1 Ne 17:45 ye
were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words
¡°True
religion is a feeling. It is common in anti-Mormon literature for attacks to be
made on prayer and on trusting one's feelings as sources for obtaining truth.
In the realm of spiritual understanding both are fundamental. Truth is felt.
Falsehood is often clothed in erudite and sophisticated arguments. One does not
have to be able to refute the argument to know that it is false. Truth feels
good; falsehood does not.
¡°Christ
spoke of the inability of the wicked to ¡®understand
with their heart¡¯ (Matthew 13:15), while the righteous ¡®understood in their hearts¡¯ things too marvelous to
utter (3 Nephi 19:33-34). Describing the spirit of revelation for Joseph Smith,
the Lord said, ¡®I will tell you in your mind and in
your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell
in your heart¡¯ (D&C 8:2). Because of their wickedness, such
understanding was lost to Nephi's rebellious brothers.¡± (McConkie and Millet, Doctrinal
Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 1, p. 137)
¡°President Harold B. Lee has called
our attention to the phrase ¡®past feeling¡¯ which is used several places in the
scriptures. In Ephesians, Paul links it to lasciviousness that apparently so
sated its victims that they sought ¡®uncleanness with
greediness.¡¯ Moroni used the same two words to describe a decaying
society which was ¡®without civilization,¡¯ ¡®without
order and without mercy,¡¯ and in which people had ¡®lost their love, one towards another.¡¯ Insensate,
this society saw violence, gross immorality, brutality and all kinds of
¡®kamikaze¡¯ behavior. Nephi used the same concept in his earlier lamentation
bout his brothers' inability to heed the urgings of the Spirit because they
were ¡®past feeling.¡¯ The common thread is
obvious: the inevitable dulling of our capacity to feel renders us impervious
to conscience, to the needs of others, and to insights both intellectual and spiritual.
Such imperceptivity, like alcoholism, apparently reaches a stage where the will
can no longer enforce itself upon our impulses.¡± (¡°For the Power is in them¡¦¡±,
p. 22)
¡°Some young people belong to peer
groups in which there is an almost constant celebration of the senses: tactile,
visual, and aural. It is significant that three prophets (Nephi, Paul, and
Mormon) in three different cultures and at three different times, each used the
same two words to describe a people who had celebrated the senses so much that
they had lost their capacity to feel. The words ¡®past
feeling¡¯ appear in the scriptures to depict people who had become
sufficiently encrusted in their excesses that they killed their capacity to
feel. The very capacity to feel which they celebrated was lost in the process
of celebration. They were in a situation in which increasingly stronger
stimulants were needed to feel anything, and finally no dose was large enough
to appease their appetites.¡± (A Time to Choose [Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book Co., 1972], 15 - 16.)