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The
Real Measure
by Truman
G. Madsen
It is often
said that there is no measure, no index of the spiritual. We can
mark its effects. We can calibrate external action, reaction, inaction.
But we have no way of applying a slide-rule to the depths of a man's
soul.
This is largely
true as we view others. It is largely false as we view ourselves.
There are Divine counsels and promises which, when combined with
human examples, become tests of our spiritual stature. They are
revealing.
In this spirit
of self-scrutiny, we pose the following questions:
Have you sat
in mild indifference and then, illumined, been "constrained to acknowledge"
the manifestations of the Son of God? Have you replaced, as did
Alma O. Taylor, the halting words of youth, "I believe because others
believe," with the fervent words of maturity, "I know though all
others may doubt."
Is your testimony
alive? Have you recently expressed it or heard others express theirs
in a way that kindled you as it did the modern Twelve ("like fire
shut up in our bones.") Can you distinguish it from feeling-tones;
for example, responses to sunsets, musical harmonies, or the beauty
of a child's face. Is it not also clear that all perception, spiritual
or sensate, is richer because of it?
Have you taught
or testified when your words carried a sense of inevitability, grounded
in a Someone more than you? And were there those who apprehended
so that, as promised, you could "understand one another and both
were edified and rejoiced together."
What is the
timbre of your voice when you say "Amen" to a public prayer or sermon?
Or when you sing unique Mormon hymns like "O My Father," or "The
Spirit of God like a Fire?"
What of your
prayer life? Are the Father and the Son intimately near as you kneel?
Unmistakably, do you ever break out of the subjective circle, aware,
at least sometimes, of the Spirit that dwells in both mind and heart?
And have you don't ever what Heber C. Kimball (according to his
family) did always: "He never ceased praying until he felt the Spirit
of God burning in his bosom. He often remarked that a prayer was
never heard, under ordinary circumstances, unless such was the case."
What of the
sacrament? How long since in the process of covenant-making you
have been fully present in remembering? And remembering what? Could
you be counted with Melvin J. Ballard? "I am a witness that there
is a Spirit that attends the sacrament that warms the soul from
head to foot. You feel the wounds on the spirit being lifted."
What of your
intellect? Is your memory, your imagination, your clarity and aptness
of thought, your capacity to "stretch as high as the utmost heaven"
enhanced "through Him that enlighteneth your eyes and quickeneth
your understandings?" Are you learning by "both study and faith"
"line upon line?" And does the glory of truth begin to permeate
you with the hope that you may one day testify, as did President
Joseph F. Smith, that "doubt and fear have been absolutely purged
from me."
Have you known
what Joseph Smith calls "flashes of intelligence" or "sudden strokes
of ideas" which may range from the subtle intuition that you are
to be called upon to pray to the impress of a crucial direction
in life? Are you moved by the Prophet's admonition to John Taylor
that the principle of revelation could become a "fountain within
you" and that one could thus eventually become "perfect in Christ
Jesus."
Is yours the
kind of personality that warms and lifts? Could you say to a friend
out of affinity with the Master, "If I could always be with you
I could cure you?" (Joseph Smith did.) Will there be a tribute from
any of your associates that, like Brigham Young, you were "able
to comfort and soothe those who are depressed in spirit, and always
make those with whom he associates so happy?...for the light of
God is in him, and others feel the influence."
Finally, how
intimate and ultimate in you is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself?
Do you recognize
that all the "tests" above are different ways of saying that He
is the alpha and omega of spiritual life? This is the "testimony
of Jesus." It is He through whom "the life and the light, the Spirit
and the power (are) sent forth by the will of the Father."
How much of
your service is wearisome and fitful? Have you learned, as the Prophet
said, that "when a man is reigned up continually he gains in knowledge
and power." Do you exhaust to the limit your own energies and thus
merit the Spirit which "leadeth to do good" which overcomes fear
and "a grudging spirit." And have you found what Christ approved
in Nephi, son of Helaman-"unwearyingness." Do you feel, with Wilford
Woodruff, that for all men of God it is the Spirit that has "nerved
them up in their spirits with fortitude and borne them up against
every opposing influence." And that "This has been the case in every
dispensation when this light and power have been enjoyed by the
children or men."
Is the most
thrilling truth within you the knowledge that you are Sired, as
He was, in the Divine likeness? To attempt to imitate His First-Century
acts if futile until we seek His Twentieth-Century Powers which
enable us to be "partakers of the Divine nature." As he told Joseph
Smith in our time, "all those who are begotten through Me are partakers
of the glory of the same."
What of the
"fruits of the Spirit?" Have you glimpsed, at least, the love for
God that, in Nephi, was "unto the consuming of my flesh." Have you
encountered the love from God which the Prophet said is "peculiar
to itself but it is without prejudice" caring, not just even, but
especially, for the most ugly and miserable of men? And does its
scope blend kinship, compassion, and desire to serve? Could you,
finding a prized possession stolen, say as did "President George
Albert Smith, "Oh, I wish I could have given it to him. Then he
wouldn't be a thief." Do you know, with Orson Pratt, that such love
is not willed but bestowed through the Spirit; that it becomes unconditional,
and that such love, the perfect love of Jesus Christ, is the only
abiding insulation against false Christs.
These are they
whom our living Prophet saw in vision, following the Redeemer, the
tint and radiance of whose countenance was beautiful to behold.
Arched over them were the golden words: "These are they who have
overcome the world are truly born again."
In our own
time enlightened men and women do walk the earth. Others will write
in their diaries that they were "incomparably godlike," and that,
as Lydia Knight records, their faces shone "like the mellow radiance
of an astral lamp."
They will answer,
as we must answer, the final question, asked by the ancient Alma:
Can you look
up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?
Is a spiritual
gift operative in your life? Said the Prophet Joseph Smith: "A man
who has none of the gifts has no faith and he deceives himself is
he supposes he has." Do you recognize in experience this continuing
touch of the Spirit? For example, in the gifts of discernment, of
healing or being healed (both in mind and body), the testimony of
the Son of God, the gift of wisdom, or of knowledge, or the gift
to teach? And do you know that intelligence is always associated
with these powers; nothing about them is "unnatural or indecorous."
To what level
does your patriarchal blessing reach in your life? Can you recollect
the time you received it and recover any of the spirit of the occasion?
Do you in quiet moments ponder it? Does Karl G. Maeser's phrase,
"paragraphs from the book of our possibilities" rest upon you with
a sense of mission so that, as President Heber J. Grant exemplified,
"you "dream nobly and manfully" and prepare ceaselessly? Do you
ever think of Heber C. Kimball's faith that you can "write your
own patriarchal blessing" under inspiration, for, saith the Lord,
"No good thing will I withhold..."
In receiving
the priesthood by ordination or an office or calling in the Church
has your awareness been heightened of that power emanating from
the glorified Christ, compared to which J. Reuben Clark testified,
"the hydrogen bomb is a mere tiny firecracker." Has what Orson F.
Whitney described as "liquid fire" or what Stephen L. Richards called
"an essence of force and power" moved in to you? Were you then,
or in later ministrations, "quickened in the inner man?"
What is your
habitual pattern under temptation. Do you, in the rising tide of
malice, or anger, or lust find yourself fighting a sham batle, knowing
you will yield? Has this ever been reversed? Have you begun trembling
under weaknesses, then reached for "The Stone of Israel?" Has His
Spirit, infusing your own spirit, given you victory over your misdirected
drives and led to authentic expression?" He that trembleth under
my power" says the Redeemer, "shall be strong." One may move, as
Brigham Young witnessed, from being "full of evil passion" to feelings
"as calm and gentle as the zephyrs of paradise." Do you realize
with Parley P. Pratt, that the religious life does not repress feelings?
Instead it "increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies them" leading
to greater (not lesser) enjoyment.
Is fasting
of any efficacy with you? Do you go beyond passive refusal of food
and drink to the active unity of mind and spirit reaching upward
through your soul stresses? Whether or not you were conscious of
immediate intervention, has there not resulted as for Susa Young
Gates, "a feeling of infinite trust and reliance?" Have you learned
that when bodily cravings are in harmony with the spirit the body
itself has new power? Thus Eliza R. Snow says, "refreshing influences
upon one affect the other." In modern revelation a synonym for "fasting
and prayer" is "rejoicing and prayer."
What of your
thoughts? Do you shrink from the revealed image of the All-Seeing
eye of the Christ who is "the discerner of the thoughts and intents
of the heart?" When thoughts boil up from your weaknesses-little
lurid thoughts-do you turn them out whether of human or of hellish
hue? And are you learning to find sufficient light to derive kernels
of truth or good?
How do you
deal with dark days? Do you struggle under depression? How petty
or profound are the apparent causes? Have you felt increasingly,
with Jedediah M. Grant, "not to fret myself. It has taken me a great
while to arrive at this point, but I have obtained it in a measure.
I thank the Lord for the bitter as well as for the sweet...I want
the Saints to live in a way that they can feel happy all the time,
and then we shall enjoy the Holy Spirit."
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