“The Gospel of the Master,” chapter 19 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 19: “The Gospel of the Master”
Chapter 19
The Gospel of the Master
On Monday, September 9, 1929, lightning shattered a utility pole when a severe storm ripped through Cincinnati, Ohio. The strike sent a surge of electricity down a wire and into the newly renovated Latter-day Saint chapel at the north end of town. Some wiring insulation caught fire, flooding the building with smoke. Firefighters soon arrived, but the damage was done.
At first, the Cincinnati Branch worried that the fire had destroyed the building’s wiring. With the chapel’s dedication less than a week away, the Saints would have neither time nor money to repair any extensive damage. But after an inspection, they discovered that the wiring was salvageable. They went to work at once to repair and replace wires, and soon the building was back in working order.1
As the dedication day neared, more and more people seemed to take notice of the Church. On September 12, Christian Bang, the branch’s first counselor, took time away from his grocery store to give an interview to a local newspaper. The reporter knew the Saints had once been the subject of controversy, and Christian was willing to clarify misconceptions the public had about the Church.2
“The Church has outgrown many prejudices in the past decade,” he told the reporter. “People are beginning to put aside age-old ideas and recognize the ideals for which we stand.”
“What is your stand on polygamy now?” the reporter asked.
“That is a dead issue,” Christian said. “We are strictly orthodox in our belief. We believe in tithing, and practice it, although our elders and counselors do not receive any salary for their services.”3
Three days later, reporters turned out again for the dedication of the chapel. The joy of the Saints was unmistakable. About four hundred people, including missionaries from the surrounding area, crowded into the chapel for the meeting. Apostle Orson F. Whitney, whose grandparents Newel and Elizabeth Ann Whitney had joined the Church in Ohio nearly a century earlier, had come from Salt Lake City to offer the dedicatory prayer.4
Perhaps no one was more enthusiastic that afternoon than branch president Charles Anderson. Together with the Bang family and other early branch members, he and his wife, Christine, had labored long and hard to grow their branch in Cincinnati. When it was his turn to speak to the congregation, he recounted the many challenges that came with purchasing and renovating the meetinghouse.
“We worked night and day to get it in condition for the dedication,” he declared, “and no one could be prouder than we are today.”5
In his sermon, Elder Whitney recounted Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery’s 1836 vision of the Savior in the Kirtland Temple, a powerful reminder of Ohio’s sacred history. As the apostle spoke, the Spirit of God rested upon him, and when he finished recounting the vision, he began to pray.
“Almighty God, our Heavenly Father,” he said. “May all who enter this house feel the influence of the Spirit of God. Reward those who have contributed of their means for its completion. Manifest the power of God in this chapel.”
He asked a blessing on the members of the Cincinnati Branch, the missionaries and mission leaders who served them, and all those who lived nearby. “Pour out Thy Spirit upon those who are here assembled,” he prayed, “and accept of this, our offering.”
A feeling of peace and quiet rested over the Saints in the chapel. Before returning to his seat, Elder Whitney said, “I feel that Mormonism from this time on will be better understood and be received with a kindlier feeling by the people of Ohio.”6
On November 1, 1929, Heber J. Grant reminisced in his journal about the day he replaced apostle Francis Lyman as president of Utah’s Tooele Stake. The year was 1880, and Heber had been just a few weeks shy of his twenty-fourth birthday. President John Taylor and his counselors, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith, were in town for the stake conference, and Elder Lyman hosted them and Heber at his home.
During the visit, someone—Heber could not remember who—had prayed for “thine aged servant, President Taylor.” The word “aged” did not sit well with the prophet, who was about to turn seventy-two years old. When the prayer was over, he asked, “Why didn’t you pray for my youthful counselors?” Heber could still remember the annoyance in his voice.
Now, nearly half a century later, Heber was about to turn seventy-three years old. “I am afraid I would feel a little shocked if someone were to pray for ‘thine aged servant President Grant,’” he wrote in his journal. He felt just as young as he did when he was forty—and even more healthy.
“The fact that we do not seem to get old in spirit is to me one of the evidences of the immortality of the soul,” he noted.7
Normally Heber would have gathered his children and their families together for his birthday. But his daughter Emily had died from complications with childbirth a few months earlier, and his heart was not yet ready for a family party. Instead, he was preparing to visit the stakes in Arizona, just south of Utah.8 Shortly before his death, Brigham Young had asked for two hundred volunteers to settle in Arizona. Since that time, the Saints had established dozens of settlements across the state, and Church members could now be found in high positions of civic responsibility. In 1927, Heber had dedicated a temple there to serve them as well as the Saints in nearby areas, including northern Mexico.9
Heber was also looking forward to a much larger celebration. The Saints would soon commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the organization of the Church. With nearly seven hundred thousand Church members in almost eighteen hundred wards and branches throughout the world, the celebration would be a global event. For more than a year, a small committee led by apostle George Albert Smith had been planning an extravaganza to coincide with the April 1930 general conference. Heber had followed their preparations and provided occasional feedback.10
He left for Arizona on November 15 and spent the next ten days visiting with Saints and basking in their love. Over the last eleven years, his feelings of inadequacy had faded. He had not disappointed the Church, as he feared he would, nor failed to live up to previous Church presidents. Instead, as the Church moved toward its second century, it was growing and flourishing.11
As Church president, Heber had witnessed a technological revolution that carried general conference and other gospel messages across the airwaves. Now, every Sunday evening, people living hundreds of miles from Salt Lake City could tune in to KSL, the Church’s radio station, to hear leaders and teachers giving addresses on gospel subjects.12 What was more, in July 1929, the Tabernacle Choir had begun a weekly radio broadcast through a New York City network. The program was an instant success across the country, and millions of listeners became better acquainted with the Church through the choir.13
Heber had also used his influence as Church president to encourage the Saints to teach and serve one another in their wards and branches. When he was young, Sunday meetings had been a time for Saints to listen to prominent men preach and teach. But under his direction, wards and branches had become the center of Church activity. Everyone was now expected to serve. Men, women, and youth taught classes, participated in quorum and class presidencies, and gave talks in sacrament meeting.14 Many Saints were also called as stake missionaries to seek after Church members who had stopped attending.15 And, for the first time, wards and stakes were sending groups of youth to the temple to perform baptisms for the dead.16
Believing the Church would be known by its fruits, Heber had urged the Saints to live clean lives. Over and over, he challenged them to keep the Word of Wisdom with exactness, abstaining from alcohol, coffee, tea, tobacco, and other harmful substances earlier generations of Saints had sometimes used. He made obedience to the Word of Wisdom mandatory for temple attendance and missionary service and pleaded with the Saints to pay full tithes and give offerings.17
On the morning of his seventy-third birthday, Heber amused high school students in Snowflake, Arizona, with stories about his efforts to master marbles, baseball, penmanship, and singing. He had told these stories many times over the years to inspire persistence and excellence, and his listeners never seemed to tire of them.18
As the day wore on, Heber’s bright eyes, strong voice, and firm step were proof of his excellent health and stamina. No one who saw him could tell that he had traveled across a good portion of the state the previous day, stopping eight times to speak to gatherings along the way.19
That same autumn, in northeastern Germany, the Saints in the Tilsit Branch met every Sabbath morning for Sunday School. To help the meeting run smoothly, branch president Otto Schulzke did everything he could to assist the Sunday School superintendent. If something needed to be done, from conducting meetings to leading the music, Otto would do it. Now more and more people were coming out to class each Sunday, including people who were not members of the Church.
Nine-year-old Helga Meiszus, one of the many children who attended Sunday School, liked President Schulzke, despite his sternness. He and his family had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. After she was born, he was the one who had blessed her in church.20
Helga’s family was a mainstay in the Tilsit Branch. Her maternal grandmother, Johanne Wachsmuth, had first met missionaries many years earlier. But it was not until the family moved to Tilsit and encountered some local Saints that they had begun attending MIA and other Church meetings. At first, Helga’s grandfather was suspicious of the Saints, but he eventually joined the Church along with Helga’s mother, grandmother, aunts, and uncle. Helga’s father had also been baptized just before she was born, but neither he nor her grandfather attended Church very often.
Helga enjoyed going to Sunday School. Someone was always playing the organ five minutes before the meeting started. It used to be Helga’s aunt Gretel, but she had emigrated to Canada in 1928 with the hope of one day making it to Utah.21 Now another woman in the branch, Sister Jonigkeit, played the prelude music.22
The Tilsit Sunday School followed the same order of exercises as every other Sunday School in the Church. Meetings opened with a hymn, an opening prayer, and another hymn. Priesthood holders then administered the sacrament for the benefit of the children who did not attend sacrament meeting later in the evening. The Sunday School then recited a scripture together and practiced singing.23
Helga’s uncle Heinrich once led the singing lessons, but he had also emigrated to Canada some months after Gretel. Now President Schulzke often led the lessons. One of the songs Helga knew well was “Abide with Me; ’Tis Eventide,” which she would sing when the sirens went off at the nearby paper factory where her father worked. Anytime she heard the sirens, she knew something bad had happened at the factory, and she worried about her father.24
When singing practice ended, the Sunday School hung curtains to divide the hall into separate classrooms for adults, youth, and children. In wards, children’s Sunday School was divided in two classes, one for younger children and one for older. In small branches like Tilsit’s, however, all children met together in one class.25
Around fifteen children attended class with Helga. Each week they learned about God and His works, faith in Jesus Christ, the Second Coming, the mission of Joseph Smith, and other gospel subjects. Often children who were not members of the Church would attend the classes. Between Church meetings, Helga sometimes attended Lutheran meetings with her school friends and sang old Lutheran hymns. But her heart was always with the Latter-day Saints.26
When their Sunday School class ended, Helga and the other children would gather again with the older Saints to hear closing remarks. They sang a hymn and said a prayer, and then the class adjourned until sacrament meeting later that evening. Erika Stephani, the Sunday School secretary, recorded each meeting in her minute book.27
“The past year has developed such an unexpected amount of work for me,” Leah Widtsoe told a friend in December 1929. “I have had time for little else than chasing all over the face of Europe with my husband, visiting and instructing our people, and supervising the welfare of our 750 young men who are in these lands acting as missionaries.”28
She was not complaining. She loved the work.29 So far, she and John had witnessed many important changes in the Church in Europe. More and more local Melchizedek Priesthood holders were serving as branch presidents, giving missionaries more time to share the gospel with those who had never heard it. Branches were also finding better places to meet. In July 1929, Church members in the eastern German town of Selbongen had finished building a meetinghouse, the first Latter-day Saint chapel in Germany. The Saints in Liège and Seraing in Belgium, as well as the Saints in Copenhagen, Denmark, were also building chapels. And that summer, John had traveled to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where a small group of Saints lived, and dedicated that country for missionary work.30
Still, as rewarding as mission life was, it could be taxing. The work was intensive, and both Leah and John were losing weight. Concerned about their health, Leah had begun carefully monitoring their diets, relying on her university training in nutrition to ensure that they ate healthy foods. She had also taken an interest in the health of the European Saints.
During her first year in the mission, she noticed that many people ate cheap imported foods that provided few nutrients for the body, resulting in serious health problems. In January 1929, she began publishing a series of Relief Society lessons on the Word of Wisdom in the Millennial Star. At a time when discussions about the Word of Wisdom often emphasized what to avoid, Leah’s lessons drew on her knowledge of scripture and nutritional science to explain how eating whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and other healthy foods recommended by the Word of Wisdom could make a person stronger physically, mentally, and spiritually.
In her first Word of Wisdom lesson, Leah paraphrased Doctrine and Covenants 88:15 to remind readers that spiritual and physical health were intertwined. “The spirit and the body constitute the soul of man,” she reminded readers. “Indeed, the true gospel must include bodily health and vigor since the body is but the tabernacle of the spirit which dwells within the body and is the direct offspring of our heavenly parents.”31
She and John had also encouraged the European Saints to do genealogical work. “There are no temples at present in Europe in which the Saints may perform the actual ordinances of the gospel,” John acknowledged in a September 19, 1929, article in the Millennial Star. “Therefore,” he wrote, “the main activity in these lands must be the gathering of genealogy.”
Leah began writing genealogy lessons for the European Saints, and John devised an exchange program to help them participate in temple work. He asked every branch to start a genealogy class to help Saints research their family histories, prepare pedigree charts, and identify names for proxy ordinance work. These names would then be sent to Saints in the United States, who would perform the temple work for them. In exchange for this service, the Saints in Europe would conduct genealogical research for American Saints who could not afford to travel across the Atlantic.32
At this time, Leah and John worked with Harold Shepstone, the English newspaperman, to find a publisher for her mother’s biography of Brigham Young. Susa trusted Leah and John to make whatever cuts were needed to get the manuscript ready for publication. She told Leah, “The best thing is to use it for the building up of the kingdom of God.”
Susa also insisted that Leah share authorship with her. “I am not going to be satisfied to have my name only appear on the history of my father,” she wrote Leah. “You will never know, for I could not put into words, the help you have been to me in that and in all my writing in the last few years.”
In December, Harold notified John and Leah that a major British book company had agreed to publish the biography.33 The news was an answer to the family’s prayers, and it came at the end of a busy but rewarding year.
Leah could not be more satisfied working as a missionary alongside John. “We are not anxious to come home, except to see our dear ones and friends,” she wrote in a letter around this time. “I feel as though I’d like to end my days on a mission—trying actively to spread the glorious truths of the gospel of the Master.”34
On the morning of Sunday, April 6, 1930, President Heber J. Grant awoke at five o’clock, ready for the historic day ahead of him. Outside, the streets around Temple Square in Salt Lake City were radiant with colorful bunting and banners to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the organization of the Church.35
Over the past week, tens of thousands of Saints had been pouring into the city to take part in the festivities. Hotels were filled to capacity, and many Salt Lake City residents had opened their homes to accommodate the visitors. Nothing this big, save the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, had ever occurred in the city.36
Major newspapers and magazines across the world were already reporting on the centennial. Anyone who strolled down South Temple Street, moreover, could see B. H. Roberts’s new six-volume history of the Church’s first hundred years on display in the window of Deseret Book, the Church’s bookstore. When first organized in upstate New York, the Church had hardly attracted any notice. Now the Deseret News was estimating that publicity for the centennial had reached some 75 million people in the United States alone. President Grant’s portrait was featured that week on the cover of Time, one of the most popular newsmagazines in the United States. The article that accompanied it was respectful—even complimentary—of the work of the Church.37
The opening session of general conference, the premier event of the centennial celebration, began at ten o’clock. Since seating in the Tabernacle was limited, Church leaders had issued special tickets for the session and extended the conference one additional day so more people could attend in person. They also organized overflow meetings in the nearby Assembly Hall and in several other buildings throughout the city.
For Saints living farther away, KSL radio broadcast the conference throughout Utah and its neighboring states, allowing Saints for hundreds of miles to listen to the proceedings. Saints in more distant parts of the world, who could not receive the broadcast, were instructed to gather at the same time for smaller centennial celebrations patterned after the celebration in Salt Lake City.38
President Grant’s heart was brimming with gratitude as he opened the conference by reading an address prepared by the First Presidency. Weeks earlier, he and his counselors had sent the address to the stakes and missions in the Church, instructing them to translate it, if necessary. “At this hour,” he announced, “all over the world this message will be read by our people.”
In the address, President Grant and his counselors testified powerfully of the Restoration of the gospel, the mortal ministry of the Savior, and His redeeming sacrifice. They spoke of the persecution of the early Christians and the centuries of religious confusion that followed their trials. They then bore testimony of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the priesthood and the organization of the Church, the gathering of Israel, the commencement of temple work for the living and dead, and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
“We exhort our brethren and sisters to put their houses in order, that ye may be prepared for that which is to come,” they said. “Refrain from evil; do that which is good. Visit the sick, comfort those who are in sorrow, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, care for the widow and the fatherless.”39
After the Saints sustained the general authorities of the Church, President Grant waved a handkerchief in the air and led the congregation in the Hosanna Shout. In their own centennial celebrations, hundreds of thousands of Saints throughout the world performed the sacred rite as well, shouting praises to God and the Lamb in their native tongues.40
Crowds returned to the Tabernacle that evening for the first performance of The Message of the Ages, a lavish pageant tracing the sacred history of the world. The production engaged a thousand actors to re-create events from the scriptures and Church history while singers and musicians performed hymns and selections from some of the greatest musical compositions of all time. The colorful costumes were well crafted, aiming for historical accuracy. The actor playing Joseph Smith wore a collar once owned by the prophet himself.41
As the sun went down on the celebration, the Church illuminated each of its seven temples with powerful new floodlights. The grandeur of the buildings shone brilliantly against the dark of night, exhibiting their beauty and solemnity for miles in every direction. And in Salt Lake City, the gleaming statue of the angel Moroni, with his golden trumpet raised high above the crowds, seemed to be calling Saints from far and wide to rejoice in the magnificent centennial.42