That happens in marriages, too, and in the other relationships we have. I can't tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window "pain" of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound which the Son of God Himself died trying to heal. Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change, and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is it hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don't keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone saying, "Hey! Do you remember this?" Splat! Well, guess what? That is probably going to result in some ugly morsel being dug up out of your landfill with the reply, "Yeah, I remember it. Do you remember this?" Splat. And everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy and hurt, when what our Father in Heaven pleads for is cleanliness and kindness and happiness and healing.

There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life -- either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes -- our own or other people's -- is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist.

We discovered that an individual would know the Church was true only to the degree he or she was true to the Church. By being true to the Church, there seemed to be an unlocking from within of a divine sense of a testimony - a conviction that came from obedience.

Once we learned this transcendentally vital lession, we stopped trying to convince people by persuasion, reason, and the use of scripture alone, for this approach stirred up their self doubts. Instead, we encouraged investigators to obey, to change, to repent, to pray, to live a commitment, to attend church, to study the Book of Mormon. This approach, when followed, minimized self-doubt.

One year later, on April 6, 1893, 40 years after the groundbreaking and laying of the cornerstones, 75,000 Saints (15,000 more than the total population of Salt Lake City at that time) gathered for the dedication ceremonies. President Wilford Woodruff, who as a young apostle had pounded the stake into the ground to mark Brigham Young’s cane print in the dirt, presided at the dedication. He and the First Presidency had earlier counseled that everyone planning to attend should first commit themselves to repent and forgive and reconcile all past sins and faults. Elder Franklin D. Richards commented that “it was of more importance for the people to be accepted than for the temple to be accepted.”¹⁸