Elder Melvin J. Ballard's observation of Mount Hood

“I had a little experience out in Oregon that helped me to understand it. 1 used to long to go and see that great mountain sixty miles east of Portland called Mount Hood, for it stood up in all its majesty and beauty as a single object of admiration. And when I finally had the chance to carry out my desire, and reached the six thousand foot level, the base of the mountain, which is the top of the Cascade range, which from that sixty miles' distance looked like a great lofty plateau, it was just studded with peaks distracting my attention here and there and everywhere, and then I was up against a great cliff of the mountain that arose a thousand feet above me, and I could not see the top of the mountain at all. I was disappointed, and I never could get the right view or feeling toward it until I began to leave it again. As I receded mile after mile, as I drew a way from it, those distracting peaks began to sink until they became like the level of the plain, and the great mountain rose in its single majesty and beauty once again above all other objects and I said: That is like life, that is the reason men did not comprehend and understand Jesus Christ. — Millennial Star 86:12”