e God behind the veil
of nature, in sun and wind and flower and fruit; but there is something
lacking. Try now to formulate some distinct idea of what this universal
and almighty force back of nature is. We are told that this force is
God, whom we must love and worship and serve. We want the feeling
of nearness to satisfy the craving for love and protection, but our
intellect and our reason must also be somewhat satisfied. We must
have some object on which to rest--we cannot always be floating about
unsuspended in time and space.

"Then there is some further confusion: Christian philosophers have tried
to personify this 'soul of the universe,' for God, they say, thinks and
feels and knows. They try to get a personality without form or bounds or
dimentions, but it all ends in vagueness and confusion. As for me, and I
think I am not so different from other men,--for me to be able to think
of God, I must have some image of Him. I cannot think of love or good,
or power or glory in the abstract. These must be expressed to me by
symbols at least as eminating from, or inherent in, or exercised by some
person. Love cannot exist alone: there must be one who loves and one
who is being loved. God is love. That means to me that a person, a
beautiful, glorified, allwise, benevolent being exercises that divine
principle which is shed forth on you and me.

"Now, if the world would only leave all this metaphysical meandering and
come back to the simple truth, what a clearing of mists there would
be! All their philosophies would have a solid basis if they would only
accept the truth revealed anew to us through the Prophet Joseph Smith
that God is one of a race, the foremost and first, if you wish it, but
still one of a race of beings who inhabit the universe; that we humans
are His children, begotten of Him in the pre-mortal world in His image;
that we are on the upward path through eternity, following Him who has
gone before and has marked out the way; that if we follow, we shall
eventually arrive at the point where He now is. Ignorance of these
things is what I understand to be ignorance of God."

"In England I lost my wife and two children. The gospel came to me
shortly after, I am sure, to comfort me in the depths of my despair. Not
one church on earth that I knew of, Catholic or Protestant, would hold
out any hope of my ever being reunited with wife and children as such.
There is no family life in heaven, they teach. At that time