The following is from a speech given by Marion G. Romney.
"Free agency means the freedom and power to choose and act. Next to life itself, it is man’s most precious inheritance.
"Free agency was operative in the spirit world. The gospel plan, as there proposed and adopted, provided that men should enjoy agency in mortality. Satan, with a third of the hosts of heaven, fought it there and lost, but they did not give up their opposition to the principle.
"In the Garden of Eden, God endowed Adam and his posterity with free agency. Satan and his followers have, from then until now, sought directly and in every conceivable indirect manner to substitute the principle of force for the principle of free agency.
"In the book of First Samuel, we have an instructive example of the results of making wrong decisions. In the first chapter we are told that Israel objected to being governed by judges. They wanted a king. The prophet told them that a king would make them servants. But they hearkened not, and persisted in demanding a king. This grieved Samuel, and the Lord said to him, 'Hearken unto the voice of the people … for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.' (1 Sam. 8:7.)
"Israel thus surrendered the form of free government God had given them. They got their king all right, and a few decades later they were taken captive into slavery. Slavery entered into by one’s own choice is no less slavery than that imposed upon him by external force."
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