Men could not have been tested without a law. The penalty for the violation of that law was death. If the law had not been broken, man would have lived; but would man thus living have been capable of perpetuating his species, and of thus fulfilling the designs of God in preparing tabernacles for the spirits which had been created in the spirit world? And further, could they have had the need of a mediator, who was to act as a propitiation for the violation of this law, which it would appear from the circumstances was destined to be broken; or could the eternal increase and perpetuity of man have been continued, and his high exaltation to the Godhead been accomplished, without the propitiatory atonement and sacrifice of the Son of God? Jesus said, "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer." Could it have behooved Christ to suffer if man had not sinned, and was it not part of the eternal plan of God that man should violate that law, that an atonement might be provided and had, and by this means man be purified and perfected, through the struggles and trials incident to his coming in contact with the powers of darkness, and, through the mediation and atonement of Jesus Christ, and his own obedience to the requirements of the law associated therewith, be raised to a higher state of existence than it would have been possible for him to have obtained without the transgression of that law? These points are made exceedingly plain in the Pearl of Great Price. It is there stated: