TESTIMONY TO THE INSPIRATION AND DIVINE CALLING OF JOSEPH SMITH DERIVED FROM THE COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE WORK HE INTRODUCED—CONTINUED.  
At once intimately connected with the coming of the Lord Jesus, and fatal to all claims of a divine commission on the part of Joseph Smith had he omitted it from the New Dispensation, is the mission of Elijah. This, too, is the subject of one of Malachi's prophecies. "Behold," that prophet represents the Lord as saying, "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."[1] According to the testimony of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, on the 3rd of April, 1836, Elijah appeared to them in the Kirtland Temple and fulfilled this prophecy. "Therefore," said he, on that occasion, "the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands, and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors."[2]
 
The nature of Elijah's mission, the manner in which the hearts of the fathers would be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, has been and is a mystery to Christendom; and only by a revelation from God could it be made plain. The mission of Elijah related to the salvation of the dead; and the introduction of that doctrine was the beginning of a revolution in the theology of Christendom. Up to that time—1836—I may say it was universally believed by Christians that the souls of men who died without conversion to the Christian religion were everlastingly lost. As I have said elsewhere,[3] it was believed that the application of the gospel of Jesus Christ was limited to this life; and those who failed, through whatever cause, to obtain the benefits of the means of salvation it affords, are forever barred from such benefits. "If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be;"[4] and they argued from this that in whatever state a man died so he remained. If he died in a state of justification his salvation was assured; but if not, then justification, and consequently salvation, were forever beyond his hope.
 
This sectarian doctrine which does so much violence to the justice of God—since it closes the door of salvation against so many millions of God's children through no other circumstance than that they never so much as heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and therefore could not either believe or obey it—arose, first, through a misconception of the doctrine of eternal punishment with which the wicked are threatened in the scriptures; and, second, through a very narrow conception of the sure mercies of God.
 
Christians believed that to receive eternal punishment was to be punished eternally. This popular error was corrected in a revelation to Martin Harris through Joseph Smith, even before the church was organized.[5] In that revelation it is explained that God is "Endless," that is one of his names; as also is "Eternal," one of his names. "Wherefore eternal punishment is God's punishment." In other words the punishment that will overtake the wicked is Eternal's punishment; Endless' punishment. But Christians mistaking the name of the punishment for the sign of its duration, taught that men were punished eternally for the sins committed in this life. God's punishment is eternal; that is, it always exists; it is eternal as God is, but the transgressor receives only so much of it, endures it only so long as may be necessary to satisfy the reasonable claims of justice, tempered with mercy. Then, when the insulted law is vindicated, the offender is released from the punishment. But as "the bars survive the captive they enthrall," as the prison remains after the transgressor has served his time in it; so in God's government, the punishment eternally remains after transgressors have satisfied the claims of justice, and are relieved from its pains and penalties. It remains to vindicate the law of God whenever it shall be broken.
 
But men read, "He that believeth not" (the gospel) "shall be damned,"[6] and they have been taught to believe that they are damned to all eternity—that they are consigned forever to the flames of hell. The so-called early fathers of the church, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Cyprian, all taught that the fire of hell is a real, material flame; and that the wicked were punished in it eternally. Augustine in the fifth century stated the same doctrine with great emphasis and argued against those who sought to modify it.[7] Thomas Aquinas of the mediaeval school of theologians, rising head and shoulders above divines of his day, teaches in his Summa Theologia, that the fire of hell is of the same nature as ordinary fire, though with different properties; that the place of punishment though not definitely known is probably under the earth. He also taught that there was no redemption for those once damned, their punishment is to be eternal. Coming to more modern times, we read in the Westminster Confession of Faith—adopted in the seventeenth century by the Puritan party in England—the following on the subject: "The wicked who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torment and be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power."[8] Question twenty-nine of the larger catechism and the answer to it are as follows: "What are the punishments of sin in the world to come?"
 
"Ans. The punishments of sin in the world to come are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torment in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire forever." The Westminster confession and the larger catechism are still the standards of the Presbyterian churches. Indeed the above expresses the orthodox Christian faith, from the second and third centuries until the present time.
 
One would think that right conceptions of the attributes of justice and mercy as they exist in God's character would lead men to the rejection of the horrible dogma of eternal punishment as taught by orthodox Christianity. But if that be not sufficient then the scriptures themselves refute it, as will appear in the following paragraphs:
 
From a remark made in the writings of the Apostle Peter,[9] we learn that after Messiah was put to death in the flesh "He went and preached to the spirits in prison, which sometime" [aforetime] "were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah."
 
During the three days, then, that Messiah's body lay in the tomb at Jerusalem, his spirit was in the world of spirits preaching to those who had rejected the testimony of righteous Noah. The Christian traditions no less than the scriptures teach that Jesus went down into hell and preached to those there held in ward. "In the second and third centuries, every branch and division of Christians, so far as their records enable us to judge, believed that Christ preached to the departed; and this belief dates back to our earliest reliable sources of information in the former of these two centuries."[10] "As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed that he went down into hell."[11] A writer in Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature referring to the passage in Peter on preaching to the spirits in prison, says: "These 'spirits in prison' are supposed to be the holy dead. * * * The most intelligent meaning suggested by the context is, however, that Christ by his spirit preached to those who in the time of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, were disobedient, and whose spirits are now in prison, abiding the general judgment. The prison is doubtless hades, but what hades is must be determined by other passages of scripture; and whether it is the grave or hell, it is still a prison for those who await the judgment day."
 
Not only is the mere fact of Messiah's going to prison stated in the scripture, but the purpose of his going there is learned from the same source. "For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."[12] This manifestly means that these spirits who had once rejected the counsels of God against themselves, had the gospel again preached to them and had the privilege of living according to its precepts in the spirit life, and of being judged according to men in the flesh, or as men in the flesh are judged; that is, according to the degree of their faithfulness to the precepts of the gospel.
 
Naturally the question arises why was the gospel preached to the spirits in prison who had once been disobedient if there were no means by which it could be applied to them for their salvation. We can scarcely suppose that Messiah would preach the gospel to them if it could do them no good. He did not go there to mock their sufferings or to add something to the torture of their damnation by explaining the beauties of that salvation now forever beyond their reach. Such a supposition would at once be revolting to reason, insulting to the justice of God, and utterly repugnant to the dictates of mercy. The very fact, therefore, that the gospel was preached to the departed is sufficient to assure us of the existence of some method by which its powers of salvation may be applied to all unto whom it is preached, including those who are dead. Following that question comes another: If the gospel is preached again to those who have once rejected it, how much sooner will it be presented to those who have never heard it, who have lived in those generations when the gospel and the authority to administer its ordinances were not in the earth? Seeing that those who once rejected the offer of salvation had it presented to them again—after paying the penalty of their first disobedience—it would seem that those who lived when it was not upon the earth, or who when it was upon the earth perished in ignorance of it, will much sooner come to salvation.
 
Of the things we have written, this is the sum: (1) The gospel was preached by Messiah to the spirits in prison who had rejected the teachings of Noah; therefore there must be some means through which its precepts and ordinances may be applied to them. (2) If the gospel can be made available to those who once rejected the proffered mercies of God, its privileges will much sooner and doubtless more abundantly be granted to those who died in ignorance of it. Let us next consider how the ordinances of the gospel wherein the power of godliness is made manifest, and without which it is not made manifest, may be applied to the dead.
 
The manner in which the ordinances of the gospel may be administered to those who have died without receiving them is hinted at by Paul. Writing to the Corinthians on the subject of the resurrection—correcting those who said there was no resurrection—he asks: "What shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?"[13] In this the apostle manifestly referred to a practice which existed among the Christian saints of the living being baptized or the dead, and argues from the existence of that practice that the dead must rise, or why the necessity of being baptized for the dead? Though this is the only passage in the New Testament, or in the whole Bible that refers to the subject, yet of itself it is sufficient to establish the fact that such a principle was known among the ancient saints.
 
While not maintaining the view that there is such a thing as a living man being baptized for one who is dead, a writer in Biblical Literature (Kitto's), expresses these views: "From the wording of the sentence (why are they then baptized for the dead?) the most simple impression certainly is, that Paul speaks of a baptism which a living man receives in the place of a dead one. This interpretation is particularly adopted by those expounders with whom grammatical construction is of paramount importance and the first thing to be considered." This view is also upheld by Ambrose among the early Christian writers; and by Erasmus, Scaliger, Grotius, Calistus among the moderns; and still more recently by Agusti Meyer, Billroth and Ruckert. De Wette considers this the only possible meaning of the words. Epiphanius, a writer of the fourth century, in speaking of the Marcionites, a sect of Christians to whom he was opposed, says: "In this country—I mean Asia—and even Galatia, their school flourished eminently; and a traditional fact concerning them has reached us, that when any of them had died without baptism, they used to baptize others in their name, lest in the resurrection they should suffer punishment as unbaptized."[14]
 
This proves beyond controversy the fact that vicarious baptism for the dead was practiced among some of the sects of the early Christians.
 
Another fact proves it still more emphatically than this statement by Epiphanius. The Council of Carthage, held A. D., 397, in its sixth canon, forbids the administration of baptism and holy communion for the dead; why should this canon be formed against these practices if they had no existence among the Christians of those days?
 
From the revelations of God to the church in this dispensation, the following may be learned: Elijah in fulfillment of ancient prophecy, appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, and delivered to them those keys or powers of the Priesthood which give to the living the right to do a work for the salvation of the dead. As a consequence, the hearts of the children are turned to the fathers; and of course, since the fathers in the spirit world through the preaching of the gospel learn that it is within the power of their children to do a work for them, their hearts are turned to the children, and thus the result to follow Elijah's predicted mission is fulfilled.
 
The work that the living may do for the dead is attending to outward ordinances—baptisms, confirmations, ordinations, washings, anointings and sealings—all being appointed by revelation from the Lord, and all sealed and ratified by the power of the Priesthood of God, which binds on earth and in heaven. It is required that all baptisms and other ordinances of the gospel performed for the dead, be attended to in temples dedicated for such holy purposes. These ordinances performed on earth by the living, and accepted in the spirit world by those for whom they are administered, will make them a potent means of salvation to the dead, and of exaltation to the living, since they become in very deed "saviors upon Mount Zion."
 
This work that can be done for the dead enlarges one's views of the gospel of Jesus Christ. One begins to see indeed that it is the "everlasting gospel;" for it runs parallel with man's existence both in this life and in that which is to come. It vindicates the character of God, for by it we may see that justice and judgment, truth and mercy are in all his ways.
 
The servants of God and the saints generally have been earnest in seeking to erect temples in which to attend to these ordinances of the gospel for the dead.[15] At first thought I was tempted to say that this work for the dead was by far the greatest part of the work contemplated in the New Dispensation; for as the leaves upon the tree............