_3. The Commandment is Given as to An Immortal Being:_ This is now the situation: The law is broken. The penalty is incurred. The law is inexorable. The law was addressed to one provisionally immortal--had not man sinned his life would have been eternal. The law was not temporal, but eternal. "Not at any time," said the Lord to Joseph Smith and six elders, in Fayette, September, 1830--"not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither Adam your father whom I created. Behold, I gave unto him that he should be an agent unto himself; and I gave unto him commandment, but no temporal commandment gave I unto him, for my commandments are spiritual; they are not natural, nor temporal, neither carnal nor sensual."[A] The Prophet Joseph also said: "All things whatsoever God in his infinite wisdom has seen fit and proper to reveal to us, while we are dwelling in mortality, in regard to our mortal bodies, are revealed to us in the abstract, and independent of affinity with this mortal tabernacle; but are revealed to our spirits precisely as though we had no bodies at all; and those revelations which will save our spirits will save our bodies. God reveals them to us in view of no eternal dissolution of the body, or tabernacle."[B] [Footnote A: Doc. & Cov., Sec. xxix:34, 35.] [Footnote B: Sermon of April Conference, 1844--the "King Follett Sermon," "Improvement Era" for January, 1909; published also in "History of the Church," Vol. VI, with notes by the Editor.] _4. The Problem:_ What, Then, Can Man or God Do? The commandment, then, is given to Adam as to an eternal being, and by violating the law, and doubtless an eternal law, he and the race he shall beget is under an eternal penalty.[A] Under these circumstances what shall man do? Nay, rather, what can he do? What shall God do? Nay, what can he do? Forgive man his transgression out of hand as becomes the true sovereign of the universe? An ancient and, I might say, a time-honored suggestion. Origen the theologian of the third Christian century, and held to be "the greatest Christian mind of the ante-nicene age," at least held forth the possibility of such procedure. For in his views "the remission of sin is made to depend upon arbitrary will, without reference to retributive justice, as is evidenced by his assertion that God might have chosen milder means to save man than he did; e. g., that he might by a sovereign act of his will have made the sacrifices of the Old Testament to suffice for man's sin."[B] "But logic," as Shedd subsequently remarked, "could not stop at this point;" for if the provision for ratifying the broken law is resolved into an optional act on the part of God, it follows that an Atonement might be dispensed with altogether. "For the tribitrary and almighty will that was competent to declare the claims of justice to be satisfied by the finite sacrifice of bulls and goats would be competent also to declare