Lorenzo Snow on Human Potential

Lorenzo Snow

We should strive earnestly to establish the principles of heaven within us, rather than trouble ourselves in fostering anxieties like the foolish people of the Tower of Babel, to reach its location before we are properly and lawfully prepared to become its inhabitants. Its advantages and blessings, in a measure, can be obtained in this probationary state by learning to live in conformity with its laws and the practice of its principles. To do this, there must be a feeling and determination to do God’s will.

“Developing Heavenly Character,” Journal of Discourses, 1883

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More from Lorenzo Snow

Our errors have generally arisen from a lack of comprehending what the Lord required of us to do. But now we are pretty well along to manhood.

Seventy years ago this Church was organized with six members. We commenced, so to speak, as an infant. We had our prejudices to combat. Our ignorance troubled us in regard to what the Lord intended to do and what He wanted us to do We advanced to boyhood, and still we undoubtedly made some mistakes, which generally arise from a lack of experience.

Godliness cannot be conferred but must be acquired, a fact of which the religious world seem[s] strangely and lamentably unconscious.

These children are now at play, making mud worlds. The time will come when some of them, through their faithfulness to the gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intelligence and power, in future eternities, until they shall ... rule as gods.

As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may be.