shall see when we come to speak of Individual Salvation. Meantime, through the fall, comes our present state of probation; our opportunities for gaining an experience in this life; of coming in contact with good and evil; learning to love the one and despise the other, by seeing them placed in contrast with each other, working out their respective results, to the production of happiness on the one hand, and misery on the other. From which experience we shall learn on what basis rests the eternal felicity of intelligences, and how to perpetuate it throughout the ages yet unborn. CHAPTER V. INDIVIDUAL SALVATION. AVING dealt with what I called General tion. You have seen that man is redeemed from the evils brought upon him through Adam's sin, without any act of belief or obedience being required of him. This is because his agency or will was not exercised in breaking the law given to Adam. The calamity overtakes him through no fault of his; and consequently his deliverance, so far, comes without his seeking-in fact, it comes independent of him. In this matter, man is passive, being acted upon by the relative claims of Justice and Mercy. But apart from the transgressions of our first parents, there is a vast amount of sin, crime and corruption in the world. Envy, hatred, malice, contention, evil-speaking, jealousy, and covetousness abound; to say nothing of the greater evils of lying, drunkenness, stealing, fornication, adultery, and debauchery of every description, which would be improper even to name. Selfishness is the starting point of the present system of industrialism; chicanery and fraud enter into all the avenues of trade; dishonesty walks the streets without shame; licentiousness revels in its own wantonness; whoredoms are poisoning the life's blood of the nations; prostitution flaunts its shame upon the streets, and takes up its abode in the very shadow of the church, where men meet to worship God. Instead of beautifying the earth, man is but making many portions of it sink-holes of iniquity; where poverty, misery, degradation, drunkenness, crime and sin lie festering in their filthiness under the sunlight of heaven, until the very earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof. Now, who is responsible for all these evils, this seething mass of iniquity, which blights like a hell-sent plague this fair creation of ours-the earth? I answer that every man and every woman and every child, who has arrived at the years of accountability-who understands the difference between good and evil-is responsible for it, so far, and to that extent that his or her individual acts contribute to the grand aggregate of crime in this sin-stained world. In the commission of these individual sins, too, man's agency becomes a factor. He sins knowingly, willfully, and sometimes wantonly. He transgresses the laws of God and of nature in spite of the protests of his conscience, the convictions of his reason and the promptings of his judgment. He becomes desperately wicked and so depraved that he actually seeks evil and loves it. He hugs it to his bosom and cries, "Evil, be thou my good; sin, be thou my refuge!" For the transgression of that law which brought death into the world, Justice had no claims upon the posterity of Adam, because their agency was not concerned in it, hence a free redemption was provided from the calamity that overtakes them. But in the case of these individual sins, where the agency of every person is exercised, justice. demands that the penalties affixed to the violated laws be satisfied, and the transgressors punished. But here again the principle of mercy is active. As I have before stated, the victory over death is not the only benefit arising from the Atonement of the Messiah; but by the sacrifice which he made he purchased mankind as an inheritance for himself, and they became of right under his dominion, for he ransomed them from an endless sleep in the grave. Nor is that all, but as the scripture saith: "He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. * * * He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. * * * The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. "* So that his Atonement not only broke the bonds of death, but also atoned for the individual sins of men on condition of their obedience their loyalty to Christ, who by virtue of his Atonement redeemed them from endless death, and therefore of right became their lawgiver, and had power given him to dictate the terms upon which the full benefits of his Atonement should be applied to individuals, in order to release them from the penalties which follow as a consequence of their personal violations of the principles of righteousness. First, however, let us settle it in our minds from authority that the Atonement of Christ has this two-fold force that I have ascribed to it, viz. that it redeems all mankind from death; and also redeems them from the consequences of personal sins, through obedience to Christ. The first part of the proposition has already been discussed and proven in those chapters devoted to the consideration of General Salvation, and those arguments need not be repeated here. That the second part is true is evident from *Isaiah liii: 5, 6. such scripture as: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned;* and, "Being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." But while you are under the necessity of sustaining the proposition, so far as the Jewish Scriptures are concerned, by inference, by conclusions drawn from the consideration of numerous passages, in the Book of Mormon we have passages which at once sustain the doctrine: "And also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned. But woe, woe unto him who knoweth that he rebelleth against God; for salvation cometh to none such, except it be through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”‡ are Alma, in answering a question asked him by the lawyer Zeezrom, said of Jesus:- "And he shall come into the world to redeem his people; and he shall take upon him the transgressions of those who believe on his name; and these they that shall have eternal life, and salvation cometh to none else; therefore the wicked remain as though there had been no redemption made, except it be the loosing of the bonds of death; for behold the day cometh that all shall rise from * Mark xvi. 16. † Heb. v: 16. Mosiah iii: 11, 12. |