The instructions which we have heard from our brethren, this morning and afternoon, are calculated to benefit every one of us, if we have listened attentively and are disposed to treasure them up in our hearts; but that is the great difficulty with us as individuals and as a people. We hear so much good instruction that it is apt to pall upon us, like persons who have plenty of food; they sometimes eat to satiety and lose their appetite, their food does not relish as it did when they were pinched with hunger and did not have such abundance. I do not know that you ever have that feeling here in Ogden; it is a feeling that no Latter-day Saints should have. In fact, there is this peculiarity about the truth, as it is preached by the servants of God—the more it is listened to the more it is sought after and cultivated, and the more precious and sweet is its influence upon the hearts of those who take this course. But where there is indifference and formality, and people don't seek, as Brother Heber used to say, to dig down to the roots, it may in such cases become wearisome and fail to have the effect it should have. But when I look at the progress that the brethren and sisters are making I feel gratified. There are times, perhaps, when I feel as others do—that we are not making the progress that we should do; that we are more careless and harder in our hearts and less under the influences of the Holy Spirit and the counsels of the servants of God than we should be. This is my feeling sometimes; but when I look calmly at the Saints, and consider the many difficulties with which they have to contend and the vast amount of tradition that has to be uprooted and overcome, I am gratified at the progress which they make, and feel comforted in the prospects that are before us, and before the Zion of God with which we are connected.
It is these traditions that we have to contend with that are so difficult for us to overcome, that interfere so seriously with the progress of the people in the things of God. They cling more closely to us than many of us imagine, and it is only when the Spirit of God rests upon us and we realize its power to a greater extent that we can understand and comprehend the power of tradition over our minds and conduct. This is the great obstruction to the teachings of the Elders and to the reception of and obedience to counsel; and that prevents the people being united as the heart of one man. It is this which prevents us entering upon the more perfect order that God has revealed, and that gives our enemies more power in our midst than they otherwise would have. It should be the aim of every one of us to seek, as far as possible, to put these things away from us. It is our privilege to have power from God, to have sufficient faith bestowed upon us through His Holy Spirit, to overcome these traditions. The writers in the Book of Mormon, in speaking of the vail of darkness that rested upon the minds of the people, alluded to it as a vail which can be rent asunder by the exercise of faith and by the blessing of God upon His Saints. There is a vail over our minds in consequence of the Fall, and our being shut, as it were, through that, from the presence of God. He can see us, but to us He is invisible, and we can know Him only through His Holy Spirit, as He reveals Himself to us from time to time. In consequence of this the adversary has great power over the hearts of the children of men; and it is only by exercising faith, by seeking earnestly for that Spirit which He bestows, that we are enabled to counteract this darkness and the influence which Satan seeks to exercise over our hearts.
I rejoice in one fact which God has revealed; it comforts my heart when I think of our condition and circumstances and of His kingdom, and that is that we live in the day when, according to the words of the prophets and according to the revelations which God has given to us in this dispensation, the power of Satan is becoming less and less, and the power of God is to increase and to be made more and more manifest, to the exposing of the works of darkness and to the breaking of the yoke which the enemy of all righteousness seeks to fasten upon the minds and understandings of the children of men.