Elias: An Epic of the Ages

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 asserts that the City of Enoch stood where the Gulf of Mexico now is.

11—2432. **Tri-Branching Tree.** Noah and his three sons, Japheth, 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 Mass, Contemning Class.** 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—Title: **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 shore 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. **Japheth'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 faggot and sword, have helped God'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 assailed 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 Hancock 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 associates 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 God"—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.

25—2882. **Long Lost Captives.** The Ten Tribes, carried away by the Assyrians, B. C. 721, and who are to return from "the north countries" (D. and C. 133:26-35).

26—2891. **Rallying the Loyal.** The Latter-day Saints have been taught to look forward to a time when they, lifting up an ensign to lovers of law, order, and liberty, and reinforced by them, will save this Nation, while anarchy is aiming at its life.

27—2903. **Inglorious Battleground.** The field of Cumorah.

28—2905. **Where Erst He Fled.** The House of Joseph, in modern times, begins its march of destiny at the Hill Cumorah, where the Nephites (also of Joseph) met their tragic fate. There is a tradition to the effect that every Temple reared by the Latter-day Saints marks a stage in the flight of the doomed Nephites, pursued by the victorious Lamanites, to the final slaughter at that historic hill.

29—2919. **Ruined Lie.** The allusion is to cities and temples built and abandoned by the Saints in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. (D. and C. 101, 103, and 105.)

30—2924. **Union * * * Enoch Saw.** The United Order—all things consecrated to God. (D. and C. 105:4, 5.)

31—2930. **Her Trembling Foes.** "Let us not go up to battle against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible." (D. and C. 45:70.)

32—2951. **Pain Shall Bring Thee Power.** Sacrificial trials, that purify and elevate, redound to the advantage of posterity. The parents suffer that the children may be blest. All noble and powerful races have "come up through great tribulation."

33—2969. **City of Joseph.** A name given to Nauvoo after the Prophet's martyrdom.

—CANTO TEN

1—Title: **The Parted Veil.** Joseph's vision and prophecy of the future. He is represented as foretelling to his people their great destiny.

2—2994. **Honor of a State.** Joseph the Prophet and Hyrum the Patriarch were murdered while under the pledged protection of the Governor of Illinois. The mob that fired its fatal volleys into the bosoms of the martyrs, and went unwhipped of justice, struck down the honor of a sovereign commonwealth of the American Union.

3—2998. **The Blazing Dome.** The Nauvoo Temple, burned by the mob forces, after they had captured the city and expelled the remnant of the persecuted community left behind at the beginning of the exodus in February, 1846.

4—3003. **New Born Babes.** Nine infants, it is said, were born in the camps of the fugitive Saints, on Sugar Creek, Iowa, the first night out from Nauvoo.

5—3011. **Born in a Day. "Little One"—"A Thousand."**—Applications of ancient prophecy. (Isaiah 60:22 and 66:8).

6—3016. **Cities Twain.** Zion and Jerusalem, the future capitals of the Saviour's Kingdom; the former the seat of representative government, the latter of monarchical power. "Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isaiah 2:3; Micah 4:2.)

7—3024. **Fain Would Dwell.** The extension of slavery to the West was the dream of the South before the Civil War. This was one reason why the Southern States favored the war with Mexico.

8—3026. **Aztec's Altar.** The region settled by the "Mormon" people, between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, belonged to Mexico, the Land of the Aztecs.

9—3030. **Golden Empire!** California, as a Mexican province, included the present States of Utah and Nevada. Some of the earliest settlers of Salt Lake Valley had previously helped to colonize California, and were among those who discovered gold there, January, 1848.

10—3032. **Eden on the Desert Brine.** The redeemed Wilderness surrounding the Great Salt Lake, and formerly known as "The Great American Desert."

11—3044. **Land of the Honey Bee.** The State of Utah.

12—3045. **Pilgrim Sire.** The author's father, Horace Kimball Whitney, was one of the Pioneers who entered Salt Lake Valley, July 24, 1847.

13—3054. **Hear Me, My People!** At this point begins the Prophet's farewell address. The preceding stanzas of this Canto are a generalization of what follows in detail.

14—3073. **Nebo's Height.** Joseph, compared to Moses, is predicting his own death and the coming of his successor, the President of the Twelve, upon whom the Prophet placed the right of succession.

15—3082. **Stalwart Upon the Mountains.** At Montrose, Iowa, August 6, 1842, Joseph Smith predicted that the Saints would be driven westward, and would "become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains."

16—3090. **War Shall Wound.** On Christmas Day, 1832, the Prophet foretold the war between the North and South. (D. and C. 87.) According to tradition, he also declared that those nations that first received the Gospel in this dispensation, would be preserved when "the consumption decreed" "made a full end of all nations."

17—4034. **First Born Fold.** Ephraim, fulfilling his mission in the region of the Rocky Mountains.

18—4041. **Brave Sons of Battling Sires.** Descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution.

19—4053. **And by that Power.** "The redemption of Zion must needs come by power." (D. and C. 103:15.)

20—4066. **Zion's Land.** Zion in a restricted sense—Jackson County.

21—4080. **The Common Good.** Christ's Commonwealth, foreshadowed by the American Union.

22—4089. **The Sceptered Harlot.** The Woman described in the Apocalypse as sitting "upon many waters"—a "great city" reigning "over the kings of the earth." (Rev. 17.)

23—5002. **A Seventh Realm.** Joseph, paraphrasing Paul, said concerning himself: "I know a man who was caught up to the seventh heaven."

24—5033. **I Am.** The Name Divine. (Ex. 3:14.)

25—5047. **Light and Liberty.** "At the first organization in Heaven we were all present and saw the Saviour chosen and appointed, and the plan of salvation made, and we sanctioned it."—Joseph Smith (Compendium, p. 288).

26—5055. **Freedom's Code.** The Gospel of Christ, "the perfect law of liberty," typed by the American Constitution, guaranteeing freedom and equal rights.

27—5070. **Not Esau's Hand.** Culture as well as strength must play its part in the building up of God's Kingdom. Zion, at first primitive and crude, shall become "the perfection of beauty," "the joy of the whole earth." Her original builders may be likened to the massive, immovable foundations of a structure whose polished walls and glittering spires are represented by their children, educated under improved conditions, and yet to stand in the forefront of the world's civilization.

28—5072. **The Kingdom to Complete.** "The spirit and power of Elijah is to come after, holding the keys of power, building the temple to the capstone, placing the seals of the Melchisedek Priesthood upon the House of Israel, and making all things ready; then Messiah comes to his Temple."—Joseph Smith (Compendium, p. 283; D. and C. 27).

—EPILOGUE

1—Title: **The Angel Ascendant.** The Angel ascending from the East (Rev. 7:2; D. and C. 77:9). This is Elias, an address to and a response from whom forms the body of the epilogue, or final division of the poem.

2—6017. **Rose Again.** Elias the All-restorer is represented as reopening for Adam the closed communication between Earth and Heaven.

3—6018. **The City Sanctified.** The City of Enoch.

4—6025. **Alien Fire.** The Gospel, restored through Noah, standing at the head of a dispensation, was carried by his descendants, after the Flood, to various parts of the earth, where fragments of it remain, mixed with the traditions of men. Ceremonies similar to, or suggestive of Gospel ordinances, and found among primitive peoples, are thus accounted for.

5—6027. **The Root of Shiloh.** Abraham, ancestor to Jesus of Nazareth.

6—6029. **Believing Blood.** "How, by the dispersion of the children of Abraham, was the promise to the patriarch fulfilled, that in him and in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed? * * * By this dispersion the blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the blood of faith, the blood that believes—with choice spirits answering to that blood, and selected for that purpose, were sent into those nations where the Gospel was afterwards preached, spirits capable of recognizing the truth, and brave enough to embrace it." (Gospel Themes, p. 156.)

7—6033. **Egypt's Chain.** The spirit of Elias was upon Moses when he led Israel out of bondage.

8—6036. **Long Captivity.** The Assyrian Captivity, which carried away the ten tribes.

9—6038. **Whose Sword.** The sword of Joshua, the conqueror of Canaan.

10—6042. **Kishon's Brook.** It was at the Brook Kishon that Elijah slew the Priests of Baal.

11—6045. **Named Ere Born.** Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, who restored the captive Jews, was named by Isaiah more than a century before his birth. (Isaiah, 45:1.)

12—6049. **Long Sealed Canopy.** The Heavens at the opening of the Last Dispensation.

13—6055. **The Kingdom's Keys.** The Melchisedek Priesthood. Elijah "holds the keys of the authority to administer in all the ordinances of the Priesthood." (History of the Church, Vol. 4, p. 211; D. and C. 2.)

14—6063. **Abrahamic Keys.** Elias, in the Kirtland Temple, "committed the keys of the Gospel of Abraham." (D. and C. 110:12.)

15—6067. **How Tell the Sum?** This stanza associates Columbus, Jefferson and Washington, impersonally, with others previously mentioned, as agents of Elias.

16—6083. **Jacob Upon Esau's Heel.** Genesis, 25:26.

17—7001. **Chaldean Dream.** The nations represented by the image seen in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, are to pass, like the dream itself, which the king was unable to recall.

18—7010. **Adorned and Ready.** When the Church, the Bride, is fully prepared, the Lord, the Bridegroom, will come.

19—7015. **Destroyers Four.** Four angels (Rev. 7:1; D. and C. 77:8, 9).

20—7017. **Twelve Times Twelve.** The One Hundred and Forty-Four Thousand. (Rev. 14:1; D. and C. 77:11.)

21—7022. **The Bow's Bright Promise.** Joseph the Seer gave, as a sign of the Second Coming, the withdrawal of the rainbow. Christ would not come during any year that the rainbow was visible; but when it was permanently withdrawn, the world might know that His coming was near at hand. (Compendium, p. 83.)

22—7036. **Prophet of the Dawn.** Elias, the Morning Star.