Hyrum M. Smith

Hyrum M. Smith

Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (October 24, 1901 – January 23, 1918)

General Conference Addresses

October 1917 General Conference
- Wisdom
  - “A wise people are a people who will do what they know to be right. The Lord has declared to us that which is right, he has given us intelligence to understand the difference between right and wrong, to distinguish between good and evil, between the true and the false, so that there can be no excuse really for the Latter-day Saints being unwise. But if the Lord has given us intelligence to understand the truth, and to know all his commandments and we do not keep his commandments, then we are not wise.”
  - “No man can find forgiveness for one sin because he is righteous in some other direction.”
April 1917 General Conference
- The Resurrection
  - “Resurrection means to come from death unto life, and as it is the body that dies, it is the body that must be raised up and brought to life again. The term resurrection is never used save in connection with the body.”
October 1916 General Conference
- Report from the European Mission
  - “We stand in the world for peace among men and not war. We detest war; we love peace. Does the world love peace? No. Do they want peace? It is not apparent that they do. The devil reigns in the world, and he has stirred up the hearts of men to anger and to hatred and to bloodshed. It is terrible to contemplate that in certain nations, among millions of the inhabitants of this earth today, infants are drawing from their mothers very breasts the poison of hate of their fellow men.”
- The True Church
  - “All men can serve God freely. All are invited to come and drink of the waters of life freely, and they may come if they will. No one will coerce them, nor compel them. Compulsion is not a principle of the gospel of salvation.”
April 1913 General Conference
- Marriage and a Righteous Life
  - “The responsibilities of marriage are great, but where love abounds, there will be happiness and joy unspeakable. So, likewise, in that relationship, they will be called upon, in all probability, to undergo very sorrowful experiences, that will bring sadness to their souls and try them severely; yet all these things can be endured if the love that should exist does exist in the hearts of those who have plighted their faith to each other.”
  - “No young man can marry outside of the Church, except he dishonor his father and mother, and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the command of God as given in the revelations of the latter-day.”
October 1912 General Conference
- The Scriptures
  - “And again, neither can the Bible spiritualize men. That is to say, the Bible has not the power to confer upon men the Holy Ghost, nor to give unto them that Spirit of God.”
  - “The Holy Ghost is received by the laying on of hands by one having authority, and then, and not until then, can the student of the scripture and the believer in God become truly spiritualized.”
April 1912 General Conference
- Mutual Confidence
  - “Immoral practices of every kind stain and corrupt and defile those addicted to them, and Hkewise leave their mark upon the children; and their children, thus handicapped, have not the vitality, they have not the power to resist the inroads of disease and infection, and various kinds of trouble when they break out in our communities.”
October 1911 General Conference
- Teachers
  - “We should respect the Priesthood and honor it, no matter who holds it, and especially should we honor and respect a man who endeavors to magnify his calling in the midst of the Saints.”
April 1911 General Conference
- Love of God Sustained by Precept and Example
  - “In the private instruction imparted to his sons and daughters he has told them that he would rather carry every one of them to the grave, in their purity and their innocence, than have one of them ever deny God, or turn away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and depart from the Church, as it has been established through Joseph Smith, the prophet.”
October 1910 General Conference
- Faith and Works
  - “If it be true that the world is better for having a good man live in it, then it must also be true that the world is better for having multitudes of good men living in it.”
  - “Our religion is not a theory; it is a fact. Ours is not a mere confession of faith; it is a great profession with a splendid practice. Ours is not a faith that is dead, being alone; but a live, active faith, closely associated with a conscientious performance of good works.”
  - “We cannot pray with much faith that so-called ministers who have taken the wrong course will repent for many of them have steeled their hearts against the truth and against repentance; but we will pray—and with great faith, too—that the Lord will cause that they shall not blind the eyes of the innocent and those who love truth.”
April 1910 General Conference
- Prophetic Succession
  - “Some of the descendants of the Prophet Joseph Smith took it upon themselves to write letters of warning to the President of the Church, in which he was accused of deceiving the Saints, and warnings to the people to beware of the general authorities and the Priesthood. The people were told that they were being led astray. The people—it was said—were innocent; the people were pure and good; but their leaders were impure and bad. The grandson of the Prophet Joseph Smith came here and made a great effort with these warnings, to create discord and dissatisfaction among the Saints of God, He joined himself with those avowed and determined enemies of the people who for years had made war upon the Saints; he was in constant association and communication with them, assisted them in their tirade against the Priesthood, and in their efforts to discredit the Presidency before the people. There were a few—-just a few foolish and unstable ones among the Latter-day Saints who had not been very faithful, who had not enjoyed the Spirit of the Lord, and they were tinctured with this folly, and they rose up against the brethren. They called themselves prophets, claiming to be one or another of the ancient prophets come again; and because of this the enemy actually imagined that they were making great inroads among the people. So sanguine and sure were some of these men that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was about to be disrupted and broken to pieces, and that there would be a great harvest for these pretenders, that even the president of the so-called Re-organized church came to Utah with the full intention and hope of gathering up the fragments and establishing again the Church under his leadership. I remember so well: he made a few speeches in this city, as did his son. They came to the conference, and sat here among the presidents of stakes. They fully expected to see the Presidency of the Church repudiated and voted down. The Latter-day Saints were assembled, as usual, in great numbers. But, do you know, there were none of the general authorities that had any fears; they did not expect to see the kingdom of God destroyed and the Church thrown down and given to another people. They knew better; the Lord had promised otherwise; and so, when the President’s name was presented before the great congregation for their support, the people responded almost to a man, and just like it might have been one man, so united were they. I remember the president of the Re-organized church and his son, how they looked back over the congregation, to see how the people would reject the authorities of the Church; but they turned to see a sight that they had never and that few of us had ever seen before, for it seemed to me every hand was raised just a little higher than I had ever seen them raised before, and they remained uplifted just a little longer than usual. They were raised with a determination, with a will, with a faith that conveyed unto all present the knowledge that these men were indeed living in the hearts df the people, and that the people knew for themselves that they were God’s divinely called servants, and that God was at the head of this Church, and not men alone, but that the men whom the Lord had chosen to preside among the people were in close touch with the Spirit of God, in communication with the Lord constantly.”
October 1909 General Conference
- Triumph of Truth
  - “As a general thing, however, when a man puts his trust in the Lord, the Lord sustains him.”
  - “Men in this Church ought not to feel that they are free to resign at their own will the positions that the Lord God of Heaven has called them to occupy, and in which He has for them a work to perform, in the carrying on of this great latter-day work, in this dispensation. The Lord’s will rather than man’s should be done.”
April 1909 General Conference
- Sabbath Observance
  - “We desire our children to grow up fearing God and keeping holy His Sabbath day; and we deplore the condition that prevails where legislators arise and make light of, and ridicule the honest, sincere, and devout wish of a mighty people when they ask for relief from this desecration of the Lord’s day. I fear for the peace and safety of our commonwealth when our law makers refuse to listen to the voice of the people, and follow the advice of the wicked and immoral instead.”
October 1908 General Conference
- Intelligent Obedience
  - “The Lord is absolutely opposed to all manner of sin, of evil, of wickedness, of vice, and corruption. He has declared that He can look upon these things with no degree of allowance. He cannot wink at these things, because He has commanded that they shall be done away among His people.”
  - “There is no such thing as “necessary evils.””
  - “All Latter-day Saints ought to set their faces, as flint, against all manner of evil, and by that example prove to the world that it is possible to live above sin, and not yield to the seducing wicked spirits which have gone abroad in the world.”
April 1908 General Conference
- Desire to Learn Truth
  - “It is the truth we love; it is the truth we seek; and we believe there are no men who are better acquainted with the truths of God than the constituted; authorities of His Church.”
  - “That is our desire, to keep the commandments of God, and to become acquainted with truth and light.”
October 1907 General Conference
- Divinity of Christ
  - “Men must believe in God; they must believe that He is our Father, that He created us and established us here; and He shall welcome us again in His presence. We must believe that Jesus is the Redeemer of the world, and accept Him as such. We must accept the doctrines He taught, and put them into practice in our lives, if the reading of the scripture, His word, will do us any good.”
  - “It is folly for men to say Jesus Christ is not divine, and that He was just a great moral teacher, a man in advance of His time, and then advise men to follow Him.”
  - “He declared Himself to be the Son of God. He proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh to God save by me.” Men can come to God in that way only, or else the Son of Man told an untruth, and lying is far from being a moral habit.”
  - “He was what He announced Himself to be, and what we declare Him to be, or else He performed a most arrogant and immoral act in assuming to be He who could forgive sins, and who could save men from their sins and lift them up, and exalt them in the presence of God.”
April 1907 General Conference
- Avoiding Evil
  - “If the Latter-day Saints are a menace at all, they are a menace to sin and vice of all kinds, to error, to falsehood, to outlawry, and anarchy, and all such.”
October 1906 General Conference
- The Ten Commandments
  - “There are those among us who do not heed it as a holy day, but instead the Sabbath is turned by them into an unholy day, a day of recreation, of sinful pleasure, a day of desecration, of following after their own wills, a day wherein they strive as far as possible to forget God rather than to remember Him, a day in which they wend their way from the house of the Lord rather than towards it; seeking pleasure and forgetting God; and this ought not to be.”
  - “Thou shalt not commit adultery. Another soul destroying crime which is very rare among the Latter-day Saints. There is no other sin, save murder only, that will so soon destroy the spiritual and moral life of men—why, it is spiritual suicide to participate in any such deadly crime.”
April 1906 General Conference
- The Narrow Way is Wide Enough for All
  - “Conversion from a condition of sin and unbelief to one of understanding and faith is not brought about instantaneously.”
  - “There is but one way of life and salvation; and it is nonsense for men to take as text “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and then, before they have finished, declare to the world that they may go their own way, suit their own inclination, follow any road they will, for so great is the love of God and the mercy of Jesus Christ that He will save them in the end.”
  - “It is folly to suppose that you can gain a salvation in the kingdom of God while you are breaking the commandments of God. It is folly to suppose that the broad way, and those roads that meander and curve, and turn away from the straight and narrow path will lead to that gate which entereth into life.”
October 1905 General Conference
- Magnitude of the Work of God
  - “May the testimony of the truth ever be with you, my brothers and sisters. May the powers of evil never be permitted to tempt you from your duty or from the path of right.”
April 1905 General Conference
- Dissension
  - “Was the life of the one equal to the life of the other? Not at all. The ends of justice were no more met when the slayer of Abraham Lincoln was put to death than recompense would he made if the combined debt of the world were to be paid with a counterfeit penny.”
  - “I say that the man who looks upon another with murder in his heart, and who, by speaking and writing, incites the feeble-minded and vicious to strike the blow which takes from the country her noble men whom they hate, is in fact the murderer. Such men commit murder in their hearts, and they are no less murderers than they would be if they committed the deed itself.”
October 1904 General Conference
- Be Not Ashamed
  - “While Peter, James and John were as good perhaps as men could be, nevertheless men who have lived in this day and who do live are as good as they were. I believe, however, our men of today have had a little advantage over those men of old, as they live in a dispensation of greater fullness of the Gospel. They ought to be good men, and they are good men.”
April 1904 General Conference
- The Obedient Will Be Saved
  - “We condone some of the sins and the weaknesses of the flesh on the ground that they are inherited. He who feels that his parents are responsible for his inherent weaknesses and evil propensities, and thereby justifies himself, accuses his father of iniquity, and classes himself among the generations of those who hate the Lord.”
  - “If properly lived, there is no sin, no inherited evil—I care not what it is—that the power of God cannot relieve and eliminate from the soul of man.”
  - “No Latter-day Saint is justified in continuing in weaknesses and in imperfections. All of us have them, nevertheless.”
October 1903 General Conference
- Strengthening the Church
  - “We ought to strive, individually, to make the Church of Christ stronger. The Church ought to be strong, because of the multitude of its members; and each member should take a particular pride in adding strength to the Church because he or she is a member of it.”
  - “We have the privilege of knowing of a surety that this is the work of God. It is no chance proposition with the Latter-day Saints; it is a surety. There is no doubt in the mind of a conscientious and fully converted Latter-day Saint that God, the Father, and Jesus Christ, His Son, the Savior of the world, appeared in person to the Prophet Joseph Smith. That is a knowledge that is possessed by tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints, and it is a knowledge, furthermore, that can be gained and possessed by every individual born into this world, if that individual will but follow the instructions given of the Lord whereby men can come to a knowledge of the truth.”
  - “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands in this world today for purity, for honesty, for righteousness, for virtue, for truth, for nobleness, and for every good, beautiful and glorious principle that has ever been made known to man. The Church of Christ stands for all these things, and it is the only organization in the world today that has the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ, as the Savior Himself taught it when He was upon the earth.”
  - “If they only knew that in converting an individual who has had a knowledge of the truth and has fallen away, or who has gotten into the dark, and doubts, through sin and transgression—for men can fall from a knowledge of the truth only through disobedience of some kind—if they knew that in winning such persons from us they were but adding strength to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were weakening their own organizations in gaining such individuals, they, perhaps, would not be so anxious to get them.”
  - “It is obvious that if you take from any proposition, from any mechanism, the weak parts, those parts that threaten the rest of the machinery or the rest of the organization, you strengthen that organization; and if you take that weak portion and add it to yourself, you do not add strength to yourself, but weakness instead. Now, take those Latter-day Saints who are in transgression and who have joined other churches, some people think they are converted from the truth, but they are not; they have lost a knowledge of the truth through their transgression, and when they are cut off from the Church of Christ and join some other organization they weaken that organization, and it makes the Church of Christ stronger because of the absence of those persons in transgression. We would be pleased to have them repent; but some people, you know, will not repent; they cannot repent. On the other hand, take the ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that Church which sends forth its ministers with divine authority to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and declare repentance to the world, whom do they convert? Is it those who have been ostracized and cast away from all religious doors? No. Is it those who are in transgression in the other churches, or in the world among men? No. Who is it? Why, it is the people who are most devout, who are most conscientious in serving God, so far as their knowledge and light goes. They want to serve the Lord, and they are striving to serve Him; they are prayerful; they are meeting-goers; in fact, those converted to the Church of Christ are the very best parishioners that are to be found in the churches of the world. In other words, they are the strongest individuals to be found in the various organizations of Christendom, and in gaining them we add strength to the true Church.”
  - “People who are sinful and unrepentant, people who are in transgression, men and women who are wicked in their hearts and who will not repent, can never enter into the kingdom of God; and no man or woman who is full of iniquity and sin can stand in this Church very long; no, they will be weeded out. There are sins, my brethren and sisters, which may be committed that cannot be repented of in this life, nor will they be forgiven in this life nor the life to come, and men and women who commit these sins cannot be retained in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Show me another church in the world that invariably excommunicates men or women because of transgression or wickedness: there are none.”
- Charity and Prophecy
  - “It is no source of rejoicing to the Latter-day Saints that so many millions are ignorant of the truth. It is no great reason for boasting on our part, that changes are being made in the systems of men, and that revealed principles are being adopted by them. While it may show forth their vulnerable parts, and give an opening against which the atheist may direct his shafts of sarcasm, yet the Latter-day Saints will not raise their voices in derision concerning them. Rather will we rejoice that mankind will receive principles of truth, incorporate them in their systems, and live them in their lives. The Gospel has been restored in our day for the benefit of the world, and we deplore the fact that the world to such a great extent are without a knowledge of it.”
  - “You Latter-day Saints ought to praise God; but in your thankfulness for the greater blessings which you enjoy, you ought not to denounce others because they have not so much good as you have. No; our whole souls should be filled with pity because of their condition, and we should sympathize with them because of their ignorance and blindness because they are being led by blind guides. We should go forth among them with tbe sole desire in our hearts to manifest unto them that which God has revealed unto us, and carry to them that which has made us free and happy, and which has made us in very deed the Church and people of God. That should be the feeling of the Latter-day Saints.”
October 1902 General Conference
- God Will Execute Justice
  - “For my own part, I would rather retain faithful and firm ten members of the Church who are already converted than convert one hundred out in the world.”
  - “To apostatize from the Church would be your own loss. As has been said, no physical injury or harm of any other kind would come to you from the Church itself; but in leaving the faith which you have espoused you would only cut yourselves off from the fellowship of good man and women, and, what is more, from the fellowship of God our Eternal Father.”
  - “We cannot compromise with the world; we cannot meet them half way; but we are in duty bound to go all the way for the purpose of warning them and preaching the Gospel as we have received it. And unless those who hear the Gospel accept every principle of it they cannot become members of the Church of Christ. There is no half way business with the Latter-day Saints. You have either to accept every principle that has been taught by God Almighty or you cannot he baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ. We have no right to do otherwise.”
April 1902 General Conference
- Prayers and Truth
  - “While we have not all the truth, still we are in that line of eternal and infinite progression which eventually will place in the possession of the faithful Latter-day Saints all the truth. The Latter-day Saints can have any and every truth that others have.”
  - “How often do parents have to deny the prayers and petitions of their own children. Notwithstanding the child desires a thing greatly, and can see no reason why he should not have it, yet in the greater wisdom of the parent his request is denied and the supposed blessing is withheld. But that is no evidence that the prayer was not considered by the parent; it is simply an evidence that the parent knows best when to give and when to withhold.”
  - “Let us seek for the salvation of the souls of men. And while we are working in the world for the salvation of those who are yet in unbelief, let us work also for the salvation of the souls of our children, and bring them up to maturity in the fear and admonition and knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
  - “We have been more favored; we ought to be better; but never let us exalt ourselves above others. Let us be humble. Let us seek the truth, and receive It when it is made known to us.”
- Learning and Teaching the Truth
  - “My brethren and sisters, God is at the head of this great work, and He is exalting His people. Look at the multitude here and in the Tabernacle today who have gathered together to hear the word of the Lord. It is with the spirit of envy that some of those not of our faith witness our unity in assembling together to be instructed in the ways of the Lord. We are Latter-day Saints, brethren and sisters, we are one people, no matter where we are or how we may be scattered, and there is only one kind of “Mormons,” only one kind of Latter-day Saints.”
  - “I would like to caution you not to seek to exalt yourselves, but to leave that to God, who will exalt us quickly and grandly enough, inasmuch as we seek to keep His laws and commandments.”
  - “There ought to be a Religion Class in the home of every Latter-day Saint. Every member of the Church ought to have a Religion Class, where the children are being taught the principles of the Gospel.”
  - “The Lord will not condescend to come down in person to each of us to convince us that this is His Church; not by any means. We must believe the words and testimonies. So it has been from the beginning.”

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Hyrum M. Smith

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