B. H. Roberts

“ From the helpless babe may come a Michael Angelo, who from some crude mass of stone from the mountain side shall work out a heaven-born vision that shall hold the attention of men for generations, and make them wonder at the God-like powers of man that has created an all but living and breathing statue. Or a Mozart, a Beethoven, or a Handel, may come from the babe, and call out from the silence those melodies and the richer harmonies that lift the soul out of its present narrow prison house and give it fellowship for a season with the Gods. ”

“ A truth is a solemn thing. Not the mockery of ages, not the lampooning of the schoolmen, not the derision of the multitude, not the blasphemy of the world, can affect it; it will always remain true. And this doctrine, announced by Joseph Smith to the world, that God is an exalted man, that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God to the world, and that he is just like his Father, and that those who are his brethren may become as he is, when they have walked in his footsteps—that is a doctrine that will stand sure and fast as the throne of God itself. ”

“ Is it a strange and blasphemous doctrine, then, to hold that men at the last shall rise to the dignity that the Father has attained? Is it "heathenish" to believe that the offspring shall ultimately be what the parent is? My soul, I wonder why men at all conscious of the marvelous powers within themselves should question this part of our faith. Think for a moment what progress a man makes within the narrow limits of this life. Regard him as he lies in the lap of his mother, a mere piece of organized, red pulp—a new-born babe! ”

“ Here, then, is eternal life: to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you—namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power. ”

“ If the vail was rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit; and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves, in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image, and likeness of God, and received instructions from, and walked, talked, and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another. ”

“ I take it that there have been but few strong men who have not felt the desire to rule, to govern; and not always selfishly, either, or for personal ends, but sometimes out of an honest thought that they can do somewhat of good to humanity. Even good men may love power, and may aspire to the righteous exercise of it. It was upon this side that Lucifer sought to break in upon the virtue of Jesus. He unveils the kingdoms of the world; which he holds in his thraldom; he reveals their glory, and the might and majesty to which men may attain, if only they can grasp the sceptre of some great empire. ”

“ When Jesus looked around, and saw none but the woman, he said to her, "Woman, where are thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?" "No man, Lord," she said. Then Jesus said: "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more." That is how God deals with sinners. It is written that God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, and that is true, he cannot; but how about the sinner? Why, he may look upon the sinner with infinite compassion. While sin must always be hateful, yet will he help and love the sinner, if he will but go his way and sin no more. ”

“ Grant immortality to man and God for his guide, what is there in the way of intellectual, moral, and spiritual development that he may not aspire to? If within the short space of mortal life there are men who rise up out of infancy and become masters of the elements of fire and water and earth and air, so that they well-nigh rule them as Gods, what may it not be possible for them to do in a few hundreds or thousands of millions of years? What may they not do in eternity? To what heights of power and glory may they not ascend? ”

“ Better to fall down before that marvelous compound of human consciousness whose elements God has joined together, and no man can put asunder, than to strip reason of those cognate elements which together furnish all that we can conceive or imagine of conscious or personal existence, and to deify the emptiest of all abstractions, a something or nothing, with just enough of its human original left to form a theme for the disputation of philosophy, but not enough to furnish a single ground of appeal to the human feelings of love, of reverence, and of fear. ”

“ Have you not read in the first chapter of Genesis of two persons appearing on this earth before man was made, when one who was God, said to the other, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness?" Does not that bespeak a pre-existence of another personage besides the Almighty? And have you not read too in the same chapter that "God created man in his own image; male and female created he them?" ”

“ And so in every inhabited world, and in every system of worlds, a God presides. Deity in his own right and person, and by virtue of the essence of him; and also by virtue of his being the sign and symbol of the Collectivity of the Divine Intelligences of the universe. Having access to all the councils of the Gods, each individual Deity becomes a partaker of the collective knowledge, wisdom, honor, power, majesty, and glory of the Body Divine—in a word, the embodiment of the Spirit of the Gods whose influence permeates the universe. ”

“ All nations are before him as if they had no being at all, and are counted to him as nothing and vanity. To whom then have you likened God, or what image will you make for him? It is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: he that stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field. ”

“ And ye said: Behold, the Lord our God hath showed us his glory, and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire; we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now, therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that had heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? ”

“ So far as it is possible for the human intellect to conceive the infinite, the material universe is infinite, eternal, without beginning and without end. It is inconceivable that the universe could have had a beginning, could have been produced from nothing. "All the apparent proofs," remarks Herbert Spencer, "that something can come out of nothing, a wider knowledge has one by one cancelled. The comet that is suddenly discovered in the heavens and nightly waxes larger, is proved not to be a newly created body, but a body that was until lately beyond the range of vision. ”

“ Have we reached a point wherein we may receive the fulness of God, of his glory and his intelligence? No; and yet if Jesus, the Son of God, and the Father of the heavens and the earth in which we dwell, received not a fulness at the first, but increased in faith, knowledge, understanding and grace until he received a fulness, is it not possible for all men that are born of women to receive little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, until they shall receive a fulness, as he has received a fulness, and be exalted with him in the presence of the Father? ”

“ And is it strange that from henceforth, the true servants of God should stand up for the dignity and honor and exclusiveness of the power and authority of that One God over this earth against the claims, and to the exclusion of all gods and powers, that men in their vain imaginings set up against this God of heaven and earth, as did Moses, Paul and Joseph Smith? ”

“ Not one atom can be added to the sum total of its substance, nor one blotted out of existence—it is everywhere existing, and, so far as the mind of man can conceive "infinity," it is infinite. Yet we know that this whole is made up of a great variety of substances and objects which are finite; and our philosophers, for the most part, hold that matter is divisible into ultimate atoms. Not that such a fact has been demonstrated or is demonstrable; but granted the existence of matter, its existence as an aggregation of such ultimate things as atoms seems to be a necessary truth. ”

“ Above, I proved God's immutability from the Bible; now I prove it from philosophy, or the light of reason.
Mutation or change is the passing from one state into another. The Infinite Being is not liable to change, as change implies an imperfection in the being susceptible of it, as that being had not in the previous state what it has in the subsequent, or vice versa. God having all perfections must be unchangeable. Therefore, he is not a man grown into a God.
The Necessary Being is such that he could not exist, nor exist otherwise. He cannot receive his existence, nor lose it. ”

“ Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them and they receive not the light.
And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation.
For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy:
And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy. ”

“ Our solar system, far from being alone in the universe, is only one of an extensive brotherhood, bound by common laws and subject to like influences. Even on the very verge of creation, where imagination might lay the beginning of the realms of chaos, we see unbounded proofs of order, a regularity in the arrangement of inanimate things, suggesting to us that there are other intellectual creatures like us, the tenants of those islands in the abysses of space. ”

“ Here I may bid fallen empires rise and pass in grand procession before my mental vision and live again their little lives: fight once more their battles; begin again each petty struggle for place, for power, for control of the world's affairs; revive their customs: live again their loves and hates, and preach once more their religions and their philosophies—all this the mind may do, and that as easily and as quickly as in thought it may leave this room, cross the street to a neighbor's home, and there take note of the familiar objects within his habitation. ”

“ Already, doubtless, shining, through this "expression of God,"—this Jesus of Nazareth,—the servant of the Lord, in attune, through the spirit of inspiration, with the very God who was approaching him, felt the divinity of his presence, and would fain acknowledge his own inferiority. What was the reply? "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." He who had said that men must be baptized for the remission of sins, though himself sinless, would honor that law by obedience unto it. Thus we learn that God can not only give law, but he can obey law. ”

“ While all nations over the earth have developed a religious tendency which acknowledged a higher than human power in the universe, Israel is the only one which has risen to the grandeur of conceiving this power as the One Only Living God. If we are asked how it was that Abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the Divinity, as he had revealed himself to all mankind, but passed through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the One God, we are content to answer, that it was by a special divine revelation. ”

“ Better is the superstition which sees the image of God in the wonderful whole which God has fashioned, than the philosophy which would carve for itself a Deity out of the remnant which man has mutilated. Better to realize the satire of the eleatic philosopher, (Xenophanes) to make God in the likeness of man, even as the ox or the horse might conceive gods in the form of oxen or horses, than to adorn some half-hewn Hermes, the head of a man joined to a misshapen block. ”

“ Our doctrine is that "Intelligences are begotten spirits," which spirits are in form like men, and are really, substance, that is, matter, but of a more subtle and finer nature than the matter composing man's tabernacle of flesh and bone. ”

“ Revelation never reveals it, nor do any of our senses witness its existence. It cannot be seen, heard, tasted, or smelled, even by the strongest organs, or of the most acute sensibilities. It is neither liquid or solid, soft or hard,—it can neither extend nor contract. In short, it can exert no influence whatever—it can neither act, nor be acted upon. And even if it does exist, it is of no possible use. It possesses no one desirable property, faculty or use, yet, strange to say, "Immateriality" is the modern Christian's God, his anticipated heaven, his immortal self—his all. ”

“ If you see any change come over our countenances when this doctrine is named, it is surprise, astonishment, that any one at all capable of grasping the largeness and extent of the universe—the grandeur of existence and the possibilities in man for growth, for progress, should be so lean of intellect, should have such a paucity of understanding, as to call it in question at all. ”

“ But Jesus heeded not the word of the servant. He had heard Jairus' cry of faith, and responsive to that faith-cry, he made his way to the home of the ruler, put out those who were unbelieving, and taking the maid by the hand, gave her back to the gladness of life, into the arms of the joyous father. The faith of that rich man was as great as the faith of any we meet with in all the ministry of the Lord. So, wealth is not necessarily a hindrance to faith. God is as close to the faithful rich as to the faithful poor, and as ready to grant them his mercy, according to their faith. ”