Meaning and Purpose of the Temporal Life

IMPROVEMENT ERA Vol. XXV MAY, 1922 No. 7 Meaning and Purpose of the Temporal Life By N. L. Nelson, Professor of Theology, Briglwm Young College [Just what does earth-life signify? In o;her words, how much does it weigh, in the scheme of eternal progress? Latter-day Saints instinctively feel that the second estate is of tremendous significance, and often refer to it as an opportunity to "taste the bit':er in order to appreciate the sweet," or to "have our eyes opened to good and evil;" but outside of certain gospel ordinances, which can be received only in the temporal world, what, in specific ideas, does this middleplane of being stand for in soul development? In this article, which is a chapter from an unpublished book, Professor Nelson attempts to set down, in definite terms, some of the aspects of soul-growth which are possible only in the mortal here and now. — Editors.] We have tried to understand the revelation that to the Lord all things — whether laws and commands or that which re- sults from laws and commands, viz., objective creations, — are spiritual: "Firstly spiritual, secondly temporal, which is the beginning of my work; and again, firstly temporal, and sec- ondly spiritual, which is the last of my work." As pointed out there, this "unfinished kingdom," which we call our world, is just now at the bottom of the valley called temporal, with a spiritual peak standing out on each side; the one behind us representing the eternity whence we came; the one in front, the eternity toward which we are bound. In the meanwhile here we are "dug in," as it were, in the very quagmires of time. Howsoever this mortal world may look from the Lord's point of view, to us it is temporal, natural, carnal, in a word, intensely real. We have seen what this fact means as applied to objective creations; viz., that it is a world bound and conditioned temporally by Mass, Extension, and Inertia, the phenomena that spell mortality; but also, that within the natural world is a spiritual reality, which "abides the

576 IMPROVEMENT ERA law of a celestial kingdom," and which therefore will emerge finally into a celestial glory; since "that which is governed by law is also preserved by law, and perfected and sanctified by the same." What, in the next place, does this temporal existence sig- nify for man? The same as for the earth — with a difference. Our bodies exhibit the same qualities which are characteristic of all matter; viz., Mass, Extension, and Inertia; but not all of our spirits can be said to be "abiding the law of a celestial kingdom," and therein lies the difference. In the case of the earth, the will behind the obedience is probably that of the Lord ; in the case of man, each of us has his own free will, and may abide a celestial law, or a terrestrial, or a telestial, or no law at all; and as is the law obeyed, so will be the outcome in glory. "Your glory shall be that glory by which your bodies are quickened. Ye who are quickened by a portion of the celestial glory shall then (i. e. — in the resurrection) receive of the same, even a fulness." The same is said respectively of the terrestrial and the telestial quickening. (See Doc. and Cov. 88:27-32.) Just what, then, does this quickening of the body mean, translated into terms of everyday living? Let us first try to sense in a general way the tremendous fact of our having been made temporal (or mortal). When we compare the freedom of movement in pre-existence, — as sug- gested in our Savior's revelation to Nephi, that on the morrow he was to be born in Bethlehem some twelve thousand miles eastward — with what happens to our spirits the moment we are born, that is to say, the moment we become subject to tem- poral conditions, we should realize without the need of scrip- tural assurance, the fact that Adam fell, that we are all fallen. No fact could possibly be more emphatic than this. Let us next proceed to examine this "fall" in terms of the essential attributes of matter. Summed up we shall find that it means a kind of imprisonment; and that salvation means fighting our way outward and upward to freedom. The first condition of this imprisonment is due to Mass or Weight; in other words, to the fact that our spirits become sub- ject to the law of gravitation, through being tied down to a body of mortal matter. At first the bondage is all but complete: as infants our limbs are as lead. Little by little the dynamic spirit- ual being within gets control — fights its way out: we creep, we walk, we run, we climb, we change these leaden limbs to bundles of nerves, the livest stuff in mortal creation. Associated with every victory over the inertia of mass or weight, are scintilla- tions of the radiant energy within, and these scintillations,

MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE 577 which are measured and stored-up in terms of mind, are felt as joy. Has it occurred to the reader that, incidental to the eon- long fight of the race against this law of gravitation, we tamed the horse to bear us more swiftly, we invented the lubricated axle to lift a load off our shoulders, we harnessed the winds and made use of the waves, we confined steam and made it lift and carry for us, we interposed our burden under the water- fall, we waylaid the lightning — nay, we have surprised a thou- sands secrets of power in Nature's storehouse to help us move faster and farther, to aid us in transporting ever-increasing weights, and to enable us to build ever higher and dig ever deeper — and all in spite of, or rather because of, the constant downward pull of the earth? From the first toddling step of the infant to the flight of the aeroplane, from the first rude javelin hurled by the savage, to the latest 42-millimeter gun throwing a projectile accurately seventy-five miles, what tri- umphs of the spirit within against the handicap of gravitation without ! Take next that second of the attributes of matter, Extension or Form. In order that we may attain it, and maintain it, what struggles we must make for food, clothing, shelter! What keenness of brain, what expertness of hand we have attained! To realize this tremendous fact, it is best to look at the ex- ternal record, that is to say, at our inventions. Compare the first crooked stick used to scratch the soil, with the latest en- gine plow; the first rude sickle, with the combined harvester and thresher; the hollow stone for grinding corn, with the flour mill of today. In cooking, heating, ventilating, sanita- tion, in manufacturing, in home adornment, in art — what strides the spirit within has compelled in its tenement of clay — all through the insistent demands of the second attribute of matter, the necessity of Extension, that is to say, of keeping our bodies from dissolution. Indeed, out of the necessity of rising superior to the con- ditions imposed by mass and extension, out of the need of stretching the tethering chain of gravitation, and overcoming the handicaps attending objective personal existence in the world, have grown most of those material achievements of man which are summed up in the word civilization. We are apt to think of the results of this ceaseless warfare of the spirit against its temporal imprisonment in terms of external monu- ments; as cities, railroads, canals, ships, and so on; but if these were the true measure of man's victory, the race might well be discouraged; for the temporal forces against which we strug- gle always win in the end, and lay low the proudest achieve-

578 IMPROVEMENT ERA merits of man. Where today are Babylon and Nineveh? How does the dust of these cities differ from the dust of the once teeming millions that swarmed like ants in the valley of the Euphrates? And what of ancient America? Did the rank forests, found by Columbus and his successors, whisper con- cerning a thousand buried cities beneath their entwining roots? The true measure of the struggle between spirit and ele- ment is, however, recorded within and not without. For in- stance, for a time we may point to the Salt Lake Temple with pride, as if that were among the great things achieved by the Pioneers. It is something, truly enough, but the real monument lies within the souls of the builders, most of whom have now passed on. There in terms of intelligence, of increased knowl- edge, wisdom, faith, will-power, love, was builded the real Temple which is to endure forever. And so of every victory of man in his battle with the earth; the external record, viewed from God's long day, is written, as it were, in water; the in- ternal record, on the imperishable book of life. This internal record is, moreover, a juster record than the external; for achievement there is measured in terms of soul- growth toward the likeness of our Father in heaven. Viewed externally the works of men are likely to be appraised accord- ing to the display they make for a brief season on the earth plane; whereas, the obscure pioneer battling with primitive conditions for a bare subsistence, may easily have acquired a greater soul-monument than he whose name is linked with the building of a continental railroad. This thought will enable us to see that our twentieth cen- tury civilization, wherein the problems connected with earth- life have largely been solved, and where friction has been re- duced to the pressing of buttons, is not necessarily the best age in which to be born : unless we can still find problems which shall call out the same powers to do, to dare, and to suffer that the unconquered wilds developed in our ancestors. It may also give us a hint why God occasionally suffers the slate to be wiped clean — why the achievements of past ages are permitted to be buried in the same grave with those who achieved them. Do we need a revelation then to tell us why our Father in heaven made us mortal and placed us in a temporal world? If intelligence — which may be defined as knowledge transmitted into habits of righteousness, — is to be the measure of salvation and exaltation, then the conditions leading to intelligence, are necessary to salvation. Is it thinkable that intelligence can come to us without a struggle? And where else in all God's economy can be conceived such a series of struggle problems — problems first to be understood, then to be worked out in terms

MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE 579 of living, — as upon this temporal plane of being? Problems graduated alike to the weakest as to the strongest of God's children? Think what it must have meant to the progress of the world, had our limbs not been shackled by gravitation — had our spirits been as free to come and go, as during pre-existence. Would there have been invented a single machine for use on land or sea? Nay, would iron or any other metal have been discovered? And without the metals where would the world of man's achievements be? The greater loss, however, would be the internal loss, the absence of those victories of mind over matter, which constitute the very essence of intelligence. So also of those necessities which make our bodies de- pendent upon food, drink, clothing, shelter, and protection against countless enemies, visible and invisible. Think what would have been lost in soul-victories over matter, had our world been free of dangers to birth and growth, or to health and life, limited though the latter be in point of duration? Without the menace of sickness and death to ourselves and the lower forms of life, what should we have known of human, animal, or plant physiology? Indeed, had life been secure, where would have come the incentive to develop a single one of the sciences? And yet we have among us a certain sect trying to shut their eyes to that universal appeal to progress, which we call sickness, sorrow, evil, death. Without the challenge of opposition, as something to be studied with a view to being overcome, where would be the incentive to knowledge or inven- tion? Whence would come the moral appeal to a change in our life-habits? That part of the plan of salvation which involves the passing of our spirits through a second estate stands therefore justified, even without the added authority of scripture; and the more narrowly we look into its bearings, the more overwhelming be- comes the proof of this fact. Nevertheless, much light is shed by revelation on the nature of the gain to the spirit by becoming subject to mortality. Consider, for instance, this passage already quoted in a previous chapter: "For man is spirit. The elements are eter- nal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receiveth a fulness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a ful- ness of joy." (Doc. and Cov. 93:33-34.) Fulness of joy in this passage can mean nothing else than a fulness of exaltation, for anything short of this must abridge the man's joy by just so much. Fulness of exaltation is the attainment of Godhood, or in the language of scripture "becoming perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect." Such a glory is not possible, then, save

580 IMPROVEMENT ERA as there is a junction between man the spirit and man the body; for "the spirit and the body constitutes the soul of man." (Doc. and Cov. 88:15.) It must moreover be an indissoluble union as was that of the soul of Christ after his resurrection, "And the resurrection from the dead is the redemption of the soul." (Doc. and Cov. 88:16.) Such a union begins when the spirit leaves pre-existence, its first estate, and is born into the flesh. This union at first is apparently comparable to that of radiant tenant and house of clay. During early infancy the spirit, in spite of all its latent power, is helplessly subject to the clay. Pretty soon, however, it ceases to be a complete prisoner, and begins to integrate or saturate its human walls with its own divine radiancy. In terms of psychology, it begins to get control of its body with head- quarters in the brain. That is precisely what education means — cementing the union of spirit and element by subordinating element and making it plastic to spirit. Life is not long enough to complete this process but eternity will be, hence the resurrection. If now a "fulness of joy" be the psychic effect of this union, considered as a final, inseparable junction, we should expect joy to attend any step along the way leading toward that divine consummation, and this proves actually to be the case. At every victory of spirit over body we experience joy; — not pleasure, which is the reaction of the body gratifying its earthly passions, — but joy, the reaction of the spirit subordinating the body by overmastering its tendency to indulgence, and turn- ing the impulse in the direction of virtue and spiritual strength. And right here is the place to point out another source of soul-growth on the one hand, or of soul-degeneration, on the other, which is perhaps greater than the combined efforts of Mass or Gravitation in sharpening the intellect and the will and of Extension in humanizing the personality, and that is the sex-relation peculiar to mortality. Man is trusted by the Creator with the fountain of life, and out of the use he makes of it, he creates for himself heaven or hell on earth. This aspect of the second estate, interwoven as it is in the en- tire moral and social fabric of mankind, cannot be adequately treated in this chapter; suffice it to point out, that here man has another illustration of how far-reaching is the influence of earth-life upon eternal progress. Let us next consider that wonderful glimpse of eternal truth set forth in the Book of Mormon: "Man is that he may have joy." Here the Lord proclaims the fact that man is made subject to a temporal world, not that he may gratify his body,

MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE 581 but that he may build for himself a soul; that is, make pro- gressively out of two distinct things, the spirit and the body, one homogeneous, indissoluble being, without which there can- not be a fulness of joy; for joy means just that, — the exhilara- tion that comes whenever the dead clay of the body is energized and lifted to the dynamic rank of the radiant spirit within it. Here is a comparison that may help us to sense how this change is being wrought. Charcoal and diamond, — the one an extreme of opaqueness, the other an extreme of transparency, — are each made of the same element — pure carbon. In charcoal the atoms are criss-cross and in confusion; in the diamonds they are organized, each fitted into each to make a perfect crystal. Suppose now that into the charcoal should come a divine spirit whose mission was to organize, little by little, through the ages, its criss-cross atoms. At every adjustment there would be joy to the spirit because the charcoal would be a little less opaque. Gradually it would become translucent, and so in time pass on to perfect transparency. If we let the charcoal represent man's body, then the dia- mond might represent his perfected soul; that is to say, the perfect, indissoluble union of his spirit and his body. The agent progressively making the change is man's spirit; the in- fluence guiding the reactions of this spirit is the Holy Ghost, or the living God. "There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth it understanding." We are now ready to consider, in its relation to the prog- ress of the human soul, the third attribute of matter. Inertia is that quality in any substance which tends to resist change. The thing at rest resists an impulse to motion, the thing in motion resists an impulse tending to rest. Inertia in the hu- man body may be defined as that quality which resists prog- ress; ignorance, stupidity, laziness, lack of ambition, being sat- isfied with good enough, — the sin of omission, — are some of the names for this temporal attribute at rest; while self-in- dulgence, vice, drunkenness, debauchery, the sin of commission, are some names for the inertia of motion. Progress is possible only by constant change of inertia, and change in an upward direction. This is really what happens in all things that live and fulfil the law of their being; they grow, they change, they enlarge, there is no settling down to inertness, nor to an unraveling from a better to a worse state. Devils, or the sons of perdition, are being possessed by the inertia of disintegration, and are unable to change; workers in the kingdom of God possess the intertia of eternal progress, which is carrying them ever-onward and upward ; unregenerated human beings are between these extremes; most of them are

582 IMPROVEMENT ERA locked in the inertia of a hand-to-mouth existence, which so far as eternal progress is concerned, does not differ from the in- ertia of the boulder on the hillside. We call them mossbacka, fossils, stand-pats. Many are on the downward road and we call them degenerates; others move now upward, now down- ward, according as they gratify spirit or body. It is in this middle region where all the work of salvation is to be done. Now inertia is overcome and changed in two ways, from without and from within; from without in all things dead or inanimate; from within, in things living, growing, evolving. The boulder on the hillside is a type of the first — no change will ever come to it save it be from outside itself; the oak slowly shaping itself from the acorn is a type of the second. Forces that pass by unappropriated by the rock, are taken into the heart of the oak, and there redistributed to overcome the inertia of bud, and twig, and trunk, and root; for the oak is a living being. How fares it with man — whence comes the power that changes his inertia? If he evolves as God would have him evolve, his inertia must ever be changed from within. As regards his purely physi- cal evolution, the growth and development of his body, it must, of course, occur in just that way; and we may well doubt whether real growth in any other direction — intellectual, moral, social, or spiritual — ever comes to him in any other way than by this unfolding from within. However, when we come to ob- serve the apparent springs of action and change in the mass of mankind, they resemble very much the forces that must be applied to the inert boulder. All mob impulses, all external coercion, all blind following as of sheep a bell-wether, all ap- peals to cupidity, to fear, to hate, in short all motives orginat- ing in the external, and acted upon in the raw— that is to say, without inward assimilation and deliberate redistribution — while they seem to change man's inertia into new alignments, new mental attitudes, do not really cause growth; for when the outward pressure ceases, he is in the same state as before. Brother Maeser's famous illustration is to the point here: "I take a stone from the street and put it into the stove — it gets warm. I take it back into the street — it gets cold again." Such is the end of all efforts to change the inertia of the carnal man Adam by external pressure. But take that other illustration spoken of in the Book of Mormon, the sixteen stones melted out of the mountain by the brother of Jared. As soon as the finger of the Lord touched them, their centers became self-radiant and they have perhaps not ceased to glow till this day. Such is the effect of conversion,

MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE 583 the effect of the spiritual man Christ in changing the unregen- erated body, by first planting the divine fire in our heart of hearts. Consider then the problem before the Council in heaven on that eventful morn of creation. A union of spirit with ele- ment was necessary to a fulness of salvation; to attain such a union, the spiritual creation must be changed to a temporal, and man must likewise suffer a "fall." By this change each eternal spirit becomes imprisoned in a tenement of clay, which it becomes his mission to raise from this lowly rank to that of a body immortal, glorious, self-radiant. Will he succeed in spiritualizing his prison-house, in making of his dual self an in- tegrated, homogeneous, indissoluble union, — in other words, a soul? — or will his house of clay succeed in dragging to its level his glorious spirit? Such were the two possible issues of this second step in the evolution of eternal life. The result was foreseen. No spirit (save One) among the billions there present, when the "morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," no matter how great his inner momentum of righteousness, would be able, unaided, to save and exalt the "element" with which he was to be joined. Somewhere in the earth life of this tentative union called soul, the body would triumph over the spirit, and this too in spite of the fact, as we have seen, that environment, in terms of temporal handicaps, such as gravitation, hunger, thirst, cold, sickness and death, and a host of other prods, would be so shaped as to help the spirit galvanize into life the inertia of its earthly tenement. Divine love was too great to permit these heavenly chil- dren thus to "fall", unless a way could be found of extending help for them to rise again. Such then was the necessity which gave rise to the plan of salvation. There was still another fac- tor to be taken into account — man's free agency. Would he accept help, or would he be so deeply buried in matter that the very desire for heavenly uplift would be smothered? That contingency also was provided for; messengers would be sent to awaken the slumbering spirit, — God's mercy and love would manifest itself in the preaching of repentance. Moreover, life would be so full of vicissitudes as to teach the utter hollowness and instability of the temporal estate. If then the spirit would not arouse and fight for deliverance, then he must perhaps die forever, terrible as that alternative might be. We are now prepared to get some clear insight to the mean- ing of the phrase, "quickening of the body;" we shall likewise have learned to appreciate Paul's definition of the gospel, as the "power of God unto salvation."