B.H. Roberts on Accelerating Change

Godliness cannot be conferred but must be acquired.

We are called upon by the still small voice, a whispering from our father, to work out our own salvation. Briefly the constructive parts of the plan of salvation are these: What man is, God once was; what God is now, man may become; the glory of God is intelligence. Nothing can be annihilated and no act lost. It is impossible to be saved in ignorance.

“As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may be.” These children are now at play, making mud worlds. The time will come when some of these boys, through their faithfulness to the gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intelligence and power, in future eternities, until they shall be able to go out into space where there is unorganized matter and call together the necessary elements, and through their knowledge of and control over…

My brethren and sisters, I rejoice in the largeness of this work of God⁠—this dispensation of the fulness of times. I love it, in part, because of its greatness⁠—in its very bigness there is inspiration. I love to contemplate the puposes of God in their farreaching possibilities. I rejoice to feel that today the children of men are moving up to a higher and truer conception of the things of God.

To limit and insist upon the whole of life and death to this side of Adam’s advent to the earth, some six or eight thousand years ago, as proposed by some, is to fly in the face of the facts so indisputably brought to light by the researcher of science in modern times, and this as set forth by men of the highest type in the intellectual and moral world; not inferior men, or men of sensual and devilish temperament, but men who must be accounted as among the noblest and most self-sacrificing of the sons of men⁠—of the type whence must come the noblest sons of God, since “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36); and that too the glory of man.

While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is established for the instruction of men; and it is one of God’s instrumentalities for making known the truth yet he is not limited to that institution for such purposes, neither in time nor place. God raises up wise men and prophets here and there among all the children of men, of their own tongue and nationality, speaking to them through means that they can comprehend. …

Mental Laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part.

Among the things important for the Saints of God to understand, among the things important for the world to understand respecting the Latter-day Saints, is the relationship that we sustain to the religious world; and I do not know that there is anything to which I could devote the few minutes at my disposal to better advantage than in pointing out that relationship, if I can obtain, through your faith and mine, the liberty that comes from the pos…