Singing
The power of righteous songs —
George Albert Smith was called on his first mission to the Southern States in 1892, as a young man of 22 years of age. The president of that mission was J. Golden Kimball, a member of the First Council of Seventy. Elder Smith was married just a month before departing for his mission. Fortunately, after a few months in the field, Elder Smith was called to serve as mission secretary and special assistant to this mission president, and his new bride Lucy was allowed to come and join him in the work. Years later, in the first general conference after he became president of the Church, the hymn, “Do What Is Right” was sung, and President Smith remembered an experience of some missionaries from his first mission.
“Brothers and sisters, we just sang, ‘Do What Is Right’ When I was in the mission field for the first time, I went into a section of the country where that hymn was known to the community, apparently. Two humble missionaries, after walking until late in the afternoon in the sun, in the heat of summer, came to a small house that was at the bottom of a hill. When the missionaries arrived, they found friends who invited them in to partake of their meager refreshment. And then they were asked to go outside in the cool afternoon shade, on one of those comfortable, open southern porches between two rooms and sing some hymns. The people of the house were not members of the Church, but they enjoyed Christian hymns.
The missionaries had been threatened in that section of the land. One of the men who had threatened them had kept watch of the road and in that way learned when they arrived. He sent word to his associates who saddled their horses and took their guns, and rode to the top of the hill overlooking the little house. The missionaries knew nothing about their presence; they did not know that right over their heads, not very far away, was a considerable number of armed horsemen with ill intent in their minds. But the missionaries had the spirit of the Lord, and as they sat there in the cool of the afternoon and sang hymns, the one hymn that seemed to have been prepared for the occasion was, ‘Do What Is Right’. The missionaries were good singers, and their voices carried out into the quiet air. They had only sung one verse when the leader of the mob took off his hat. They sang another verse, and the mob leader dismounted, and the others also got off their horses. By the time the last verse was sung, these men were repentant. Upon the advice of their leader, they rode away without making their presence known. The leader was so impressed with what he had heard the missionaries sing that he said to his associates, ‘We made a mistake. These are not the kind of men we thought they were. Wicked men can’t sing like angels, and these men sing like angels. They must be servants of the Lord.’
The result was that this man became converted to the Church and later was baptized. And I never hear that hymn sung but what I think of that very unusual experience when two missionaries, under the influence of the spirit of God, turned the arms of the adversary away from them and brought repentance into the minds of those who had come to destroy them”
General Conference report, October 1945, page 116.
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