"In the same world there are also the spirits of Catholics, and Protestants of every sect, who have all need to be taught and to come to the knowledge of the true unchangeable gospel in its fulness and simplicity, that they may be judged the same as if they had been privileged with the same in the flesh.
"There is also the Jew, the Mahometan, the infidel, who did not believe in Christ while in the flesh. All these must be taught, must come to the knowledge of the crucified and risen Redeemer, and hear the glad tidings of the Gospel.
"There are also all the varieties of the heathen spirits; the noble and refined philosopher, poet, patriot, or statesman of Rome or Greece, the enlightened Socrates and Plato, and their like, together with every grade of spirits, down to the most uncultivated of the savage world.
"All these must be taught, enlightened, and must bow the knee to the eternal King, for the decree hath gone forth, that unto Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.
"Oh, what a field of labor, of benevolence, of missionary enterprise now opens to the apostles and elders of the Church of the Saints! As this field opens they will begin to realize more fully the extent of their divine mission, and the meaning of the great command to 'preach the gospel to every creature'."
Parley P. Pratt, a modern Apostle, was a friend and follower of Joseph Smith. He sat at the feet of Joseph, as Paul at the feet of Gamaliel. These are Joseph's doctrines, the doctrines of "Mormonism", which stands for the Gospel in all the ages, and for the salvation of the living and the dead. God will judge no man for an opportunity that he never possessed. Faith and repentance are just as possible and just as effectual in the spirit world as they are in this sphere. But the ordinance of baptism—immersion in water for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost—with other sacred ceremonies, must be done here, in places dedicated for the purpose. This vicarious work is absolutely essential, in order that the departed may be duly admitted into the Church of Christ and share in all its blessings.
The Hell of Dante.
In the Thirteenth Century a great Italian poet, the immortal Dante, produced a wonderful work, "La Divina Comedia" ("The Divine Comedy"). In one part of the poem, the author represents himself as passing through Hades or Hell. In the first circle of the infernal depths—a region called "Limbo", which a footnote in my copy of the poem describes as a place "containing the souls of unbaptized children and of those virtuous men and women who lived before the birth of our Savior"—he meets some of the noble characters whom the Apostle Parley mentions as inhabiting the Spirit World, and the guide says to him:
—"Inquirest thou not what spirits
Are these, which thou beholdest? Ere thou pass
Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin
Were blameless; and if aught they merited,
It profits not, since baptism was not theirs,
The portal to thy faith. If they before
The Gospel lived, they served not God aright;
And among such am I. For these defects
And for no other evil, we are lost;
Only so far afflicted, that we live
Desiring without hope."—Hell, Canto IV, Lines 29-39.
And this was all that Thirteenth Century theology could say for such men as Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle and others, the best and brightest spirits of their times!