Self-preservation became
not only the first law, but I can imagine, the only law he knew. As the
race increased, and the struggle for existence became more acute, selfishness
and strife would manifest themselves. Man would struggle with man for supremacy
or for the best things nature could offer for the prolongation or the comforts
of life. Thus would man become “carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature.”
(Alma 42:6-13.)
Now, what was there in man to
lead him up to a Godlike life? The divinity within him, I grant you, would be
ever urging him to rise above himself. But his reverence for the Infinite could
express itself only in a worship of the manifestations of divine power—the sun,
the moon, the thunder, the lightning, the cataract, the
volcano, etc.
How significant is that passage,
then, which says, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God.”
The Lord revealed to man the
gospel, and one of the very first commandments given suspended in essence the self-preservation
law. It was the law of sacrifice. The effect of this was that the
best the earth produced, the best specimen in the flock or herd should not be
used for self, but for God. IT was God, not the earth, whom man should worship.
How this simple test of sacrifice affected the divine nature as well as the
carnal man, the story of Cain and Abel graphically and appropriately illustrates.
For one, the best, the “firstlings of the flock” was all too poor as a means of
expressing his love and appreciation of the revelation of life that God had
given; for the other, he would go through the form because God had commanded,
but he would keep the best for himself. (David O. McKay, Letter to David McKay,
December 20, 1920, repr. Treasures of Life, comp. Clare Middlemiss [Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1962], 276)
