When Christ was confronted with a
multitude of people enthusiastic to make him king. He did not hesitate to put
the test that should determine whether they were acting on the basis of the
natural or of the spiritual life; for, said He, “No man can come unto me unless
the Father draw him.” Nor was he afraid that the test he was about to apply
would discourage any that were really fitted to come. “All that the Father giveth
me,” said he, “shall come unto me; and him that cometh to me I will in nowise cast
out.” The result proved that none of the multitude had “been given” by the
Father, and not many of his professed disciples.
What then? Shall man sit expectantly or
indifferently by, till it becomes God’s pleasure to “draw him” or “give him” to
Christ ? Somehow, these passages must be understood in consonance with the
universal invitation : “Let him who is athirst come; and whosoever will, let
him take the waters of life freely.” (Revelation 22:17) The appeal here is to
man’s volition, not to God's permission. It is “whosoever will,” not “whosoever
God wills.” The problem is to reconcile these apparently conflicting ideas.
And this problem is easy enough to one
who steadily refuses to think mystery into it. Of course ultimately, and in the
absolute sense, man is dependent upon God for the breath that keeps him alive,
for the water and food that nourish him, and for all those adjustments of
nature whose sum-total constitute his tenure of mortal existence; but behind
all this, man has a will no less free than his Father’s; and should there be a trial
as to which is supreme, God could of course, deprive him successively of all
the powers that have been added upon him by virtue of obedience, since the
birth of his spirit in heaven, provided eternal justice permitted such an
undoing of man. But man’s will might still hold out negatively—even to a point
where nothing in the universe could touch it further.
Of course such a state would represent
our extreme idea of damnation—a state in which there would be left to him the
consciousness to know and feel, but no vestige of power to do, unless ability
to refuse assent to God, be considered power, and this nothing could take away.
It would be such a state, in fact, as Lucifer the arch rebel is even now
approaching. In the positive sense, therefore—that is, as respects power to
create, modify, change,—God’s will must ever be supreme over man’s ; but in the
negative sense they are, ever have been, and ever must be equal.
This view of the human will must
become clear with a little thought.
Make man co-eternal with God, as
Joseph Smith does, and you cannot escape the necessity of endowing him with
free will
;
but free will is not free will, if it
have any limitation; if on the negative side it could ultimately be crushed
through coercion, or if on the positive side there were any degree of power to
which it might not attain, should it comply with the conditions.
In the light of this doctrine, it must
be self-evident that man never has attained nor ever can attain, to any saving
attribute or spiritual power, save by an act of will on his own part. What I
mean is, God could not elect that man should be blessed so or so simply to
please Himself ; any more than He could decree that man should be damned so or
so without reference to eternal justice. Han can be blessed only if he consent
to God’s will ; he can be damned only if he defy God’s will. In other words,
man’s promotion or demotion in the scale of progress is directly related to his
own will, and not predetermined by God.
But man wills only because he desires.
It is here then, here in the field of desire, the field antecedent to will,
that all the forces of the universe—usually summed up in the word,
environment,—play upon him. It is here, therefore, and here only, that God’s love
finds its opportunity to bless man, by creating in him ideals of righteousness.
But man must consent to entertain
these ideals, in preference to the false and fleeting ones which the less
perfect environment—such as the motives of his fellow man, his own carnal
instincts and appetites, or even the whisperings of evil spirits—is urging upon
him ; otherwise God cannot “draw him” into the spiritual life.
When, therefore, of the multitude that
listened to Peter on the day of Pentecost, three thousand souls were “born of
God” in a day, we must believe that they consented to entertain the ideal of
the spiritual life which the Holy Ghost put into their hearts, otherwise the
Father could not have “given them” to Christ. So also of that other multitude who
partook of the loaves and fishes ; the reason of their failure to grasp the
hidden significance of Christ’s strange words, lay precisely in the obverse
fact : they had refused to entertain the spiritual ideal which the Father was
striving to form within them. Predestination had nothing whatever to do with
either case.
These preliminaries being understood,’ let us come face to face with the tremendous significance of the fact which forms the theme of this chapter. No man can come unto Christ save the Father draw him. No man, in and of himself, has power to awaken his dormant spiritual life. No man can enter the kingdom of God, except he be born of the spirit. Vary the statement as much as you will, the truth remains the same: “Cominng unto Christ,” “Awakening one’s spiritual life,” “entering the kingdom of God,” all signify the beginning of a life which, when perfected, will be in harmony with the universe and therefore eternal; consequently, as only those things can coexist between which there is no friction, there is no eternal life for the man or woman in whom the potentiality of the divine sleeps on. Between the eternally dormant and the eternally dead there is no difference save in name.
Several important questions confront
us now. We have seen that man in and of himself is powerless to begin the new
life, let him do what he will in the way of observing tenet, ordinance, and
commandment; but God is equally helpless to do so for him without the
cooperation of man’s will. It requires the united will of both God and man in
the most solemn compact of which intelligences are capable. Nor could this be otherwise,
as we shall see later, when we discuss the vital significance of the spiritual life.
The next proposition to which I invite
attention, is this: The conditions involved in the evolution of the spiritual
life are not fiat conditions, depending upon the ipse dixit of Omnipotence
; they are organic conditions depending upon eternal law; . . . (Nels Lars
Nelson, “The Spiritual Life,” The Mormon Point of View 1, no. 3
[July 1, 1904], 224-30)