Chapter II: Part 2

But receiving the gospel, whether by angelic ministrations or otherwise, is one thing, and obtaining authority to preach it and administer its ordinances is another. Knowledge, light and revelation may be enjoyed, and yet the favored recipient of these blessings may be without any authority to perform any official act in the name of the Lord. Joseph Smith not only received the ministrations of the angel bearing the everlasting gospel, but also obtained the right to officiate in all its ordinances, rites, ceremonies and endowments. He did not receive this authority from man. As we have already shown, it had departed from the earth centuries before. No amount of learning would bring it. No college, prelate, potentate or priest could confer it. All the wealth of the world could not purchase it. It does not come by the will of man.

How did Joseph Smith gain it? Holy men of old, who held the keys of this power in former dispensations, came to earth as ministering spirits and ordained him to the same offices which they held in mortality. First came John the Baptist, who was beheaded for the truth's sake, bearing the keys of the Aaronic or lesser Priesthood, and ordained Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to the authority thereof, with the right to preach the gospel of repentance and administer baptism for the remission of sins. But as John did not hold the power when on earth to confer the Holy Ghost, he did not presume to bestow it upon others. Next came Peter, James and John with the keys of the Apostleship, of the holy Melchisedek Priesthood and of the dispensation of the fullness of times, which they conferred upon Joseph and Oliver, giving them authority to ordain others to this ministry and to confirm baptized believers by the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

The lesser Priesthood holds the power of the ministration of angels and authority to administer in temporal things. The greater Priesthood holds the power of communion with the Highest and of attending to all things, spiritual and temporal; for the salvation and exaltation of man till he reaches the actual presence of the Eternal God, and shines forth in the fullness of the attributes of his Almighty Father.

Thus power was restored to rebuild the Church of Christ, to preach the true gospel; to baptize penitent believers for the remission of sins; to bestow upon them the Holy Ghost, bearing witness of the Father and the Son and of acceptance with them; to appoint and ordain all the various ministers necessary for the publishing of the truth to all nations, the work of the ministry, the perfecting of the Saints and the edifying and government of "the body of Christ."

So the Church was set up in these latter times. Humble believers received the word with gladness, and obeying it, obtained from God the witness of its truth. The signs promised to believers followed them. They spoke in other tongues, prophesied, saw visions, dreamed divine dreams and enjoyed all the gifts of the Church as did the saints of old. The sick were healed by the laying on of hands, devils were cast out, the deaf heard, the eyes of the blind were opened, the lame leaped for joy, the tongue of the dumb was loosed, the heavens were opened to human view, and the Holy Ghost, as on the day of pentecost, rested down in power upon the Saints of the new dispensation.

Then they _knew_ for themselves. Doubt had fled, the darkness was dispersed, Satan trembled, priestcraft raged, and while the tidings of the restored gospel caused joy in heaven and praise on earth, the powers of evil in and out of the flesh conspired to fight the truth, make war upon believers and persecute the servants of God unto death. But the Lord strengthened the hands of His people and poured out light and knowledge from on high. The hidden things of ages were brought forth. Revelation after revelation was multiplied to the Church.

Then came Elijah the Prophet, bearing the keys of the turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children and of the children to the fathers, that the link of the broken chain of the Priesthood through the ages might be welded together, and the spirit world be known to men in the flesh. Next came Moses, the man of God with the keys of the gathering of Israel, that the remnants might be brought in from their long dispersion and inherit the lands promised to their forefathers. And Raphael and Gabriel and other holy messengers also appeared, each in their order, bearing the keys of their respective ministries when living as men upon the earth, that all the powers needful for the establishment of the great and last dispensation of the fullness of times might be centered upon the head of the man chosen to open it to the world, and that he might bestow them upon others called and chosen by the spirit of revelation.

Glory to God in the highest! The straight and narrow way is opened. The silence of ages is broken. Jehovah speaks from out the bosom of eternity. Angels again come down from the abodes of bliss. Communication is restored between man and his Maker. The Holy Ghost again comforts, reveals and bears witness. The sacred gifts are once more enjoyed. All earth shall hear the glad tidings. Every soul shall be warned. And though Joseph, the chosen seer, and many of his brethren have become martyrs for the truth's sake, and the bosom of mother earth is stained red with the blood of the persecuted Saints, the Church re-established, the Priesthood restored, the truths now revealed shall never, be taken from earth again, but they shall spread and increase and prevail and triumph, until darkness and evil, and sin and Satan shall give way, and this planet, ransomed and redeemed shall be crowned with the glory and presence of its rightful King, Jesus the anointed, the sinless Son of the omnipotent God.

EIGHTH LEAF.

Apparent Doom of the Majority of Mankind--No Salvation but by Jesus Christ--Is the State of Man Fixed at Death?--The Common Belief Incorrect--Preaching to the Dead--The Spirit Without the Body Sentient--Nature of Paradise--All People to Hear the Gospel Either in this Life or the Next.

One of the great difficulties in the way of inquiring minds, desirous of understanding gospel truth, is the apparent doom of the great bulk of the human family to perdition. The declaration is plainly and positively made in the scriptures that there is no other name given under heaven whereby man can be saved, but the name of Christ Jesus. It is also proclaimed that "except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

Many millions of the earth's inhabitants have passed away without hearing the name of Jesus, or having any opportunity of the privilege of the second birth. And the query arises, must all these souls be lost in consequence? And if so can the God of the Bible be just? Further; the question comes up, If the world has been in error so long, and the Church of Latter-day Saints is the only true Church of Christ, what has become of the generations of professing Christians, who lived and died in the centuries between the loss of the gospel and the Priesthood and their restoration in the present age?

The difficulty arises through lack of a correct understanding of the plan of salvation, and through the erroneous doctrines of unauthorized teachers. Orthodox "Christianity" affirms that the future state of man is fixed at death; that the departing spirit goes either to an eternal heaven or an everlasting hell; and that there is no possibility of change, but, to use a familiar saying, "as the tree falls, so it lies." The light of modern revelation rolls back the darkness of ages and unfolds the glorious plan of human redemption in its fullness, and the illuminated soul perceives the triumph of justice in union with mercy, through the extension of gospel privileges beyond the narrow sphere of this mortal life.

Why should the opportunity to learn and the power to obey the truths of the gospel be confined to dwellers in the flesh? Is it to be supposed that when the immortal spirit leaves its domicile of clay its powers of preception, of reason, of reception or rejection of truth or error, of submission or rebellion to the decrees of heaven, are buried with the decaying body? The idea is contrary to all the hopes of the life to come kindled in the heart by the promises of the gospel. It is also antiscriptural. There is nothing in holy writ which establishes any such absurdity. Paul declares that all men shall be judged by the gospel which he preached. If this is true and God is just, must not all men _hear_ that gospel and have the opportunity of receiving or rejecting it? And if this privilege has not been granted to them while in the body, must it not be afforded them when out of the body?

Peter states that the Lord shall "judge the quick and the dead," and explains that "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." He mentions this in connection with his history of the mission and works of Jesus, who, he tells us, was "put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit: by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison."

This accounts for the whereabouts of the Savior during the interval between his death on the cross and His resurrection from the sepulchre in the rock. At His appearance to Mary in the garden, after He had risen, He said, "I am not yet ascended to my father." During the three days of His body's sleep in the tomb He was continuing the work the Father had given Him to do. He was preaching "deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that were bound."

That these spirits in prison had been in the flesh, Peter makes clear by stating that they were "disobedient * * in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." The gospel was thus preached also to the dead, that they might have the same opportunities and be judged by the same gospel as the living.

The exercise of faith is an operation of the spirit of man, and so is repentance. These lead to obedience and obedience to acceptance with God. The body without the spirit is dead and can neither believe, repent nor obey, but the spirit without the body is active, sentient and capable of exercising all of its powers that are adapted to a spiritual sphere. It is only through the medium of the body, however, that the spirit can handle, experience and fully control or be subjected to corporeal things. That part of the gospel which pertains to earthly ordinances and observances is, therefore, unapproachable to the disembodied. But they can learn and submit to all its spiritual laws and influences and "live according to God in the spirit." They can hear the gospel, for Christ preached it to many of them; they can obey, for He not only proclaimed liberty to them but "He led captivity captive," and they must therefore have repented and become acceptable to God. As one of the early fathers of the Church said of the slain Redeemer, "He went into hades alone, but he came forth with a multitude."

The Jews of Christ's day believed that there were two divisions of the spirit world--Paradise and Tartarus. The good went to the former, the bad to the latter. Jesus promised the repentant thief on the cross: "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." This is not the abode of the Eternal Father but of departed spirits, where they wait until the resurrection. A place of instruction and preparation, of peace and rest, of joy and serenity, of progress toward perfection. And into this abode of the just, Christ led from Tartarus the spirits purified and chastened through their captivity, who were disobedient in the flesh in the days of Noah, but had suffered for their rebellion, and in the spirit had gladly received the gospel through His ministrations.

And thus, in the due time of the Lord all who have dwelt upon the earth in any age, Jew, Gentile, heathen, Christian, may hear the glad tidings of the everlasting gospel preached by those appointed and authorized, and have an opportunity of repentance, improvement and reconciliation. But the ordinances which belong to the sphere of mortality cannot be received in a spiritual estate; they belong to the flesh and must be attended to in the flesh. Consideration of the means provided by Infinite Goodness through which the benefits of those essential ordinances can be obtained by believing, repentant, disembodied persons, must be left till the unfolding of another leaf.

NINTH LEAF.

Decrees of God Fixed in the Spiritual as in the Natural Universe--Ordinances Essential--The Living may be Baptized for the Dead--The Principle of Proxy--The Place for the Administration of Vicarious Ordinances--Revelation of Elijah, the Prophet--Connection with the Spirit World--True Order of Communication--Blessed Results of Work Done for the Dead.

The divine fiat has gone forth that "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." This is a fixed law. The same certainty that is exhibited in the government of the material universe obtains in the spiritual domain, and is as much a necessity in one as in the other. As man cannot change the revolutions of the planets nor alter the principles that underlie all motion and regulate all matter, so he cannot turn aside the decrees of Jehovah, nor modify, in the least degree, any rule or commandment pertaining to the everlasting gospel. Neither will He who reigns in the unseen world, as well as in the sphere perceived by the senses, swerve from His established laws in the former any more than in the latter.

Baptism, or the birth of water in the form and mode already described, is an essential ordinance. There are others equally necessary in their time and place in the divine plan of human redemption. They must be rightly received and administered, or the blessings that spring from them, as their natural fruit, cannot be enjoyed. As aliens cannot be admitted to the rights and privileges of citizenship in an earthly government, without complying with the naturalization laws in such case made and provided, so aliens from the heavenly kingdom cannot be received into its dominion, nor be adopted into the family of the Eternal King, without obeying the laws set as the conditions of admission.

These laws and ordinances will be made known to the inhabitants of this planet, either in the flesh or in the disembodied condition. They will have the opportunity of receiving or rejecting them on the agency given to man, that a just judgment may be rendered in the great day of accounts. But ordinances, such as baptism, the laying on of hands for confirmation, ordination, marriage, etc., belong to the corporeal sphere. They are set for the state of probation.

Water is an earthly element, or compound of elements, and the blessings ordained to flow from the death, burial and new birth, typified by authorized baptism therein, cannot be secured in any other way. Millions of earth's sons and daughters have passed out of the body without obeying the law of baptism. Many of them will gladly accept the word and law of the Lord when it is proclaimed to them in the spirit world. But they cannot there attend to ordinances that belong to the sphere which they have left. Can nothing be done in their case? Must they forever be shut out of the kingdom of heaven? Both justice and mercy join in answering "yes" to the first and "no" to the last question. What, then, is the way of their deliverance?

The living may be baptized for the dead. Other essential ordinances may be attended to vicariously. This glorious truth, hid from human knowledge for centuries, has been made known in this greatest of all divine dispensations. It is indeed light in the midst of darkness. It shines in the depths of the shrouded past, illuminates the mystic future, and reveals the infinite love of God and His tender mercy over all His works. It explains the meaning of scripture texts long considered difficult and obscure. It links by loving ties the living with their dead. It shows why the fathers "without us cannot be made perfect." It opens the way of redemption for the hosts of departed heathens. It brings together in one all who are in Christ, even though parted by the vail that is drawn between the physical and spiritual spheres. It gives men and women the power to become "Saviors on Mount Zion," Jesus being the great Captain in the army of redeemers.

In God's house all things are done in order. There is a right way and a proper place for the administration of ordinances for the dead. The living relatives of those who have departed without an opportunity of obeying the earthly requirements of the plan of salvation, if they have themselves been born of the water and of the spirit, stand in the name and place of the departed and receive the ordinances to be placed to the credit of the dead. Either sex represents its own. Men are not baptized for women, nor women for men. The first-born son in each family has rights of priority connected with this vicarious work if he has proven himself worthy. The ordinances must be administered by those having authority, being set apart for the work, and must be duly witnessed and properly recorded. The books on earth must tally with the records in heaven.

The place for these administrations is in a temple built to the Most High God, after the pattern revealed. The baptismal font, like the brazen sea in the temple of Solomon, is placed in the basement, under the place where the living are wont to assemble, typifying the place for the dead, all things spiritual having their correspondence with things natural. That which is done on earth, according to the divine instructions, is acknowledged in heaven, and is of force and effect in the world to come. Herein is manifested the power of the Holy Priesthood, loosing or binding on earth, and it is loosed or bound in heaven, all according to the commandments and revelation of the Most High through Jesus the anointed.

This principle of proxy runs like a thread of gold throughout the entire robe of salvation. Christ is the proxy of blood for the whole race of sinners. The Spotless One died in the place of the impure. He is the offering for the deadly sin of Adam. He is the propitiation for the evil deeds of a world. The lamb on the smoking altar, the scapegoat turned into the wilderness, the sprinkling of atonement, all the sacrifices of the old covenant, as well as the infinite one of the new, are based on the doctrine of vicarious action and the divine acceptance of authorized substitutes.

The manifestation of this truth in the last dispensation came from the Prophet Elijah in the temple built to the Almighty by the Latter-day Saints in Kirtland, Ohio. On the third of April, 1836, he who was caught up to heaven without death, appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, and committed the keys of the power to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers," that the earth might be saved from a curse. The living are thus authorized, under prescribed conditions, to act for the dead, and the fathers in the spirit world look to the children in the flesh to perform for them the works which they were unable to attend to while in the body.

Here is the peculiar blessing upon the heads of the Saints in the grand, culminating and completing dispensation of the fullness of times. To labor for the redemption of their progenitors until every lost link in the line of their ancestry, back to the Abrahamic stock from which they originally sprang, shall be taken up and welded into the perfect family chain. Herein is seen one of the blessings attending the perpetuation of a man's name in the earth; to die leaving no seed being considered in olden times, among the people of God, one of the greatest of calamities. Indeed the glory and dominion, and joy and rapture of the future state will be found to have intimate relation to the family condition, and the promise to Abraham of a numerous posterity was not merely of earthly portent, but reached into the exaltation and beatitudes of eternal existence.

This glorious doctrine bears the key to the sphere within the vail. It regulates the communion of the living with the dead. It saves those who receive it from improper and deceptive spirit communications. Tidings to the living from their friends who have passed away do not come in disorder and confusion, nor by the will of men or women, whether corrupt or pure. Order is maintained in all the works and ways of God. Knowledge that is needful concerning the spiritual sphere will come through an appointed channel and in the appointed place. The temple where the ordinances can be administered for the dead, is the place to hear from the dead. The Priesthood in the flesh, when it is necessary, will receive communications from the Priesthood behind the vail. Most holy conversations on all things pertaining to the redemption of the race, belong in the places prepared in the temples.

The Saints in the flesh are required to use all due diligence in obtaining their genealogies by the means at command, and a spirit has moved upon men in the world to collect and perfect and publish the records of their ancestors, by which, thousands upon thousands of acceptable names have been obtained, and the work of vicarious baptism already done is immense. But that which remains to be accomplished is so vast, that no mind, unless illuminated by the light of God, can see how it can ever be performed and perfected. Yet it will be done, and blessed are they who aid in the heavenly labor! With what joy will they be greeted by the spirits of their progenitors when they meet them in Paradise! What honor will crown their brows in the day of reward and compensation! They will stand among the saviors, and shine among their kindred who are redeemed, like glorious suns in the heavenly constellations!

This divine plan of vicarious action, is one of the broadest, brightest and loveliest leaves in the blessed tree of life. It bears a healing balm for millions upon millions of earth's sons and daughters who have passed away without hearing the only name whereby man can be saved, or who, having heard, were never taught the way of salvation as ordained through Jesus Christ. It is redolent of the love and mercy of the Eternal Father, and bears the sweet perfume of charity and gratitude of the children reaching out after the fathers, of the fathers blest in the works of the children, and of kindred affection enlarged, cemented and perpetuated for ever and ever. It parts the vail between the physical and the spiritual, it softens the heart, and brings the living and the dead nearer to God, and it sanctifies the soul to obedience, worship and devotion, filling it with reverence and adoration of Him who has devised this broad and universal plan for the redemption of the human race.

TENTH LEAF.

Universality of Death--Results of the Transgression of Law--Dissolution of the Body not the End of Existence--What is Resurrection?--The Spiritual Body of Jesus--All to be Raised from the Dead--The Order of the Resurrection--Necessity of an Immortal Body--Ignorance of the Laws of Nature--Matter Indestructible--Possibilities of Creative Energy--Life and Immortality Brought to Light.

Death is the common heritage. It is a legacy to all the children, left by our first progenitor. It is the result of transgression, the penalty of violated law. The immortal pair who dwelt in Eden fell into mortality through sin. Immortality is the power of continued existence. But "all things are governed by law." Sin is law-breaking. To live for ever requires perpetual obedience to the laws of everlasting life. "That which is governed by law is preserved by law." By the same rule reversed, the reverse obtains. Therefore, that which is immortal and obeys not the laws of immortality, will become mortal. If obedience insures preservation, disobedience involves destruction. Law reigns in the highest as well as in the lower spheres of being. Eternal life involves eternal compliance with the laws of existence.

All seeds produce their own kind. Mortal beings beget mortality. When the parents of our race became mortal through breaking the law of their immortal condition, they brought death to their offspring as well as to themselves. "In Adam all die." The curse of death smites the whole family. "It is appointed unto man once to die." No ingenuity he can exercise or precautions he can adopt will avert the impending doom. The decree has been proclaimed, "Thou shalt surely die," and it is irrevocable. The taint that came from the tree of death whose fruit was forbidden, descends to all generations, and every variety of form and feature, and color and stature, and tendency and peculiarity, have the one common characteristic, the certainty of death.

But is the dissolution of the body the end of existence? Not at all. We have seen that the part of man that comes from heaven lives on when that which comes from the earth returns to the earth. Yet this is not sufficient. The query arises, Shall this body, made mortal through transgression, remain for ever under the penalty of the broken law, or are there some means of expiation for the sin, and restoration from the doom, its consequence? Are all the associations formed in the flesh and pertaining to this mortal state, to perish with the decayed body and be scattered like the dust to which it is resolved? Are the fond relations of husband and wife, and parent and child to be dissolved forever? Is this exquisitely, "fearfully and wonderfully" formed mechanism, with the experiences of its temporal existence, to be obliterated and lose its identity in the material universe?

The answer comes down from the remotest ages, like sweet and sacred music whose tones swell and increase as the chorus is joined by the voices of the prophets and saints of each succeeding dispensation, until the grand harmony thrills every respondent soul. The burden of the song is in the words of the poetic Isaiah: "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." And the ringing tones of Job the ancient are heard as a solo whose melody reaches unto heaven: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!"

The faith of all people who have communed with God or have been inspired by the Holy Ghost, has been that they should be resurrected from the dead. They not only had the assurance of spirit life beyond the grave, but of the revivification of the material body. The signification of the word "resurrect" is "to stand up again." That which was laid down was to be raised up. The release of the immortal spirit from the mortal body would not answer to this. It was this mortal that was to put on immortality, this corruptible that was to put on incorruption.

To make this matter certain, Jesus, who expiated the primal sin, after being offered on the cross as the great sacrifice, gave up the ghost. His lifeless body was taken down, embalmed and buried in a new tomb hewed out of the rock. It was guarded by Roman soldiers. On the third day from the interment that body came forth alive from the grave. The same Jesus who was crucified appeared again among His disciples, and proved that the same body interred was brought forth again, by exhibiting the wounds made by the nails and the spear, by permitting them to touch Him, by eating and conversing with them, and by repeated visits.

This was not a mere manifestation of the immortality of the soul, but a demonstration of the resurrection of the body. Yet that body was transformed. The corruptible blood was purged from the veins, and incorruptible spiritual fluid occupied its place. It was buried a natural body, it was resurrected a spiritual body. Here then, was a pattern of that which is to come. This was the "first fruits of them that slept," a glorious sample of the great harvest of the summer of redemption.

Now the sacrifice of the Savior had as one of its chief objects the restoration of mankind to the condition lost by the fall. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Death came to the race through one man's sin; life comes to the race through one man's atonement for that sin. The remedy is as broad as the disease. The plan is perfect. This is why Christ is called "The resurrection and the life." By virtue of His triumph over sin and His voluntary submission to death, which had no valid claim upon Him, being sinless, He obtained the keys of redemption for all the sleeping dust of the Adamic family. So He made no idle boast or mystic figure of speech when he declared, "The hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."

The raising of the dead, though universal, is not simultaneous. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, He will first redeem those that are in Him. Having put on Christ and received of His spirit, they will come forth at His call to meet Him. They who have part in the first resurrection are those who have died in the Lord and are blessed and holy. Their bodies will be fashioned like unto His glorious body. Having been planted in the likeness of His death they will be also in the likeness of His resurrection. That is, they will be quickened by the celestial glory and be placed in a condition to receive a fullness thereof, and inherit all things as joint heirs with Christ.

The wicked dead remain unquickened for a thousand years. They reap the fruits of their evil seeds sown in lives of transgression. They drink the dregs of a bitter cup. Some are beaten with many stripes, others with but a few. Justice metes out to them their dues. And when they come forth to stand up in their bodies, they will not be quickened by the celestial glory, but by that for which they are fitted by their respective conditions consequent upon their earthly acts, and they will occupy positions accordingly. But all will be redeemed in due season from the grave and stand the scrutiny of the All-Seeing Eye and the judgment of unswerving Justice, which will determine their eternal future.

In this age of general doubt, when human reason is exalted above divine testimony, and the voice of faith is drowned by the clamors of pretended science, the possibility and use of a resuscitation of the body are scouted and denied. But "all things are possible to them that believe," and the divinely illuminated mind can perceive not only the use, but the necessity of the resurrection.

The being that was placed in Eden and endowed with power to wield dominion over all created things, was a living soul, a sentient spirit in an immortal body, a man fashioned in the image of God. He fell from that condition and paid the penalty of death. Christ's atonement, as we have seen restores him to his original condition. But this he cannot have without his body again made immortal. By the workings of the grand scheme of human exaltation, he and his posterity, with the benefits of the lessons of experience, will be restored to the immortality and pleasures of the primeval paradise, and placed on the path of eternal progress.

And, mark this, a body framed out of the grosser elements is essential to the perfect happiness and power of the refined spiritual organism which possesses it as a tabernacle. The principle of affinities and of the attraction and communion of similars proclaim this truth. Spirit ministers to spirit. Things of a like nature cohere. The higher or spiritual element reaches upward to the loftiest things; the lower or fleshy element reaches downward, and the twain, inseparably combined and governed by the laws of right and truth, draw pleasure and delight from the heights and depth of the boundless universe and the ever-extending spheres of eternal intelligence. A disembodied spirit is imperfect, and requires clothing with its denser parts. Without them, its affinities would lie in but one direction, and its joy and progress would be limited.

The family condition too is formed in the embodied state. Death separates the husband and wife, the parents and children. The resurrection, in its highest conditions, reunites them and restores all that was lost in the grave. Who can picture the bliss, the glory, the power, the might, the dominion and majesty that shall grow out of the redemption from the dead of the righteous man and his household, dwelling in perfect harmony and peace with all the powers of their being, spiritual and physical, purified, quickened, intensified and enlarged to a fullness, with all eternity before them for the exercise thereof in accordance with the designs of the Great Greater? It is beyond the skill of man to depict it, and no mortal mind can comprehend it without special divine illumination.

And who shall define the impossible, or draw the bounds of the powers of the Creator? The secret of ordinary life is hidden from the scrutiny of the most profound scientist. He knows not the mystery of the vital principle that quickens even the lowest form of animated nature. His own powers of mind and motion are incomprehensible to him. Their origin and cause are beyond his ken, and he cannot solve the problem any better than the ignorant Hottentot or the untutored Indian. The reproduction of plants from their seeds, the evolving of life out of the midst of their death, is a wonder unexplained. And shall we say that it is impossible for the Power that regulates the universe to reanimate a defunct body?

It must be remembered that nothing in nature is annihilated. No particle of matter is destroyed by any process. What is called death is but a change of form. All matter is not visible to the human eye. A body may exist, but so transformed as to be imperceptible to the natural vision. The forces that regulate the universe are occult, and though some of the laws that govern them are known, there are others that have not been discovered, and it is the height of presumption for those who have obtained a smattering of information concerning these things--and who has obtained more?--to declare that impossible which they know nothing of, or to limit the power of that creative or quickening energy, whose nature, capabilities and qualities they cannot comprehend in the smallest degree.

If one dead body has been raised to life, unnumbered millions may also be revived. That one we have in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and He is the forerunner of all the race. Let the sons and daughters of men rejoice and give thanks to Him who has wrought out this great redemption. Death is conquered. The grave has no terrors. Life and immortality are brought to light. Eternity with all its prospects and capabilities is open to the view. And through the power of the resurrection vested in Christ Jesus, the whole globe shall deliver up its dead, and the great progenitor of our race, Adam, the "Ancient of Days," shall stand forth at the head of his posterity all quickened and animated by the spirit of life; and while Jesus the Son is hailed as the mighty Redeemer, God the Eternal Father shall be honored and worshiped for ever as the Author of our being, from whom springs all life, light, power and glory throughout the vast domains of universal space!

ELEVENTH LEAF.

Man or Woman Alone Imperfect--Marriage Ordained of God--Sanctity of Proper Sexual Relations--Matrimony a Part of Religion--The First Pair Immortal--Marriage for Eternity--Keys of Celestial Marriage--Condition of Those who Marry Only for Time--Man the Head of the Woman--Plurality of Wires--Continuation of the Righteous Forever--Eternal Family Organizations--Everlasting Increase and Dominion.

No man or woman, separate and single, can attain the fullness of celestial glory. Perfection of being, happiness, exaltation or dominion, is unattainable by either sex alone. The nature, desires, capabilities and manifest design of both male and female humanity proclaim this, and the voice of Deity has endorsed and sanctified the utterance of nature. Woman was made for man. Marriage is ordained of God. In its correct form it is under the divine direction. The Father of the race has the right to a voice in the sexual unions of His children. Those relations are fraught with so much consequence, relating to time and eternity, that the Supreme Ruler should regulate them for the benefit of the parties, the welfare of society and the good of posterity in this world, as well as for eternal results in the life to come.

The male and female elements of humanity seek union, of their own volition. The natural attraction that prompts this is right and proper. But if there were no rules and restrictions for the government of these tendencies and the actions resultant, confusion would ensue, and the effects would be sorrow, ruin and destruction. Matrimony therefore becomes a part of religion. It is a divine institution, and hence should be divinely directed. The first marriage on record was solemnized by Deity. It was God who said, "It is not good that the man should be alone." It was God who brought Eve and gave her to Adam. It was God who commanded the twain made one flesh to "increase and multiply."

Marriage, properly contracted, is therefore holy and pure, and its relations, unabused, are sacred and chaste. The notion that celibacy is purer than matrimony, that either man or woman is holier in the sight of heaven because of nonintercourse with the other sex, is a gross error, unwarranted by reason or revelation. There is no attribute of the mind or function of the body that is in itself, or in its legitimate exercise, impure or degrading. It is only the wrong use of any of our powers that is sinful.

The first marriage recorded in scripture was the union of immortals. The curse of death had not been pronounced when the ceremony was solemnized. There was no sin then, and therefore there was no death. The man and woman became ONE as eternal beings, and dominion was given to them over all earthly things, together. Death and the rule of man over the woman came as the consequences of transgression. The penalty was paid, the redemption was wrought out, and through the atonement those two persons are restored to their pristine condition.

In the resurrection, then, Adam and Eve come together as at the first in the garden, and there is no more separation for them. They are rejoined, not as ghostly beings without the feelings and powers of tangible personality, but as the man and the woman made one eternally, with power to increase and multiply and have dominion, with all eternity before them for the exercise of every power with which the Creator endowed them, spiritual, mental and physical, standing at the head of the race, perfected by experience and obedience to eternal law, and ready to act in the harmony with celestial intelligencies, and preside over their own posterity forever.

Here is a sample marriage. It was not for time alone, but for eternity. Death intervened, but only as an incident. The bond that bound them in matrimony was not sundered. The seal set upon them was of heavenly stamp. Its virtue reached within the vail. Its force extended into the world to come. There was no end to it. God had a hand in it and it was His seal and sanction that made it valid and everlasting. All other marriages solemnized on similar principles and under the same authority will be of the same virtue and effect. Ordinances performed by those divinely appointed are as though attended to by Deity in person. "Whoso receiveth you receiveth me," saith the Lord. What they "bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." Herein is the authority of the holy Priesthood, and herein is the sealing power for the Saints of God, by which they may enter into the holy order of celestial marriage that lasts while eternity endures. The KEYS of this power are only held by one man at a time on the earth, being vested in the president of the whole Church of God in the flesh. But while he holds the keys, others may officiate therein under his direction and authority.

Unions formed by men and women, of their own arrangement without any divine sanction or divine ceremony, are only temporary in their nature. They end when the parties or either of them die. God does not acknowledge that which He has not appointed. Neither the vows of the man and woman, nor the ceremony performed by a person unauthorized by the Almighty are recognized in heaven, but only pertain to earth and time. The claim of parents thus united, over their offspring, is but of the earth, earthy, and does not extend into the spheres beyond. Death dissolves both these marital and parental ties, and each family particle becomes disintegrated.

No power but that of Deity can bring them again together, and as God proceeds by law, and the law fixed for these relations have not been complied with, the separation continues while endless ages roll. "In the resurrection _they_ neither marry, nor are given in marriage," but, if in a saved condition, are as the angels, and they are ministering spirits or servants unto those who obtain the crown of eternal lives, "a far more and exceeding and eternal weight of glory," than that which rests upon any of the angels. Men and women may be _saved_ in a separate and single state, but they cannot be _exalted_ into the fullness of celestial glory without union in celestial marriage, because that is a state of perfection and comprehends the gift of perpetual increase, in which there are endless dominion and the exercise of all the powers of immortal manhood and womanhood united as one in the everlasting covenant.

In the divine economy, as in nature, the man "is the head of the woman," and it is written that "he is the savior of the body." But "the man is not without the woman" any more than the woman is without the man, in the Lord. Adam was first formed, then Eve. In the resurrection they stand side by side and hold dominion together. Every man who overcomes all things and is thereby entitled to inherit all things, receives power to bring up his wife to join him in the possession and enjoyment thereof.

In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory. Is there any reason why this should not be so? Is not each of these wives entitled to her position in eternity, by virtue of the sealing power which made her part of the man? Why should one enter into the exaltation of the celestial world, and the other be relegated to singleness and servitude? They all become one in the patriarchal order of family government. And if this be the case in heaven, why should not similar conditions so far as possible exist on earth? Is earth holier than heaven? If a man receives from the Lord more wives than one under the sealing ordinances of celestial marriage, where is the moral wrong? They belong to no other man, but are his by mutual consent of all the interested parties, and they live together in the marriage state, one as much as the other.

In this position there are occasions for the exercise of patience, forbearance, charity, self-sacrifice and the exercise of all the virtues to a far greater degree than in any other. In this plural family relation, an experience can be gained that no other condition in life affords, and the parties who so live and keep the law will be, in the very nature of things, prepared for a wider sphere of dominion, and power, and dignity, and might in the eternal world, than those who have only experienced the monogamic condition. They will, therefore, if they endure unto the end, go forward into the highest degree of exaltation, while their posterity will multiply in an ever-increasing ratio, until worlds will be filled by their generations and they will ascend to the majesty and splendor of the Gods on high.

Herein is our Eternal Father glorified and His dominions extended. By the continuation of the seeds of the righteous forever, the multiplication of His sons and daughters creates the needs for worlds and systems, to be brought forth according to eternal laws, to occupy their position in the universe as dwelling places for spirits, and embodied mortals, and perfected souls, in the various grades on the path of progress towards the perfection of the celestial order; as orbs of light and splendor, or globes of trial, punishment or correction, each in its allotted sphere in the galaxy of suns and stars and planets, and in the vast and wondrous plans of the Mighty Architect, the Eternal Parent of organized intelligencies.

In obedience to His laws, there is present peace and future joy. They who are in harmony with Him are in affinity with the source of all pleasure and power. His commandments are found in the laws of continuing life, which regulate as permanent things; and they who reject Him and His counsels shut the gate against their own happiness and advancement. But, for them who receive His gospel and conform to all its ordinances and teachings, the door is open to the highest courts in the heavenly mansions, and while they are helped through the ordeals of mortal life, they gain the keys to all the glories of that existence in which the family relation is perfected and perpetuated, and every power of the whole being, refined, intensified and developed, finds exercise, in its true sphere, to the complete and unalloyed bliss of each one in the endless family circle, and the glory of Him who is the Patriarch and Ruler of all.

TWELFTH LEAF.

Christ's Work Continued After His Death--The Perfect Science of Human Redemption--What was Lost in the Fall--What is to be Regained in the Restoration--Justice Tempered with Mercy--Loss Sustained by the Disobedient--Doom of the Sons of Perdition--The Celestial, Terrestrial and Telestial Glories--Redemption and Glorification of the Earth--Salvation of the Whole Race--The Finished Work of Christ--Universal Dominion of the Father.

The mission of Christ was to save that which was lost. It was not completed when He hung upon the cross. His dying exclamation, "It is finished!" referred to His sufferings for sin, the ordeals of mortality, His labors in the flesh. As we have seen, He continued His work of salvation when out of the body, by preaching to the dead. After His resurrection He met, on several occasions, with His disciples, and instructed them in the plan of redemption and sent them to all nations, that the work He had commenced on earth might be continued. He ministered to other nations, uttered His voice to other sheep which were not of the fold in Palestine, that the lost tribes of Israel and all who could not be reached by His Jewish Apostles might hear the glad tidings of salvation. This, however, not fully revealed in the Bible, is made clear in the Book of Mormon. After His ascension, to fulfill His own promise, He went to prepare a place for His faithful disciples, that when they left the earth they might be able to abide with Him.

But all this was only a small part of the perfect scheme of redemption. That which was lost in Adam is to be regained in Christ. Through the commission of crime, death came into the world. Satan gained dominion. The earth trembled under the curse. Eden bloomed no more upon its face. The tree of life was removed. Thorns and briers and noxious weeds came up in the place of the flowers and fruits of paradise. Deity was hidden from the sight of man. Sorrow and pain and toil and travail became the heritage of mortals. Enmity arose between man and beast. Venom entered the serpent's fangs, and rage the hearts of brute and fowl and aqueous creature. Strife dwelt in the very elements and death brooded over the face of the smitten globe.

What, then, was lost? The immortality of man; the blessed tree of life; communion with Jehovah; the companionship of angels; the purity of paradise; man's dominion over inferior creatures; freedom from satanic influence; exemption from toil and pain; earth's affinity with perfected realms on high.

Until all this has been restored, Christ's work must continue. The earth must be cleansed from its corruptions. The elements must melt with fervent heat, and be purified from evil. Satan and his hosts must be banished and bound. Eden must blossom again as at first. The lion and the lamb must lie down together. The fig tree and the myrtle must flourish where the rank weeds grow. The whole race of Adam must be raised from the dead. The vail between earth and heaven must be removed. The knowledge and glory of God must cover the earth as the waters cover the deep, and the spirit of life and peace and light and joy must be poured out upon all flesh, until the whole creation vibrates with pleasure and responds with praise.

The ushering in of the great millennial day, a glimpse of which has been seen by all the holy prophets since the world began, with the sweet rest of earth and its inhabitants, is not, however, the completion of Christ's glorious work. His kingdom must not only be established from pole to pole and from shore to shore, but His saving power must penetrate to every lost soul of our race in, the regions of the damned.

A just judgment will be meted out to all. They who reject the gospel must suffer the penalty. Those who are found worthy of many stripes must receive their portion. The wicked will be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God. Each condemned person will pay the uttermost farthing for his sins. Justice, tempered, not warped or thwarted, by mercy, will mete out to all their right deserts, "every man according to His works." The punishment is always existent, therefore it is eternal punishment. But each one who suffers, receives only his just portion thereof. Shall the murderer and the Sabbath-breaker, the adulterer and the thief, the drunkard and the profane, all merit the same doom? Would human courts proclaim such judgment? Shall man have more equity than God? When stern justice has claimed its own and filled its purpose, shall there be no place for sweet mercy?

While there is one soul of this race, willing and able to accept and obey the laws of redemption, no matter where or in what condition it may be found, Christ's work will be incomplete until that being is brought up from death and hell, and placed in a position of progress, upward and onward, in such glory as is possible for its enjoyment and the service of the great God.