The purpose of man's existence here is two-fold. One object is manifest from a revelation already quoted, as follows:
"For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receiveth a fullness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a fullness of joy."[[44]]
The spirit of man, we here learn, must become inseparably connected with element in order to receive the fullness of joy designed for him by the Gospel, therefore, he must take upon him a mortal tabernacle, and, for that reason, after having advanced in intelligence far enough to retain his first estate, he is sent to an earth. Under the Divine plan, a Savior, one who is given power to lay down His life and to take it up again, is provided, to become the first fruits of the resurrection, to open the grave, that the spirit and body may be reunited, nevermore to be separated.
Another object of our coming here is equally important, and relates to our spiritual growth. We may use a comparison.
The teacher in school, acquainted with the order in which the different powers of the mind develop in childhood, adapts his instructions to the growth in progress at any particular period. While not at all neglecting the general training of the child, he will direct his efforts particularly, at different stages of progress, to the development for example of perception, of imagination, of comparison or reason, in his pupil, as the mind under his charge grows in power. This procedure is necessary from the fact, that, as psychologists tell us, unless the powers of the mind are exercised as they develop, they remain dormant or only partially developed, as, for instance, the love of poetry or of music, if these pleasures are not cultivated in childhood.
And just so, we may be assured, is the plan of the Gospel adapted to the development of the powers of the spirit of man in the different stages of his progress through the first and second estates.
At what stage of progress, then, it may here be asked, have we now arrived; and what powers of the soul are the experiences of mortality specially designed to enlarge?
Man finds himself thrust into the world, surrounded by sorrow, injustice and poverty, and, if he contemplates these conditions without knowing the purpose of the Lord in sending him here, he may exclaim with Schopenhauer, "If God made the world, I should not care to be God." But the Gospel testifies to the mercy and wisdom and goodness of the Lord, for in it we learn that the very conditions of which the philosopher complains are designed to develop the attributes for the full growth of which the spirit is given the schooling of mortality.
Let us consider. We are here cut off from any understanding of our pre-existent state or any knowledge of the hereafter, and must perforce accept the providences of the Lord and His designs for our future welfare on trust, and so the attribute of faith is developed.
Furthermore, notwithstanding all the failures and sorrows and trials of life, we are impelled by an innate self-renewing power to press onto the end, thus exercising hope. Dr. Johnson has well said: