“You remember that some time ago we talked on the subject of sin and death.  Since then I have had some further thought on the subject which I will here jot down for you.  You asked me, you remember, what sin is, and I tried to explain.  Here is another definition:  Man belongs to an order of beings whose goal is perfection.  The way to that perfection is long and hard, narrow and straight.  Any deviation from that path is sin.  God, our Father, has reached the goal.  He has told us how we may follow Him.  He has pointed out the way by teaching us the law of progress which led Him to His exalted state.  Sin lies in not heeding that law, but in following laws of our own making.  The Lord says this in the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 88: 

’That which breaketh a law, and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself, and willeth to abide in sin, and altogether abideth in sin, cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice, nor judgement.  Therefore, they must remain filthy still.’

“Now, keeping in mind that sin is the straying from the one straight, progressive path, let us consider this expression:  ’The wages of sin is death’.  This leads us to the question:  what is death?  Do you remember what Drummond says?  He first explains in a most interesting way what life is, using the scientist’s phrasing.  A human being, for instance, is in direct contact with all about him—­earth, air, sun, other human beings, etc.  In biological language he is said to be ’in correspondence with his environment,’ and by virtue of this correspondence is said to be alive.  To live, a human being must continue to adjust himself to his environment.  When he fails to do this, he dies.  Thus we have also a definition of death.  ’Dying is that breakdown in an organization which throws it out of correspondence with some necessary part of the environment.’

“Of course, these reasonings and deductions pertain to what we term he physical death; but Drummond claims that the same law holds good in the spiritual world.  Modern revelation seems to agree with him.  We have an enlightening definition of death in the following quotation from the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 29:  ’Wherefore I the Lord God caused that he (Adam) should be cast out from the Garden of Eden, from my presence, because of his transgression, wherein he became spiritually dead, which is the first death, even that same death, which is the last death, which is spiritual, which shall be pronounced upon the wicked when I shall say Depart ye cursed’.

“It seems to me that there is a most interesting agreement here.  Banishment from the place where God lives is death.  By the operations of a natural law, a person who fails to correspond with a celestial environment dies to that environment and must go or be placed in some other, where he can function with that which is about him.  God’s presence is exalted, holy, glorified.  He who is not pure,