Brigham Young in the office (leaders at work)

Brigham Young's office style

"The stream of visitors poured steadily through the outer office and trickled in orderly sequence into his own office, hour after hour. No one was ever denied admittance. His two counsellors, various members of the Twelve who were at home, sat with him and gave opinions or help in the various matters presented for the Leader's decision.

He was exceedingly quick at reaching the core of any matter brought to his attention, and was sometimes impatient with the circumlocution or hesitancy of his callers, especially so if guile were used in leading up to the point of issue. At such times he would interrupt a caller or a council meeting, would state the issue and answer yes or no, quietly and decisively. He was never ambiguous or involved in answer or statement, nor did he waste time or words. The kindly tone, the sympathetic glance, softened the rigour of the denial, added joy to the affirmative yes. He used to say that he knew when men wanted him to say yes and he usually gratified that desire," The Life Story of Brigham Young by Susa Young Gates (his daughter), 1939, 337-338.

Trust No One To Be Your Teacher

A few years ago, I tuned into a BYU commencement address on the car radio:

"Some of you graduates will continue your educational studies. Keep up the good work! We’re proud of you! Most of you will not pursue more formal education but will embark on your chosen career. We’re grateful for you and wish you well.

Brothers and sisters, regardless of your choices for the future, you will continue to learn. As long as you live, you will learn. It is part of God’s plan for us. You will grow intellectually and spiritually. Just as Jesus the Christ 'increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man,' so may you.

To increase your wisdom and stature, you will exercise your agency. You will choose your teachers and your role models. Choose them wisely. Heed this counsel of Alma: 'Trust no one to be your teacher . . . , except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments'" (Elder Russell M. Nelson, 23 April 2009, BYU Web page; see Mosiah 23:14: http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/23?lang=eng).

Trust no one! I was startled. The idea seemed unrealistic. It was one of those "Who, then, can be saved?" moments, and I began to wonder. . . Trust no one? And just how many men of God will these new graduates find in the academy or the office? Or how about those teachers and ministers who pick the Bible to death, line upon line, precept upon precept? Who, then, can be your teacher? your role model? Elder Nelson's statement pours cold water on a good many dissertation advisors, department chairs, CEOs. But there you have it. Choose and Heed are in imperative mode. So is Trust no one.

The words quoted by Elder Nelson come from another speech, another commencement. Alma the Elder, addressing his new community--refugees from the oppressive rule of King Noah--refuses to be named king (Mosiah 23:7):

But he said unto them: Behold, it is not expedient that we should have a king; for thus saith the Lord: Ye shall not esteem one flesh above another, or one man shall not think himself above another; therefore I say unto you it is not expedient that ye should have a king.

Here, in a one-liner buried in the narrative, is one of the greatest revelations in all scripture:

Ye shall not esteem one flesh above another. Ye shall not esteem.

Then comes the corollary:

One man shall not think himself above another.

Alma continues:

13 And now as ye have been delivered by the power of God out of these bonds; yea, even out of the hands of king Noah and his people, and also from the bonds of iniquity, even so I desire that ye should stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free, and that ye trust no man to be a king over you.

14 And also trust no one to be your teacher nor your minister, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments.

Trust no king, and trust but few to teach and few to minister.

The wording of the 1830 Book of Mormon has been modified, yet the original sentence grammar does not offend the ear:

"and that ye trust no man to be a king over you;

and also trusting no one to be your teachers nor your ministers, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments" (Joseph Smith Begins His Work: Book of Mormon 1830 First Edition, Wilford C. Wood, ed., 203).

After hearing Elder Nelson, I felt glad I was not standing on the threshold of graduate mentoring. I inwardly imagined a few graduates finding mentors of sound religious faith and values--and such are yet many--and hoped that the rest might come to see their new Bishops and Stake Presidents as if their true dissertation advisors or business administrators.

Such glad safety is illusory. Every time I pick up a book, leaf through a newspaper, or watch the television commentator, I begin trusting someone to be my teacher. Latter-day Saints often use the idiom: "the author is not a Latter-day Saint, but it is still a good book." The questions ought to be, upon taking up a book: Is he a man of God? Does he or she live a godly life?

Are matters of morality so very delicate? They are. Trust no one.

Surely the counsel of Elder Nelson cannot apply so generally? It does. Choose Wisely. Trust No One. And the last might be restated: Read but Verify. That is, Read Wisely, read with the eyes open, read through the lens of gospel light.

The list becomes long.

"Trusting no one to be your teachers" becomes:

Trusting no one to be your historian;

Trusting no one to do your science;

Trusting no one to be your compiler of facts, your journalist, essayist, rhetorician, your literary critic, your biographer, your mathematician.

I read broadly, but my trust does not flow so broadly as the leaves I spread to read. As Robert Frost teaches in "Wild Grapes": "Nothing tells me/That I need learn to let go with the heart." ("And have no wish to with the heart. . . The mind--is not the heart").

Latter-day graduates who aspire to the honors of academia ought ever to remember: "The mind--is not the heart." And they ought to discover for themselves the little lingering note of wonder, the catch in the breath: The mind -- is not the heart.

There are teachers, and then there are teachers, but who qualifies as the False Teacher? To answer, we turn to Samuel the Lamanite, who gives us the following signs by which we may identify 1) the false teacher and 2) the phony reformer (Helaman 13:27-28, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/hel/13?lang=eng).

27 But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet.

28 Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.

"If a man shall come among you" begins Samuel the Lamanite, and he does such and such, and then you do so and so, then you may know you are following a false teacher.

He shall say: "Do this" and "Do that" and even "Do whatsoever", that is to say, "Whatsoever your heart desireth." There is a point of subtlety here. The false teacher does not begin by saying "Do whatsoever your heart desireth." There comes first many a Do This, many a Do That, and then there follows quite a long journey: "Walk after the pride of your own hearts." Finally, he teaches: Now you are ready to go ahead with "whatsoever."

All must be soaked in smooth and "flattering words unto you." The false teacher is your friend, your guide, he cloaks you in the garment of praise.

In return, you are to fund the teacher "of your gold, and of your silver" and "lift him up," or promote him. You become his chief propagandist and fundraiser.

"And because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well"--"you're doing great, making great progress," then--and this is a powerful conclusion--"ye will not find fault with him."

What do we see, then?

A man comes among us, flatters us with pretensions of friendship, praises us, and we instantly buy into it all; we fund him, roll out the red carpet, promote him, praise him to the stars, and--because he is our great and wonderful friend--we will not, would not, ever "find fault with him."

Even worse, says Samuel, should that same man not only preach but minister. He preaches and he editorializes: Do this, Do that, Change this, Change that "and ye shall not suffer." Change whatsoever.

As we make pace on our own Pilgrim's Progress, we now encounter not only the False Teacher but that near kin, the Reformer.

Susa Young Gates observed a breathtaking trait in her father, President Brigham Young (she is setting out a short laundry list of his weaknesses, and, as we all know he had a "strong" weakness or two, while yet "a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments"):

"Those who posed as reformers towards him and his people, who would destroy the Church and Kingdom of God, and especially if they were themselves 'whited sepulchres' he hated with a passion that often vented itself in violent speech. His family, who heard never an unrefined word from his lips, were nevertheless not shocked when he denounced or even cursed in the pulpit the renegades" who privately, and often also in public, cast aspersions on wives and children.

His children, you see, furrowed little brows over hearing themselves publicly described as bastards. Daddy would step up and defend his little ones, those who could hardly speak for themselves (compare Elder Dallin H. Oaks, "Protect the Children," General Conference, October 2012). All of which explains the use of childish language in so defending; for he was saying what both defenseless children and walked-on saints would have much liked to have said--and if he had not so spoken, the very rocks perforce would have come to speech. The man knew appeasement; he knew how to quiet a brooding crowd. Brigham Young was as much a carrier of an antique folk culture as he was messenger of a gospel culture, and I like the way Brigham Young never held back.

Which aspersions? Oh, you are wonderful people, but how sad to see these "disadvantaged" (read: "illegitimate") children, these "poor" ("oppressed") wives. Oh, you have done such wonderful things in such a short time, but how sad to see the Priesthood taking the helm, rather than the judge, the governor. Don't you care what people might say of your children? Are you, good people, after all, un-American?

Protect the Children (or, Mr. Young, you talk strangely): "When our women and children were left on the banks of the Missouri, in a helpless condition, I said to one of the United States officers, who had been threatening those who were left behind--

'While I am gone to find a home for my family, if you meddle with them, or insult them in the least, by the Gods of Eternity I will be on your track.' 

And had their threats been executed, I would have slain them, even though I should have had to go into the heart of Washington city to do it.

Says he, 'Mr. Young, you talk strangely.'

'Well,' I said, 'let my family alone'; 

for they wanted to persuade them back to the other side of the river, to afflict them still more" (Journal of Discourses 1:363).

Not every uniformed officer or professed reformer is a "whited sepulchre"; Brigham Young said it required the gentle Spirit of God to see through a man while his lips poured forth words sweet as honey. President Young's day was a day of subtlety, of charmed rhetoric, of--to our roughened ears--undreamed-of sophistication and manner. It was a day of hats. It was all soaring Saruman calling on Gandalf Greyhame; Gondor visiting the Shire folk. For a caller to evoke the subtle duel by essaying in lofty counterpoint on the titles of "his excellency, the great governor, Brigham Young" called forth the barbaric pinpoint: " 'Brigham the Carpenter' will do":

"His daughter [Susa Young Gates] relates that when he was governor a traveler addressed him with all of his federal, military and religious titles, to which Brigham replied, 'Sir, you have omitted my most cherished titles: Carpenter, Painter and Glazier.'" He himself said he preferred "Brigham, how are you?" to "'Governor Young', 'Governor Young,' in a canting tone" (Leonard Arrington, Brigham Young, American Moses, 244-245; Journal of Discourses 1:363).

Despite such frank pinpoints, Brigham himself, as the famous Fitz Hugh Ludlow noted, was "mannerly to a degree astonishing," acting with "perfect deference to the feelings of others," although possessing power seemingly "the most despotic known to mankind." Ludlow professed great friendship, believed himself sincere in that friendship, liked Brigham Young as much as did everyone else who ever met him (excepting a certain officer), indeed found him to be absolutely sincere and endearing; at once, he also deemed his power, that is to say, his priesthood authority, "a crime against the Constitution" (Leonard Arrington, Brigham Young, American Moses, 326). How many visitors charmed, or mystified, by an audience with Abraham Lincoln, also came to see in him a despot and his actions crimes against Constitutional law? Even some of Lincoln's oldest friends finally so concluded. After the assassination, Brother Brigham mused over what his own meeting with Lincoln might have been like: they would trade story after story in humorous repartee.

Neither can we imagine the Nephites and Lamanites as children, ungiven to speech. Samuel the Lamanite is sarcastic, and he vents, and he curses. Tired of his threats--and doubtless disgusted--the people righteously throw rocks, sanctimoniously shoot arrows, and Samuel leaps from the city wall and flees for his life.

But let's be serious: Who would reform into ineffectuality the Church and Kingdom of God? (How often we hear the claim that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, bereft of its first fire, blends into the crowd--just another protestant faith! just another academic subdiscipline!) Not Thomas Kane, not Alexander Doniphan (these two being the paradigmatic friends in our history); not every man who comes among us. Consider the signs: promote him, give him money, find no fault with him. Do this, Do that. Don't do this. Don't do that--and words sweet as honey. None of these words describe either Kane or Doniphan, but they do describe others of Brother Brigham's day. Of course, it takes the Spirit of God to discern the matter, but it never hurts to start with the subtle yet sufficiently plain wording of the Book of Mormon, a significant role of which, says a modern Prophet, is to expose "the enemies of Christ." "God, with his infinite foreknowledge, so molded the Book of Mormon that we might see the error and know how to combat false educational, political, religious, and philosophical concepts of our time" (Ezra Taft Benson, "The Book of Mormon is the Word of God," Ensign, January 1988).

Trust no one. In coming days "humble followers of Christ" will doubtless shake hands with a few calling "reformers" and "flatterers," and we would do well to fortify ourselves against these professed friends with that same armor we put on to withstand what President Benson calls "the evil designs, strategies, and doctrines of the devil in our day"--though we need not vent, I suppose.

And we must never, never curse. Young college graduates! your professors and advisors may be present.

Neal A. Maxwell, Walter Jackson Bate, and Brigham Young: The Moral Purpose of Biography

Since childhood I continue to read with eager haste the biographical record of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The reading has built faith and, together with the Holy Scriptures and the teachings of living prophets, has helped convert my soul to the Lord. In these biographies, when good and true, I have found "the always heartening union of achievement with the familiar" (Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats, 2).

Advice to writers suggests writing on what one knows best; the advice applies to readers also. And such reading of what we know and love the best serves a moral purpose. When we read biography "We have a natural hunger to learn what qualities of mind or character, and what incidents in a man's life, encourage--or at least permit--an achievement so compelling when, at the same time, so little is apparently given at the start." "The interest is thus deeply human and moral, and in the most capacious sense of both of these words" (Walter Jackson Bate, 2).

Such hunger to learn--and the learning is a moral quest--has its pitfalls. According to the gifted Walter Jackson Bate, we approach greatness with two fears. First comes the fear that all that is great in the world has already been accomplished; then follows the thought of it being "utterly impossible to imitate" the hero "in any thing" (Bate citing Doctor Johnson, 35). Yet the very act of reading the right sort of biography can quell both fears such that "Whatever our usual preoccupations, in approaching such figures we become more open to what Johnson thought the first aim of biography--to find what can be 'put to use'" (Bate, 2).

And what can the young Latter-day Saint reader "put to use" from the lives of the prophets and pioneers whose names he already knows so well? Here I recall the way in which Preston Nibley chose to sum up his biography of the second prophet of our dispensation: "HE BELIEVED." Faith can always be "put to use"--and that makes of any biographer someone having almost endless capacity to do good: "I have been astounded by the strength of this man's faith; such faith I have never encountered in any other person" (Preston Nibley, Brigham Young: The Man and His Work, 539). We all recall Brigham Young's assertion: " 'Mormonism' has made me all that I am" (JD 8:162, Widstoe, Discourses of Brigham Young, 451). Whatever we are, we also can believe and become whatever the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ may make of us.

Any young reader hopes to share in the deeds of the great. Yet in the very moment of aspiration, deflation sets in: Who can match their deeds, their virtues? Here is where--and not a moment before--the words of Doctor Johnson fruitfully come to use. Confronting the "utterly impossible to imitate in any thing," "The sacred writers (he observed) related the vicious as well as the virtuous actions of men; which had this moral effect, that it kept mankind from despair" (Bates again citing Johnson, 35).

Note it well: the very act of relating even the vicious is intended to produce a "moral effect" urging the reader forward in the paths of king or prophet, though none himself. Turning to the Bible, we find David, though exemplar of virtue, yet caught in the vicious. And Peter? Here is no king: the record relates a quite ordinary soul of impetuosity, even the soul of impetuosity, temper, jealousy, and inconsistency. Indeed, the man possessed but a sole virtue: "HE BELIEVED." And Christ then made of Peter the Apostle "all that I am," that is to say, all that we wonder at in the Acts of the Apostles. Other Biblical greats somehow escape the taint of the vicious: James and John stand to perfection despite being sons of Boanerges; Joseph has no fault; Moses stands near perfect (though Aaron knows flaws). There are human moments but not a jot of vice. Appears, in lightning flash, one rather primal personality. Despairing Elijah, both troubler of Israel and the paradigmatic prophet of "like passions," is suddenly swept to heaven. (And, as I was always taught at home, Who would not gladly exchange their own reward in heaven for the throne of Elijah or the crown of Brigham Young?)

Commenting to his own biographer--who worked under instructions to be candid--Elder Neal A. Maxwell said: "It isn't that we're searching for weakness as much as we are for growth" (Bruce C. Hafen, A Disciple's Life: The Biography of Neal A. Maxwell, xv). The same apostle often related how Prophet and President Lorenzo Snow: "meekly but instructively, said of the Prophet's imperfections [Joseph Smith]: When I saw the weaknesses and imperfections in him I thanked God that He would put upon a man who had these imperfections the power and authority which he placed upon him. . . for I knew I myself had weakness and I thought there was a chance for me" (The Collected Works of Neal A. Maxwell, 6:1:118). "A chance for me"--Johnson could not have stated it better. Lorenzo Snow, says Elder Maxwell with an inimitable allusive grace, "viewed others graciously and charitably as if through the 'windows of heaven'" (3:2:89). While we might not with justification write hagiographically, whatever the word really means, perhaps we can write sainthood into our own souls.

As compelling as biography, and perhaps more so, is to have the privilege of knowing, or at least of seeing and hearing, the great men and women of our own day, faults or not. (We're talking prophetic faults here.) Elder Maxwell, in his turn, "meekly but instructively" approaches a contemporary prophet: "I found President Lee to be personally kind, and yet very tough-minded intellectually. Because he knew the gospel to be true, he was fearlessly confrontive. This also permitted him to deal with institutional and personal feedback from a position of security" (L. Brent Goates, ed., He Changed My Life, 239). Again: "In my relationship with him, I found him to be kind and to be an unusually perceptive listener, for what reasons I am not certain. Thus, when I was around him, I felt completely secure rather than anxious. Others, as reported, may have had a different experience" (239). And who would not rather listen to Neal Maxwell's creative and articulate speech than to some grumbling functionary or embittered soul?

"I can truly say," wrote Brigham Young, "that I invariably found [Joseph Smith] to be all that any people could require a true prophet to be, and that a better man could not be, though he had his weaknesses; and what man has ever lived upon this earth who had none?" (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, Brigham Young to David P. Smith, June 1, 1853, 343). President George Q. Cannon, another latter-day apostle, had the privilege of knowing well Brigham Young: "To describe my feelings upon the death of this man of God, whom I loved so much and who had always treated me with such kindness and affection, is impossible. He was in my eyes as perfect a man as I ever knew. I never desired to see his faults; I closed my eyes to them. To me he was a Prophet of God, the head of the dispensation on the earth, holding the keys under the Prophet Joseph, and in my mind there clustered about him, holding this position, everything holy and sacred and to be revered" (Davis Bitton, George Q. Cannon, 212). Davis Bitton had no need to include this gracious assessment of Brigham Young into an already overly long biography of Brother Cannon. That he chose to do so says a lot about Bitton's sense of the purpose and tradition of Mormon history as we have received it. There is more: "The thought that ever with me was: If I criticize, or find fault with, or judge Brother Brigham, how far shall I go?" (Bitton citing Cannon, 212). And even more: "And in contemplating that life, it seems to me perfect. In my eyes and to my feelings he was as perfect a man as could be in mortality" (210). What could Brother Bitton have been thinking? Yet his book will last.

Brigham Young's own daughter, Susa Young Gates, has left for the curious a short recital of papa's faults, faults that something call to mind Martin Luther or the endearing wizard, Gandalf:

He had some character-weaknesses": "He was easily prejudiced, and it was difficult to change his opinions when once they were formed. Then he could be sarcastic, but never spiteful. On provocation, he was sometimes very angry, but never with tempestuous explosion or rude haste." (It enraged Brother Brigham when his boys broke windows spraying glass into rooms where small children were at play.) Then: "Those who posed as reformers towards him and his people, who would destroy the Church and Kingdom of God, and especially if they were themselves 'whited sepulchres' he hated with a passion that often vented itself in violent speech." Note: "his family, who heard never an unrefined word from his lips, were nevertheless not shocked [!] when he denounced or even cursed in the pulpit the renegades who sometimes manifested their filthy bitterness to women and children not only in the streets, but a few times at least in their public addresses (Susa Young Gates and Leah D. Widtsoe, The Life Story of Brigham Young, New York MacMillan Co., 1931, 317).

Herein lies the substance of the errors at once overlooked by Brother Cannon. And we again call to mind what Elder Neal A. Maxwell says of President Harold B. Lee: "Because he knew the gospel to be true, he was fearlessly confrontive." ("I love to fight the devils, but I love to overcome them," Brigham Young, JD 3:224; "I will never cease to contend, inch by inch, until we gain the ground and possess the Kingdom," JD 8:166.) Besides, how many of Brother Brigham's public displays of tough words and acts might be seen as a going-out-on-a-limb for the Kingdom, rather than as personal failing and character flaw. Elijah was never polite to Ahab.

As for Brother Brigham's view of others' faults, or of his own:

He said little about his faults, or about other's faults. Once he rebuked his daughter for relating in detail one of her own character weaknesses. 'Don't do that,' he said. 'If you were holding a fort against an enemy, you wouldn't get up in a gap in the wall and shout, Here is a hole, climb in here!' (Gates and Widtsoe, 318).

Too many Latter-day Saints clamber up to the yelling gap today.

We have spoken of weakness--of prophets sharing 'like passions"--yet there are powerful virtues all too easy to overlook, including virtues "impossible" for me to reach.

I like the way in which Brigham Young simply moved on:

"Brigham Young went always on his calm, deliberate way. . ."

(Gates and Widtsoe, 316).

Church History Library
September 11, 2012