The Exodus from Egypt was a messy business. Getting Egypt out of the house of Israel was a muddled one. The whole affair is both famous and fatuous. There were clouds of confusion all around. Much of it was more complicated than it needed to be. Pharaoh and the house of Israel were their own worst enemies. They adopted a yesbuttery attitude (that’s “yes, but . . .”), which tends to produce more heat than light. Most of the angst and anger in the Exodus story could be avoided. Naturally, it’s easier said than done, but two principles seem more relevant to a modern reading. First, follow the Lord’s authorized servants and, second, do it the way the Lord repeatedly commands, as a child, “for of such is the kingdom of God” (3 Nephi 9:22).

Pharaoh—Horus Incarnate—has a plan. Pharaoh has responsibilities, a vision, and a divine mandate. Pharaoh is god on earth, the great mediator between the divine beings above and mortals beneath. Ma’at, or harmony and balance, must be maintained. Sometimes this means officiating in religious ritual, and sometimes, ma’at necessitated the religious ritual of war. As High Priest of Every Temple, Pharaoh became the great image-bearer for the gods. His word was divine, and in the words of Yul Brynner, “so let it be written, so let it be done!”

To fulfill that plan, Pharaoh needs workers. It’s not personal, it’s not even business, it’s just life. Every man, woman, and child must understand their place. The people serve Pharaoh, and by serving Pharaoh, they fulfill the will of the gods, enable harmony, and bring balance. This is how it is, how it was, and how all things are meant to be. Sure, the house of Israel was enslaved and made bricks, but this world needs transformation, so it’s best to keep your head down, feet down, and do your duty. There are gods to lift up, one of which is Pharaoh.

Yahweh, or Jehovah, has a plan. To fulfill that plan, the Lord called a particular family, the house of Israel, to bless all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people (see Abraham 2:8-11). By bringing the great everlasting covenant to the world, Israel and all they gather will dwell safely, securely, and sweetly within the light of the God of Israel. Ultimately, all who are assembled shall be gathered to the sacred person (the Lord), on a sacred time (the Sabbath), at a sacred place (the temple). The Lord will rule, reign, and rest when all things are gathered together in Him.

Jehovah’s plan is to make the house of Israel “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), but his intention does not stop there. Jehovah aims “to make us kings and priests unto God and his father” (Revelation 1:6). We are to be “heirs of God, and joint-heirs” with God (Romans 8:17). But to do all that, the Lord cannot very well have his covenant people slogging through mud and slouching after sin. What’s the point of gathering together if what we are gathering to is less than what scattered us in the first place!

But, Israel was in bondage. The house of Israel, the means of bringing salvation to the world, was plodding through the mud. They were bound down, with heads down, while the sun beat down. The idea of deliverance was about as believable as a virgin giving birth. Or, perhaps, that was the point. If Pharaoh’s worldview was to have a shakeup, it had to happen with real power—not the sort of power that ended in broken swords and bodies. This had to be a revolution in every sense of the word.

Consequently, for Israel to put off the fleshpots of Egypt, the Lord must get Egypt out of them. Aaron was in the way of Aaron, and Hannah from pick-a-tribe-any-tribe could never quite shake the Egyptian sand from her garments. Indeed, for the Israelites, girding up one’s loins seemed trickier when one’s spiritual robes were overflowing with Egyptian gold. Therefore, it makes little sense for the Lord Jehovah to pluck his people out of Egyptian mud, so they could plow their souls under with pride.

No wonder, the Lord said to the early Latter-day Saints, “the redemption of Zion must needs come by power; Therefore, I will raise up unto my people a man, who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel. For ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power, and with a stretched-out arm. And as your fathers were led at the first, even so shall the redemption of Zion be” (Doctrine and Covenants 103:15-18). If the Lord “is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” and “the course of the Lord is one eternal round” (1 Nephi 10:18-19), then who are we to assume the false gods of our world will yield to anything less?

The Lord’s Sevenfold Plan

The God of Israel is involved in the affairs of his children, for they are his children. As members of the restored Church, we do not believe references to God as our Father to be merely metaphorical. He is a Father, and he delights in blessing his children. The timing of the Lord’s blessings is always miraculous. Still, sometimes as myopic mortals, it is difficult to see how all things shall work for our good and his name’s glory (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:3). Nevertheless, “the Lord knoweth all things which are to come” (Words of Mormon 1:7). Therefore, the Lord declared to the enslaved Israelites in Exodus 3:7-9:

  1. I have seen
  2. I have heard
  3. I know their sorrows
  4. I am come down
  5. To deliver you from Egypt
  6. To bring you up
  7. Unto a good land

These seven principles demonstrate the Lord’s character and how he intends to save his children. Those principles equally apply to anyone choosing to walk the covenant path. The Lord sees, hears, and knows our sorrows, but he is not a distant God. Instead, he intends to enter our lives on a personal level, bringing deliverance from anything ungodly and deliverance to all that is.

The Lord’s Seven “I Will” Statements

Consequently, the Lord declares seven “I will” statements in Exodus 6:6-8. Seven is the number of fulness, perfection, and that which is complete. Within these seven principles are couched the Lord’s lovingkindness. In them, we can see the entire plan of salvation, what it means to walk the covenant path, and how the Lord will accomplish our redemption:

  1. Bring you out.
  2. Rid you out of bondage.
  3. Redeem you.
  4. Take you to Me.
  5. Be to you a God.
  6. Bring you into the land.
  7. Give it to you for an heritage.

As there is no originality in hell the Satanic strategy of shove-Israel’s-face-in-the-mud-so-they-believe-they-are-mud seems particularly relevant today. Call it materialistic reductionism if you will, but, as Napoleon Hill once quipped, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”[1] That sentiment seems to cut both ways, when we are yearning for God or when we are strolling towards Sodom. Making muddy bricks for a worldly dictator is not Israel’s calling or the calling of any of God’s children. Living is not the same thing as making a living—for myself or the dictator. When our Lord promised abundant life (see John 10:10), that promise comes only as we walk the covenant path not in ambling along forbidden ones (see 1 Nephi 8:28).

Plaguing the False Gods

So, who and what are these gods we must scuttle? Pharaoh was his own worst enemy. It seems scuttling the world’s false gods need not go to DEFCON 1, where plagues begin dropping on our heads. As early as the thirteenth century, readers have noticed a clear pattern in the plagues of Egypt.[2] The first nine plagues are expressed as three groups consisting of three plagues.

  1. Plagues: 1, 4, 7: Given as a warning to Pharaoh early in the morning at the Nile river (see Exodus 7:15; 8:20; 9:13).
  2. Plagues: 2, 5, 8: Given as a warning to Pharaoh, but delivered at the palace (see Exodus 8:1; 9:1; 10:1).
  3. Plagues 3, 6, 9: Given without warning.

The plagues consistently ascend in severity ranging from irritations to destruction to death. Other patterns can be detected, but my purpose here is to highlight the relationship between the ancient Egyptians’ false gods and the false gods plaguing our lives today. “The plagues of wrath recorded in Exodus correspond to the stages of the creation of the earth in the opening chapters of Genesis. The plagues are in direct contrast to the creative force of God.[3] What God ordered in his creation of the world as his temple, the plagues systematically reverse to the point of chaos. Each of the plagues corresponds with the days of creation.[4] As Pharaoh had defiled the temple of the earth, so the plagues destroyed the false idols and temples Pharaoh established.

This is one significant reason why we need “religion.” We need the things that tie us to God. Religion is related to ligament, which ties the muscle to the bone. President Dallin H. Oaks taught, “Attendance and activity in a church help us become better people and better influences on the lives of others. . . . Church attendance can open our hearts and sanctify our souls.”[5] We need religion and the Church to prevent us from worshipping idols—particularly the one staring back at us in the mirror.

President Spencer W. Kimball delivered a First Presidency Message in the June 1976 Ensign titled, “The False Gods We Worship.”[6] President Kimball remarked, “I use the word idolatry intentionally in that address. As I study ancient scripture, I am more and more convinced there is significance in the fact that the commandment ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ is the first of the Ten Commandments.” President Kimball further exposed the typical culprits where the spirit of idolatry runs amok. He said, “Many people spend most of their time working in the service of a self-image that includes sufficient money, stocks, bonds, investment portfolios, property, credit cards, furnishings, automobiles, and the like to guarantee carnal security throughout, it is hoped, a long and happy life.” Indeed, these manifested false gods have more sway in hearts and minds than ever.

Yes, the false gods of today are “everything which entices a person away from duty, loyalty, and love for and service to God.”[7] Rather than ascribing the blame to those dastardly demons that entice, we must never forget we have moral agency. The power is within us to choose to be enticed or not.[8] A man should not have to stick his head into a garbage can to know it stinks. In dealing with the devil, perhaps Screwtape’s advice to the younger devil Wormwood is timely here: “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”[9]

Survival in the Wilderness

As for wandering in the wilderness, we note, “not all who wander are lost.”[10] Following the Lord’s guidance, manifested both through the Lord’s prophet and his spirit, is crucial for wandering through mortality without getting lost in forbidden paths (see Exodus 13:21-22). The Exodus story forms a marvelous type and shadow for our own wilderness wanderings through mortality:

Through the waters of baptism and the waters of the Red Sea, the Lord purchased his people Israel (Exodus 15:16). We belong to him in a covenant relationship. It is a relationship worth celebrating, as Miriam the prophetess did by celebrating the might of the Lord in saving Israel from the world and from sin (Exodus 15:20–21). Yet we must eat and drink in order to journey onward towards eternal life. Our spirits, like our bodies, require consistent nourishment, or they will die. Israel “went three days in the wilderness, and found no water” (Exodus 15:22). The situation was grim indeed, for “when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter” (Exodus 15:23). “Marah” in Hebrew suggests “bitter.” This false water source suggests the bitterness of sin. Elder Richard G. Scott referred to the effect of sin as “the gall of bitterness.” Marah, like the bitter herbs of the Passover, reminded Israel of “slavery and captivity in Egypt; bitterness of slavery to sin; bitterness of Christ’s suffering for our sins.” What was the solution to such bitterness? “The Lord shewed [Moses] a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet” (Exodus 15:25). The solution to our sin is the peace of Christ.

Jesus is the tree of life (1 Nephi 11:4–6). We are all invited to “cast [our] burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain [us]: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). He invites all to cast their burdens upon Him, for He cares for all (1 Peter 5:7). When we invite the Lord to bless our lives by exercising faith and casting Him into our lives, He removes the bitterness of sin while sustaining us in the wilderness. For the Lord declared, “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). Israel rejuvenated their souls at the healed waters of Marah but had to continue on.

Their journey was not complete until they were safely in the land of promise, yet the need for water remained. Following the trial at Marah, the children of Israel journeyed until “they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees” (Exodus 15:27). Palm trees are a sure sign in a desert that water is present. The seventy palm trees were for Israel a sign that life-saving water could yet be found again. The trees were the sign where water could be found; the wells were the instrument of obtaining the water of salvation, but it was the water that saved. Likewise, to modern Israel today, the Seventy are “to preach the gospel, and to be especial witnesses [of the Lord] . . . in all the world” (D&C 107:25). The Lord further declared that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles “hold the keys to open up the authority of my kingdom” (D&C 124:128). The twelve wells, like the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles with the priesthood keys they hold, provide access to the living waters of life. Only through the duly ordained ministers of the Lord do we find and can we sup from the living waters of salvation. Jesus is the living water who saves, redeems, and cleanses.[11]

As a Little Child

In this modern world of the year 2022, something far more sinister lurks beneath the surface of our craving for money, property, and a name flashing on the marque down the street. It is something our Lord repeatedly mentioned in words like, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33), or from a modern apostle, “If you have not chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”[12] But, what is the kingdom of God? We typically hear answers like, “the Church,” “Zion,” or “God’s will,” but while those definitions are all well and good, there seems to be a fundamental truth at the bedrock foundation of those renderings of the phrase, “the kingdom of God.”

Our Lord said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). Or, from King Benjamin, we are to put “off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child” (Mosiah 3:19). Indeed, only when I choose to put off anything that is not godly, I am enabled to “put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Apparently, the corpus of scripture demonstrates that the only way to become a saint, see the kingdom of God, or to stand approved of God, requires I first become as a little child, and then to hit us between the eyes, the Lord says, “for of such is the kingdom of God.” For the atoning grace of the Lord to renew and regenerate my soul, I must come of age spiritually speaking by becoming as a little child.

Lest we squirm out of the situation, another translation renders the passage this way: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs” (Matthew 19:14 New Revised Standard Version). Such as these? Who are these? Obviously, the children uninhibited by the meddling of “maturity.” The passage seems quite clear that the sort of beauties, wonders, and truths the Lord promises are only available to the sort of people best described as “children.” But, what could the Lord mean? Surely, he does not intend the snippiness, tantrums, and a child’s willy-nilly disregarding for safety and security?

Children enjoy the quiddity, or, the “whatness,” of everything. They find joy in the brownness of brown, the grassiness of grass, and the trafficness of traffic. They love a thing for the thing’s sake, not for how they can use, misuse, or abuse it. While I see taillights in rush hour traffic, a child sees the eyes of a dragon and a story forms, and he’s suddenly talking smack to the drake staring back at him. While I see a concrete dystopia that is I-15, a child wonders at the sound and speed of the vehicles and remembers the story about the chariots she heard last night. Or, perhaps she is just intrigued at the color orange she saw on the head of the construction worker she just passed. Why is it orange? What makes orange? Does she like orange more than pink or yellow? I want an orange hat too! In other words, the world is filled with wonder, but as we grow, we grow out of it—not because the world has changed, but we have chosen the lesser part.

So, I found myself careening down 400 N. to Main in Logan, Utah, weaving through traffic, jockeying for position, and threading the needle, so to speak. Why? So that I might get home, get on, or get past the nuisances holding me back from the “real” business of life—you know, the after-work snack, catching up on the news with my wife, and taking the dogs on a walk. For every distracted driver holding up the passing lane is another moment, another second, preventing me from reading Tolstoy or Tolkien. Surely the story of the Exodus, plagues, fire, darkness, and Pharaoh are best left buried under the Egyptian deserts and not lurking in the next car lane! Surely what happens in my Honda has nothing to do with Horus!

Then it hit, and like a Mack Truck no less! When our Lord promised to send the Comforter to teach us all things and “bring all things to your remembrance,” (John 14:26), it seems in my life the “things” in question always must be corrective rather than self-affirming. They have to do with edging me further up and further into the Lord’s will while diminishing or even killing, the side of me choosing to see my travelers as mosquitoes driving Mazdas. Why can’t the Lord just let me go about my merry business swerving through traffic and cutting off random citizens? Why can’t he leave religion in Church pews and not wrestling for expression on Main Street? Let me have my autobahn, and let me have it on my terms!

An annoyance to a cad is a world of wonder to a child or even a dog. When I drove through that same intersection the next week, Max, our Golden Retriever, gave the car in the next lane a free car wash from all his drool and slobber splattering their windows. Max whined with glee at the sights, sounds, and smells! “What’s all the uppity about you mutt?! Traffic? The shmuck in front of us going 10 mph under the speed limit?” Apparently, even a dog picks up on the wonders of creation and a world tingling with delight. Whatever else the “kingdom of God” is, it isn’t a place reserved for “pickle suckers.”[13] No wonder the Lord used a child to typify his kingdom (see Matthew 19:14). This is also why “there is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.⁠“[14] If we are to take the unblushing promises of the Lord seriously, both reverential awe and uproarious mirth make their harbor in eternity’s dock.

G. K. Chesterton quipped, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”[15] In moving through mortality, there seems to be only two choices: mirth or madness. I saw this demonstrated last Sunday when in my ward’s Primary Singing Time, our wonderful music leader asked for volunteers to help lead the song, and in American Sign Language to boot! Bedlam ensued. You should have seen the skiffs and scuffles as each row erupted in mayhem! Children from around the room shouted, “Pick me! Pick me!” One of the boys in my class didn’t hesitate. He skipped the hand-raising, ran to the room’s front, and took his post next to the music leader. He had upon his face an air of, “Reporting for duty Ma’am! Locked and loaded, ready to go!” It was a glow of gaiety all around!

Why do such things not occur in the Elders Quorum? Is it the ASL, the Man Card being called into question, the effort, or something else? Why is the Relief Society room typically filled with the prim, proper, and the very put together but exuberant glee for the gift of participation is notably absent? And no pandering with an answer like “reverence” will do. Our Primary music leader played those children like a banjo at an Ozark hoe-down. I believe Paul’s oft-quoted plea to grow up in 1 Corinthians 13:11 is a misreading of Paul’s intent. When Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things,” Paul is highlighting the problem, not the solution (1 Corinthians 13:11).

Let’s be clear. When Paul “became a man,” he put away the things of a child. The obvious problem is that our Lord defined the quality of heaven like that of a child (see Matthew 19:14). Consequently, when we put off our child, “we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12, NRSV). It seems that “growing up” is akin to wandering through self-imposed mists of darkness. Those mists of darkness are precisely blinding because we cannot see past our own image. We are called to be “the image of God,” not icons of a worldly one! God tends to be a wrecking ball with false gods and images; the ten plagues should disabuse us of any notions to the contrary. When we “grow up” in the Lord (Doctrine and Covenants 109:15), I suspect it looks and sounds more like a Primary class than a Ward Council Meeting. If “Jesus Christ is joy” and “joy is the serious business of heaven,” then choosing to see as a child is undoubtedly one way to lose the “scales of darkness” from our eyes.[16]

G. K. Chesterton noted, “A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door.”[17] No need for a dragon when a door will do. Alma invited us to “imagine” eternal verities (see Alma 5). When we squash our imagination with the woes and vicissitudes of this world, we lose our capacity to see truth “as things as they really are, and of things as they really will be” (Jacob 4:13). “The function of imagination is not to make strange things settled so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders.”[18] Chesterton concluded,

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.[19]

The root of all culture is cultus or worship, and disciples tend to become like the object of their worship. If we have bought into the materialistic reductionism of our time that declares everything can be reduced to matter or energy, then the more we make excuses about things being beyond our control. As a result, we tend to incarnate the wrong things. When we say phrases like, “I am depressed,” “I am ugly,” or “that’s just who I am,” intentionally or not, we have accepted a new ontological identity.

If the restored doctrine of the atonement of Jesus Christ is true, and we are moral agents, then we are not defined by anything other than, “I am a child of God.” While we may have feelings of depression, that is a far cry from being a depressed person. What is being anyway? What does it mean to be a person? The Lord alone is truly the only one authorized to use the words, “I Am,” and actually mean it. The rest of us are not human beings, but godly becomings. “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”[20] That sentiment and truth is increasingly more relevant now than ever.

So, where does this all leave us? President Gordon B. Hinckley said it simply: “Where there is appreciation, there is courtesy, there is concern for the rights and property of others. Without appreciation, there is arrogance and evil. Where there is gratitude, there is humility, as opposed to pride.”[21] Note those words, “where there is gratitude, there is humility.” The Lord makes this promise to those who are humble, “For my Spirit is sent forth into the world to enlighten the humble and contrite” (Doctrine and Covenants 136:33). What does this spirit bring when we qualify for his influence in humility? Paul said, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23).

The Lord further declared, “Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things. . . . And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments. . . . And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more” (Doctrine and Covenants 59:7, 21; 78:19). Joy and rejoicing are states of being, not states of the Union. To see things as they really are, we must see as a child sees, and the only way to make that a reality is in the spirit of thanksgiving.

So then, our exodus from the false god of self begins in getting outside of oneself. Therefore, in the Lord’s Spirit, let us follow the Lord’s prophet. Let us also grab a magnifying glass and use it to examine the warp and woof of the nearest couch cushion. We could also take it outside to the grass or, if nothing else, use the glass to look at the first thing we see. There is no such thing as a boring world, only boring souls, and a spirit of blasé is a choice. Perhaps, we should spend less time in, as Korihor said, “the management of the creature” (Alma 30:17), and more time in the marvels of creation.

We have, what Coleridge called, a “film of familiarity” over our eyes. “By awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us,” it becomes “an inexhaustible treasure.”[22] It isn’t illusion or delusion, but seeing things as they really are, because “by the power of the Holy Ghost, [we] may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:15). What is more beautiful and wondrous than the new creation promised as we choose to put off “the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord”? As we begin this process, we discover, most startlingly, that while our flesh ages, our spirit is enlivened, and we experience the sprightliness of God’s Spirit “as a child” (Mosiah 3:19).

[1] Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, 31.

[2] Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508), Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (d. 1158), and Bahya ben Asher in his thirteenth century commentary (see Ziony Zevit, “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus,” JQR 66 [1976]: 194, nn. 6-7).

[3] Patrick D. Degn and David S. Christensen, Types and Shadows of the Old Testament: Jesus Christ and the Great Plan of Happiness, (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2018), 62.

[4] See Patrick D. Degn and David S. Christensen, Types and Shadows of the Old Testament, 62-65 for details.

[5] Dallin H. Oaks, “The Need for a Church,” General Conference, October 2022.

[6] https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1976/06/the-false-gods-we-worship?lang=eng

[7] Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 145.

[8] See Doctrine and Covenants 58:26-28; 101:78; 2 Nephi 2:26-26.

[9] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 16.

[10] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.

[11] Patrick D. Degn and David S. Christensen, Types and Shadows of the Old Testament: Jesus Christ and the Great Plan of Happiness, (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2018), 68-70.

[12] Neal A. Maxwell, “Response to a Call,” General Conference, April 1974.

[13] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled,” BYU Speeches, October 24, 1974; https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/gordon-b-hinckley/let-heart-troubled/.

[14] G. K. Chesterton, “On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small,” Heretics.

[15] G. K. Chesterton, “On Running After One’s Hat,” All Things Considered.

[16] Russell M. Nelson, “Joy and Spiritual Survival,” General Conference, October 2016; C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, (New York: HarperOne, 2017), 125; 2 Nephi 30:6.

[17] G. K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy.

[18] G. K. Chesterton, “A Defence of China Shepherdesses,” The Defendant.

[19] G. K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy.

[20] G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, April 19, 1930.

[21] Gordon B. Hinckley, “With All Thy Getting Get Understanding,” Ensign, Aug. 1988.

[22] Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographica Literaria, chapter 14.