The gospel of Jesus Christ was given to the world at a new period of history. It was when the Government of the United States was in its infancy, yet it had been launched with the greatest political and civic ideals that were ever known to modern times. It was a new period of social and economic life, and during the period or two decades from 1830 to 1850, there was more advancement in industrial history than there had been in all the history of the world up to that time.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1924

Topics: America, Heritage

A Remarkable Conception of Civil Government

Among the large contributions which Joseph Smith made was that remarkable conception of civil government which he gave to the world, for it was he who emphasized, if he did not first teach, the doctrine that all governments are instituted of God for the benefit of men; and it was he who first plainly declared—assuming that some attention had been given to the same thought before—that the Constitution of the great land in which we live came from the inspiration of God through men who were raised up for the purpose of establishing it as an instrument of government. I have always been grateful for these conceptions of government and I have felt in recent years that until the great ideas of government which he promulgated among this nation find their place more securely and firmly in the minds and hearts of the citizenship of this country, America will never achieve her great destiny and will never be what she was intended to be, the beacon light of liberty and freedom and civil righteousness to all the world.

My attention has recently been directed, by my colleague, Brother Richard R. Lyman, to a book which is off the press but a few months, in which the author, Mr. Clarence True Wilson, sets forth rather more clearly than I have ever seen it stated before, the conception of government which has been taught in this Church for nearly a hundred years. The author points out that for more than thirty years he has studied all the works which have been written upon the Constitution of this country, the influences which brought it about, and the influences exercised upon its framers, which culminated in the form and plan of government which find expression in that great document. He says that never in all his research has he discovered a single author who attributes the Constitution to the influence of the Bible and God. He points out that some contend that influences derived from the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Greek, and the Roman attempts at Republican government found their expression in this great document.

Influence of the Bible on the Constitution

He says that most commentaries on the Constitution pay homage to the influence of the common law of England and the English experiment in free government, but in no works on this great document does he find a single expression which indicates that it was the Holy Bible, the scriptures of the Lord, which furnished the foundation for this great instrument of government, and yet, says he, the Bible is the only book with which all the framers of the Constitution were intimately familiar. It was the book which they had read from their childhood to their maturity. It was the book from which they learned their spelling; it was the book from which they learned their English, it was their chief literature; and he asks this question: “Is it not reasonable, natural and logical, to draw the inference that it was the influence of the Scriptures of the Lord which permeated the hearts and the minds of those patriotic men in the formulation of the greatest instrument, which Gladstone says, ever fell from the pen of man?” Time will not permit to make anything like an analytical comparison between the fundamental institutions of our government, as they were established in the Constitution, and the Hebrew government which was established under the hand of God, and which prevailed for so many centuries under his divine guidance. It might be said, however, in a moment, that there is not a single fundamental institution of this country, ordained and established under the Constitution, that does not have something like a counterpart in the Israelitish form of government which prevailed prior to the time of the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: Heavenly Interest in Human Events; US Constitution, Inspired

There has been no king in this country. Do you know that Washington was upon several occasions requested, almost demanded, to assume the role of king, for that was the form of government which was best known to those who established this one. He persistently declined, and the makers of our Constitution saw the wisdom of his action. They recognized too that kings and the so-called divine right of kings, were not compatible with the great spirit of liberty and democracy which was to underlie the structure of our government. Does it not seem somewhat significant that in the Israelitish form of government, for a period of four hundred and seventy years, there were no kings to rule in Israel, in spite of the repeated demands of the people for a king, that they might be like other nations. They were told that God was their king, and, that no king should rule them so long as they subscribed to the great principles of truth and righteousness which the Lord had laid down for them to follow.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: Government, Forms of; Kings

How the Principles of this Government can Endure.

Now, brethren and sisters, I state these points of comparison and draw your attention to these things for this purpose—we all love this country, we love America, we want the principles of government which we espouse to endure. I ask this question: Will these principles of government endure? Is the Constitution safe for the future, and for the generations to come?

I answer the question in this way, that the Constitution and the sacred principles which it unfolds in the form of government will endure if the people of America will subscribe to and defend and uphold the fundamental principles of religious righteousness upon which it is built, and not otherwise. Righteousness, in its last analysis, is a religious term. God is the author of righteousness The framers of laws have, to a large extent, recognized that doctrine. The gospel is the compilation, the aggregation of all principles of righteousness, and into the form of government which we uphold and support there has been woven the principles of individual and community righteousness which are underlain by truth which eminates from God himself. You can’t have a good government without good people, and goodness is a religious term. Much as many of our philosophers would contend that it is to be defined in terms only of ethics, and of social convention and understanding, I maintain that all true morality is supported b and finds its basis in religion, and we cannot hope in this country of ours to sustain the great Constitution—and you know that that is a matter of much concern now—unless we adopt into our lives those principles of civic righteousness and of morality and of truth which underlie it. I wish that could be said to the whole people. I am just as thoroughly convinced that there is a dependence upon our Father in heaven for the carrying forward of the great principles of government, which we espouse in this nation, as I am that our own work depends upon his providence and his protection and his guidance.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: Morality

Indeed I regard these great principles of government as a part of the blessed gospel that God has given to his children, and so we must sustain them. To us is committed the obligation and the opportunity of maintaining these great principles of righteousness in their undiluted truth and beauty. We must conserve them, we must preserve them for the generations to come. America must not fall from the standards of truth and righteousness that underlie the structure of her government.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: US Constitution, Defend

Brethren and sisters, let me say in closing that we have it of record, that the prophet Joseph Smith said the time would come when, through secret organizations taking the law into their own hands, not being governed by law or by due process of law, but becoming a law unto themselves, when, by those disintegrating activities, the Constitution of the United States would be so torn and rent asunder, and life and property and peace and security would he held of so little value, that the Constitution would, as it were, hang by a thread. But he never said, so far as I have heard, that that thread would be cut. I believe, with Elder Richards, that this Constitution will be preserved, but it will be preserved very largely in consequence of what the Lord has revealed and what this people, through listening to the Lord and being obedient, will help to bring about, to stabilize and give permanency and effect to the Constitution itself. That also is our mission. That also is what we are here for. I glory in it. I praise God with all my heart and soul that I am a member of it.

Source: Elder Charles W. Nibley
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: US Constitution, Threats to

Let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we and they shall maintain just, moral sentiments and such righteous convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes at our country; but if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions at morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

Source: Daniel Webster
from his very last public address, made before the
Historical Society of New York, in 1852,

Topics: Christianity; Morality; Principles

In reading recently the Constitution of the United States, I thought of the eloquent words of James Russell Lowell when he was at the court of France. Guizot, the French statesman, said to him: “How long will the Government of the United States endure?” And the reply of James Russell Lowell was: “Just so long as the ideals of the founders of this government endure.” This incident has been told in the remarkable letters of the great statesman Guizot, and it is something for us to remember.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: Principles; US Constitution, Threats to

Conflict the Result of Ignorance of Law

I have frequently, in view of recent events, asked myself this question: Have we, modern people, who live in the most enlightened and progressive period of the world’s history, with the experience of the past to guide us, and knowledge of the future, as it has been outlined by the prophets who have lived before, overcome this needless, unjustifiable, erroneous conception of the proper relationship which exists, or should exist, between the church and the state? Do we properly differentiate between our obligation of obedience to civil law, in the administration of temporal affairs, and our obligation to the church, which represents divine law, given for the purpose of preparing men for future glory and exaltation in the kingdom of heaven? Where conflict exists between the two, it is clearly the result of either ignorance, or wilful misinterpretation of both civil and ecclesiastical law.

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, April 1923

Topics: Freedom, Religious

•  ⟨⟨ 
•  ⟨ 
•   |  
•  ⟩ 
•  ⟩⟩