Atonement – Sunday, December 29, 1940
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.
Consider for a moment the moral teachings of Jesus the Christ. These many centuries they have been a standard of character excellence, of social responsibility, of human kindness, and 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. Nor are we merciful to the point where our friends and our business associates feel that they can always depend upon us. Nor are we always peacemakers. We still lay up for ourselves treasures upon the earth and our hearts are set upon them.
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 two-fold – to give unto men a pattern of life – a code of principles in accordance with which to conduct themselves, 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 vital in the working out of eternal purposes, 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 teachings, either in theory or practice, there still remains the fact that the way to life through time without limit, toward achievement without bounds in worlds without end, is the way made possible to all men by that Savior who did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
December 29, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,593