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 and is not part of the baptismal covenant.
The modern world with our low infant mortality rates cannot truly understand the impact of the lament, “for how many little children have died without baptism!” on the ancient world. The number of infants dying soon after birth was much higher in the ancient world and the number of children dying within a few years was also high. In the community, where Mormon made this statement, probably every family had lost a very young child. Mormon’s words recognized 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. As it read prior to correction in the printer’s manuscript it was a better parallel with the way the concept is used later in the same text: “For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity” (Moro. 8:18).
Apparently the change was made to clarify a potentially problematic reading in which “being” could either function as a noun defined by “changeable” or as a verb, making the phrase “being a respecter [of] persons.… ”