James E. Talmage

“ But the Church has not only grown; it has developed. Between growth and development there is an essential difference; and not a few of the grave mistakes of men, even in every-day affairs—in business, in politics, in statesmanship—are traceable to our confusing and confounding the two. Growth alone is the result of accretion, the accumulation of material, the amassing of stuff. Development involves an extension of function, a gradation of efficiency, a passing from immaturity to maturity, from the seed to the fruiting tree.
Growth produces big things, and not only things of this sort but men. ”

“ If the veil was rent to-day, 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 to-day, 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 instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another. ”

“ When left to his imagination, without the guidance of revelation, man conjures up a heaven and a hell to suit his fancy. Thus, to the mind of the savage, heaven is a hunting-ground with game a-plenty; to the carnal, heaven promises perpetual gratification of senses and passions; to the lover of truth and the devotee of righteousness, heaven is the assurance of limitless advancement in wisdom and achievement. And to each of these, hell is the eternal realization of deprivation, loss, disappointment and consequent anguish. ”

“ The baubles of earth are set over against the priceless jewels of heaven; the fleeting things of mortality are put in contrast with the enduring verities of eternity.
Granted that this is a material world, and that experience in material affairs is a pervading and indispensable element in the curriculum of life's school, it is no less truly a fact that earth-life is neither the beginning nor the end of individual existence and progression. ”

“ Who are the living but the few just now tabernacled in mortal bodies destined sooner or later to die? Who are the dead but the uncounted myriads who once lived in the flesh and have already passed to the world of the disembodied? If the Atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ be a means of salvation to the few only who constituted the living during some specific period, or even to all who have heard and accepted the Gospel while in the body, the sacrifice made by the Son of God becomes of limited and small effect. ”

“ When will men awaken to the imperative yet persuasive summons to repentance? Are not the awful vicissitudes of the days of war and death sufficient to arouse us to some realization of the solemnities of eternity? As a nation we have valiantly waged war for the vindication of the rights, privileges, and liberties of men. As individuals we are summoned by the call of God to resist iniquity, and to make peace and reconciliation with Him through obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. ”

“ When Death is reaping so rank a harvest through war, pestilence, and famine, can we bear to believe it?
What of those beloved fathers, husbands, brothers, sons—yours or some others'—who have fallen on the blooddrenched fields beyond the seas—are they, because unbaptized, to be forever shut out from the Kingdom of God, even though they have died martyrs to the cause of the Divine purpose in the vindication of the liberties of mankind? ”

“ We are destined to exist through the eternities beyond the resurrection with spirit and body reunited. Only in such union is a fulness of glory, opportunity, and achievement possible.
Thus spake the Lord Jesus Christ to the Church in 1833: "For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receiveth a fulness of joy. And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy." ”

“ Religion is more than a code of morals. Man can no more be saved by ethics than can he live by bread alone. The spiritual nutriment, without which no soul can develop to the exalted status of eternal life, consists of "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
The very purpose for which this earth was created as an abiding place for the spirit-children of God during their brief period of embodiment in flesh was to test and "prove them herewith to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them." ”

“ Is it not reasonable, and wholly in keeping with the ordinary ways of men in their mutual dealings, that some substantial evidence shall be demanded to attest the genuineness of the repentance we voice in words? Is it enough that the debtor shall merely acknowledge his obligation and express regret that he has not heretofore been able to meet it? He must do something more, or he remains forever in debt. The seal by which repentance is validated is Baptism in water for the remission of sins; for by this is the blood of Jesus Christ made effective to cleanse from sin. ”

“ Through the lurid gloom of smoke and fire in which the nations have been enshrouded, amidst the awful stench of blood that has sickened the world, mankind has had reason to rejoice in the enlightening beams of comforting assurance that an era of peace is to be established. And this shall be a peace that cannot be broken, for righteousness shall rule, and man's birthright to liberty shall be inviolate. ”

“ But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. ”

“ But behold, I will shew unto you a God of miracles, even the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and it is that same God who created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are." (Moroni 9:7-11) .
Miracles are not promised save to those who believe and obey as the Lord hath commanded. However marvelous they may be as gaged by physical standards, the gifts of the Spirit appeal to the unbelieving and carnal mind only as unusual and curious phenomena; while to the man of faith they testify of the power and purposes of God. ”

“ To regard all religious systems, all sects and churches, as essentially of equal worth and worthiness, is to make of religious profession a matter of mere convenience and conventionality.
I verily believe, with the full force of my soul's conviction, that there is and can be but one Church of Jesus Christ upon the earth, possessing the blessings and powers of the Holy Priesthood, with the authority to administer the ordinances requisite to salvation. Nevertheless, I can and do admit freely and without reservation the right of any man to believe that I am wrong ”

“ The genesis of every soul lies back in the eternity past, beyond the horizon of our full comprehension, and what we call a beginning is as truly a consummation and an ending, just as mortal birth is at once the commencement of earth life and the termination of the stage of antemortal existence. ”

“ Religion without personal morality, professions of godliness without charity, church membership without consistent conduct in the common affairs of life are but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals—noise without music, the words of prayer without the spirit.
"If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. ”

“ The prophet Enoch testified further: "But God hath made known unto our fathers that all men must repent. And He called upon our father Adam by His own voice, saying: . . . If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized, even in water, in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth, which is Jesus Christ, the only name which shall be given under heaven whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men, ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." ”

“ Faith and repentance, as the Scriptures aver, are prerequisites to effective baptism; and it is as unreasonable to expect a faithless unrepentant sinner to comprehend the essentiality of baptism as to expect one untrained in the rudiments of arithmetic to understand algebra.
Wilful ignorance of Gospel requirements is sin. Man is untrue to his Divine lineage and birthright of reason when he turns away from the truth, or deliberately chooses to walk in darkness while the illumined path is open to his tread. Positive rejection of the truth is even graver than passive inattention or neglect. ”

“ No more loathsome cancer disfigures the body and soul of society today than the frightful affliction of sexual sin. It vitiates the very fountains of life and bequeaths its foul effects to the yet unborn as a legacy of death.
"Infidelity to marriage vows is a fruitful source of divorce, with its long train of attendant evils, not the least of which are the shame and dishonor inflicted on unfortunate though innocent children. The dreadful effects of adultery cannot be confined to the erring participants. ”

“ If so, then surely the sting of death and the victory of the grave are enduring verities; for the dead would be lost to us and we to them. Such a conception affords ample explanation of the prevalence of black at funerals. The sombre pall and sable trappings are all in place if bereavement on earth means everlasting separation.
The dread assumption—let us not say belief, for who does not hope that a brighter destiny awaits us?—has been fostered by custom and ignorance, and even taught as doctrine by substituting the precepts of men for the word of God. ”

“ To assume that an ethical or even a strictly moral course of conduct is all-sufficient for the soul's salvation would be to repudiate Scripture, deny the essential efficacy of the Atonement, dethrone the Christ, and eliminate God from earthly affairs. Such an assumption proclaims the stupendous error that mortal man is competent to save himself—on his terms, and according to a standard established by human agency. ”

“ One of the essential and distinguishing characteristics of life is the power to select and utilize in its own tabernacle, whether plant, animal, or human, the material elements within its reach, so far as such are necessary to its growth and development. This is true alike of the unborn embryo and of the mature being.
Man's spirit, therefore, is in the likeness of its Divine and Eternal Father, and in the operations of the functions of life it shapes the body to conform with itself. How could the spirit be otherwise than in the image of God if it be divinely begotten and born? ”

“ The second death, therefore, whatever its nature or extent, is a feature of the final judgment, at which each shall stand in his resurrected body of flesh and bones to receive the sentence of honor or of shame.
We are without scriptural warrant for assuming that the second death is another separation of body and spirit, or that the spirit shall undergo dissolution and cease to be. The spirit of man is eternal; and the resurrected body shall be everlasting. The soul knows not annihilation, neither loss of personality in an impossible Nirvana. ”

“ Without the power of perpetuating his kind man is in part bereft of his glory; for small is the possibility of achievement within the limited range of an individual life. Grand as may seem to be the attainments of a man who is really great as gaged by the best standards of human estimation, the culmination of his glorious heritage lies in his leaving offspring from his own body to carry forward the worthy efforts of their sire. ”

“ The immortal spirits that come to earth to tabernacle in bodies of flesh have the right to be well-born, through parents who are free from the contamination of sexual vice.
"It is a deplorable fact that society persists in holding woman to stricter account than man in the matter of sexual offense. What shadow of excuse, not to speak of justification, can be found for this outrageous and cowardly discrimination? Can moral defilement be any the less filthy and pestilential in man than in woman? Is a male leper less to be shunned for fear of contagion that a woman similarly stricken? ”

“ Men have been prone to turn deaf ears to the voice of God, delivered through the prophets always in season to avert threatening calamities; and have rested in the lethal contentment of self-confident ability to deal in their own way with the problems of life. How surpassingly wiser would it be, as shown in the light of our dearly-bought experience, to acknowledge the wisdom of God's beneficence, and profit thereby. Prophecy is direct and sure, science laggard and tentative. One is the advance message from God, the other man's belated and ofttimes distorted version of the truth. ”

“ He it is who seeks to lead men captive at his will, to destroy their power of agency and choice, to dupe them into bartering their birthright of freedom for the nauseating pottage of present expediency.
He it is who has cajoled men into the unscriptural conception that there are ways, many and variable, by which salvation is attainable, other than the one and only way provided by the Savior of souls. ”

“ Verily so, if marriage be nothing more than an earthly contract, regulated by law solely as a human institution; for no legislature, congress, or parliament of men, no synod, church, council, or ecclesiastical hierarchy of human origination, can legislate or administer ordinances of other than earthly validity. To claim jurisdiction in post-mortal affairs on the basis of human assumption is both sacrilege and blasphemy.
The current marriage ceremony, uniting the parties until death does them part, is framed in consistency and propriety. ”

“ Great and glorious as is the boon of Redemption from the grave, greater and more glorious as are the conditions prescribed for the soul's Salvation, the revealed Gospel of Jesus Christ provides yet more transcendent blessings in the plan for Exaltation, whereby resurrected man may advance from one stage of relative perfection to another, with powers of eternal increase and never ending progression. ”

“ We are not inheritors of original sin, though we be subjects of the consequences. The millions who have been slaughtered or have otherwise met death because of the greatest war in history, and those other and more millions of helpless dependents who have endured such agonies as to make of death a blessed relief, are all involved in the frightful results of the precipitation of war by their respective rulers; yet who can doubt that when a just accounting is called, those who brought about the carnage and the suffering shall be made to answer, not the irresponsible victims? ”

“ The Kingdom of Heaven on earth is to be a literal government, administered under the supreme direction of Jesus Christ the King. No longer shall men arrogate to themselves the power of might to exercise dominion over their fellows, nor exalt themselves on thrones, nor bedeck themselves with crowns and scepters. ”

“ With God as with man there is a time of seeding and a time of harvest. Only now has the world been even measurably prepared for government based on the consent of the people, for the kind of government that shall yet be established in other lands as it has been already developed in America. Fifty, twenty, aye, even ten years ago, to have attempted forcibly to uproot the weeds of autocracy would have endangered the precious wheat of real democracy. There is a dominant element of timeliness in all the works of God. Verily He doeth all things well, and in propitious season. ”