REACHING AFTER THE DEAD "Lest We Forget" THE Latter-day Saints are deeply concerned in the identification of their dead, back through the generations to the remotest extent possible. This is exemplified by the persistent ardor of the people in the compilation and preservation of genealogical records, the collating of items of lineage, and the formulation of true family pedigrees, by which the facts as to the relationship of ancestors to posterity may be determined. In this specific activity the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not working alone; for it is a notable fact that during the last seven or eight decades, interest in genealogical matters has developed to a degree theretofore unknown in modern history. The living are reaching backward to learn of their dead. And in this movement, as in many other distinguishing features of particular epochs, a power superior to man's unguided purpose is operative. The immediate motive in such undertakings may vary with the individual. Many, doubtless, are eager to trace their pedigree to an illustrious source according to human estimate of eminence; and of these some find disappointment. As literature attests, many spurious pedigrees have been fabricated. It was probably against such that Paul inveighed in his terse admonition to both Timothy (1 Tim. 1:4) and Titus (3:9) and through them to the Church, to eschew fables and endless genealogies, from the discussion of which only contention would result. The Latter-day Saints have a specific, and, indeed, unique purpose in genealogical investigation. They seek not nobility nor aristocracy of ancestry, but the facts, let the line lead where it may; and the shadow of falsification would be fatal to their object. Every believer in individual existence beyond the grave--and everybody believes in or fears the certainty of such a state--hopes and yearns for the blessed condition we call salvation. On the authority of Scripture the Church proclaims that "through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel"; and conversely, that without compliance with the laws and ordinances prescribed by Jesus Christ no man can have place in the Kingdom of God. Who can doubt this basal and portentous truth in the light of the Savior's definite and unqualified affirmation to the learned Jew, Nicodemus, respecting baptism by water and of the Spirit (see John 3:5), which requirements are among the fundamental laws and ordinances of the Gospel? In His comprehensive declaration our Lord made no discrimination of classes, drew no distinction between the living and the dead. But what of the unnumbered hosts who have lived and died without a knowledge of the indispensability of baptism, or, though they knew yet never had opportunity to be baptized by one holding the authority of the Holy Priesthood to so administer? Are they irrecoverably lost? A frightful thought!