In the justice of the Almighty the plan of salvation must be so comprehensive and general that the human family, without distinction, shall have the opportunity of receiving it. We learn from the Pearl of Great Price that before Adam departed to the life beyond, God revealed to him the plan of salvation. He obeyed it and communicated this knowledge to his posterity during the seven generations that lived contemporary with him. With the Gospel, necessarily came the authority of God to administer in the ordinances thereof. This authority is called the Holy Priesthood. In a revelation given the prophet Joseph Smith, September 22d and 23d, 1832, and contained in Sec. 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants, we learn that the priesthood was conferred through Father Adam by the laying on of hands upon Abel, and from Abel or Seth was conferred through the lineage of their descendants to Enoch, and from Enoch to Noah down to Melchisedek, who conferred it upon Abraham. In the days of Abraham lived the great prophet Esaias, who, the revelation informs us, received the priesthood under the hand of God. From Esaias it was handed down through an unbroken chain to the prophet Moses, but because of the unbelief and hardness of the people, "He took Moses out of their midst and the Holy Priesthood also, and the lesser priesthood continued." (Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 84.) This record shows an unbroken succession of the Holy Priesthood and the Gospel of Christ from Adam to Moses, a period of about 2,500 years. Then began those periods of the world's history when the fullness of the Gospel was not to be had among the children of men, periods when the spirit of darkness engrossed the human family and left mankind, in a great degree, as a blind man groping for the wall. The first of these periods continued from Moses until the Savior came and restored the higher priesthood, established His church upon the earth, and sent his apostles to preach the Gospel in all the world. Another similar period was from the time the Gospel became corrupted, in the first two or three centuries of the Christian era, to its restoration in this dispensation through the prophet Joseph Smith. The Christian dispensation of the Gospel continued to a greater length upon the American continent, extending to nearly 400 years after Christ. What success attended the Gospel among the ten lost tribes whom the Messiah visited and how long it was maintained among them is not yet revealed, but will be in the due time of the Lord.