"Now we believe that those who embraced the gospel in the spirit world will be saved; and believe with the scriptures that a vicarious work must be performed for them by the living. This doctrine was evidently understood by the saints in the days of the apostles. Paul informs us that the first gospel ordinance of all dispensations, baptism, was administered by proxy among the former-day Saints. While teaching the Corinthian saints about the resurrection, (I Cor. xv: 29) he asks them: 'Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all?' in other words, of what use is baptism for the dead, if there is no resurrection? showing that the doctrine of baptism for the dead was evidently neither new nor strange to the people to whom the apostle was writing. Christ died for the dead as well as the living: "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and the living." (Rom. xiv: 9.) "But do you mean that living persons shall be baptized for the dead?" "Certainly. Before the great day of the Lord shall come 'that shall burn as an oven, and when all the proud, yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch,' (Mal. iv: 1,) an important event is to take place, as we learn from the same prophet, verses 5 and 6: 'Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.' The coming of Elijah, to inaugurate this great work must evidently be to some one who is prepared to receive him. His mission, 'to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers' is very comprehensive, and pertains to the whole family of Adam, there being no discrimination between the living and the dead, between those who have lived in the past and those who shall live in the future. There must be a welding link between the fathers and their children, and that welding link is baptism for the dead. We testify that Elijah has come; that he appeared to Joseph, the seer, and Oliver Cowdery, in the Kirtland Temple, on the 3rd of April, 1836, and said: 'Behold, the time has fully come, which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi, testifying that he (Elijah) should be sent before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse. Therefore, the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands, and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors.' Ordinances for the salvation of the dead require temples, or sacred places, especially constructed for their administration; for