MY MOTHER.
CHAPTER I.
PREDICTION FROM MALACHI FULFILLED—BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF MARY ALICE CANNON—CANNON FAMILY EMBRACE THE GOSPEL—MIGRATE—MOTHER'S DEATH AT SEA—ARRIVAL AT NAUVOO—FATHER'S DEATH—HER MARRIAGE.
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."
Thus spake the Lord through Malachi, the prophet; but just what was meant by turning the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers, has been a matter of speculation among bible students since time was young. Of course, many have supposed that this prediction was fulfilled in the coming of John the Baptist; but wherein John the Baptist accomplished any such work as that indicated is not clear. Whatever the work was that Elijah was to do, there must be something potential about it, to have the effect of appeasing the wrath of the Almighty and averting the curse with which the earth (or possibly the inhabitants of the earth) would otherwise be smitten.
Not until the doctrine of salvation for the dead had been revealed was the full import of the declaration quoted from Malachi understood even by the Latter-day Saints. The anxiety they immediately experienced for the salvation of their kindred who had died without conforming to the Gospel requirements, when they learned that the living might do a vicarious work in behalf of the dead, that would place the latter upon an equal footing with the most favored of the living, was an illustration of its effects upon the children.
The interest that was awakened about that same time in the matter of genealogical research, without any apparent cause for it, more than had existed for ages, may reasonably be considered an evidence that the "heart of the fathers" was being turned to the children. Nor was this interest in the tracing of genealogies, and the connecting of one generation or age to another by kindred links, limited to Latter-day Saints, or those familiar with the doctrine of salvation for the dead, as newly revealed. It seemed to be a spontaneous feeling, specially noticeable in the more enlightened countries of that age and since. The disposition to engage in this research was not limited to any class or creed. It was manifested alike by people of various religious beliefs and by those also of infidel tendencies. Sometimes pride of ancestry furnished the excuse, and at other times the hope of inheritance was the incentive. Whatever the causes that led to the compiling and publishing of genealogical works, it is easy for Latter-day Saints to believe that men so actuated were inspired of the Lord, whether they realized it or not, and that the grand and ultimate purpose of the Lord was that the living believers in that doctrine might do a vicarious work for the salvation of individual dead, and thus connect the present generation with those of the past.
