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.
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