James R. Clark on the Responsibility Placed Upon All Church Members to Test Statements From Church Leaders

  

I believe that the Lord has never removed the responsibility from the individual member of the Church for testing by the Holy Ghost what is said to us. We must know for ourselves; we must get that knowledge for ourselves—first by becoming familiar with what the Lord has already revealed and secondly, by a personal testimony borne to us by the Holy Ghost. That is where members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if I might so speak, have an advantage that no other people have. We claim the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. (James R. Clark, “Prophets and Problems of the Pearl of Great Price,” 33^rd Annual Leadership Week, BYU Extension Division, 1956, p. 72)