Atonement – Sunday, December 27, 1942
If we were to measure the accomplishment of ultimate purposes in terms of the lifetime of any one man or any one generation, many things that are certain of eventual fulfillment would seem to have been vain and hopeless.
Progress is slow at best, and at times, certainly, it would seem that we move in the wrong direction. The race of men learn slowly and stubbornly. Consider, for example, the moral teachings of Jesus the Christ. These many centuries they have been conceded, theoretically, at least, to be the standard of character excellence—the standard of individual and social responsibility, of man’s relationship to man. But, unfortunately, it seems that they have been a standard which men have departed from rather than a standard which men have complied with. We still do not love the Lord our God with all our hearts, because the best evidence of such affection would be compliance with His commandments.
We still love ourselves better than our neighbors. The meek have not yet inherited the earth. Nor do we hunger and thirst after righteousness to the point where we are willing to give up some things we like better than righteousness. Many of us still try to serve two masters. And as regards the mote and the beam, we still expect more of other men than we expect of ourselves. All these things, and many more, we do and do not do. Yet even so these are the principles that one day will become the basic law of this world—”And the government shall be upon his shoulder.” (Isaiah 9:6) But even if the moral teachings of the Christ had availed us nothing, yet was His coming vital to all mankind, for His mission was twofold—to give unto men a pattern of life—a code of principles in compliance with which we might reach our highest possibilities—and, often overlooked, but of first importance, to die that men might live. To say that we understand the necessity for this sacrifice, or the manner of its accomplishment, would not be wholly true. But beyond those things which we now can see and understand are those greater things which we cannot see and cannot now understand, which are none the less real; and the Atonement of Jesus the Christ was and is as fundamental to the eternal progress of man as are birth and death and the life to come. And so, though the generations were to reject His moral teachings, either in theory or practice, there still remains the fact that He did for us what we could not do for ourselves—a fact which is not limited by our understanding of it—a fact which is vital to the continuing progress of all of us.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Dec. 27, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
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December 27, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,697