Saturday, October 7, 2023

Brigham Young on Psalm 51:5

  

The spirits that live in these tabernacles were as pure as the heavens, when they entered them. They came to tabernacles that are contaminated, pertaining to the flesh, by the fall of man. The Psalmist says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." This Scripture has established in the minds of some the doctrine of total depravity—that it is impossible for them to have one good thought, that they are altogether sinful, that there is no good, no soundness, and no spiritual health in them. This is not correct, yet we have a warfare within us. We have to contend against evil passions, or the seeds of iniquity that are sown in the flesh through the fall. The pure spirits that occupy these tabernacles are operated upon, and it is the right of Him that sent them into these tabernacles to hold the preeminence, and to always give the Spirit of truth to influence the spirits of men, that it may triumph and reign predominently in our tabernacles the God and Lord of every motion. We not only have this warfare continually, day by day, within ourselves, but we also have an outside influence or pressure to resist. Both the religious and the political world have influences to contend against that very much resemble each other; they are more or less exercised, governed and controlled by surrounding influences. We Latter-day Saints have an influence of this kind to contend against. (Brigham Young, March 8, 1863, JOD 10:105)