Elder Maxwell was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when he delivered this Thanksgiving Eve fireside to the Monument Park First and Second Wards on November 24, 1993.
I am struck, brothers and sisters, by the apostolic request “Lord, increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). As I study that expression, I find it occurred after the Twelve had already seen Jesus heal Peter’s mother-in-law, a leper, a paralytic, a withered hand, and the centurion’s servant. They had observed Jesus cast out devils, raise from the dead a widow’s son and Jairus’s daughter, still the tempest, cast out a legion of devils, feed the five thousand miraculously, and be transfigured on the Mount. Yet they still asked, “Lord, increase our faith”! That request tells us something about the nature of faith.
Had what they had seen been enough to produce lasting faith, they would have never asked. How many of those, for instance, who witnessed the miraculous multiplication of the loaves of bread and consumed them eagerly and hungrily, still deserted Jesus a few days later when he proclaimed himself to be the bread of life (see Matthew 14; John 6:35). Many of them thereafter, as the scriptures say, “walked no more with Jesus” (John 6:66).
Miracles are not the stuff of faith. They come as God chooses to give them to us, and many of us here have experienced them, but the daily stuff of faith is something else about which I will try to speak briefly tonight.
Faith can be lost as well as increased, though we will speak about how to increase it. It seems appropriate at this time in history to make this observation about the loss of faith. It is my view that faith never disappears without leaving tracings of its past presence. These tracings show the extent of previous belief, and they establish our present accountability. These tracings will disclose what the individuals once knew, when they knew it, and how they behaved in reference to it. No present rationalizations can fully erase past realizations! And that is true of those who apostatize from the Church.
One reason faith fails to increase sometimes, brothers and sisters, seems to be that it is poorly defined. It is left and ill-defined, and therefore, is very difficult to increase. Faith has several facets. It has several focal points. I find this definition from President Brigham Young especially helpful, so I share it with you tonight. He said that we must have “faith in [Jesus’] name, character, and atonement . . . faith in his Father and in the plan of salvation.”1 These focal points of faith are very specific. Thus, if we need to increase our faith, as the Twelve asked Jesus to do, it would need to be in each of those dimensions. I will speak of two of them tonight.
Brigham Young went on to say that with such specific faith we can give obedience to the requirements of the gospel. Vague belief, in contrast, is little more than an unfocused feeling of pleasant sentiment: mildly affirmative but not focused.
For instance, do we, by way of specific illustration, really have faith in the actuality of Jesus’ atonement, or do we merely like His Sermon on the Mount? Without full faith in Jesus as mankind’s rescuing Messiah, we will also lack faith in His capacity to rescue us individually. Do we respect Jesus, or do we worship Him as a Perfect Savior and as the creating Lord of the Universe? This verse is very specific: “That by [Christ], and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:24; see also Moses 1:33; Hebrews 1:2).
We do not worship a one-planet God, and to have a sense of awe about Jesus as the great Creator, the Lord of the Universe, is a different thing than simply regarding Him as one to be admired. We live, for instance, on a very small planet. Our solar system is quite small. The galaxy of which we are a part, the Milky Way, is a very ordinary-sized galaxy. We are very obscurely situated, except God knows we are here, and He has put us here.
Scientists recently have discovered a sheet of galaxies—a wall of galaxies heretofore unknown. They are excited over this discovery and say that the further out we go, the more we see. They even speak of order and a network—a “honeycomb.” I think about the words Joseph Smith used about this planet belonging to the same order as Kolob. They speak of how we are located in one of the few empty spaces in the universe, and I think of what we read in the Book of Abraham about the Lord saying, “for there is space there, and we will make an earth” (Abraham 3:24).
In every way that matters, there is not only poetry but theology in words that come to us from the Lord in which He said, speaking of the universe, “and any who hath seen the least of these hath seen God moving in His majesty and in his power,” of “worlds without number” and “there is no end to my works” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:47; Moses 1:33; Doctrine and Covenants 22:23). Scientists share with us, brothers and sisters, something that is wonderful. The scientists I read about “wonder about it all,” and so do we. I don’t expect them to believe the Restoration scriptures, but I am grateful for the relentless way in which they are pushing back the horizons of knowledge. So, when we sing “all the starry band of shining worlds in splendor through the skies,” the faith we should have in the Restoration is a faith that is expansive.2 There is room in the theology of the Restoration for even more a sense of wonder and awe concerning Him.
Not only is God in the galaxies, however, but He is in the smallest of the tiny molecules of DNA. The DNA molecule has caused such a stir for a number of years in the scientific community, I am told. It is formed by a beautiful double helix and reflects beauty and divine design, though it is so tiny. When the molecule “unravels” in order to replicate itself, it might be called a molecular ballet. In the tiniest things, there is divine design.
In the most marvelous and macro ways in the galaxy, God is there. But more important for us is the knowledge that he is in the details of our lives. After Enoch saw whatever he saw, he was filled with awe; the thing that mattered to him was not how many galaxies there were, but to know of God, “yet thou art there” (Moses 7:30). This is what Enoch wanted to know. This is what you and I want to know. Does God know us, does He love us, does He care about us? The answer to all of those is a resounding YES!
To have faith in Him in those ways lets us know what kind of Father He is.
Years ago, less aware of the implications of scriptures, I remember reading that without faith we cannot please God. I never thought it was an arbitrary requirement, but it sounded a little bit as if it were a hurdle He wanted us to jump (see Hebrews 11:6).
Only in recent years do I appreciate the fact that without faith we cannot please God, because without faith we cannot come home to Him. How could He possibly be pleased when we can’t come home? He wants us to come home, and we can’t do that without faith—the kind of faith that would help us become more like Him. He is a Father, and we can have faith in the love this Perfect Father has for us.
If we lack faith with the kind of focal points mentioned earlier, it shows up in interesting ways. You and I see it as failure to pay a full tithing, failure to wear the holy temple garments, refusal to work more meekly at making a marriage more successful or a family happier, the resentment of personal trials, trying to serve the Lord without offending the devil. We have quite a few Church members who are trying to do just that! Failing to sustain the brethren, neglecting prayer, neglecting the holy scripture, neglecting neighbors, neglecting sacrament meetings, neglecting temple attendance. Cory3 added another one from President [Marion G.] Romney,4 that wonderful neighbor of ours of yesteryear who, like Richard L. Evans,5 was able to compress wit and wisdom together. President Romney said there are too many Church members who are trying to serve the Lord but only in an advisory capacity. It takes faith to pay tithing, to go on missions, and to qualify to go to the temple. Such is how specific faith is.
In a very real way, let us look at faith in Jesus’ atonement. It is the central act in all of human history. Nothing compares to it. I am struck, again and again, by how Jesus, who might have reflected a little credit upon himself for that astonishing accomplishment, doesn’t do so. He gives all the glory to the Father. After the Resurrection, His pronouncements don’t mention the scourging, they don’t mention the crown of thorns, they don’t mention the vinegar and gall, they don’t mention His being spit upon, struck, or mocked.
What concerned Him most about going into the Atonement? He tells us in the 19th section [of the Doctrine and Covenants], that He might get part way into the process, having partaken of the bitter cup and shrink, hold back (see Doctrine and Covenants 19). Mercifully for us, He finished His preparations unto the children of men and did not flee and pull back. In that setting of working out the Atonement, He asked a why question, the likes of which none of us will ever put to Heavenly Father. It was as prophesied in Messianic psalm, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34). He didn’t get an answer right away. He went ahead anyway, which is what He expects us to do when we have our much tinier “why” questions which are very real for us.
Brigham Young adds to the understanding of the Atonement by indicating that in Gethsemane and Calvary, as many of you have heard me say before, “. . . the Father withdrew Himself, withdrew His Spirit, and cast a vail over [Jesus]. . . [Who] then plead with the Father not to forsake Him.”6 No one has ever been so alone, and that is when Jesus cried out. Had He not been of such a character, He would have shrunk under such circumstances. Mercifully for us, we can have faith in Jesus’ character. Then, after the Atonement, He confides in us of His suffering, for He “descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:6; see also 122:8). His empathy and understanding of each of us thus became perfect.
I know it is a tremendous leap of faith for people because we don’t understand how He could bear all of our sins (nor do Alma, Isaiah, Matthew, and Nephi tell us), how He bore our griefs and our sicknesses as well, but He did. This fully qualifies Him to say, “For I descended below all things, in that I comprehended all things” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:6–7). It is the marvelous centerpiece of all human history, and it permitted Him, said Alma, to “be filled with mercy” (Alma 7:12). I take it that Jesus otherwise would have had an intellectual appreciation of our suffering, but once He took upon Him our sicknesses, our griefs, and our pains, then He understood personally and perfectly. This is why we can have faith in His Atonement and faith in His character. It is such a different thing from, say, “My, isn’t this sermon or that sermon of Jesus splendid?” His sermons are splendid, but faith in His character and faith in His Atonement are really the hallmarks of the kind of faith that we are talking about.
His character was such that He promised meekly to give all the glory to the Father and He did (see Moses 4:2). I don’t know how long it was from the Atonement back to the premortal world, but when the Father asked who might be the Savior, Jesus, as you know, meekly said, “Here am I, send me” (Abraham 3:27). Never has anyone offered to do so much for so many with so few words. He also promised to give all the glory to the Father, and when He was finished with the Atonement, that is what He did. He gave all the glory to the Father. Such is the monumental integrity of Jesus, and we can have complete faith in His character. Because of the matchless luminosity of His character, Jesus truly is the light of the world. There are those who go partway and recognize Him as a light to mankind, and I am glad they do, but we must take the next step not only to see Him as the light of the world but to see everything else by His light.
This is what Jacob said, that we will see “things as they really are, and as they really will be” (Jacob 4:13). The more you and I come to understand God and Jesus, the more we want to be like Them and to be with Them. That yearning takes on a strength and an intensity that dims other things in comparison. Their character is so marvelous. No wonder the Prophet said, “If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.”7 How can we know who we are if we don’t know who He is? How can we understand what our character should be like if we do not understand His? Christ’s character is without flaw, and He is perfect in His love and empathy, so you and I can trust Him completely. If He were not, imagine where we would be.
If Jesus were preoccupied with some other hobbies, where would we be? If Heavenly Father were overwhelmed with problems of His own, how significant would our prayers to Him be?
Jesus also took account of the different receiving capacities of people to whom He gave counsel. You and I don’t always do that. We sometimes devastate the tender and leave the arrogant unfazed. Jesus knew just what to say. To the tenth leper who at least had enough gratitude to return—no point in scolding Him, Jesus simply said, “Where are the other nine?”—a searching inquiry (Luke 17:17–18). To the mother of James and John, who was more accountable, who wanted her sons to sit at His right and left hands, gentle Jesus gave her mild reproof and said, “Ye know not what you ask,” and then went on to say that the Father would make that decision (Matthew 20:22, Mark 10:38). To Peter, who was much more accountable and faltered briefly, Jesus said, “Simon Peter, lovest thou me?” There must have been a scalding of the soul that night, but in a way that blessed Peter. Finally, as you know, Peter said, “Lord, thou knowest that I love thee” (John 21:15–17).
Every parent here knows that your children have different bearing capacities. It takes not only love to customize but inspiration to do so. Isn’t it interesting that the plan of salvation is premised on the long haul and the right methodology? Love unfeigned, longsuffering, showing us the way—not just telling us where to go.
Brigham Young said that when we think about human nature, we will agree that the plan of salvation is the best way to deal with the human family. Indeed it is, but it is harsh at times because it puts so much responsibility on us. Think about these words in perhaps a little different way. “All these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7). That is not just for Joseph Smith. What does that tell us? It tells us that we may be doctrinally rich, but we are experience-poor. It is a sobering declaration. The plan of salvation is designed to correct that deficiency, but the soul shivers when we think of the implications of that doctrine. So as we heard them sing tonight, there are moments when we should say, “Be still my soul.”
In the plan of salvation things occur in process of time. There are those of us who tend to be impatient. We wish at times it were not so, but the process of time gives us a chance to change and to improve. It also gives us time to put off the natural man or the natural woman.
Having just come from Japan, it seems to me that the natural man is sometimes sumo-sized; he doesn’t go off quietly. It is the work of a lifetime and beyond death—before the resurrection. The isometrics involve pitting the old self against the new. We are not really competing with anybody else; it is our two selves that are at war. This is perhaps the most grinding form of calisthenics that one knows: putting off the natural man or the natural woman.
How marvelous it is that God’s character and His plan include longsuffering. He is not going to let us stop short of our developmental possibilities if He has His way. He has insights concerning each of us that we don’t have. We don’t realize the stretch that is in us or what plans He has for us. There are three kinds of trials: those that are common to man—they go with the mortal territory; those that originate with our own stupidity and sin—a good share of the total; and the third kind, which is tutorial by means of which the Lord gives us certain lessons because He loves us, and because we are apt to receive them. Whatever the type, we read in Mosiah that our faith and patience will be tried again and again, and that we will even be chastised (see Mosiah 23:21). It sounds like “a severe mercy,” but it is still mercy.
In any case, we may still wonder at times, “Why me, why this, why now”? Brigham Young says to us in this respect, “The spirit of revelation should be in each and every individual to know the plan of salvation and to keep in the path that leads them to the presence of God.”8 We should know that personally. This is what the gift of the Holy Ghost can do for us. It gives us that reassurance to guide us, to correct us, and to know how we are doing. Our capacity for personal revelation, personal inspiration, or personal insight comes rooted in and depends upon our faith. This is why some among us in the Church do so well quietly and modestly at the process of knowing and discovering certain things, and for others, it is such a struggle, probably because of their lack of faith in the plan of salvation, in Jesus’ character, and Atonement. The storm fronts in life are real, but they are not the same thing as general darkness. Some people wrongly conclude there is general darkness out there when, in fact, these are passing local cloud cover.
If we know that God is perfect in His love, perfect in His knowledge—which He is—then we can never really seriously ask Him, “Do you know what I’m going through?” or “Do you care?,” because we know He does. We may still wonder and be perplexed at times about what is happening, but Nephi’s bottom line should be ours: “I do not know the meaning of all things, but I know God loves his children” (see 1 Nephi 11:17). If we can know that, it will be sufficient to see us through.
We all have given to us these descriptive, definitive words of Joseph Smith: “If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, and possess the principles which he possesses.”9 As King Benjamin said, we must become as a child, “submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, and willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him” (Mosiah 3:19). Such is the tutorial suffering.
One of the challenges in the Church, it seems to me, is that we are weak individually and the doctrines of the Church are so strong. One of the great requirements laid upon us in the Church is to maintain orthodoxy. Unorthodoxy means unhappiness. Excesses in behavior and wrong doctrines bring unhappiness, and it takes faith to maintain balance in daily life. The doctrines of the Church need each other as much as the people of the Church need each other, and we dare not break them apart and specialize in them because we need them all for the spiritual symmetry that we are describing.
In the plan of salvation—and each of us here may have already discovered this—there are those who live with circumstances that aren’t going to go away. Then there are the “pass through” challenges when it might be intense “but [for] a small moment” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:7); Paul apparently had lived with a challenge. We don’t know the nature of his affliction or difficulty, but he prayed mightily three times that the “thorn in his flesh” would be removed, and the answer was no, so he lived with it (see 2 Corinthians 12:7–10). This is possible to do if we understand the plan of salvation and we have confidence in the character of God and in Jesus’ Atonement. In fact, maybe discipleship is really confirmed when we have a “live-with” situation, and we finally accept it. I don’t know when that balance is, but Paul found it, and for some of us, we want to importune, because there are times when importuning brings relief, but there are times, as with Paul, when it isn’t going to go away, and this is when we become, in the words of Mormon, “alive in Christ” because of our faith.
Brigham Young said we will grow in the knowledge of truth as we impart knowledge to others. He went on to say whenever you see an opportunity to do good, do it, for that is the way to increase in the knowledge of truth. Instead, however, if we don’t share the gospel and speak out concerning the gospel, if we don’t do good, then we will become “contracted” in our views. We have a few members of the Church today who have become contracted in their views. They have shrunken in terms of their discipleship.
The scriptures tell us not only of the style of Heavenly Father, but His substance. For instance, His course is one eternal round. I don’t know all that that means, but it suggests a perpetual reenactment of His plan. How could He do that, again and again, if He didn’t love people?
I have just been with forty different mission presidents in several settings. The easy thing for a mission president and his wife is to say, “Oh my, here comes another group of elders and sisters, here we go again.” They don’t, however. God never gets tired of people. G. K. Chesterton said that God has never grown tired of making all daisies alike because he has never grown tired of daisies.10 Heavenly Father has never grown tired of people. He loves us, He is a Father, so He is willing that His course be “one eternal round.” How can we prepare ourselves for that kind of world unless we are willing to take up the cross daily? We can’t run with the cross for a while and put it down, heave a sigh of relief, and say, “That takes care of that.” It has to be a daily thing. The dailiness increases our appreciation for Heavenly Father’s steadiness.
I am grateful the Prophet Joseph Smith said of discipleship and where it will eventually take us, no man ever arrived at that stage in a moment.11 Indeed not!
Now my brothers and sisters, if I can, I should like to close perhaps in a little different way. Whatever the circumstances of our lives are—and they vary significantly even within the group here tonight— whatever our classroom is where Heavenly Father has to give us the lessons. Sometimes those lessons are very painful, and sometimes they are public. But He has to work with our circumstances. Happily, however, one also sees in those classrooms the lives of people, including some in this room—about whom I know a little bit— who have performed so marvelously. We see you growing and developing, and we rejoice in that kind of discipleship. We see your classroom as though it is a sort of amphitheater into which the rest of us can look. The classroom, however, is the sample God has given us not only of humanity, but of the experiences that He will give us.
I congratulate you! The difficulty is I am speaking to so many people who are so modest, you won’t even think I am talking about you, but I am, you who have done so well with what has been given to you in the allotments of life!
In the Lectures on Faith, the Prophet and others said that one could know by the spirit that the direction of his or her life is correct.12 It doesn’t mean we are perfect, that there aren’t some zigs and zags, but rather that we have set a course and we are pursuing it, even with our imperfections. Paul went further when he said Enoch knew that “he pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch was so meek and modest. How marvelous for him to know that he pleased God. This is possible for us, too. Therefore, I rejoice in people like you who are faithful members. You don’t lead lives of quiet desperation; you lead lives of quiet inspiration. You say your prayers, you love, you forgive, you serve, you search the scriptures seriously, and you “liken” them to yourselves. It is that kind of quiet discipleship over which I marvel!
If I can be forgiven, since we last spoke, my father has passed on at 91. A very meek man, a convert to the Church. In the end, Dad had chosen to die at home, which his medical circumstances permitted. This is not always possible. I loved him for the way he maintained his sense of humor. He had written his obituary. We asked him where it was when we sensed the end might be coming. He said he thought it was in his scriptures, so we got the scriptures but couldn’t find it. He said, “That is all right, I will write another version. It will be the inspired version.” Yet as he began to have trouble breathing and was coughing, each time one would go in the room with him, you wanted to cough for him to help him. One of his granddaughters, who had come home from a mission in Korea not too many months before, came in and said, “Grandpa, can I cough for you?” And wittily, he said, “What language would you cough in?” And she replied, “Korean, of course.” And he said, “I can only cough in English.”
He taught me not only how to live but how to die. I hope I can follow his example. It is that sort of quiet discipleship that you and he and people like you in the Church constantly exemplify, which gives me great reason to rejoice. We know who we are. We know to whom we belong.
Lately, it occurred to me that to live life without the fulness of the gospel is really like living one’s entire life in an airport transit lounge with the ever-changing crowd. There is no sense of belonging, no sense of cosmic connection. But with that marvelous gospel, how great it is!
We do have a challenge with discipleship, and that is we tend to forget yesterday because the present cares press in upon us so quickly. This verse tells us a lot about human nature:
And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him. (Helaman 12:3)
Why does it have to be so? Is it simply unintended forgetfulness? Is it failure of intellectual integrity that refuses to acknowledge past blessings? Or is it a lack of meekness that requires the repetition of such stern lessons? Deliberately cultivating our spiritual memories thus becomes a large part of maintaining daily faith. Clearly, it is the case that our past blessings will help us to discount our present anxieties.
We talk about counting our blessings, but the trouble is, so many of us are so busy counting other things instead. Memories are marvelous. I know we can exaggerate memories. Owen Barfield said sometimes a whisper can be warehoused as a shout.13 We do that sort of thing unintentionally. Memories are not always easy to manage. Churchill said, in paying tribute to Neville Chamberlain, who was so often his political opponent, “History, with its flickering lamp, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleam the passion of former days.”14 But the lamp of history sees poorly at times, and likewise memory. I rejoice in one of the promises given us, that we will one day have a bright recollection and a perfect remembrance—not only of the mistakes we have made, but of the joys that have been so much a part of our lives and the blessings of God.
With you, I rejoiced in the PBS series on the Civil War. I think all of us who watched it were deeply touched by the letter Maj. Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife. He died the week after he wrote this letter, excerpts of which I will read to you now.
My dear Sarah,
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days— perhaps tomorrow, and lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more. . . .
. . . never forget how much I loved you, or that when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name and when the soft breeze fans your cheek it shall be my breath or the cool air on your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah we shall meet again.15
May we treasure those memories, brothers and sisters, and on this Thanksgiving Eve consider anew what dimensions of our faith need to be increased and the specific ways that attend to those needs for an increase.
As we contemplate tomorrow’s feast, which we do rightfully, I call your attention to another feast when the faithful will one day sit down in the presence of the notables of the past, not only the men of God but the great women of God about whom we shall learn much more. This is called the supper of the Lord, the ultimate thanksgiving dinner. We may ask people whose place they are going to for dinner—a natural inquiry. The question is, are we going to that dinner—that great feast in the presence of the Lord and all of His notables? We have the invitation, but it can be redeemed only with the kind of faith about which I have spoken far too inadequately tonight. The promise is that when we go, we will sit down and go no more out. I don’t know what that means. Probably given the fact that time and space will not constrain us in the next world, no place will really be away, and if in the presence of God, all things past, present, and future are continually before Him, we will never go out of His presence again. That is the dinner for which you and I especially need to show up, and it will take faith in Jesus, His character, His Atonement, and His Father’s plan of salvation.
God bless you and sustain you in the quiet inspiration of your lives, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen!
Notes
1. JD, 13:56.
2. Daniel C. Roberts, “God of Our Fathers,” Hymns (1985), no. 78.
3. Cory Maxwell, Elder Maxwell’s son. (Eds.)
4. Marion G. Romney (1897–1988) was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1951 to 1972, a counselor in the First Presidency from 1972 to 1985, and President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1985 until his death. (Eds.)
5. Richard L. Evans (1906–1971) was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apos- tles from 1953 until his death in 1971, and the announcer for the weekly “Music and the Spoken Word” broadcast with the Tabernacle Choir for four decades.
6. JD, 3:206.
7. Discourse, April 7, 1844, as Reported by Willard Richards, in Joseph Smith, Journal, March 1, 1844– June 22, 1844, 67, Joseph Smith Papers. (Eds.)
8. Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. John A. Widtsoe (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1954), 38.
9. History of the Church, 4:588. Compare Discourse, April 10, 1842, as Reported by Wilford Woodruff, 146, The Joseph Smith Papers; also History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 Addenda, 62, The Joseph Smith Papers. (Eds.)
10. See G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Company, 1919), 107. (Eds.)
11. Compare Letter to the Church, circa February 1834, 135, The Joseph Smith Pa- pers. (Eds.)
12. See Lectures on Faith 6. (Eds.)
13. See Barfield’s poem, “The Tower,” quoted in C. S. Lewis, “Letter 22,” in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1964). (Eds.)
14. Winston Churchill, Nov. 12, 1940, to House of Commons.
15. See the July 14, 1861 Sullivan Ballou letter to Sarah Ballou at https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-civil-war/sullivan-ballou-letter. (Eds.)