The temporal salvation of man
Taken from an address at a Church Welfare Meeting, Salt Lake Tabernacle, General Conference, Saturday, April 5, 1941.
In 1897 when I was on my first mission, I found myself, one morning, distributing tracts in a little undesirable district in Stirling, Scotland. I approached one door and in answer to the knock a haggard woman stood before me, poorly dressed, with sunken cheeks and unkempt hair. As she received the tract I offered, she said, in a rather harsh voice, “Will this buy me any bread?” and as I started to tell her that it would buy her not only bread but something far more precious, a man equally haggard and underfed came up and said: “What is it?” She handed the tract to the man and said: “Gospel vendor! Shut the door!” From that moment I had a deeper realization that the Church of Christ should be and is interested in the temporal salvation of man. I walked away from the door feeling that that couple, with the bitterness in their hearts toward man and God, were in no position to receive the message of the gospel. They were in need of temporal help, and there was no organization, so far as I could learn, in Stirling that could give it to them.
Notes
Clare Middlemiss, Cherished experiences from the writings of David O. McKay