I merely wanted to read those two paragraphs for the purpose of presenting the attitude of the professors, in a general way, in regard to the creeds of men and the existing Christian Churches. I now call your attention to some few doctrines that our prophet taught in respect of man. Of course, you who are familiar with Christian teaching of three-quarters of a century ago, will recall the fact that it was quite customary to represent man as a quite inferior, insignificant, poor worm of the dust; and the phraseology applied to him was that he was a creature "conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity." Referring to these ideas as something engrafted upon Christianity, yet foreign to its genius, Professor G. H. Howison of the University of California, in his contribution to the book _Conceptions of God_ (1902) and speaking of those who hold and taught such views, says: "Their monotonous theme was the inevitable greatness of the Supreme Being and the utter littleness of man. Their tradition lay like a pall upon the human spirit--nay, it lies upon it to this day, and it smothers now, as it smothered then, the voice that answers there to the call of Jesus." (p. 96.) When the prophet proceeded with the deliverance of his message to the world, he departed from this view as to the essential baseness of the nature of man, and proceeded to proclaim him to be a son of God, not only through some means of adoption, but by the very nature of him. He proclaimed him to be an eternal intelligence as to his spirit, and that after the experience of the resurrection from the dead, he would be an immortal personage, a prince of heaven, an heir to all that God possesses, and a joint heir with Jesus Christ, capable of infinite progress and of amazing possibilities. On one occasion--to be more specific, in 1844--while discoursing upon the subject of man and his spirit, he propounded this question: