CANTO SIX
1—Title: **From Out The Dust.** A paraphrase of Isaiah 29:4. The prediction is held to have been fulfilled in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. This entire Canto is based upon the general content of that volume. It embodies the prehistoric story of America, assumed to have been related by the angel custodian to the translator of the buried Book of Gold.
2—1415. **Must Righteous Be.** See Ether 2:8-12.
3—1434. **Former State.** The Book of Mormon is the only adequate explanation of the origin of the American Indians.
4—1457. **Ancient Altar.** Adam's altar, in Adam-ondi-Ahman, otherwise Spring Hill, Daviess County, Missouri, (D. and C. 116; History of the Church, Vol. 3, p. 388).
5—1461. **Dual Grave.** Burial in earth and hell, or death temporal and spiritual.
6—1466. **Where Adam Dwelt.** According to Joseph Smith, Jackson County, Missouri, is the ancient site of the Garden of Eden. Our First Parents, after their expulsion from Eden, dwelt in the Valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman. See Note 4.
7—1468. **Still Chaste.** The fall of Adam and Eve, while technically a sin because of a broken law, should be stressed as the means whereby God's children obtained their bodies, rather than as an act of moral turpitude. There are two general classes of crimes—malum per se and malum prohibitum. Malum per se is a Latin phrase signifying "an evil in itself," while malum prohibitum means "that which is wrong because forbidden by law." The transgression of our First Parents was malum prohibitum, and the consequent descent from an immortal to a mortal condition was the Fall.
8—1470. **Love's Work.** Adam's fall prepared the way for Christ's redemptive mission. Had there been no fall, man would have remained a spirit, without a body, and consequently imperfect. Christ redeemed the soul—spirit and body—and put it in the way to perfection.
9—1471. **Zion of Primeval Days.** The City of Enoch. (Moses 7:18-64; History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 209, 210; D. and C. 84:99-102.)
10—1479. **Final Change.** The change wrought upon the people of Enoch by translation not being equivalent to resurrection, they will have to undergo a further change, to prepare them for celestial glory. But they will not taste of death. A similar lot is that of John the Beloved (John 21:20-23; D. and C. 7); also of the Three Nephites (III Nephi 28) and of certain ones mentioned by Paul (I Cor. 15:50-54).
11—1480. **New Jerusalem.** The divinely chosen site for the Holy City is Independence, Jackson County, Missouri.
12—1484. **Japheth * * * Shem.** The reference is to Noah's blessing upon Shem and Japheth (Gen. 9:26-27). From Shem came Abraham, the ancestor of the House of Israel; and from Japheth the Gentiles, the founders of the most enlightened nations of modern times, including the United States of America. Ham, through Canaan, was the progenitor of the negro race, long held in slavery in this and other Gentile countries. The Ethiopian has also served the Semite, as Noah predicted. How Japheth has "dwelt in the tents of Shem," is partly shown by the history of Palestine, long dominated by the Gentiles, particularly the Turks, who still possess it. Japheth's remarkable blessing has also been realized in the history of our own country, America, which the Gentiles now inhabit, and where, according to the Book of Mormon, they are to assist in gathering Israel and building the New Jerusalem, (III Nephi 20 and 21). It is their privilege to share, if they will, in all the blessings promised to the chosen people. (Abraham 2:9-11.) "The tents of Shem" may be interpreted to mean the homes of the people of God, lineally descended from Shem, through Abraham.
13—1485. **An Ark of Peace.** "It shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another." (D. and C. 45:69).
14—1486. **The Ensign.** The Church of Christ in Latter Days.
15—1487. **Joseph Signals Jacob.** Joseph, in Ephraim, begins the work of Israel's gathering.
16—1489. **Ancient of Days.** Adam as the Ancient of Days will return to the place where he blessed his posterity. (D. and C. 116; History of the Church, Vol. 3, p. 388). See notes 4 and 6.
17—1507. **Hesperia.** The West—America.
18—1512. **That Servant.** The servant mentioned by the Saviour to the Nephites. (III Nephi 21:10, 11).
19—1515. **God's Legion.** "Zion, which shall come forth out of all the creations which I have made." (Moses 7:64).
20—1517. **Land of Joseph.** America, as the Latter-day Saints have been taught to believe, was given to Joseph of old as an inheritance. (Gen. 49:22, 26; Deut. 33:13-17).
21—1519. **Gog and Magog.** Gog is the name of a person; Magog, of a country or people. According to Ezekiel (38 and 39) Gog, "the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal," was to come with his people from the North to invade the land of Israel and there suffer defeat. Gog and Magog are generally understood as symbolical expressions for the heathen nations of Asia, more particularly the Scythians. In this poem the allusion is to those nations that war against Zion.
22—1538. **Where, Joseph?** Joseph Smith is meant. To him, after a general introduction, Moroni relates the story of the Jaredites, as told in that part of the Book of Mormon entitled "The Book of Ether."
23—1540. **Wide Severing.** In the days of Peleg the earth was "divided" (Gen. 10:25). Whether this means the dividing "to the nations" of "their inheritance" (Deut. 32.8), or a tearing asunder of the land into continents and islands, is not stated. The latter view, the one here suggested, may help to explain why the site of the Garden of Eden is now in North America.
24—1543. **Sons of Shinar.** The Jaredites, who came from the Tower of Babel, the place of which was "a plain in the Land of Shinar." (Gen. 11:2). Shinar was Chaldea.
25—1547. **Primal Tongue.** The language of the Jaredites—the pure Adamic tongue—was not confounded.
26—1554. **A Book Sublime.** A book written by the Jaredite leader, and yet to come forth. That leader was Mahonri Moriancumr, though this name does not occur in the Book of Mormon. "The Brother of Jared" is the only appellation bestowed upon him there. Joseph Smith supplied the missing name.
27—1557. **Baptismal Billows.** The Jaredites, in barges, passed through the depths of the ocean, to reach their Land of Promise (Ether 6:6). Their voyage was therefore a baptism, more literal than the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and referred to by Paul as a baptism. (1 Cor. 10:2.)
28—1561. **Shelem's Height.** The Mount Shelem, so called "because of its exceeding height." (Ether 3:1).
29—1566. **Wing-Like Continents.** North and South America.
30—1573. **Mahonri's Realm.** North America, possessed by the Jaredites down to about 600 B. C., when the nation was destroyed by internecine strife.
31—1580. **Freedom's Greater Cause.** The Cause of Christ.
32—1591. **Past Zions Rose.** "Thou hast taken Zion to thine own bosom, from all thy creations, from all eternity to all eternity." (Moses 7:31.)
33—1595. **Fortressed by God's Mightiness.** I Nephi 13:19; Ether 2:12; D. and C. 45:70.
34—1601. **"Give Us a King."** The Jaredites demanded a king—a demand reluctantly acceded to by their leaders, who foresaw, as did Samuel the Prophet, in a similar situation, the evils that would result. (Ether 6:22-28; I Samuel 8:4-22).
35—1645. **Solitary Twain.** The Prophet Ether and King Coriantumr, the last of the Jaredites.
36—1653. **Another Nation.** The Nephites.
37—1657. **After Tale.** These words—part of a brief comment by the author—introduce a summary of the Nephite narrative.
38—1665. **A Leper.** Jerusalem in her degenerate state.
39—1666. **Prophet Pioneer.** Lehi, a descendant of Joseph, through Manasseh, with a colony from Jerusalem, succeeds the all but extinct Jaredites upon the Land of Promise, where they extend the glory of their great ancestor.
40—1669. **Joseph's Bough.** "Joseph is a fruitful bough." (Gen. 49:22).
41—1690. **Chosen Seer.** Lehi predicts the coming of "a choice seer" who is to be a lineal descendant of Joseph. The name of that seer is also to be Joseph, and it is to be the name of his father—a prophecy fulfilled in Joseph Smith, Jr. (II Nephi 3.)
42—1692. **Buried Lore.** The Book of Mormon.
43—1695. **Favored Son.** Nephi, who succeeded his father Lehi, and against whom his brothers Laman and Lemuel rebelled, thus dividing the nation into Nephites and Lamanites.
44—1712. **Heavy Rod.** The Lord used the savage Lamanites to scourge the enlightened yet ofttimes disobedient Nephites.
45—1717. **Infinite and Spirit Minister.** The Spirit of the Lord, declared by Nephi to be in the form of man, and with whom he conversed as one man converses with another. (I Nephi 11:11).
46—1731. **Prophet Prince Foresaw.** Nephi's vision of the future, in which he beheld events upon both hemispheres—Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and his subsequent appearings to the more righteous of the Nephites, preceded by awful judgments upon the wicked (III Nephi 8-11).
47—1757. **Final Doom.** The conflagrations that destroyed Nephite cities were prophetic of the end of the world, which is to be by fire.
48—1771. **Infant Innocence.** The children of the Nephites, blessed by the Saviour. (III Nephi 17:11-24).
49—1785. **Other Sheep.** Jesus said to his Jewish disciples, "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold." (John 10:16). They supposed that he meant the Gentiles, instead of which, as the Book of Mormon tells, he had reference to the Nephites and to other branches of the House of Israel. (III Nephi 15:17-24; 16:1; 17:4.)
50—1803. **Japheth's Destiny.** The Saviour portrays the future of America and the diverse fates of the obedient and disobedient Gentiles (III Nephi 16 and 21).
51—1811. **A Lion to the Chase.** III Nephi, 20:16; 21:12.
52—1820. **Sun's Red Glow.** The wrath of the Lamanites, turning upon their white oppressors.
53—1822. **Eternal Rays.** Divinely revealed laws by which Zion will be redeemed (D. and C. 105:4, 5).
54—1826. **Servant Marred.** "He shall be marred because of them." (III Nephi 21:10.)
55—1834. **He Sanctifieth Three.** The Three Nephites (III Nephi 28).
56—1847. **Forebeam of Day Divine.** The happy condition of the Nephites, for two centuries after the coming of Christ, was a foretaste of the Millennium.
57—1854. **So Shall It Be.** Terrible calamities are to precede the Reign of Peace, as they preceded the events that typified it. (Matthew 24).
58—1869. **Avalanche * * * Sun's Face.** Nephites and Lamanites.
59—1872. **Bloody Chase.** The Lamanites driving the Nephites to their doom at the Hill Cumorah.
60—1883. **Oriental Sight.** The Western Hemisphere discovered by the Eastern.
61—1885. **Faith * * * Patience.** The Brother of Jared was noted for his exceeding faith (Ether 3:9). Columbus triumphed by patient endurance.
62—1894. **Zion's Land.** Joseph Smith declared the whole of America to be the Land of Zion.
63—1899. **Oppressed Become Oppressors.** Even the liberty-loving settlers of New England, who had fled from tyranny in the Old World to find freedom in the New, enslaved the red man and drove him from his ancient possessions.
64—1904. **The Motherland.** Great Britain, mother of the New England colonies.
65—1909. **Man of Matchless Worth.** Washington.
66—1922. **Joseph's Namesake Seer.** Joseph Smith, Jr., (II Nephi 3).
67—1931. **The Iron Rod.** The Word of God (1 Nephi 11:25).
68—1945. **Spirit Gardens.** The Heavenly fields. (D. and C. 88:51-61).
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