Hugh B. Brown's Letter

A good friend forwarded me a link today of a letter written by Hugh B. Brown which has apparently never before been published.  The letter was written to someone who was struggling and having a crisis of faith, and I was impressed by several things that Elder Brown wrote.  One of those was an argument for the duration of the human soul. 

He wrote of how according to science, matter is indestructible; even a fire which appeared to burn his schoolhouse only transformed what was in the schoolhouse into something else (gases, oils, ashes, etc.).  This idea is similar to the law in physics of the conservation of energy: “energy can neither be created nor be destroyed.”  Hugh B. Brown’s point was that if inanimate material cannot be destroyed, then surely that which is much more valuable—“human personality and love”—will not “come to an end when I cease to react physically to my surroundings in this world.”  I drove past a cemetery today which was completely filled with flowers, and those flowers to me represent more than the fact that there are people who have died and are missed.  Those who placed the flowers had some faith that the action was of worth, and not just to themselves—it was a way to express love to someone who still exists.  Both faith and reason tell us that just as the earth around us seems to go on perpetually, so do those who have died continue to exist.  That said, Elder Brown’s point was not to convince this man back into the faith.  While showing that there are evidences like these that give us confidence in the great plan of salvation, there will in this life always be unanswered questions.  He admitted, “There are many things I cannot explain, there are many things I cannot understand.”  And that is how it is and should be for all of us—if we are to “walk by faith, not by sight” then we cannot expect to get all the answers when we desire (2 Corinthians  5:7).  I think that the Savior’s example of how He taught shows that developing faith is more important than finding answers.  In John 6 we have the account of what we might call a crisis of faith of many of those who were following Him.  He taught at the synagogue of Capernaum a very strange doctrine regarding His blood and body and eating His flesh that the people did not understand.  To us reading the account with a knowledge of the Sacrament we can see the symbolism, and what He taught makes sense.  But the people’s response was, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” (John 6:60)  I think that Jesus could have easily explained what He had taught in different terms so that they understood and were not as offended by His teaching—but the important point is that He did not do that.  Instead of feeling the need to give them all the answers and appease all their concerns, He said simply, “Doth this offend you?” (John 6:61)  Jesus wanted those who followed Him to have faith, and those who could not trust what they had seen despite what they did not understand soon left Him.  In this life there will always be things that we do not understand, and so if our faith depends on having no unanswered questions then we are doomed.   As Elder Brown quoted Fosdick saying, “Faith is vision to believe what as yet one cannot demonstrate and valor to act on the basis of that insight.”