Beginning in 1976 and continuing through 1991, our nation has commemorated the bicentennial of one of the most remarkable 15-year periods in the history of this or any other country. It was a decade and a half that began with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, continued through the Revolutionary War and our brief experiment with the Articles of Confederation, and then the adoption of our present Constitution.

The key bicentennial years are 1976 (Declaration of Independence), 1987 (the Constitutional Convention), 1987-89 (ratification of the Constitution), and 1989-91 (adoption and ratification of the Bill of Rights).All American citizens share a pride in the events whose 200th birthdays we observe. And all should take upon ourselves the obligation, as President Ezra Taft Benson has counseled, to learn more about those events and the Constitution that resulted from them.

There are particularly strong reasons why this pride and its accompanying obligation are applicable to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As a people we have probably benefited as much as anyone and more than most from the existence of the Constitution. There is serious question whether a message as controversial as ours could have survived during the early 19th century in any other nation. The constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, federalism, freedom of speech, separation of powers, and other individual liberties were very likely essential to the survival of the restored gospel.

The restored gospel also offers some unusual insights into the Constitution. We know that the events whose 200th anniversary we now celebrate did not just happen by chance. The Lord himself "established the Constitution . . . by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose. . . ." (D&C 101:80.)

If you were to list the dozen greatest leaders in the 200 years of our republic, whom would you include on that list? Chances are most people's lists would include names like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison (our first four presidents) and also Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. They would probably also include Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps two or three of more recent vintage. Different people's lists would be likely to vary in some respects. But I suspect that the large majority would include Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and Lincoln.

Four of those five were alive and provided probably their best governmental service during the crucial 15-year period that we are talking about, 1776-1791. Three of the five were actually present at the Constitutional Convention, and the fourth, Jefferson (who was in France during the summer of 1787) had an influence.

It is, it seems to me, far more than coincidence that such a large proportion of our all-time greatest leaders happened to be living at the time the Constitution was adopted, though our total national population at that time was only a small fraction of what it was in later times.

Note that the Doctrine and Covenants' description of the Lord's participation in the coming forth of our Constitution does not tell us that He "inspired" the words of the Constitution.

In one sense, at least, "inspired" is not a totally accurate description of our Heavenly Father's involvement. "Inspired" is a word that we use to describe scripture. While the Constitution shows some quite unmistakeable consequences of divine influence, it is unlike scripture in that some parts are not only not the product of inspiration; they are positively offensive. The most obvious example is the provision in Article I, section 9 guaranteeing the continuation of the slave trade until 1808.

The Lord tells us that He established the Constitution by the hands of wise men whom He raised up unto this very purpose.

I conclude from this that, consistent with the principle of foreordination, the Lord placed here on the earth at the crucial time of constitution-making an uncommon and unprecedented collection of government leaders, peculiarly endowed with the capacity to bring into being the most nearly perfect set of organic laws with which any government and any people on this planet have ever been blessed. It is a set of organic laws that has undergone only one major change after the adoption of the Bill of Rights. That major change was the addition of the three Civil War amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth. The other 13 amendments adopted after 1791 have dealt with matters that, while important, have not matched in significance the work that was done between 1787 and 1791.

What, then, is this Constitution? Why does it qualify as the greatest set of organic laws in the history of mankind? For all its importance, all its profundity, and all its sophistication, the basic structure and operation of the Constitution are fairly simple. It does essentially two things, both of which are ultimately designed to protect individual rights against infringements by government.

First, the Constitution allocates the powers of government along two planes, one horizontal and the other vertical.

Horizontally, it divides the powers of the national government among three co-equal branches, the legislative (two houses of Congress), the executive (the president and the various departments that serve under him), and the judiciary (the Supreme Court, 13 intermediate courts of appeals, and 96 district courts). Vertically, it divides powers between the federal government on the one hand, and the 50 states on the other.

Beyond these two structural features, which we call separation of powers and federalism, the Constitution also contains a series of governmental "thou shalt nots" - prohibitions against governmental intrusions into the lives of individuals.

Most of these are contained in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the like) but a few are contained in the main body of the Constitution (habeas corpus and protection against state impairment of contractual obligations) and in the amendments adopted after 1791 (protection against state deprivation of due process of law and equal protection).

Probably the best voucher for divine involvement in our Constitution is the simple fact that it has withstood the test of time.

With only a handful of amendments, and really only one (the Fourteenth) that has had an impact comparable to what was done in 1787-1791, our Constitution has sufficed through 200 years of the most explosive and dynamic change that the world has ever known. It is little short of miraculous that the same constitution could have sufficed for 13 struggling colonies scattered along the Eastern Seaboard and what is today the world's most powerful nation. And yet it is, I suppose, the kind of result that we should have expected to come from the hands of wise men whom the Lord raised up unto that very purpose.