"God shall give unto you (the saints) knowledge by his Holy Spirit, yea by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the world was until now: which our forefathers have waited with anxious expectation to be revealed in the last times, which their minds were pointed to, by the angels, as held in reserve for the fullness of their glory; a time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many Gods, they shall be manifest; all thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, shall be revealed and set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of Jesus Christ; and also if there be bounds set to the heavens, or to the seas; or to the dry land, or to the sun, moon, or stars; all the times of their revolutions; all the appointed days, months, and years, and all the days of their days, months, and years, and all their glories, laws, and set times, shall be revealed, in the days of the dispensation of the fulness of times, according to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other Gods, before this world was, that should be reserved unto the finishing and the end thereof, when every man shell enter into his eternal presence, and into his immortal rest. How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven, upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints" (Doc. and Cov. Sec. 121, 26-33.)
VII. NECESSARY ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH IN THE MATTER OF MENTAL ACTIVITY AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.
Surely, in the presence of this array of incentives, instructions and commandments to seek for knowledge, taken from the revelations and other forms of instruction by the Prophet of the New Dispensation—taking into account also the scope of the field of knowledge we are both persuaded and commanded to enter—whatever position other churches and their religious teachers may take, the Church of Jesus Christ in the New Dispensation can do no other than to stand for mental activity, and earnest effort to come to a knowledge of truth up to the very limit of man's capacity to find it, and the goodness and wisdom of God to reveal it.
The New Dispensation having opened with such a wonderful revelation respecting God, making known as the very first step in that revealed knowledge not only the being of God but the kind of beings both the Father and the Son are—its representatives may not now attempt to arrest the march of inquiry and plead "mystery" or "humility" or "reverence" as a bar to entrance into those very fields of knowledge God has commanded us to enter, and reap in, and of which he gives us assurance that our harvest shall be abundant.
VIII. THE LIMITS OF OUR INQUIRIES.
Let me not be misunderstood. Again I say, I am aware that there are limits to man's capacity to understand things that are. That God also in his wisdom has not yet revealed all things, especially respecting the Godhead; and that where his revelations have not yet cast their rays of light on such subjects, it is becoming in man to wait upon the Lord, for that "line upon line, and precept upon precept" method by which he, in great wisdom, unfolds in the procession of the ages the otherwise hidden treasures of his truths. All this I agree to; but all this does not prevent us from a close perusal and careful study of what God has revealed upon any subject, especially when that study is perused reverently, with constant remembrance of human limitations, and with an open mind, which ever stands ready to correct the tentative conclusions of today by the increased light that may be shed upon the subject on the morrow. Which holds as greater than all theories and computations the facts—the truth. These are the principles by which I have sought to be guided in these five Year Books of the Seventy's Course in Theology, and in some more than in the one herewith presented.
But some would protest against investigation lest it threaten the integrity of accepted formulas of truth—which too often they confound with the truth itself, regarding the scaffolding and the building as one and the same thing. The effective answer to that may be given in the words of Sir Oliver Lodge: "A faith dependent on blinkers and fetters for its maintenance is not likely in a progressive age to last many generations.(Science and Immortality, p. 130.) "From age to age, our knowledge is growing from more to more," remarks John Fiske, in his "Century of Science." "By this enlarged experience our minds are affected from day to day and from year to year, in more ways than we can detect or enumerate. It opens our minds to some notions, and makes them incurably hostile to others; so that, for example, new truths well nigh beyond comprehension, like some of those connected with the luminiferous ether are accepted, and old beliefs once universal like witchcraft, are scornfully rejected. Vast changes in mental attitude are thus wrought before it is generally realized." ("Century of Science," p. 145.) This holds good in theology as in science. Not that the universal and fundamental truths in theology which God has revealed change, but that men's method of viewing them and expounding them changes, and, let us hope, changes for the better, for the more clear and perfect understanding and development of them—else there would be no progress in theology—while in all things else there is progress. But here let me conclude Fiske's noble passage:
"In this inevitable struggle [between vanishing old ideas and incoming new ones] there has always been more or less pain, and hence free thought has not usually been popular. It has come to our life-feast as a guest unbidden and unwelcome; but it has come to stay with us, and already proves more genial than was expected. Deadening, cramping finality has lost its" charm for him who has tasted of the ripe fruit of the tree of knowledge. In this broad universe of God's wisdom and love, not leashes to restrain us are needed, but wings to sustain our flight. Let bold but reverent thought go on and probe creation's mysteries, till faith and knowledge "make one music as before, but vaster."
IX. THE RIGHT TO SEEK KNOWLEDGE ASIDE FROM REVEALED KNOWLEDGE.
One other thing: Such subjects as are treated in this Year Book necessarily rest on what God has revealed—that is, for the data, the facts involved; but that does not necessarily hold as to illustration and argument for development of the truth and making clear the revealed things of God. Here one may do as it is said Clement of Alexandrea did in urging men to strive for a knowledge of Christian truth, rather than a mere belief of it; "such instruction was to come primarily from the 'Divine Word'; but everything in the range of human learning was to be welcomed as co-operating with him. For Clement gratefully acknowledged truth wherever found, whether among heathens or heretics." It should be observed, however, "that while constantly confirming his propositions from his Greek writers, he ever turns for a final appeal to the scriptures"—that, too, must be our course.