‘Causes’ that can be counted on… – Sunday, November 20, 1960
We would turn back today to a citation from Emerson which said: “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. . .—”1 At this season when the harvest has been brought home, we are earnestly thankful that the fruit is in the seed, that the harvest comes from causes that can be counted on, that the Creator is over all.
Of course, there are some who would say that we are indebted to chance, or that we live in a self -regulating universe. As to chance, Bruce Barton has given us this significant sentence: “When a load of bricks, dumped on a corner lot, can arrange themselves into a house; when a handful of springs and screws and wheels, emptied onto a desk, can gather themselves into a watch, then and not until then will it seem sensible, to some of us at least, to believe that all … [this] could have been created … all without any directing intelligence at all.”2 Being altogether unconvinced that chance is the answer—being convinced that life did not create itself, or that law does not administer itself—what we now do, gratefully, is to give gratitude for all that God has given. We are thankful for the power to think, for the understanding that the glory of God is intelligence, for the privilege of life, for the conviction that its purpose is well worth all the effort, all the improving, all the repenting, all the striving and the struggling and the daily doing of duty.
We are thankful that such assurances, carry us through difficult and discouraging days. And with these lines, written some centuries since, we would say: humble yourselves and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, . . . and live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which He doth bestow upon you,”3 for “. . . if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you . . . and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that He requires of you is to keep His commandments;…”4 This grateful thanks we give for all that God has given.
1Emerson Compensation
2Bruce Barton, If a Man Dies, Shall He Live Again?
3Book of Mormon, Alma 34:38
4Ibid, Uosiah 2:20-22
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KSL and the CBS Radio Network, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, November 20, 1960, 11.30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. Copyright 1960
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November 20, 1960
Broadcast Number 1,631