Other gifts of flowers are a basket of asters and cut roses by the Primary association, a basket of flowers by the City Council, a harp by A. C. Brixen, a wreath by Annie Hoglund, an anchor by Mr. and Mrs. John Beck, beautiful floral designs by Mrs. M. M. Barratt, and also by Mr. and Mrs. James C. McDonald, an unusually beautiful bouquet of golden-banded lilies of Japan and cut roses by R. C. Evans, besides many offerings without names.
The effect of the whole is that of simplicity and purity, the distinguished traits of the departed President. While the committee on decoration deserve great praise for the planning of the whole, F. G. F. Huefner and his assistants, Sisters Sarah A. Gill, and Lizzie Ashton, who executed the plans, are not to be forgotten.
CHAPTER 57.
CHARACTER SKETCH.
By Dr. J. M. Tanner.
"To the law and to the testimony; and if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." If the whole religious life of Wilford Woodruff could be summed up in a single sentence, it would be in that Scriptural statement by which the truth of God's purposes was made evident. The Scripture was his safe guide in every walk of life. To him it was a living fountain. Its promises gave him assurance, its warnings restrained him, its proverbs gave him wisdom, its psalms attuned his soul, its more sure word of life was to him conclusive of all that God had done and that He would yet do many great and marvelous things among the children of men.
He was a devout student of the Bible, and that book accounts not alone for the spiritual quality of his life, but for the peculiar workings of his mind. There was nothing in life that he could not measure in terms of Holy Writ. It is doubtful whether the Bible ever brought a human soul more perfectly within the circumference of its teachings, promises, rewards, and inspiration than it brought Wilford Woodruff. He was what is sometimes called a man of one book; that is, a man whose predominant characteristics are marked by a single book. He knew his Bible. It was the companion of his youth, the joy of his early manhood, and the solace of his old age. Whatever did not square with its teachings was to him insufficient. It brought him discernment and made him wakeful and watchful for the new light its promises contained. It was a watch-tower on which he stood looking for new evidences of a new dispensation and of glorious promises of a day to come. In his youth, his contact with religious denominations brought him no spiritual satisfaction, because the sects of that day did not conform to that standard of truth, the Holy Writ, to which he had pledged his allegiance.
A man whose life the Bible so completely permeated could be naught else than a spiritual-minded man. To no man's mind was God ever a more potent reality in the affairs of men than to his mind. To him He was not a distant being whose mysteries obscure and overawe. To Wilford Woodruff God was a companion, a kind and loving father, a protector, a guide. That God spoke with men face to face was no metaphor to him, was no spiritualized conclusion, it was a commonplace, though profound, truth. He regarded himself as a child of God to whom and with whom he had a right to speak. There was nothing in life which a man might not disclose to his Maker, and he aspired to commune with God as one man speaketh to another.