Faith & Spirit Quote by Lorenzo Snow

A grenade in a single sentence, Snow’s couplet collapses the usual gap between creature and Creator. Its power comes from the tight parallelism: two clauses, two timelines, one audacious implication. God is not an absolute other; God has a biography. Man is not a fixed, fallen type; man is a project with a destination. The line works because it turns theology into a ladder you can picture, then dares you to climb it.

Snow, a Latter-day Saint leader in the 19th century, was articulating what became a hallmark of LDS thought: exaltation, the idea that humans can become like God. The phrase “as man now is” roots the claim in the ordinary and embodied, not the monastery. It’s not about escaping humanity; it’s about upgrading it. The second half, “man may be,” is carefully modal. Snow doesn’t say “will be.” He leaves room for agency, covenant, and discipline, which is precisely how a religious community turns metaphysics into a program of life.

The subtext is as political as it is spiritual. In an America thick with revivalism, hierarchy, and suspicion of new sects, Snow offers a radical democratization of the divine while still maintaining order: progression is possible, but not automatic; it’s mediated through the church. It also reframes suffering and ambition. If God once stood where you stand, then struggle becomes less a punishment than a credential - evidence that the path is real because even God walked it.