Transcript
John W. Welch: Thank you for being here. I don't know what to say. It's overwhelming to be here with you and to have Elder Gilbert. Christina. What beautiful, beautiful words of consecration And thank you so much, Rosalynde, for that wonderful introduction. How many of you have an Elder Maxwell story where you remember something that he said or did that indelibly stays with you? Anybody look at your hands. I'll have more to say about that as we go along, his influence lives on.
I was just wondering, as we were having dinner, what Neal might be thinking about this evening, and what his assignment is up there, and can he even get away for it. But I felt that he is pleased, and I just hope what we have to say will be worthy of him and his legacy. And as I've said, words never to be forgotten.
I've subtitled this “The thoughtful legacy of Neal A Maxwell”, and there's an intentional ambiguity in there. It's full of thought very well thought out. Everything he said and did was so perfectly framed and stated, but at the same time, it was also perfectly thoughtful, kind concerned about other people, and what a legacy that is to all of us, I hope to be able to say something tonight that will perpetuate and strengthen that wonderful legacy that we are blessed to have as we celebrate tonight the memory of Neal and Colleen.
It's November, November 19 today. And I thought we should begin by remembering that they were married on November 22 in 1950 in the Salt Lake Temple. So, their 74th wedding anniversary is coming up this Friday. And I know we've got a lot of the Maxwell family here. You'll have a wonderful time, and we'll all pause to be so grateful. We owe the whole family such a great debt of gratitude. Thank you. Thank you.
And speaking of the Maxwell Institute, the name that the organization that carries on this legacy here at BYU. This was taken at Halloween, you can see where his picture stands there, right as you come into the office, If any of you have never been there, you really ought to go and take a look, and you'll be welcomed, as I certainly was so.
And I say, thank you. Thank you with special appreciation and everlasting friendship. Now that's Neal Maxwell's signature on there. His handwriting was famous for being almost illegible, right? In fact, people picked up some papers that he had written, and they couldn't tell whether it was upside down or not, but that's Neal Maxwell. It's wonderful to appreciate how appreciative he was for every little thing. And actually in each of his books, which I've read the last month, every one of his books has a page of acknowledgements where he thanked all kinds of people who had helped him in even the most minute ways, I mean, down to the proofreaders and even the editors, who thanks them. But he was so, so thankful, and we, I hope, are equally thankful. Well, above all, we all know how careful Elder Maxwell was as an apostle of Jesus Christ, to protect and cultivate unity and oneness in heart and mind. He taught me to get opposites together. Joseph Smith talked about proving opposites, but Elder Maxwell says, Just what are you doing when you prove an opposite, you are finding out how it works together with the other half, that the opposite is only a part of the picture, and without combining the opposites, and without being unified in mind and heart, we don't succeed as we interact with other people. His book of one heart, the glory of the city of Enoch. That's it.
He was, of course, very, very much a model of this principle of the Enoch character of Zion, that we would be all of one heart. And I think he truly lived the word of the Lord found in Doctrine and Covenants section 38 if ye are not one. Can you all finish it? Ye are not mine?
Well, I'd like to give a nod here to Oliver Cowdery, who wrote, of course, an important part of our early church history, where he begins, those were days never to be forgotten. I celebrate the words of Neal A Maxwell as words never to be forgotten, not that words and deeds are somehow opposite, but that they go together. And Elder Maxwell loved the history of the church as well as the thought and scriptures of the church. His words, I think, offer us here in mortality, an everlasting legacy of thought and deed.
And he loved King Benjamin, and he used these words, remember, remember, O man and perish not. So, my message tonight, I hope, will model and inspire us to all remember the words of Neal A Maxwell and find out how to do that and where to look so we'll touch on a few of those practical things as we go along.
Of course, Neal was both eloquent and urgent. His words have an engaging rhetorical style all their own, producing confluences of sounds and thoughts that both enrich and encourage. His words inspire action and not just reaction. His words entice us all to do good, provoke us all to do better and reward all who do so.
To my ear, Maxwell's words have beautiful, even musical, qualities to them. Read them out loud, read them slowly, with rhythms and cadences, his sentences sound good when read aloud. It's better than than Homer, or any of the Greek classics. I can see him smiling as he found ways to string spiritual scriptures together. I just wonder, as he was writing, as something came to him and he put these phrases together, wondering, did he imagine that anyone would really unpack what he meant by those? It wasn't that he was just clever in every one of those little creations or embedded layers of inspiration that I've enjoyed, and I hope you also share that experience and feeling with me.
You know he was able to find all these kinds of things in the nethermost parts, not of the vineyard, but of the Old Testament. And as well, he found them in the sublime vistas of the future and the world as revealed by modern day seers, old and new again, a combination that Elder Maxwell mastered at the same time.
Elder Maxwell was also preeminently practical. Let's take a look at one of his books. The Smallest Part you read the whole thing. It says, “Behold I say unto you I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.” Now, I was amazed as I went through all of these titles. You know, if you look in the library, it's just going to tell you that the title of this book is The Smallest Part. No, the title of the book is a whole scripture, and it's quoted, a few times on Elder Maxwell's books his editors or designers put the quote marks on but most often they didn't. I think Neal left that for us to discover. Where are these phrases, these gems coming from? Well, anybody know, “I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.” Oh, that's Ammon in Alma chapter 26 after his 14 years of laboring on his mission, he's trying to tell us what he learned. Well, Elder Maxwell is looking at those chapters in the book of Mormon as a very practical lesson of how we should how we should live and how we should be good missionaries. And so this becomes a very practical book. In it, actually, Elder Maxwell will explain, first of all, three strategies, and the three that he focuses on here are a view of truth, a view of morality and a view of causality. Well, those are big philosophical words, truth, epistemology, morality, ethics, causality, and metaphysics, but he's making them all very practical. And these are strategic matters that he's giving us. And then, in part two of the book, he then talks about what he calls tactical suggestions. I'm not sure exactly what he means by the word tactical, but I always have to remember in reading Elder Maxwell that World War II was still not very far behind for him. He, of course, served in World War II. It indelibly impressed and changed his worldview. He was on Iwo Jima, and you can read about what he did and learned there, but I think when he's talking about strategy, he's trying to think how, even how military forces have to be organized, and what do they need to do? Well, they have to manage tasks and time. They have to have ways of helping and communicating with each other. And then there are some tactical parting points there as well.
So let's look at five practical things that I'd like to dwell on tonight for a little while, simple things that I think we can do that would help us to be as strategic and as tactical as he was. And so my simple thing number one is just remember and bear well the name of Neal Maxwell, and remember that it's very rare here at BYU for any building or organization to be able to be named after a person. Normally, these privileges are reserved for whom? Of course, the presidents of the church and past BYU presidents. At the law school, I remember how much it benefited us to be able to have a building named after J. Reuben Clark and who he was. He was a formidable lawyer in Washington, DC. He was a remarkable United States Ambassador to Mexico, he came with a wealth of experience and a reputation that he was brought into the First Presidency, not having ever served as an apostle, but because he had skills that were necessary to help the church navigate through the 1930s and the depression, the 1940s and World War Two, all of the reconstruction, lots and lots of things. So I would hope that in the Maxwell Institute and here at BYU, we appreciate the honor that it is to have his name. And what is it that we need to do to honor him more, I think, is to learn a little bit more about him. And let's think about how that might be. I mean, how many of you know that when he returned from World War Two, and after he was married and graduated from where the University of Utah he went off and served as a strategic aide to Utah Senator Wallace F Bennett in Washington, DC, very successfully there. During those years in Washington, he and Colleen became devoted young parents to their four children, all born in the 1950s Rebecca, Cory, Nancy and Jane and you know, they lost three children to miscarriages during that decade. They didn't have it easy, if you think he somehow was able to just walk in and have a golden spoon that opened doors for him. What was he famous for in high school? Raising pigs, and he actually won medals at the county fair. Well, how many of you know that when he was when he returned, what did he do? He was hired at the University of Utah, first as the secretary to the university's elite Board of Regents, and then as a teacher in the political science department, and soon he became the Dean of Students there in the 1950s he knows education even at a very young age. He then developed a campus wide student leadership training program at the U and this explains the title of his first book, which was a more excellent way. Oh, and notice that that's in quotes, and yes, that is from a scripture, and you can find it on your handout. But it also has a subtitle, which is “Essays on Leadership for Latter-day Saints.”
And look at the foreword in this book, Senator Bennett; listen to how he praised his aid’s wonderful qualities of thought. And, does this sound like Maxwell or not? He praised Neal's “unusual power to interweave abstract concepts with understandable explanations of practical techniques, and thus to produce recommendations that will work.” And that's the quote. Well, this all explains, I think, why the then associate professor, Neal A Maxwell, was honored by the students at the U in 1967 as their Professor of the Year. Quite remarkable.
Well, I didn't know all this till I started rereading a lot of these chapters in Bruce Hafen's book, which I hope you all will do. It's remarkable. Well, Elder Maxwell's success at the University of Utah, and that's a building on the U campus, these also explain, why there is today a Neal A Maxwell lecture in political theory and contemporary politics, politics, an annual lecture. We have one here. They have one there. How many of you knew that before? No, I didn't know about it until I went searching on the web to find Maxwell Lecture. But what did I find? the University of Utah's Maxwell lectures, and wow, he was a great scholar and did a lot of wonderful things. And here you see him working on his typewriter. this lecture up there, brings together speakers and commentators from various universities each year from all around the country, and they wrestle with topics that would have been squarely of interest to Elder Maxwell, including such topics as democracy, freedom from debt, individual thriving, leadership in global politics and the persistence of the human. Well, these are all topics embedded here in the works of Neal A Maxwell. What I'm suggesting is that in honoring him fully, we may want to find some friends up the street. there's a unifying force here. I think that's worth mentioning, and why? Because, as you read Elder Maxwell, remember that his messages really are universal.
Well, here at BYU, I'm also very honored to join a distinguished line of speakers who have honored the Maxwell name here in Provo. And I see Jim Faulkner here, one of our previous lecturers. And I hope I haven't overlooked any others.
And kudos also to the Maxwell Institute for the recently launched Maxwell Institute lecture series. If you haven't heard about this, it was mentioned briefly: Fridays at 11 o'clock, called “The Wonder of Scripture.” I think it's a great title. Makes me wonder what they're going to talk about. These speakers share the personal, love and life they have found in the Scriptures.
And speaking of the studying the Maxwell legacy, this is the title of the cover of Cory Maxwell's Neal A Maxwell quote book, and it was published a while ago—now enough that, Cory, I hope there's an updated version in the works, but maybe an electronic version that will have all of Maxwell's materials that will then be found in all these wonderful quotes that are there. But of course, there's a lot of other stuff out there on the web. How many General Conference speeches did Elder Maxwell give? 53 and of course, you can go right to the library on the church library app, and you can look for a person's name. So Clark Gilbert, your name's there, right? And we can find you, all one of them. How many Elder Maxwell, 53 and they're all right there, full text. Now, if you read one a day, that's going to take you two months to get through, but it's wonderful. So lots of other things,
And with that, there are hundreds of other his devotional speeches. Here he went around speaking to almost every department on campus. When he was appointed Church Commissioner, church education, he was an on-the-ground leader, and many of those are available.
And of course, I've already mentioned Bruce Hafen's book, “A Disciple’s Life”. I certainly hope that that you will take a look at that.
And also, you may not know, Bruce gave a lecture earlier this year the Church History Library lecture up in Salt Lake City, and he told about his experiences there writing this book. And Bruce is here tonight. We praise him and honor him for what he did to produce for us a written record that we can now use and benefit from. And Bruce tells great stories and new details that I had never heard before. For example, he talks about how Church translators back in Elder Maxwell's day, as they're translating up there—y ou know, they don't have AI--and they're trying to decide who's going to translate which speech, and they divided all of the conference speakers into four levels of difficulty, so that the ones that were easier to translate into Spanish and Portuguese and everything else went to maybe the newer, less experienced translators. Okay, so they had four categories, and guess which one of those Elder Maxwell was in? None. He was the fifth, by himself. He was the top, a class of his own, as the most difficult.
And Karen Bradshaw Maxwell, a daughter-in-law, puts this all into perspective. What she said about Elder Maxwell's speeches, she said, “each of his talks is like a bullion cube. It is so compact and rich.” Well, she then explains, and this is very helpful to all of us as we read and try to work with the Maxwell legacy, what were the translators worried about? Well, it's the same thing we as readers face as a challenge. It's not that Neal used big academic words, but that his language is so compressed and so full of carefully chosen—look at all the C's here! somebody's inherited alliteration—so full of carefully chosen imagery, metaphors, allusions, and I, of course, would add alliterations. How can you translate that kind of thing? certainly not easily into any other language?
So let me turn to simple thing number two. Next is to, then, preserve and share unforgettable experiences about Elder Maxwell. Let me encourage you too. As we've said, many of you have stories about Elder Maxwell. In preparing for this lecture, which I've been laboring on for several months, I've conducted an informal field study asking many people if they remember a personal Neal Maxwell story. And without exception, people said yes, and were eager to tell me. Here's one such story. Because of the scope of Elder Maxwell's interests and sensitivities, he was soon called as a Commissioner of Church Education, and he became the genius, I think, and inspiration behind many of the principles that we still use.
And soon, Elder Maxwell took his leadership and wisdom on the road and presented leadership training, as you might suspect, to a lot of CES and other Church leaders. One such attendee, named Dale Bradford from the Midwest, who served wonderfully in Brazil and all over, told me—and this was like 50 years ago—he still remembers this. He told me how vividly he remembers being taught as Elder Maxwell explained what he called “the four levels of delegation.” Well, they're worth knowing about. And as you can see, I won't go through this in great detail, but all of us are in positions where we delegate responsibilities in one way or another. And Elder Maxwell had figured this all out. Sometimes you're delegating to a person who needs to learn personally how to do something, and you're giving that person an assignment to do that, but you have to spell out to that person, here's why I'm delegating this to you, what you will learn. Second, you might be delegating to one who is competent but needs to learn how to follow up with return and report. Third, delegation among equals might be the case where you've got equals and people need to learn how to work in teams or in quorums. And fourth, delegation to an expert to provide, as needed, otherwise unavailable services. Well, that's crystal clear, and you can see why Elder Maxwell's work there in leadership helped him to sensitize leaders of the need to know each person. And individually, in order to delegate being aware of their abilities and uncertainties, and then to communicate deliberately in each unique case with helpful plans, so this would help everyone to succeed.
Well, in addition, he was an amazingly generous mentor for me and for many others, I met Elder Maxwell Neal for the first time at my graduation here from the College of Social Sciences. We held it down in the Smith Field House and little did we know what frontiers were lying ahead of us in 1970 but I count it as a great blessing that Neal and I were aware of each other so early, and how generously he mentored me and countless other people. This is a skill we must learn. He would call me sometimes early in the morning. He had my home phone number, and he called early enough, around 7am, when he knew we were eating breakfast; he could even recognize the voice of Christina and others—she had a beautiful voice then, of course. Well, Christina, how are you? But he knew the children by name, and he asked, Is your father there? Well, yes, and so on. Well, he particularly mentored me through what I considered a very delicate and sensitive task of reporting and publishing the long sequence of sacred temple elements that I had discovered in the Sermon on the Mount in 1986—that's a long time ago. We didn't talk about the temple, outside of the temple, very much in those days. Elder Maxwell was my coach on what to say and what not to say.
He mentored us as we put together a major conference on King Benjamin's Speech, and he even gave us a long paper. In that article, which stands as the lead article in that large book, and Elder Maxwell and Colleen followed the teachings that he emphasized there in that chapter. His chapter, by the way, is called, guess what? King Benjamin. “King Benjamin's Speech: A Manual of Discipleship.” You got it. Well, Elder Maxwell and Colleen were very generous with their consecrated resources, and Kirk Magelby remembers, to his astonished delight, when he opened a letter from Deseret Book advising us at FARMS that Elder Maxwell had assigned to us all of his royalties from his latest book, We Talk of Christ: We rejoice in Christ.
So Elder Maxwell's legacy is certainly enormous. We've only touched the opening layer of that. I remember when we were able to meet regularly with Elder Maxwell as a whole team of us put together the Encyclopedia of Mormonism in 1992. He was an indispensable and very wise counselor on what to say and what not to say, knowing it from an academic as well as a church point of view.
In a lighter vein, Neal dragged Jeff Holland and me out onto tennis courts up at Aspen Grove and in Alan Ashton's backyard in a mostly-futile campaign to keep us all healthy. On the tennis court, no competitive player I have ever seen—and Neal was certainly one of those—has ever been more complimentary of his opponents. Every shot was met with “Great shot,” even if it happened to slump into the net.
At every turn, he taught us lessons of life, and I remember him especially telling me the following when he first learned about his cancer. He had been scheduled to leave soon to fly all the way to South Africa. In those days, that was a slow, long flight. He was going to preside at conferences there. So he went into President Hinckley's office to see if it might somehow be possible for someone else to go in his place. President Hinckley looked up and, Elder Maxwell told me, he said, Is there any reason you can't go? We die with our boots on, don't we? Now, there may very well have been people in South Afric a who had special needs that only Neal Maxwell could provide. I believe that. And as Elder Bednar has recently said, the apostolic keys never go anywhere on accident. So Neal, the obedient servant, got on the plane and went, and for me, this was an unsurpassed lesson of consecration, and indeed, he was blessed with seven more years to exemplify meekness. He could have gone a lot earlier.
His meekness was also in evidence on another occasion at Aspen Grove, shortly after this picture was taken, as you see him there in the upper right hand corner of the picture, right after he had been ordained an apostle. As Lew Cramer vividly remembered for me, when the young Sunday School teacher at Aspen Grove asked Elder Maxwell— not recognizing who he was, of course—but asked him to introduce himself. Neal humbly responded, “I am Neal Maxwell. I'm number 12 of 12, and I do what I'm told.” Well, whenever we hear of meekness, we can remember that moment.
And at a formal event, as Sydney Reynolds recalls, in New York City, the FARMS Islamic Text project was holding some sessions and getting some press with media people there. And Sidney says, I was seated with news, media, news and media people and ambassadors from Islamic countries. Elder Maxwell was the after dinner speaker, not very far into his speech, one of the writers leaned over to me and said, Who is he again? I replied that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ, the news writer, almost reverently said, Well, what is certain is that he is a man of God.
Well, someday, people may want to know these stories, and I hope you're writing your stories down, make them a part of your personal history, and maybe the Maxwell Institute should have an open Welcome to invite people to share their stories. Let me turn to number three.
Simple thing number three is appreciate and emulate Neal's outstanding personal qualities. How many of them are there? There are many a life that is this expansive must be thoroughly contemplated among Neal's outstanding personal qualities, one finds several persistent subjects that run consistently through his life. Pick a few and follow them on the top of our list as Jeannie and I were going over this, he was certainly a dedicated family man, and he always put family first. In fact, I noticed that in 1967 his first book contained this dedication to Colleen, to my wife, Colleen, for enduring the difference between what I have written and what I do, and for being an inconvenient but sometimes necessary second conscience to reduce that difference. And what do you know? Neal dedicated one of his last books to her as well, thanking her quote for her constant illumination, which has inspired me for well over half a century. Now, in our sunset years, she glows even more brightly. The Maxwell biography also. Contains this dedication for Colleen as the story was theirs. As Neal had said, not just his well. Elder Maxwell went on to write many things about family and friends. We won't have time to go into them. But you can find a book, for example, that my family might partake. Oh, another scripture from the words of Lehi in First Nephi, chapter eight. But notice that he says, There these kind of things the home is so crucial that is, it is the source of our greatest failures as well as our greatest joys. It is one place that presses us to practice every major gospel principle, not just a few, as may be the case in some fleeting and temporary relationships. He goes on, the affections and thoughtfulness required in the home are no abstract exercises in love, no mere rhetoric concerning some distant human cause. Family Life is an encounter with raw selfishness, with the need for civility, of taking turns, of being hurt and yet forgiving of being at the mercy of others. Moods, family life is a constant challenge, not a periodic performance we can render on a stage and then run for the privacy of a dressing room, to be alone with ourselves, the home gives us our greatest chance, however, to align our public and private behavior, to reduce the hypocrisy in our lives, to be more congruent with Christ. Home Life is high adventure. Well, many, many more things can be said here. I do want to mention one in particular here that Rick Turley's executive assistant Andrea had many interactions with Elder Maxwell over the years. She remembers him, of course, as being always very kind, cheerful and soft spoken. But more than that, she said: “One time in particular, about 1998, around a year after he was diagnosed with cancer, I was dropping some things off in his office while his wife was there waiting for him. He was in a meeting with the Twelve at the time. I stayed and visited with her and with Susan Jackson, his executive assistant. As we were talking, we heard some of the Brethren's voices in the hall. We looked up just in time to see Elder Maxwell stop mid-conversation there and break into a full run toward his office. Colleen stepped out to meet him, and he grabbed her hands. ‘I heard your voice,’ he said, ‘and I got so excited to see you.’” Andrea concludes, “it was the sweetest expression of affection I had ever seen.”
In our family, we were blessed to have Elder Maxwell perform the sealing, the marriage of Allison, our daughter and her husband John. After beautifully performing the words of that holy ordinance, he gave the new couple, and all of us there, an apostolic tutorial in celestial marriage, which we all took time afterward to recollect as best we could. Working together, we created a line upon line record, which, to Alli and John's credit, they have always used, right there, next to their patriarchal blessings. Elder Maxwell, always an effective communicator, began how by asking the couple questions and then letting them take turns talking and listening. He gave them wise counsel such as, cultivate an affection born of admiration. Wow. Lift each other up. Some of the cleverest things you ever think of you must never say. Praise your children. Praise your mothers. Pray together and alone. Private prayer is for unburdening. Be kind. Have a doctrinal discussion together at least 10 minutes a week. He gave similar advice to John Covey, who, when he heard that that Elder Maxwell devoted time each week no matter how busy he was to scripture study, it changed John's life, and he decided to do the same. Elder Maxwell went on and gave them some sublime blessings, and I think he would bless you all with this: that those who visit your home will feel the spirit there, that you will yearn to return to Christ with a deeper understanding of the Atonement, that you will be personally clasped in the arms of Jesus. Now he didn't say “Mormon 5:11” there, but he was quoting Mormon 5:11, as he always did. These precious phrases. Really, really wonderful.
Rick Turley wrote me this one. “We were in a setting in which someone was criticizing a person who seemed to lack social grace. Be kind to him, Elder Maxwell gently urged. He might have a flat spot on his DNA.”
The next thing that was, I think, impressive about his life was how well he kept track of time and timeliness and was yet open to the inspiration that each available moment provided. Bruce Hafen tells of the time when Neal invited him to go with him up to the LDS hospital on his lunch hour to help him give somebody a blessing. He said he needed to be back for a meeting in half an hour. [Yeah, right!] But as Bruce recalls, “as we walked quickly down a hospital corridor looking for our patients, some people in a different room, saw him and said, ‘Elder Maxwell, you came. How did you know we were praying for you? We're so glad you're here.’ He walked into that room. There was a man who was very, very sick on the bed with his family gathered around. Elder Maxwell didn't know these people at all, but he instantly knew them. He asked such honest, direct questions. We soon gave that father a blessing, and then Elder Maxwell said, ‘How about your mom? Does she need a blessing, too?’ And we gave her a blessing. And then we embraced with that family. Hurried back to the other room, visited those we were appointed to see, and then rushed back.” And I've added maybe a little late to the meeting.
Many stories like this exist. One we know of personally, where a friend of a good friend of ours was dying, and he had them come to his office and treated them as if they were the most important people in his life. They felt such peace there that after their visit, and to their surprise, he continued to call every week for many weeks to give further encouragement and spiritual support. And he then spoke at the funeral of that Shane who was so ill, “I was so touched,” Deanne said, “by Elder Maxwell's willingness to help someone that he didn't even know. I felt a lot of love.”
Well, Neal kept track of time and timeliness, and I think he marveled also at timely coincidences. And here's one that he might nod and smile at: At the time of his passing on July 21, 2004 Neal had just turned 78, years and three weeks old. I used to think that was pretty old. Well, today, my age happens to be today, exactly 78 years and five weeks old. Was this a coincidence meant to be? Well, I was really scheduled initially to do this a couple weeks earlier, so it wouldn't have been five but three weeks! Well, these kinds of ticker tape reminders make us all appreciate the importance of miraculous timings of the Lord that stand behind many intersections in our lives.
And, of course, Elder Maxwell had other qualities we could go into. He made use of profound thoughts. One of his favorites was a quote from Austin Farrar, a British theologian philosopher. I love this one, and we've used it a lot, but it was Elder Maxwell who introduced us to it: “Though, argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. What no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.”
Elder Maxwell was, as we think about his interest in profound thoughts, an eternal pluralist. Together with Joseph Smith, he believed in not just intelligence, but intelligences; not just the spirit, but spirits; not just the prophet, but prophets; dispensations; scriptures; doctrines; kingdoms; eternal progression; heavens; gods; and worlds without end. Notice the plurality of that set of words that populate our theological, religious and spiritual lives.
His next to the last book, Whom the Lord Loveth, is a wonderful synopsis of a lot of things that he said; His concluding, final chapter, which is very short, I want to read quickly with you. Listen to this. “The doctrines of the kingdom need each other as much as the people of the church need each other.” Do we need each other as the church? Absolutely, the doctrines do too. Have you ever thought about that. “We dare not break the doctrines apart or specialize within them, because we need them all to achieve spiritual symmetry, an outcome that requires connections and corrections. Orthodoxy is felicity in beliefs and behavior.”
Just two more to go. I said five simple things. Number four, draw inspiring insights out of under-utilized scriptural phrases. I hope I've modeled this to you as I've given you the handout tonight with those little phrases. If we look at the scriptures, not just for big stories or big pictures or big themes, but get down into the individual words and phrases, many, many inspiring things will come out.
How early in his life did Elder Maxwell actually think this way? Well, thanks to Cory, who has sent me a copy of a missionary teaching manual that Elder Maxwell wrote in 1949 as he was a missionary in Canada. Well, he's still pretty young, right? He was born in 26. He's 23 years old. He called it The Sword of Truth, and it's 20 pages long, single spaced, on his manual typewriter. This is his foreword, where he's encouraging missionaries to do and the lessons they should teach. And by the way, I like his lesson plan a lot. But here was his advice to his missionary companions, “add scriptural weight to your teaching.” He warned them not to “get off on a tangent,” and be sure to “leave listeners with a frame that will cause them to ponder the things you have said.” He went on to assure them, look at the number of words that start with s here, “Men who sail in ships of reason, who have set their sails to catch the winds of truth will eventually be driven to accept these truths as uttered by Joseph Smith, a servant of the Most High and in so doing, they shall land successfully upon the shores of salvation.” This is Elder Maxwell, missionary Maxwell, 23-year-old Maxwell, thinking these seeds of who he is and what he will be, they're so beautifully contained here.
Well, in the last little while I've, of course, as I said, I've spent time reading carefully my shelf of books of Elder Maxwell and just the titles of some of these, Meek and Lowly and Even as I Am. And If thou Endure It Well, no quote marks there, but you all recognize those words spoken to Joseph Smith in the Liberty jail. So in all, two thirds of his book titles come straight from scripture. Elder Maxwell did not play hide the ball in these and other titles of his talks. He wore his eternal agenda right up front, openly on his sleeves, prayerfully on bended knees, and lovingly in his heart, might mind and strength, but most often, he left it to us, his readers, to put the quote marks on these scriptural phrases and really adopt and internalize them. He knew that finding those things would do us good. He's cheering us on.
To come to simple thing number five, rise above your most daunting challenges. If you feel down or depressed, there's a way with Elder Maxwell and Jesus Christ to rise above those problems. We can relate to what he did, even if our challenges are not the same as his. He was called out of the blue when barely 40 to become the Commissioner of Church Education in 1967 and here you see him with President Lee Harold B. Lee. He was asked to adjust and justify the overwhelming idea of creating, for the first time, a unified Church University educational system, not just in Provo, but with units in Idaho, Hawaii, Salt Lake City, as well as a single, coordinated seminary and Institute program, without the use of or email. Can you imagine! Thanks to Neal's inspiration and his repeated on site personal visits, the system that now Elder Clark Gilbert's further development and skillful direction is taking it. All of this is still serving countless learners all over the world. Undaunted by so many challenges, including his final seven-year battle of cancer, Neal and Coleen and the whole Maxwell family soldiered on.
In this light, you might want to look at a cluster of four books that were written in that period of some of his deepest struggle. One of them, But for a Small Moment, relating to Joseph Smith's trials. How about Meek and Lowly? 1987. Not My Will, but Thine, 1988. If Thou Endure It Well, 1996.
He struggled through. He followed the footsteps of the Savior in joy and in pain. He was no stranger to the extreme suffering of Joseph, the prophet. And tried to let no murmuring word escape his tongue.
Well, in conclusion, I hope you agree with me so far that Elder Maxwell's written and spoken words are indeed words never to be forgotten. His legacy is thoughtful, logical, rational, persuasive, but also inspired, warm, impressed with spirit and guiding forward individual movement, even in the adverse face of whims.
Today, of course, Elder Maxwell's speeches and articles are more readily available, as we've mentioned briefly before. But I'd like to also add that, if any of you don't know about it, there is a website, scriptures.byu.edu, that's been put together by Stephen little and others working with him. It's a fabulous scripture index, and it has easy navigation tools, and you can set the filter by speaker to Neal A Maxwell, and it will tell you every place in General Conference or anything in the in the system, how many times he ever mentioned any scripture, and precisely where and display for you the full text in which that context appears.
I think, with the aid of AI, our rising generation worldwide will have the blessing of being able to find much more and much easier the words of Neal A. Maxwell, and we've already been warned that there's something coming this next year called the Beacon program to celebrate BYU’s 150th anniversary.
Here's a picture of Elder Maxwell with Spencer W Kimball and Elder Holland at the 100th anniversary. Elder Maxwell, by the way, didn't speak at that on that occasion, but he did publish, in October, in 1975 in the Ensign, an article called “Why a university in the kingdom?” You ought to read that. It's kind of been lost in the copies of the Ensign we used to have on paper and threw away. But there it is.
And along with that, what the Beacon program plans to do is to have 24 Maxwell articles. That's one every other week for the year, and I suppose I hope there will be 24 the next year. We'll see how this goes. But these wonderfully selected talks. What impressed me as I went down the list of what's coming is that the topics that they cover will be relevant to departments and classrooms all over campus. There are some that deal with leadership. They'll be important in the business school. There are doctrinal discussions that will go to the Religion Department and elsewhere. There are talks that relate to the School of Education and the process of educating. There are talks about families, which will be useful in the study of marriage and family relations. There's even one of them that they chose on the Constitution of the United States. I didn't know that Neal had given had written a paper on the Constitution of the United States, and I haven't had time to go read it yet, but maybe we can participate in this part of the Beacon program, even in the Law School, in Neal's legacy. Every student at BYU and everywhere in the church education system, I would say, can find that Neal is still with us, gently leading the way, teaching us about such things as spiritual ecology and the brightness of hope.
His books are worth reading and rereading, and so much can be easily found today, Neal would be so glad for us as he leads the way here with the Olympic torch. I hope and pray that he will continue to lead us with light and truth. So may we all remember these five simple things. Honor the name of Neal A Maxwell. Tell stories about his inspiring influences, emulate his many personal qualities, find underutilized words in the scriptures, and rise above your challenges.