What is it that Makes a Pioneer* – Sunday, July 20, 1947
Pioneering is an important factor of progress—which brings us to the question: What is it that makes a pioneer? By this term we do not mean merely those who leave established communities and old countries because of the difficulty of making a living where they are and the promise of making an easier living elsewhere.
We have more especially in mind those who leave relatively secure ways of life to face hardships and uncertainties for the sake of sound principles, those who sacrifice their own present for the future of others. Pioneers may also include those who move from the known to the unknown in their thinking, those who are prepared to forsake traditional error, however well entrenched it may be, and seek always to discover truth, and accept it wherever they find it, regardless of convenience or consequences.
It is characteristic of pioneers also to have learned that the world doesn’t owe them a living beyond the degree of their willingness to work, and to have learned that there is little satisfaction in eating unearned bread. Likely they have also learned not to expect others to carry all their burdens or to assume their obligations, and yet, in the words of Isaiah, “They helped every one his neighbor; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage.”1 We enjoy the heritage we have because pioneers and pilgrims of the past knew that an ideal was worth more than any immediate comfort or convenience, because they knew that the right to think, to speak, to worship, and to work were worth more than anything a man could be given in exchange for them. A great price has been paid by pioneers of the past for the principles that have given us our present.
And for what we have and for what we do with what we have, we in turn shall be accountable to generations yet to come. God grant that our children and our children’s children may have as much cause to be grateful to us as we have to be grateful to the pioneers and pilgrims of the past!
*Revised.
1Isaiah 41:6.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, July 20, 1947. 11:80 a.m. to 12:00 noon, EDST. Copyright 1947.
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July 20, 1947
Broadcast Number 0,935