Moses and the Gathering.
Moses, who led Israel out of Egypt, held the keys for the gathering of God's people; and those keys had to be restored, that there might be a greater gathering, of which the Egyptian exodus was typical. Moses, as a ministering angel, delivered to Joseph Smith the keys of the Gathering. (Doc. & Cov. 110:11.) But for this, the children of Ephraim, such as are now Latter-day Saints, would still be in Babylon, many of them in distant lands, from which they have come like sheep at the call of the Shepherd. Moses had a dispensation of the Gospel, and sought to sanctify his people that they might look upon the face of God, as he had done. But they were not prepared for it; and so Moses was taken, with the Melchizedeck Priesthood and the fulness of the Gospel (Doc. & Cov. 84:19-28), and Israel was left for fifteen centuries under the Aaronic Priesthood and the Lesser Law, which Paul likened unto a schoolmaster, to bring them to Christ.
In due time came the Saviour and the Meridian Dispensation. Twelve Apostles were chosen upon the Eastern Hemisphere, and Twelve upon the Western, and sent forth to preach the Gospel as a witness before the end. And the end came—the end decreed at that time-the downfall of the Jewish commonwealth, and later the destruction of the Nephite nation. Those terrible calamities were typical of one more terrible still—the downfall of all wickedness, the approaching End of the World.
And now, after the lapse of nearly two thousand years, the Gospel and the Priesthood have come back again. Once more, the pure word of God is going forth, this time as the immediate forerunner of the decreed Consummation.
"Mormonism" means far more than the restoration of the Gospel at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Such a definition, such a presentation of the subject would be manifestly imperfect. Ignorant indeed would be that "Mormon" who confined his thinking to so narrow a field. "Mormonism" is not a mere sect among sects, one more broken off fragment of a degenerate and crumbling Christianity. It is the pure, primitive Christianity restored—the original faith, the root of all religion; and it was not accident, but design, that gave it the strength of its position.