This, however, is no new doctrine. We have already seen that Peter understood that the Messiah went and preached to the spirits who had rejected the gospel in the days of Noah; and also that the gospel was preached to the dead— without confining it to those who lived in the days of Noah or any other period.
Nor is this all, for Paul says to the saints at Corinth: "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?"[I] And why, I ask, does Paul make this very plain allusion to baptism for the dead, if there is no such ordinance connected with the gospel? No other passage of scripture perplexes the theologians more than this one, and they have exhausted their ingenuity in trying to explain away the evident meaning of it, because it is destructive of some of their horrible dogmas in respect to the eternal damnation of those who do not have the good fortune to become acquainted with the truth in this probation.
[Footnote I: I. Cor. xv: 29.]
"From the wording of the sentence"—else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?—"the most simple impression certainly is, that Paul speaks of a baptism which a living man receives in the place of a dead one. This interpretation is particularly adopted by those expounders with whom grammatical construction is of paramount importance, and the first thing to be considered."[J] To this rendering of the passage could be drawn up a long list of respectable authorities, among them Erasmus, Scaliger, Grotius, Calixtus, Meyer and De Wette.
[Footnote J: Biblical Literature (Kitto) Art. Baptism.]
Epiphanius, a writer of the fourth century, in speaking of the Marcionites, a sect of Christians to whom he was opposed, says: "In this country —I mean Asia—and even in Galatia, their school flourished eminently; and a traditional fact concerning them has reached us, that when any of them had died without baptism, they used to baptize others in their name, lest in the resurrection they should suffer punishment as unbaptized."[K] This proves beyond controversy the fact that vicarious baptism for the dead was practiced among some sects of the early Christians.
[Footnote K: Heresies, xxiii: 7.]
Another fact proves it still more emphatically than this statement of Epiphanius. The Council of Carthage, held A. D. 397, in its sixth canon, forbids the administration of baptism and the holy communion for the dead; and why would this canon be formed against these practices if they had no existence among the Christians of those days?
We have now seen, not only that baptism for the dead is a principle known to and doubtless practiced by the Corinthian saints, in the days of Paul—and evidently with his approval—and by some of the Christian sects for two or three centuries after his time; but we have also seen that it was forbidden by the council of an apostate church in the fourth century.
In the dispensation in which we now live, however, the knowledge of the ordinance, with a commandment to practice it, and with instructions necessary to its practice, has been restored; and the erection of costly temples, in which this and other ordinances for the dead may be administered, testifies to the zeal with which the Latter-day Saints enter into this work; and is a living testimony to the world that there was virtue in the mission of Elijah. He succeeded in turning the hearts of the children to the fathers; and we may reasonably conclude that the hearts of the fathers have been turned to the children, for they without us cannot be made perfect.