--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Reynolds, Alice Louise collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 16 number: 8 published: 1913-06 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Reynolds, Alice Louise, "Vicarious Service," *Improvement Era* 16, no. 8 (June 1913): 795.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1608unse 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: improvementera1608unse start_page: 795 end_page: 795 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1913-06) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1608unse publication_year: 1913 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 1913, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Vicarious Service Vicarious Service BY ALICE LOUISE REYNOLDS, OF THE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY One Sunday morning, while attending church in one of our well-known American college towns, the minister delivering the sermon said, in substance : Is it not a shock to the intelligence of any thinking person to be asked to believe that one person can die for the sins of another? How can the death of another possibly affect my sins? I must overcome my own sins ; all such matters are entirely personal. To reason otherwise is comparable to the reasoning of the Indian who killed the first white man he came in contact with, because some other white man had killed an Indian. That evening I attended another church, and the minister ol this church said : There are persons who scoff at the idea of one suffering and dying for another, yet such is the way of life. We make oui advent into the world through the suffering of another, and oft times the birth-pangs bring death. I shall go still further with this latter argument, to meet a class of people in and out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, who insist that work for the dead is ineffective, because it is vicarious. I would remind people who hold this point of view, that we receive our bodies vicariously. On this side our vision is clear, and we accept it without thought as the only way. Fancy spirits, in the pre-existent state, refusing to come to this earth because of themselves they cannot clothe the spirit with flesh and blood. Imagine their insisting that no development could come to them under such conditions. Is it not likely that persons who object to a vicarious atonement, as well as work for the dead, are equally as inconsistent as a spirit would be refusing the mortal body in God's own appointed way? It is, we think, vastly better to take the poet Browning'? view of matters, when he wrote : "Perfect I call Thy plan ; Maker, remake, complete, — T trv?t What thou shalt do!" PPOVO, UTAH