=1. Man's Agency is God-given.=--The following is an extract from a discourse delivered by President Brigham Young, July 5, 1855. (See Journal of Discourses of that date, and Millennial Star, vol. xx, p. 43.) "What is the foundation of the rights of man? The Lord Almighty has organized man for the express purpose of becoming an independent being like unto Himself, and has given him his individual agency. Man is made in the likeness of his Creator, the great archetype of the human species, who bestowed upon him the principles of eternity, planting immortality within him, and leaving him at liberty to act in the way that seemeth good unto him;--to choose or refuse for himself, to be a Latter-day Saint or a Wesleyan Methodist, to belong to the Church of England, the oldest daughter of the Mother Church, to the old Mother herself, to her sister the Greek Church, or to be an infidel and belong to no church. When the kingdom of God is fully set up and established on the face of the earth, and takes the pre-eminence over all other nations and kingdoms, it will protect the people in the enjoyment of all their rights, no matter what they believe, what they profess, or what they worship."
=2. The Nature of Sin.=--The English word "sin" represents a very great variety of terms occurring in the original languages, the literal translation of which bear to one another a very great similarity. Thus, in the Old Testament, the following terms among others occur:--_setim_ (referred to in Psalms ci, 3), signifying "to deviate from the way;" _shegagah_ (Lev. iv, 2; Num. xv, 27), "to err in the way;" _avon_, "the crooked, or perverted;" _avel_, "to turn aside." In the New Testament we find, _hemartia_, "the missing of a mark;" _parabasis_, "the transgressing of a line;" _parakoe_, "disobedience to a voice;" _paraptoma_, "falling from uprightness; "_agnoema_, "unjustifiable ignorance;" _hettema_, "giving only partial measure;" _anomia_, "non-observance of law;" _plemmeleia_, "a discord." The above illustrations are taken mainly from Müller and French. In all these expressions, the predominant idea is that of departure from the way of God, of separation from His companionship by opposition to the Divine requirements. Sin was introduced into the world from without; it was not a natural product of earth. The seed of disobedience was planted in the mind of Eve by the arch-fiend: that seed took root; and much fruit, of the nature that we, with unguarded words, call calamity, is the result. From these thorns and thistles of mortality, a Savior has been prepared to deliver us.