MY brethren, sisters and friends: The congregation is large, and I hope to be so directed by the Spirit, that all present who so desire may be enabled to hear and understand.
The Sabbath is the day provided expressly for the reception of spiritual food. The speakers, or those who may be called upon to teach, need all the resources that are within their reach in order to satisfy a congregation of hungry souls, they need particularly the faith and prayers of the Saints, the influence and power of the Holy Ghost, the manifestation of the authority of the Holy Priesthood, so that there may be instruction upon the important topics and principles of the Gospel, not the theoretical ones alone, but those that are interwoven with our daily life.
There is a vast amount of experience in the aggregate among the people. Individual experience forms one of the treasure houses from whence a speaker can draw the supplies that are necessary and advantageous for a sympathetic audience. There is a great deal implied in a congregation like the present one; there is much more implied in the aggregation of congregations forming a community, from communities to nations, from nations to mankind at large. The most narrow as well as most dense communities are made up of the family organization. There is found circle within circle, or as the Prophet had it, "wheel within wheel;" and the homes of a community should be the outgrowth, not of theories alone, but of the faith, knowledge, and understanding of those relationships which exist there. When these family organizations are based upon knowledge they are likely to be more permanent. If they are only thoughtless or theoretical, or if they exist without information, circumstances, pressure, opportunities are very likely to disintegrate them, to break them up, to dissolve them, and so through indifference for each other substitute an anomalous condition of selfishness amongst those members who otherwise should form connected and interwoven circles.
In Christendom the marriage covenant is the foundation of the home. The ideas which men hold concerning it, lay at the foundation of all social order, all unity and all government, and even the welfare of future ages depends upon the theories cherished in regard to home and family associations. The thoughts held and the practice growing out of these, are surely higher than could be possible in the families of a community where the sexual relations remain undetermined, where they are without restraint and without order, there will inevitably be chaos, disruption and contention, and the body politic would speedily and inevitably under loose conditions, degenerate and pass away. But this marriage organization and institution has existed from the beginning. It has been the binding and sealing power of the family; it has perpetuated those families from the time that Eve was given to Adam to the last marriage that took place in our own immediate neighborhood. The Lord said that it was not good that man should be alone. He gave to him as a helpmate one of His daughters by the name of Eve. This relationship was then, instituted by the Almighty, and therefore a man and his wife should really become one; their interests, their labors should be blended; their responsibilities should be mutual; and in thus helping and aiding each other they should train the posterity that God might give them in His fear and in the practice of righteousness, so that His rule and Kingdom might exist and prevail upon the earth.
In all nations, from the highest civilized to the lowest tribal relation, among the wanderers of the earth, there is more or less semblance of this organization, this family compact, this united responsibility; garnished in many lands with pomp and ceremony, and with all the appliances and sanctities of religion. In others with less, and still less of this, until we come to where with but little ceremony the dusky Indian captures the maiden of his choice, and takes her to the tent which he has erected for himself.