  (Scripture Reading Exercise.) I.—TRADITION.
SPECIAL TEXT: "Can'st thou by searching find out God? Can'st thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" Job xi: 7. NOTES.1. Tradition as a Source of the Knowledge of God: The first evidence men have of the existence of God comes from tradition, from the testimony of their fathers; and this has been the case from that event known in history as the Fall, until the present. Nor is this evidence unworthy of serious attention; it rests upon a surer foundation than is usually accorded it. Suppose we go back to its beginning, to its first introduction into the world, and observe how well founded it is. According to the account given by Moses in Genesis, previous to the Fall. Adam associated with God; conversed with Him respecting the works of creation, and gave names to the cattle and all living things upon the earth. How long continued, or how intimate this association was, we are not informed in Genesis; but at all events, it was long enough continued, and sufficiently intimate to fix definitely in the minds of Adam the fact of God's existence. Then when Adam and his wife transgressed God's law, their recollection of his existence did not vanish, but they tried to hide from his presence; and were afterwards visited by the Lord, who reproved them for their sin and pronounced the penalty which would overtake them for their transgression. All I wish to call attention to in this is the fact that they knew positively of the Lord's existence before their transgression, and they did not forget his existence after that event; but, on the contrary, had a lively recollection of what they had seen and heard before they fell. This they related, undoubtedly, to their children, who, in turn, transmitted the knowledge to their children, and so from generation to generation the tradition of God's existence has been handed down until the present time. 2. Antediluvian Tradition of God: It will be remembered that Adam and all the patriarchs previous to the Flood lived to a very great age. Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and during that time Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech, the father of Noah, were born. Indeed, the last named patriarch was fifty-six years old when Adam died; so that for a number of years he must have had the pleasure of Adam's acquaintance; while the patriarchs between Adam and Lamech all associated with him for hundreds of years, and would learn well the story that the grand Patriarch of our race would have to tell respecting Eden before the Fall. 3. Postdiluvian Tradition of God: We are told in Genesis that when Lamech was one hundred and eighty-two years old he begat Noah; and since Lamech was fifty-six years old when Adam died, Adam had been dead but one hundred and twenty-six years when Noah was born. After the birth of Noah, Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years, so that Noah associated with his father, who had seen Adam, for more than five hundred years; and also with a number of the other patriarchs—with Enos, the grandson of Adam, and son of Seth—with Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared and Methuselah. Then, the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth, all of whom were born before the Flood, would likewise be acquainted with a number of these worthies who had lived with Adam and heard his testimony of God's existence. Again, Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the Flood; that would give him ample time and opportunity to teach his posterity for several generations the tradition respecting God, which he had received from a number of patriarchs, who lived previous to the Flood, and thus the said tradition became firmly fixed in the minds of men. The chronology here followed is that of the authorized version of the English Bible as summarized in the Second Lecture on Faith. Doctrine and Covenants. 4. The Bible Here Regarded as a Body of Tradition: It may be thought that in the foregoing notes, dealing with tradition, we have been really appealing to Revelation, the Bible—the product of a divine inspiration resting upon men, hence Revelation—not tradition as men commonly understand tradition, viz: something handed down from age to age by oral communication without the aid of written memorials. But the Bible is sometimes regarded in more than one aspect. Commonly it is held to be a volume of inspired writings, revelation indeed; but it is also regarded as a body of traditions crystalized into writing. As such it has been used in preparing the foregoing notes. 5. Reversed Order of Tradition: By this title I ask you to reverse the order of considering tradition. Instead of beginning with Adam and coming down through the generations to our own times, begin with the child of today and go up through the generations of men to Adam. How do children of our generation get their first idea of God? Ordinarily from their fathers. In Christian lands they obtain the "God idea" in childhood at their mothers' knee. And these mothers and fathers from the preceding generation of fathers and mothers; and these again from a preceding generation of fathers and mothers, and so following until the stream of tradition is traced to its source, which the Bible, considered as a body of tradition, now of long standing, represents to be Adam, who was "the first man." It is interesting to note, in passing, that the Bible tradition—when we consider the Bible at no higher value than a volume of tradition—is confirmed in many respects by the tradition of other people than the Hebrews; namely, the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians and Egyptians. (See the Seventy's First Year Book, note 2 pp. 24, 25. 6. How True Traditions Degenerated Into Mythology: Traces of that tradition, (of the existence of God) and of these patriarchs connected with it, may be found in nearly all, and so far as I know, in all the mythologies of the world, as well in ancient as in modern times; as well in the mythology of the civilized Greeks and Romans, as in that of India, China, Egypt, and that of the American Indians. The tradition has evidently been corrupted, added to and twisted into fantastic shapes by the idle fancies of corrupt minds, but despite all the changes made in it, traces of this tradition are discoverable in the mythology of all lands. I believe, too, with Crabb, "That the fictions of mythology were not invented, (always) in ignorance of divine truth, but with a wilful intention to pervert it; not made only by men of profligate lives and daring impiety, who preferred darkness to light, because their deeds were evil, but by men of refinement and cultivation, from the opposition of science, falsely so-called; not made, as some are pleased to think, by priests only, for interested purposes, but by poets and philosophers among the laity, who, careless of truth of falsehood, were pleased with nothing but their own corrupt imaginations and vain conceits." Thus the tradition of the patriarchs was, in time, degraded, by some branches of their posterity, to mythology—a muddy, troubled pool, which like a mirror shattered into a thousand fragments, reflects while it distorts into fantastic shapes the objects on its banks. Still, under all the rubbish of human invention may be found the leading idea—God's existence; and that fact alone, however mis-shapen it may be, proves how firmly fixed in the human mind is the tradition of the fathers; while the universality of that tradition goes very far towards proving its truth. Scriptural evidences that traditions are sometimes made to distort truth, revealed or received from the fathers, may be learned from the following passages: Matt. XV:2; Mark VII:5, 9, 13; Col. 11:8; II Thes. III:6; I Peter 1:18. Footnotes |
|
