--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Wolfe, Walter M. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 2 number: 10 published: 1899-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Wolfe, Walter M., "Stumbling Blocks," *Improvement Era* 2, no. 10 (August 1899): 721–728.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera210unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera210unse start_page: 721 end_page: 728 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1899-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera210unse publication_year: 1899 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1899, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Stumbling Blocks STUMBLING BLOCKS, BY ELDER WALTER M. WOLFE. To those who have been reared in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and perhaps to those who embraced the Gos- pel in the early days of this dispensation, it may seem strange that, after baptism and confirmation, there should yet remain stumbling blocks in the way of seekers after truth; who, though of the seed of Joseph, have in an especial degree the perverseness of Ephraim, and, while convinced of the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph, yet seek after a sign as to the correctness of some of the doctrines taught by the Priesthood. Even when the sacred portals of the House of the Lord have been crossed and the new and everlasting covenant has been entered into, there may remain traces of the sectarianism and false doctrines that have blinded the world for 1800 years since the apostasy first commenced. We are familiar with instances, scores of them, where a new comer, an immigrant to Zion, has drifted away from the principles of the Gospel that he once loved, on account of the real or fancied injustice of a brother, a misunderstanding of the law of tithing or a failure to regard the teachings of the Word of Wisdom. But 722 IMPROVEMENT ERA. there is another reason for coldness and spiritual darkness that has been especially impressed upon me. It is an easy matter for any one who is spiritually inclined and who has studied the Bible to see in the first principles of the Gospel, the teachings of the Savior practically exemplified. Should such teachings be given in Presbyterian, Methodist or Episcopal churches, and words "Mor- mon" or "Latter-day Saint" not be associated with them, there are few of the sincere church members in the world who would not ac- cept of them. Hence these foundation stones in the plan of sal- vation being shown to a waiting world by zealous missionaries, the honest in heart "hear the word gladly and anon with joy receive it" and become participants in the blessing by the ages long fore- told. The difficulty in the case of new converts and inquirers is not as to what they believe, but as to what people and friends will say. Milk for the babes suffices until suddenly, unexpectedly, the latent thought is brought into action by some passing word or ser- mon or manifestation and then Doubt and Faith fight the mighty battle for supremacy. About eight years ago I attended a ward conference in south- ern Utah. One of the speakers made the assertion that God is constantly increasing in knowledge and power. To me the state- ment seemed blasphemy. The words of the old Westminster Cate- — chism rang in my ears "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and un- changeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." When the meeting was over I sought the Stake President and, after a long interview, returned to my room to ponder over the words, more encouraging and inspiring than any others that have been given to man since Father Adam walked in the garden, "As man is God was, as God is man may be." It may be remarked in this connection that our new converts are often misjudged because they do not seek and follow counsel. They must be educated up to a point where the Priesthood and its power and authority can be dis-associated from man, the human speaker. Man in the world follows only the dictates of his own mind, warped and prejudiced by centuries of inherited traditions. It is well-nigh impossible to cast these off as the serpent sheds his skin. He must be gently brought to realize that only in the fullness of the Priesthood and its teach- STUMBLING BLOCKS. 723 frigs, under divine inspiration and revelation, can perfect knowl- edge and understanding be obtained. Before this realization can be obtained must come a literal crucifixion of the self that asserts itself in every man and woman —these// whose presumptuous asser- tion caused Lucifer to fall, and whose humble abnegation on the part of our Savior brought salvation to a fallen race. It behooves all who dwell in the light of truth and fullness of knowledge to deal tenderly with those who have not yet learned what a safeguard lies in counsel. On the occasion to which I have referred, I was advised not to delve into the "hidden things." Could I stop think- ing? My mind and heart were aflame. The rise of God from man the development of man into God, were beyond my finite compre- hension, and yet, in the thought was the problem of existence, and I understood now the prayers of aged patriarchs that up to this time had fallen upon my ears as empty words. Now indeed life had an aim wide as infinity, an aim that should end only when eternity shall cease. Yet with this overpowering idea came the question What and : who is God? And the first of the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England came into my mind with its contrary statements that God is a being "without body, parts or passions" and that the "Father, Son and Holy Ghost are of one substance, power and glory." I realized at once that the God of the world and the God of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are as unlike as Baal and Jehovah. The concluding statement of the first article, that Father, Son and Holy Ghost are of the same substance, first opened my eyes to the fallacy of the doctrine there expressed. Then I saw, that a being without body parts and passions was no God for me, and I relegated what I had before held as truth to the ashes of memory. But the greatest difficulty was yet to come. If, I reasoned, God, our prototype has increased and progressed and continues to increase and progress, man, his child, must have passed through similar experiences that have brought him thus far on his way to perfection and is destined to pass through similar experiences until he reaches an equally exalted plane; hence if there is a future, there must have been a pre-existent state. At this point I stood between two great schools of modern 724 IMPROVEMENT ERA. religious thought —one the Christian (accepted by the civilized world at large) teaching that man did not exist before his natural, human birth; that the soul is a direct creation of Deity, entering the body with the breath of life; that man is simply the impotent fabric from an omnipotent hand, coming we know not why, and predestined to go where God in his infinite justice has decreed. Such was the teaching of Augustine, such has been the teaching, with more or less definiteness, of the Roman Catholic Church, of Calvin, of Luther, and of all the sects and isms that have arisen since the pentecostal feast. On the other hand the teachings of Buddha, known to the western world during the latter part of this century as Theosophy, and made especially important by the late visit of some of its most prominent members to Salt Lake, have fascinated a great number of people who are inclined to a belief in pre-existence; and here the theological pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and the doctrine obtains that man has come up through various lower forms until he has arrived at this —the highest stage of corporeal exist- ence. This human condition lived perfectly, he ceases to exist as an individual, and becoming absorbed in the Supreme Being, enters the state called Nirvana; aspiration, identity are gone, and futurity becomes a happy blank. There we have it. Christianity doubts a former existence, Buddhism a future, and between the two a trem- bling world knows not which way to turn. A careful study of ecclesiastical and profane history was of inestimable value to me at this point, and as our missionaries meet the same difficulties that I have met with, a brief history of the origin of the prevailing errors as to the nature of God and the doctrine of a pre-existent state may not be amiss at this stage. In the third century before the Christian era, the great philos- opher, Plato, advancing on the tenets of his master Socrates and realizing that the marble statues in the Parthenon and Agora were blocks of stone and nothing more, taught that there was but one God — infinite, He pervaded all space and eternal, invisible. was the source of life. From him emanated the soul of man and the "daemon," that we call conscience, was subject to his laws. A grand idea when contrasted with the gross idolatry of the world! His followers were soon numbered by the hundreds of thousands. — STUMBLING BLOCKS. 725 "What," you ask, "had Plato to do with Christianity?" Simply this: When Greece fell (in 146 B. C.) her wealthy men and phil- osophers, who could not endure Roman taxation and Roman rule, made their homes in Alexandria, which soon succeeded Athens as the capital of the literary, artistic and philosophic world. Two hundred years later many followers of the Savior, fearing Roman persecution and hating Jewish scorn, sought likewise an asylum on the sunny, south shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The Platonists of Alexandria held open debate and were like those Athenians whom Paul describes: "they spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." On this account they gave audience to the timid Christians as they would have done to any other expounders of new mysteries, and the Christians (to their shame be it said that they did not die like the martyrs of Rome and Antioch) temporized with the Greeks. Plato called his divine essence the Logos and the Apostle John, in the original Greek says: "In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God." "Why not," said the Christ- ians, "for the sake of harmony and of converts reconcile Plato and Christ?" So God became a spirit, infinite, eternal, invisible the Logos of the philosopher. Rome accepted the error a century later, just as she subsequently accepted from the same African source the false doctrines of celibacy, penace, infant baptism and a score of equally dangerous heresies that brought ruin upon the church and death upon the world. Augustine was a profound student of Plato, and so far as he believed consistent, accepted his every tenet. He ranks today as the greatest of the church fathers. In theology Calvin followed Augustine even more closely than Augustine followed Plato, and Luther was an Augustine monk after the order of St. Francis. Plato also taught that the soul was an emanation from Deity, hav- ing no pre-existence as an entity.So the Christian church lost, or else held as and unworthy of credence, all that we traditional believe concerning the spirit world even to the mighty council, where the fate of earth, man, salvation itself, was the subject of — argument a council of which Jew and Aztec still treasure some misty knowledge. Therefore, finding neither of the so-called Christian doctrines taught by the Savior or his apostles and trac- 726 IMPROVEMENT ERA. ing them to a distinctly pagan source, became first reasonably I and afterwards spiritually convinced that each was false and that the teaching of the primitive church was to the contrary. But in the meantime points had arisen that history could not settle, questions brought up naturally in considering the principle of eternal progression. What of the resurrection, I wondered; is it past, present or future; what of resurrected beings? Especially was I once troubled at hearing Michael and Father Adam spoken of as identical. History and the Bible availed nought. What I needed was a brother to direct me toward the light and truth; what I obtained was, "Do not meddle with the mysteries." I asked for bread and was given a stone, for fish, and found a serpent. Many of my readers realize full well that the Bible, with regard to these essential mysteries, is to the world at large a sealed book. Man cannot, without the aid of latter-day revela- tion, interpret the sacred pages on which he bases his hopes of eternal life. He cannot tell whence he comes or whither he goes. The idea of the Lord Jesus Christ as our "Elder Brother" in a lit- eral sense is absolutely incomprehensible, the term is acknowledged only as having something to do with the plan of salvation. Yet how plain the word of God, when, unconfined to a single book, we read the inspired words of the Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, and the writings of the Seer. These works, especially the first and last, are surrounded by a kind of curtain of mysterious sanctity that makes a new-comer afraid even to inquire about them, and yet they are as much the heritage of the children of the cove- nant as are the Bible and Book of Mormon. There are many young men and women in the Church of Jesus Christ today who are in the spiritual condition of the eunuch whom Philip met. (Acts viii: 27-31.) For these children of the cove- nant some further provision should be made. God has established upon the earth his Priesthood. This Priesthood holds the keys not only of revelation and of sealing ordinances, but of instruction in our most holy faith, and it is far better that from the lips of one inspired by the Almighty himself should come the words that will give eternal life and hope and understanding, than that they should come from the thoughtless, ignorant or indifferent. Do not think for an instant that I am urging the spreading abroad of that which STUMBLING BLOCKS. 727 should be concealed —the casting of pearls before swine, it is a fact that too many of our young people, eager for marriage, receive their endowments utterly ignorant of the true purport of the ceremonies in which they have participated and of the lessons that should be conveyed from the time that the portal is entered until the sacred kiss is given across the altar —ignorant not from choice, but from the lack of fitting instruction from the servants and handmaidens of the Lord, consecrated to the great work of inducting our young into the hidden things that pertain to the Kingdom of God. We know how they go forth. A flitting picture is all that they possess, and the great truths of past, present and future are irrevocably lost. As such persons mingle with the world, and in our day Babylon is in our midst, they class even holy rites with the myths of Greece and fables of the Arabians. Not that they apostatize, but the perfect rooting and grounding in the faith that comes from an inner consciousness and understanding of the laws and principles of salvation, their history and growth, is entirely wanting; and they become first lukewarm, then cold, and finally the mantle of charity covers them by saying that they are weak in the faith. Too often their children drift into and become a part of the great, godless world. The instruction of which I speak cannot be given in our schools nor yet in our meeting houses and places of public assembly. For obvious reasons it is rarely mentioned in the Sunday School save in the theological department where it too frequently is a cause of profitless discussion. There is no provision made for it in our Mutual guides. It falls naturally to those who are especially and actively connected with the latter-day work and who are richly endowed with the gift of the discernment of spirits. Those to whom mysteries are dark and not understood are not fit instructors in the inner knowledge of the things of the Gospel of Christ. And yet it was for the purpose of such instruction that the schools of the prophets were established and Parley P. Pratt as the presi- dent of the one organized in Zion (Jackson County, Missouri), received the following blessing: "And I will bless him with a multiplicity of blessings; in the expounding of all scriptures and mysteries to the edification of the school and of the church in Zion." (Doc. and Cov. Sec. 97, p. 5.) 728 IMPROVEMENT ERA. In one particular the education of young Saints is in marked contrast with the training of the world. When our children arrive at an age where nature or association prompt them to make inquiries as to the origin of their beings, we do not turn them off with "found under a cabbage leaf or brought by the doctor" stories. Plainly, simply, trusting to the inspiration which God gives each of his children, we unfold to them the mysteries of ibirth and teach them to reverence and keep pure and holy the tab- ernacles that the Heavenly Father has given them, that in due time they, too, may be fitted to fulfill the end of their creation, and so our boys and girls grow up pure of thought and clean of body and we are blessed in the confidence that we have given them. Shall we not then, when, of larger growth, they come to us for an explanation of the spiritual life, its mysteries and possibilities, reveal to them God's mighty truths as willingly,and trusting to the same divine guidance that we enjoyed when dealing with the physical? I believe that we should, and that in doing this, God's blessing will be upon teacher and taught. Ignorance is almost as harmful as false doctrine, and it may work even more disastrous results. I appreciate fully the danger of teaching those who are unprepared for such knowledge and also the injury that may be done by uninspired teachers, but I do believe that if greater atten- tion were paid to these subjects, Zion would be built up and the Spirit of the Lord would rest mightily upon our young men and maidens and upon the strangers from the four corners of the earth, who have been brought to a knowledge of the truth, and the righteous purpose of our Father would be rolled forth and more speedily accomplished.