The Articles of Faith. James E. Talmage

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      31. Even the transgressions of man may be turned to the accomplishment of high purposes. As will be shown, the sacrifice of Christ was ordained from before the foundation of the world,189 yet Judas who betrayed, and the blood-thirsty Jews who brought about the crucifixion of the Son of God, are none the less guilty of the awful crime.

      32. It has become a common practice with mankind to heap reproaches upon the progenitors of the family, and to picture the supposedly blessed state in which we would be living but for the Fall; whereas our first parents are entitled to our deepest gratitude for their legacy to posterity—the means of winning glory, exaltation, and eternal lives, on the battlefield of mortality. But for the opportunity thus given, the spirits of God's offspring would have remained forever in a state of innocent childhood; sinless through no effort of their own; negatively saved, not from sin, but from the opportunity of meeting sin; incapable of winning the honors of victory because prevented from taking part in the battle. As it is, they are heirs to the birthright of Adam's descendants—mortality, with its immeasurable possibilities and its God-given freedom of action. From Father Adam we have inherited all the ills to which flesh is heir; but such are necessarily incident to the knowledge of good and evil, by the proper use of which knowledge man may become even as the Gods.190

      NOTES.

      1. Man's Agency is God-given.—The following is an extract from a discourse delivered by President Brigham Young, July 5, 1855. (See Journal of Discourses of that date, and Millennial Star, vol. xx, p. 43.) "What is the foundation of the rights of man? The Lord Almighty has organized man for the express purpose of becoming an independent being like unto Himself, and has given him his individual agency. Man is made in the likeness of his Creator, the great archetype of the human species, who bestowed upon him the principles of eternity, planting immortality within him, and leaving him at liberty to act in the way that seemeth good unto him;—to choose or refuse for himself, to be a Latter-day Saint or a Wesleyan Methodist, to belong to the Church of England, the oldest daughter of the Mother Church, to the old Mother herself, to her sister the Greek Church, or to be an infidel and belong to no church. When the kingdom of God is fully set up and established on the face of the earth, and takes the pre-eminence over all other nations and kingdoms, it will protect the people in the enjoyment of all their rights, no matter what they believe, what they profess, or what they worship."

      2. The Nature of Sin.—The English word "sin" represents a very great variety of terms occurring in the original languages, the literal translation of which bear to one another a very great similarity. Thus, in the Old Testament, the following terms among others occur:—setim (referred to in Psalms ci, 3), signifying "to deviate from the way;" shegagah (Lev. iv, 2; Num. xv, 27), "to err in the way;" avon, "the crooked, or perverted;" avel, "to turn aside." In the New Testament we find, hemartia, "the missing of a mark;" parabasis, "the transgressing of a line;" parakoe, "disobedience to a voice;" paraptoma, "falling from uprightness;" agnœma, "unjustifiable ignorance;" hettema, "giving only partial measure;" anomia, "non-observance of law;" plemmeleia, "a discord." The above illustrations are taken mainly from Müller and French. In all these expressions, the predominant idea is that of departure from the way of God, of separation from His companionship by opposition to the Divine requirements. Sin was introduced into the world from without; it was not a natural product of earth. The seed of disobedience was planted in the mind of Eve by the arch-fiend: that seed took root; and much fruit, of the nature that we, with unguarded words, call calamity, is the result. From these thorns and thistles of mortality, a Savior has been prepared to deliver us.

      3. Eden.—In the Hebrew tongue, from which our word "Eden" is taken, this term signifies something particularly delightful—a place of pleasantness; the place is also called "the garden of the Lord." One particular spot in the land of Eden was prepared by the Lord as a garden; this was situated eastward in Eden. From the garden, the parents of the race were expelled after the Fall, though it is reasonable to suppose that they still dwelt in the land or region of Eden. We read that at a later date, Cain, the first murderer, "went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden" (Gen. iv, 16). Though there is no uniform belief among Christian scholars as to the geographical location of Eden, the majority claim that it was in Persia; however, the most radical among the advocates of this view fail to prove any marked resemblance between the region at present and the place described in the Bible. The Latter-day Saints have more exact knowledge on the matter, a revelation having been given through Joseph Smith, at Spring Hill, Mo., May 19, 1838, in which that place is named by the Lord "Adam-ondi-Ahman, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet" (Doc. and Cov. cxvi). From another revelation we learn (Doc. and Cov. cvii, 52–53) that three years before his death, Adam called together in the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman those of his sons who had been made High Priests, together with the rest of his righteous posterity, and there bestowed upon them his patriarchal blessings, the event being marked by special manifestations from the Lord (see also Doc. and Cov. cxvii, 8). The Lord has pointed out in this day the exact location of the altar upon which Adam offered sacrifices after his expulsion from the Garden (see Contributor, Vol. vii, page 314). There is no authentic record of the human race having inhabited the Eastern Hemisphere until after the flood. The Western Continent, called now the New World, comprises indeed the oldest inhabited regions of earth. The west, not the east, is the "cradle of nations."

      4. The Serpent, as stated, having aided the purposes of Satan, received from the Lord a special curse (see Genesis iii, 13, 15, and the Pearl of Great Price, p. 16). The creature was doomed to a life of degradation. Even from the standpoint of anatomy, the serpent is a degraded type. Though a vertebrate—a member of the highest sub-kingdom of animals, it is devoid even of external limbs, and its means of locomotion are of no higher order than are those of the worm and the caterpillar. In the scriptures, the serpent is made the symbol of craft, subtlety, cunning, and danger.

      5. Mortality Essential.—President John Taylor, after discussing the succession of events leading up to the Fall, says—"Thus it would appear that if any of the links of this great chain had been broken, it would have interfered with the comprehensive plan of the Almighty pertaining to the salvation and eternal exaltation of those spirits who were His sons, and for whom principally the world was made: that they, through submission to the requirements of the eternal principle and law governing those matters, might possess bodies, and those bodies united with the spirits might become living souls, and being the sons of God, and made in the image of God, they through the atonement might be exalted, by obedience to the law of the Gospel, to the Godhead."—Mediation and Atonement, p. 135.

      6. Beneficent Results of the Fall.—"'Honor thy father and thy mother.' This was one of the ten special commandments given to Israel, during a grand display of God's power and glory on Mount Sinai. In the past centuries of darkness it appears to have lost its significance with the Christian world. They do not appear to realize that honor is due to the first parents of the human race. They have been long taught that Adam and Eve were great transgressors, and have mourned over the fact that they partook of the forbidden fruit and brought death into the world. There is no possibility that the fall of man was an accident or chance, any more than was his creation. If an accident, then why was Christ prepared from before the foundation of the world as a propitiation for sin, and to open up the way for man to immortality? Christ's mediation was a sequence of the fall" (see Acts v, 31). "Without the fall there would have been no broken law, and therefore nothing to repent of; and there could be no forgiveness of sin without the atonement of Christ. The Book of Mormon makes this subject very plain: 'And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed, he would not have fallen; but he would have remained in the Garden of Eden. And all things which were created, must have remained in the same state which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. And they would have СКАЧАТЬ