I feel like bearing my testimony to the Gospel of the Son of God, and I have it upon my mind to impress on the Latter-day Saints one particular item of our faith, and that is to take a course to possess the Spirit of the Lord. According to your experience and mine you cannot understand the things of God but by the Spirit of God. If we were to examine the character of the Jews in the days of the Savior we would learn this one fact—that the people at that time were about as destitute of the Spirit of the Lord as any nation ever need be. In our day it seems that the Spirit will actually prompt people to liberal thinking, to liberal actions and to liberal government, and not to be as suppressive as they were in the days of the Jewish nation and other nations that then bore rule; although in Christendom there have been times when governments have been very oppressive, and when the people were obliged to think as they were told, and when the doctrines they believed in must be according to the precepts and teachings of priests; but the present age is more liberal. The time has come when the Lord is commencing to pour out his Spirit upon the people. According to the words of the Prophet the time is to come when the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured out upon all flesh. He says, "Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit." This appears to be the commencement, and I am very thankful for it. Still, according to the experience of those who examine themselves, and the operations of the different spirits upon themselves, we learn that the power of evil is very great, and we are more given to it than to possess the Spirit of Christ. Yet the Spirit of the Lord enlightens every man that comes into the world. There is no one that lives upon the earth but what is, more or less, enlightened by the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. It is said of him, that he is the light of the world. He lighteth every man that comes into the world, and every person, at times, has the light of the Spirit of truth upon him.
When we look at the conduct of the Jews and of the Romans in Jerusalem, and other nations around, among whom Jesus traveled, we find that it was very little influenced by those mighty miracles that we think, talk and preach so much about. I mean the Christian world. They cry to their hearers, "Look at the Savior, look at his acts, behold his doings! What miracles he wrought! How he suffered for us," and so on. What did the Jews or Romans care about all this? Did they believe in him? It appears not, or but very few of them. And, as we have just been hearing, it was the same among the multitudes who followed him; although he fed them, and they saw his miracles, yet they understood nothing of the power by which his mighty works were accomplished. It was just so with the young man who was born blind, whom the Savior healed. "Who opened your eyes," said the Scribes and Pharisees. "Why, this man who is going about preaching, who says he is the Savior, the Son of God—the king of the Jews." The priests replied: "That is nonsense; you do not pretend to say that this man opened your eyes!" "Well, all I know about it is, that he spat on the ground and made a little mortar from the clay and anointed my eyes, and before that I was blind, but now I see." "Well, do not believe on him, he is an impostor, he is deceiving the people;" and when we examine and understand the facts in relation to this personage whom we call the Savior of the world, there were not, strange to say, as many persons believed on him as have believed on Joseph Smith in the latter days. Not that Joseph was the Savior, but he was a prophet. As he said once, when some one asked him, "Are you the Savior?" "No, but I can tell you what I am—I am his brother." So we can say. But Joseph was a prophet; and so we testify, declaring that we know it. But how, in the world, do you know it? Because somebody has made clay and anointed your eyes? No. The young man did not know the real character of the personage by whom his eyes were opened, nor he never would know unless the Holy Ghost—the Spirit of revelation, rested upon him to such a degree as to manifest to him that Jesus was the Christ.