The question is still possible about the relationship of children to the Fall of Adam. Mormon reiterates: “little children are alive in Christ.” That is, they participate in the resurrection. That part of the atonement does not require agency. Our earthly agency is not required to have us be mortal, and our earthly agency is not required to accept the resurrection from our mortality. That does not change, and it not part of the baptismal covenant.
[for how many little children have died without baptism!]: The modern world with our low infant mortality rates cannot truly understand the impact of this statement in the ancient world. The number of infants dying soon after birth was much higher in the ancient world, and the number of children dying was also high. In the community where Mormon made this statement, it was probable that everyone at least knew a mother who had lost a very young child. Mormon’s words were a recognition of the pain of that reality, and the need for reassurance that those young children were not condemned for the simple lack of a religious rite that there was no time to perform.
Variant: In the printer’s manuscript the phrase reads:
…if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable being a respecter to persons…
A correction in the Printer’s manuscript gives us the current reading, which was also in the 1830 edition. (Book of Mormon Critical Text. FARMS 1987). As it read in the Printer’s manuscript it was a better parallel with the way the concept is used later in the same text: