Brigham Young

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Dreams of Brigham Young University

October 21, 2009 in Education by Greg | No comments

Today, Carrie told me of a talk given by Merrill J. Bateman about the history of Brigham Young University.1 Just as Henry B. Eyring spoke about the future of BYU in A Consecrated Place, Elder Bateman spoke of those who were given dreams of its future destiny.

Recently I shared with the faculty and staff some key events from BYU’s history. During the preparation of the material, some insights were gleaned with regard to the special nature of this institution. Today I wish to share a few of them with you.

Lessons from BYU’s History

Karl G Maeser The first lesson one learns in reviewing BYU’s history concerns the extraordinary faith of the early Saints who forged this institution. They founded Brigham Young Academy in a desert with a fragile economic base. However, they understood the importance of education, especially for their children, and were willing to sacrifice every temporal asset they had in order to keep the school alive. This was true of the faculty and staff and also of the citizens throughout the valley. It was not uncommon for Karl G. Maeser and his staff to receive less than one-half pay during the 1880s. Abraham O. Smoot, a highly successful businessman, stake president, mayor of Provo, and chairman of the board of Brigham Young Academy, gave his buildings, his land, and mortgaged his home in order to save the institution. He died penniless, having given everything to the school.

The faith of BYU’s founders was never stronger than during times of crisis. I was particularly impressed with Karl G. Maeser’s conviction as he responded to Reed Smoot, a student, during the 1884 fire that destroyed the academy’s only building. As it became apparent that they could not save the Lewis building, the student said to Maeser, “Oh, Brother Maeser, the Academy is burned!” Maeser responded, “No such thing, it’s only the building.”2 Six years earlier, shortly after the death of Brigham Young, Maeser had a dream in which President Young showed him the design of a new building. At the time Brother Maeser did not understand the purpose of the dream. Six years later, as he looked at the charred ruins of Lewis Hall, he could see in his mind’s eye the building that would take its place.3

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  1. Bateman, Merrill J. “Gathered in the Tops of the Mountains”. 7 Sep 1999. BYU Speeches. 21 Oct 2009. See BYU Broadcasting for a PDF of the talk.↩
  2. Ernest L. Wilkinson and W. Cleon Skousen, Brigham Young University: A School of Destiny (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976), 74–75.↩
  3. See ibid., 118–19.↩

Spiritual Knowledge

October 11, 2009 in Education by Greg | No comments

In 1993, Richard G. Scott spoke about acquiring spiritual knowledge at BYU’s Campus Education Week. In beginning his talk, Elder Scott asked, “Why center on spiritual knowledge?” to which he responded by quoting Spencer W. Kimball:

Olive_Tree Spiritual learning takes precedence. The secular without the foundation of the spiritual is but like the foam upon the milk, the fleeting shadow.

Do not be deceived! One need not choose between the two . . . for there is opportunity to get both simultaneously; . . .

Secular knowledge, important as it may be, can never save a soul nor open the celestial kingdom nor create a world nor make a man a god, but it can be most helpful to that man who, placing first things first, has found the way to eternal life and who can now bring into play all knowledge to be his tool and servant. (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 390.)

He also quoted others:

President J. Reuben Clark observed:

There is spiritual learning just as there is material learning, and the one without the other is not complete; yet, speaking for myself, if I could have only one sort of learning, that which I would take would be the learning of the spirit, because in the hereafter I shall have opportunity in the eternities which are to come to get the other, and without spiritual learning here my handicaps in the hereafter would be all but overwhelming. (CR, April 1934, p. 94.)

President Gordon B. Hinckley stated:

This restored gospel brings not only spiritual strength, but also intellectual curiosity and growth. Truth is truth. There is no clearly defined line of demarcation between the spiritual and the intellectual when the intellectual is cultivated and pursued in balance with the pursuit of spiritual knowledge and strength.

The Lord Almighty, through revelation, has laid a mandate upon this people in these words:

“Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). (CR, April 1986, p. 63; also, “Come and Partake,” Ensign, May 1986, p. 48.) . . .

As knowledge unfolds it must be understood, valued, used, remembered, and expanded.

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Holy Order in the Book of Mormon

August 20, 2009 in Priesthood by Greg | No comments

The Book of Mormon contains a number of references to the holy order – or the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God -1, many of which are found in the book of Alma. In “The Holy Order of God”, Robert L. Millet wrote:

Priest entering the Holy of Holies To the wayward people of Ammonihah, Amulek had delivered a poignant testimony of Christ as God, had borne witness of the necessity of repentance, and had held out the hope of redemption from sin and death through the merits and mercy of the coming Messiah (see Alma 11:26-46). Alma then delivered a companion and confirming witness of the reality of the Savior and the manner in which men and women can, through faith, pass from death unto eternal life. “Therefore,” he said, quoting the Lord to the ancients, “whosoever repenteth, and hardeneth not his heart, he shall have claim on mercy through mine Only Begotten Son, unto a remission of his sins; and these shall enter into my rest.” Alma then pleaded: “And now, my brethren, seeing we know these things, and they are true, let us repent, and harden not our hearts, . . . but let us enter into the rest of God, which is prepared according to his word” (Alma 12:34, 37). It is in the context of Alma’s discussion of how the Saints can, through applying the atoning blood of Christ, enter into the rest of God, that Alma begins a discussion of the holy order of God. His discussion is a deep and ponderous and insightful prophetic declaration as to how, through the blessings of the priesthood—those called and prepared from the foundation of the world—the people of God may be sanctified from sin and enjoy the “words of eternal life” in this mortal sphere, all in preparation for eternal life with God and holy beings hereafter (see Moses 6:59).2

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  1. See D&C 107:3; for a more thorough review of the priesthood and its orders, see Ellsworth, Richard G. “Priesthood”. 1992. Encyclopedia of Mormonism. 2009.↩
  2. Millet, Robert L. “The Holy Order of God”. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds. Alma, The Testimony of the Word. Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1992. 61-86.↩

Salt Lake Temple Foundation Stones

July 29, 2009 in Temple by Greg | 2 comments

The following is a story about the Salt Lake Temple foundation stones told by Boyd K. Packer. In this story, he relates why the foundation stones had to be replaced and why these stones may have been changed in anticipation of a cataclysmic event.

It was on the twenty-third anniversary of the organization of the Church, 6 April 1853, that the cornerstone was put in place and the construction officially began.

It would be years before the railroad would cross the Rocky Mountains from the east and the Sierras from the west to meet at a point north of the Great Salt Lake. For years ox teams had been dragging granite stones from the mountains twenty miles to the southeast.

Granite slabs for Salt Lake Temple “‘Good morning, Brother,’ one man was heard to say to a teamster. ‘We missed you at the meetings yesterday afternoon.’ ‘Yes,’ said the driver of the oxen, ‘I did not attend meeting. I did not have clothes fit to go to meeting.’ ‘Well,’ said the speaker, ‘Brother Brigham called for some more men and teams to haul granite blocks for the Temple.’

“The driver, his whip thrown over his oxen, said, ‘Whoa, Haw, Buck, we shall go and get another granite stone from the quarry.’”1

At the quarry President Woodruff had watched men cut out granite stones seventy feet square and split them up into building blocks.2 If there was no mishap, and that would be an exception, the teamster, “too poorly clad to worship,” could return within a week.3

In due time the railroad came south and a spur was run to the quarry and to Temple Square. Then the stones could reach Temple Square in one day. The canal being dug to convey the granite stones to Temple Square would thereafter be used to carry irrigation water.

On Temple Square the stones were shaped into blocks for the walls, for oval windows and treads. For the four circular staircases which rise up through the corner towers, six hundred eighty-eight steps, all of them exactly alike—each of them weighing over 1,700 pounds, each taking weeks to chisel out and polish.

Symbols are chiseled on the granite stones which depict the sun, the stars, the planets, and the earth. To be sure that the stones representing the phases of the moon were accurate, Elder Orson Pratt, a competent astronomer, set up an observatory on temple block. He could open the slats in the roof to study the heavens with a three-inch lens.

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  1. David O. McKay, Salt Lake Temple dedication services, 21 May 1963, pp. 7–8.↩
  2. Journal of Wilford Woodruff, 4 July 1889, Church Archives.↩
  3. David O. McKay, Salt Lake Temple dedication services, 21 May 1963, pp. 7–8.↩

Brigham Young on Darwin, Huxley and Miall

April 19, 2009 in Science by Greg | 4 comments

After a brief hiatus dealing with a broken computer just in time for tax season, it’s time to get back to business. So, here is one of those classic Hugh W. Nibley quotes that contains a wonderful statement by Brigham Young.

Brigham Young Academy In the quote below, President Young stated that the “scientific” theories of Darwin, Huxley, and Miall1 were actually being used to promote a political economic theory based on natural selection that thwarted the Saints from living the United Order. That was in 1875.

Last month I posted an entry on Charles Darwin which points out that over time the theory of evolution reaches far beyond a scientific or biological theory.

In any case, here is the quote as promised:

As if to counteract these growing heresies, the old Darwinian view is being puffed today for all it is worth in a half dozen prestigious TV documentaries in which we are treated to endless footage of creatures ranging from amoebas to giant carnivores stalking, seizing, and with concentrated deliberation soberly crunching, munching, swallowing, and ingesting other insects, fishes, birds, and mammals. This, we are told again and again, is the real process by which all things were created. Everything is lunching on everything else, all the time, and that, children, is what makes us what we are; that is the key to progress. And note it well, all these creatures when they are not lunching are hunting for lunch–they all have to work for it: There is no free lunch in the world of nature, the real world. Lunch is the meaning of life, and everything lunches on something else–”Nature red in tooth and claw.” Tennyson’s happy phrase suited the Victorian mind to perfection. He got the idea from Darwin, as Spencer did his even happier phrase, “Survival of the fittest.” Darwin gave the blessing of science to men who had been hoping and praying for holy sanction to an otherwise immoral way of life. Malthus had shown that there will never be enough lunch for everybody, and therefore people would have to fight for it; and Ricardo had shown by his Iron Law of Wages that those left behind and gobbled up in the struggle for lunch had no just cause for complaint. Darwin showed that this was an inexorable law of nature by which the race was actually improved; Miall and Spencer made it the cornerstone of the gospel of Free Enterprise–the weaker must fall by the way if the stock is to be improved. This was movingly expressed in J. D. Rockefeller’s discourse on the American Beauty Rose, which, he said, “can be produced . . . only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. . . . This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.”

In this divinely appointed game of grabs, to share the lunch-prize would be futile, counter-productive, nay immoral. Since there is not enough to go around, whoever gets his fill must be taking it from others–that is the way the game is played. “In Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, or anywhere else in England,” as Brigham Young reported the scene in 1856, workers knew that “their employers would make them do their work for nothing, and then compel them to live on roots and grass if their physical organization could endure it, therefore, says the mechanic, `If I can get anything out of you I will call it a godsend,’ ” and does what he can to rip off the boss. If he gets caught, he is punished, yet he is only playing the same game as his employer.

Three years after Brigham made his observation, the Origin of Species appeared, putting the unimpeachable seal of science on the lunch-grab as the Supreme Law of Life and Progress. And it was expressly to refute that philosophy on which Brigham Young founded Brigham Young University in 1875: “We have enough and to spare, at present in these mountains, of schools where . . . the teachers . . . dare not mention the principles of the gospel to their pupils, but have no hesitancy in introducing into the classroom the theories of Huxley, or Darwin, or of Miall and the false political economy which contends against co-operation and the United Order. This course I am resolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to. . . . As a beginning in this direction I have endowed the Brigham Young Academy at Provo and [am] now seeking to do the same thing in this city [Salt Lake City].” With his usual unfailing insight, President Young saw it was the economic and political rather than the scientific and biological implications of natural selection that were the real danger and most counter to the gospel.2

Sources:

  1. Thomas H. Huxley was an English biologist and is best remembered as “Darwin’s Bulldog”. Louis Compton Miall was a Professor of Biology at Yorkshire College and in 1883 delivered a lecture on The Life and Work of Charles Darwin to the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.↩
  2. Nibley, Hugh W. “Work We Must, But the Lunch is Free”. Approaching Zion. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1989. 205-207.↩

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