Nevertheless, this life of ours is no trifle, no insignificant
incident in the soul's eternal course, having but small and
temporal importance, the omissions of which can be rectified with
ease by the individual beyond the veil. If compliance with the
divine law as exemplified by the requirements of faith,
repentance, baptism, and the bestowal of the right to the
ministrations of the Holy Ghost, are essential to the salvation
of those few who just now are counted among the living, such is
not less necessary for those who once were living but now are
dead. Who are the living of today but those who shortly shall be
added to the uncounted dead? Who are the dead but those who at
some time have lived in mortality?

Christ has been ordained to be judge of both quick and dead; he
is Lord of living and dead as man uses these terms, for all live
unto him. How then shall the dead receive the blessings and
ordinances denied to them or by them neglected while in the
flesh? "Mormonism" answers: By the vicarious work of the living
in their behalf! It was this great and privileged labor to which
the prophet Malachi referred in his solemn declaration, that
before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, Elijah should be
sent with the commission to turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children and the hearts of the children to the fathers. Elijah's
visitation to earth has been realized. On the 3rd of April, in
the year 1836, there appeared unto Joseph Smith and Oliver
Cowdery, in the temple erected by the. Latter-day Saints at
Kirtland, Ohio, Elijah the prophet, who announced that the time
spoken of by Malachi had fully come; then and there he bestowed
the authority, for this dispensation, to inaugurate and carry on