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Show CELESTIAL MAEEIAGE. 267 merry in possession of, vanished from him as he entered into the infant tabernacle. He was obliged to begin down at the lowest principles of knowledge, and ascend upward by degrees, receiving grace for grace, truth for truth, knowledge for knowledge, until he was filled with all the fullness of the Father, and was capable of ruling, governing, and controlling all things, having ascended above all things. Just so with us; we that once lifted up our united voices as sons and daughters of God, and shouted for joy at the laying of the foundation of this earth, have come here and taken tabernacles, after the pattern of our elder brother : and in our humiliation- for it is humiliation to be deprived of knowledge we once had, and the power we once enjoyed-in our humiliation, just like our elder brother, our judgment is taken away. Do we not read also in the Bible, that God is the Father of our spirits? We have ascertained that we have had a previous existence. We find that Solomon, that wise man, says that when the body returns to the dust, the spirit returns to God. who gave it. Now all of this congregation very well know, that if we never existed there, we could not return there. I could not return to California. Why? Because I never have been there. If you never were with the Father, the same as Jesus was before the foundation of the world, you never could return there, any more than I could to the West Indies, where I have never been. But if we have once been there, then we can see the force of the saying of the wise man, that the spirit returns to God who gave it -it goes back where it once was. Much more evidence might be derived in relation to this subject, even from the English translation of the |