Elias Part 20

CANTO EIGHT

1--t.i.tle: **The Lifted Ensign.** The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized April 6, 1830.

2--2357. **Shepherds Twain.** Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, the first and second Elders of the Church.

3--2366. **Giant of Untruth.** The parallel begun in the first stanza continues through the second.

4--2380. **Time Yet Was Young.** Here the main narrative reverts to the story of Enoch and his city, as revealed to Joseph the Seer, and embodied in the Book of Moses (6 and 7). In the poem that story continues as far as the line, "And Noah's righteous seed in me rejoice."

5--2389. **Sainted Commonweal.** The City of Enoch.

6--2400. **Chain * * * Sundered.** The people of Enoch, under the Law of Consecration, attained to such a superior condition that it was said of them: "And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind and dwelt in righteousness, and there was no poor among them." (Moses 7:18.)

7--2404. **Armageddon's Conflict.** The final struggle between the powers of Good and Evil, when Satan will be overthrown (D. and C.

88:112-115).

8--2409. **Terrestrial Radiance.** "Their place of habitation is that of the terrestrial order." They are "held in reserve to be ministering angels unto many planets," and "as yet have not entered into so great a fulness as those who are resurrected from the dead."

Joseph Smith ("History of the Church," Vol. 4, pp. 209, 210).

9--2420. **The Captive Free.** Christ, during the interval between his crucifixion and resurrection, visited and preached to "the spirits in prison"--spirits disobedient in the days of Noah, and swept away by the Deluge (I Peter 3:19, 20; and 4:61; Key to Theology 14).

10--2424. **Climbing Robber-like.** According to the Bible, the people who built the Tower of Babel did so that its top might "reach unto heaven" (Gen. 11:4). Joseph Smith is said to have declared that the "heaven" they had in view was the City of Enoch, then suspended within sight of the earth. Endeavoring to get to Heaven by "another way," the builders of Babel were comparable to "thieves and robbers."

Tradition a.s.serts that the City of Enoch stood where the Gulf of Mexico now is.

11--2432. **Tri-Branching Tree.** Noah and his three sons, j.a.pheth, Shem and Ham.

12--2464. **One Like Unto Him.** Joseph Smith was a man like unto Moses, who was like unto Christ. Moses led Israel out of temporal bondage, and Joseph began a work destined to deliver Israel from spiritual bondage. Thus Moses and Joseph were both typical of Him who redeemed the world from the bondage of sin and death.

13--2467. **A Two-Fold Type.** The social and spiritual condition of the Jewish saints and the Nephite disciples foretokened the Millennium. Joseph Smith had in view the realization of what Enoch had achieved, and what the primitive Christians endeavored to accomplish, in preparing a people for the presence of the Lord.

14--2473. **Sought Fulfillment.** Following these words is a description of social conditions at the time of the advent of "Mormonism."

15--2604. **The Trampled Terror.** A personification of the French Revolution.

16--2607. **Frowning Ma.s.s, Contemning Cla.s.s.** The social problem of the Twentieth Century.

17--2630. **Time An Enoch Came.** Joseph Smith is likened unto Enoch, and even called by that name, in some of the early revelations (D.

and C., 78, 92, 96, and 104). This may have been done to impress the fact that Joseph's work was similar to that of Enoch.

18--2656. **A Holy Hand.** John the Baptist, ordaining Joseph and Oliver to the Aaronic Priesthood, May 15, 1829 (D. and C. 13).

19--2661. **Panoply of Power.** The Priesthood. The main narrative here resumes from the point of digression.

20--2694. **Again The Woman Wonderful.** The Church of Christ in its Latter-day Restoration.

CANTO NINE

1--t.i.tle: **Upon the Shoulders of the Philistine.** Under this caption, suggested by Isaiah 11:14, is treated the westward movement of the Latter-day Saints, incidental to the gathering of scattered Israel.

2--2722. **Eaglet's Nest Is Empty.** Within a year after its organization the church migrated from its birthplace, Fayette, Seneca County, New York, and the surrounding region.

3--2724. **Storied Strand.** The sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie, in Northern Ohio, where the Saints began to settle early in 1831. There they built their first Temple, and took initial steps toward founding the United Order, under the Law of Consecration.

4--2742. **Shinea's Land.** Kirtland, Ohio, and its environs, was "The Land of Shinehah" (D. and C. 82:12 and 104:40-48). From that part, in 1837-38, the Church moved its headquarters to Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri.

5--2750. **Their Powers Bestow.** An allusion to visions seen in the Kirtland Temple, April 3, 1836 (D. and C. 110).

6--2759. **Laman's Bands.** The first mission to the Lamanites (Indians) was undertaken in the autumn of 1830. The missionaries labored also among the white people of Ohio and Missouri. At Independence, which was then on the frontier of the United States, they crossed the line into Indian Territory, now the State of Kansas.

7--2767. **Lands the Rarest.** The region drained by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

8--2779. **j.a.pheth's Wrath.** The Gentiles in Western Missouri, misapprehending the motives of the "Mormons" in gathering to that part, and incited by evil-minded agitators, rose against the newcomers, and drove them first from Jackson County, and eventually from the State.

9--2788. **The Shoulders.** Civilization, with its steamships, railroads, and other utilities, and persecution, with f.a.ggot and sword, have helped G.o.d's people to accomplish their destiny. "The blood of the martyrs" has been "the seed of the Church," whose every movement, voluntary or compulsory, has been toward the goal of its ultimate triumph.

10--2791. **Calm Caesar.** Julius Caesar, while crossing a stormswept water, quieted the apprehensions of his boatman by remarking, "Fear not, you carry Caesar and his fortunes."

11--2794. **The Law of Liberty.** The Gospel of Christ, misnamed "Mormonism."

12--2800. **Sees Menace.** Having come mostly from the North and the East, the "Mormons" were suspected by the slave-holding Missourians of being abolitionists. This false charge, with others equally groundless, caused the persecution that followed.

13--2813. **A Second Pharaoh * * * A Herod.** These epithets fitly characterize the Governor of Missouri, Lilburn W. Boggs, who issued the edict under which the persecuted people were expelled. Said he, to the mob-militia who drove them from their homes: "The Mormons must be exterminated or driven from the State."

14--2815. **Gathering the Whirlwind.** Missouri paid her debt to justice during the Civil War, when her Western borders, where mob violence had a.s.sailed her "Mormon" citizens, were ravaged again and again by the fierce guerilla warfare that spent its fury in that unhappy region.

15--2829. **Shakes the Dungeon.** Joseph Smith and others were imprisoned in Richmond Jail, where they were taunted by their guards, who boasted of murders and outrages committed upon the defenseless people after the surrender of Far West. The lion-hearted leader endured it till he could endure no more. Springing to his feet, he rebuked the ribald wretches, commanding them in the name of Jesus Christ to be still. They obeyed, cowering before him and begging his pardon. Parley P. Pratt, a fellow prisoner with the Prophet, says of this remarkable incident: "He ceased to speak. He stood erect in terrible majesty, chained and without a weapon. * * * I have seen the ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes, and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended on a breath in the courts of England; I have witnessed a Congress in solemn session to give laws to nations * * * but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains at midnight in a dungeon, in an obscure village of Missouri." (Autobiography, pp. 229, 230.)

16--2835. **Disease and Death Subdued.** After the Prophet had regained his freedom, and while his followers were settling at Commerce (afterwards Nauvoo), an epidemic of fever and ague swept over that region. Many, prostrated by the malady, were miraculously healed under his administrations.

17--2836. **Sire of Waters.** The Mississippi River.

18--2839. **City, Mother of Many.** Nauvoo the Beautiful, built upon the site of Commerce, in Hanc.o.c.k County, Illinois, was the parent and model of many other cities subsequently founded by the Latter-day Saints, mostly in the region of the Rocky Mountains.

19--2846. **Unworldly Link.** The Nauvoo Temple, where work began in this dispensation for the salvation of the dead.

20--2847. **Elijah's Mightier Mission.** Malachi 3:1 and 4:5, 6; D.

and C. 110:4-16; History of the Church, Vol. 4, p. 211; Gospel Themes, pp. 138, 139.

21--2860. **Crisis Past.** Early in 1837, during a period of apostacy at Kirtland, the Prophet said: "Something new must be done to save the Church." Thereupon he appointed Heber C. Kimball, of the Council of the Twelve, to head a mission to Europe. Part of the opposition encountered by Elder Kimball and his a.s.sociates was a fierce onslaught by evil spirits, at Preston, England, where they began their labors. (Life of Heber C. Kimball, pp. 138-146.) The first company of emigrating Saints from abroad sailed from Liverpool for Nauvoo, in 1840. By that time another apostolic mission, headed by Brigham Young, President of the Twelve, had been sent to the British Isles.

22--2863. **Befriended by the Just.** Many of the people of Illinois extended a hospitable welcome to the plundered and homeless "Mormons," fleeing out of Missouri.

23--2866. **Earliest Offering.** Ephraim is the first branch of the Israelitish tree to bear the fruits of faith in and obedience to the Gospel in latter days. "Ephraim is my first-born," the Lord says through Jeremiah (31:9). That is, Ephraim, who "mixed himself among the people" (Hosea 7:8), is the first to be "born of G.o.d"--baptized and gathered out from the nations.

24--2877. **Egypt of the West.** America, where the gathered descendants of Joseph are to re-enact upon a larger scale the part played by their great ancestor in the famine-stricken nation on the Nile.