Key to the Science of Theology

by Parley P. Pratt

A Woman, manufactured from a rib!

Thus, parents still would fain conceal from budding manhood, the mysteries of procreation, or the sources of life's ever flowing river, by relating some childish tale of new born life, engendered in the hollow trunk of some old tree, or springing with spontaneous growth, like mushrooms, from out the heaps of rubbish. O man! When wilt thou cease to be a child in knowledge?

Man, as we have said, is the offspring of Deity. The entire mystery of the past and future, with regard to his existence, is not yet solved by mortals.

We first recognise him, as an organized individual or intelligence, dwelling with his Father in the eternal mansions. This organized spirit we call a body, because, although composed of the spiritual elements, it possesses every organ after the pattern, and in the likeness or similitude of the outward or fleshly tabernacle it is destined eventually to inhabit. Its organs of thought, speech, sight, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, &c., all exist in their order, as in the physical body; the one being the exact similitude of the other.

This individual, spiritual body, was begotten by the heavenly Father, in His own likeness and image, and by the laws of procreation.

It was born and matured in the heavenly mansions, trained in the school of love in the family circle, and amid the most tender embraces of parental and fraternal affection.

In this primeval probation, in its heavenly home, it lived and moved as a free and rational intelligence, acting upon its own agency, and, like all intelligence, independent in its own sphere. It was placed under certain laws, and was responsible to its great Patriarchal Head.

This has been called a "First Estate." And it is intimated that, of the spirits thus placed upon their agency, one-third failed to keep their first estate, and were thrust down, and reserved in chains of darkness, for future judgment. As these are not permitted to multiply their species, or to move forward in the scale of progressive being, while in this state of bondage and condemnation, we will trace them no further, as their final destiny is not revealed to mortals.

The spirits which kept their first estate, were permitted to descend below, and to obtain a tabernacle of flesh in the rudimental existence in which we find them in our present world, and which we will call a second estate.

In passing the veil which separates between the first and second estates, man becomes unconscious, and, on awakening in his second estate, a veil is wisely thrown over all the past.