1 Nephi 7:8

8  And now I, Nephi, being ^agrieved for the hardness of their hearts, therefore I spake unto them, saying, yea, even unto Laman and unto Lemuel: Behold ye are mine elder brethren, and how is it that ye are so hard in your hearts, and so blind in your minds, that ye have need that I, your ^byounger brother, should speak unto you, yea, and set an ^cexample for you?

            -Here Nephi seems so disgusted, grieved, sick and tired with Laman and Lemuel that all gentleness and tact is abandoned for a strait forward accusing reproof!

       “ye are so hard in your hearts and so blind in your minds…”

-Nephi, by this point, understands the method of divine communication.  He knows the role of the heart and the mind and how the Spirit touches each.  His adjective associated with each sensor organ gives us an understanding of how to hear. The heart is penetrated (unless of course it is too hard) and is a function of feeling (emotion) while the mind/brain “sees” or understands intellectually (unless of course it is unable to see/it is turned into darkness and blind to the light).  Conversely, we know how a person is void of spiritual communication:  the heart becomes unfeeling and the mind becomes unable to see/recognize/understand or to perceive light and truth.

8-12.  Nephi’s accusation and evidence against his rebelling brothers:

1.      ye are so hard in your hearts

2.      so blind in your minds

3.      ye have not hearkened unto the word of the Lord

4.      ye have forgotten that ye have seen an angel

5.      ye have forgotten the great things the Lord has done for us

6.      ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things.

      “ye are so hard in your hearts”

            -this is to be unpenetrable in feeling or is spiritual sensitivity.  These have shut off all opportunity for the truth to “soften” them up.  We see people like this frequently.  These are so closed off from any possibility of accepting or considering something different than what they want or what they believe.  The gospel, on the other hand, invites us to experiment. To plant a seed and see if it takes root and grows or if it yields poor results/bad fruit.  An oft-stated prerequisite to spiritual development and learning is humility.  At its core, humility is a personal admission that we do not know all things, that we may be wrong and that God knows MUCH more than I do.  The gospel requires us to be open, to be humble.  If some unknown idea, belief or supposition is true, it will be made manifest because truth attracts truth.  The source of truth will confirm it.

   “so blind in your minds”

            -to be hard in heart and blind in mind are correlates.  One hardly exists without the other.  Is this a causal or correlate relationship?  Does hardness of heart lead to and create blindness in the mind or vice-versa.  Different still, are these covariate?  Certainly it seems that the two are almost always together in a spiritually morbid person.  Both conditions make it impossible for a person to see/recognize the ways of God. 

    “ye have need that I, your byounger brother, should speak unto you”

            -not only did Laman and Lemuel need their younger brother to correct them but they needed an angel from God’s presence to correct them.  These two are nearly past correction.  They have no remorse nor any internal impulse toward truth and right.  They are entirely consumed with what they want –all else is an affront and a threat to them.  They are driven by their fears and their temporal desires.  Anger is their modal motivator.