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Mr. Orson Pratt's utterances in sermons, etc.) from his appearance to Abraham ; though he has this advantage over his creatures that " he can move up or down through the air witiiout using them." The following is an ex- tract from one of their popular catechisms bearing on the subject : " Q. 28. What is God ? .1 . lie is a matei-ial in- telligent personage, possessing both body and parts. — Q. 38. Doth he also possess passions? .1. Yes; he cats, lie drinks, he loves, he hates. — Q. 44. Can this being oc- cupy two distinct places at once ? A . No" {Latter-day Saints' Catechism, quoted in Morm. lllust. p. 43). To the same cfifect we read in the Mormon Ilymn-book (p. 349):
" The God that others worship is not the God for me : He has no parts nor body, and cannot hear nor see." A local residence is assigned to this antlirojiomorphic deity : he lives, we are told, " in the planet Kulob" {Seer, p. 70, and Millen. Star, xiv, 531). Moreover, as he pos- sesses the body and passions of a man, so his relations to his creatures are purely human. St. Ililarj' of Poitiers asserts that some Arians attacked orthodoxy by the fol- lowing argument: "Deusyjo^er non erat, quia neque ei flius; nam si filius, neeesse est ut et/amina sit" (Ilil. adv. C'omt.y The conclusion thus stated as an absurdity in the 4th century the Mormons embrace as an axiom in the 19th. '-In mundi primordiis, Deo erat /amino," is an article of their creed (Patr. Order, p. 1, and p. 15; also Seer, i, 38, 103). No existence is "created;" all beings are "begotten." The superiority of the Mor- mon God over his creatures consists only in the great- er power which he has gradually attained by growth in knowledge. He himself originated in "the union of two elementary particles of matter" (Gunnison, p. 49), and by a progressive development reached the human form. Thus we read that " God, of course, -was once a man, and from manhood by continual progres- sion became God; and he has continued to increase from his manhood to the present time, and may con- tinue to increase without limit. And man also may continue to increase in knowledge and power as fast as he pleases." And again : " If man is a creature of eter- nal progression, the time must certainly arrive when he will know as much as God now knows" (^Millen. Star, xiv, 38G). This is in strict accordance with the fol- lowing words of Joseph .Smith : " The weakest child of God which now exists upon the eartli will possess more dominion, more property, more subjects, and more power and glory than is possessed by Jesus Christ or by his Father ; while at the same time they will have their do- iiiinion, kingdom, and subjects increased in proportion" ( Mil/. Star, vol. vi, quoted in Morm. Ilhist.). An apos- tle carries this view into detail as follows: "AVliat will man do when this world is filled up? Why, he will make more worlds, and swarm out like bees from the old world. And when a farmer has cultivated his farm, and raised numerous children, so that the space is be- ginning to be too strait for them, he will say, My sons, yonder is plenty of matter, yo and oryanize a world and people it'' (P. Pratt, in Millen. Star, xiv, 6G3, and Seer, i, 37). This doctrine of indefinite development nat- urally passes into polytheism. Accordingly, the Jlor- mon theology teaches that there are gods innumer- able, with diflerent degrees of dignity and power. It was revealed to Joseph Smith that the first verse of Genesis originally stood as follows: "The J/tad Ood brought forth the Gods, with tiie heavens, and the earth" {Millen. Star, xiv, 455). The same i)riii)het also tells us {ilrid.) that a hundred and forty -four thou- sand of these gods are mentioned by St. John in the Apocalypse. ^loreover. "each God is the (lod of the spirits of all flesh iiertaining to the world which he forms" {Seer, i, 3^). Young claims that it was revealed to him that the God of our own planet is Adam, who (it seems) was only another form of the archangel Jlichatl : " When our fatiier .\dam came into tlie garden of Eden, he brought Eve, one of his vires, with him. lie helped to make and organize this world. Uc is Michael the
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Archangel, the Aiwient of Days. He is our Father and our God, and the only God with u-hom we have to do" (from Discourses of the Presidency, in vol. xv, p. 769, preached in the Tabernacle, April 9, 1852). It is cu- rious to observe, from such examples, how easily the ex- tremes of materialism and immaterialism may be made to meet. For here we have the rudest form of anthropomor- phism connected with a theory of emanation which might be identified with that of some Gnostic and Oriental ideal- ists. There can be no doubt that, under its present intel- lectual guides, Mormonism is rapidly passing into that form of practical atheism which is euphemistically termed jmntheism. Thus we read in the Washington organ of the presidencj' that the only thing which has existed from eternity is " an infinite quantity of self- vioving intelligent matter. Every particle of matter which now exists existed in the infinite depths of past duration, and was then capable of self-motion" {Seer, i, 129). "There is no substance in the universe which feels and thinks, but what has eternally possessed that capacity" (^ibid. p. 102). "Each individual of the vege- table and animal kingdom contains a living spirit, pos- sessed of intelligent capacities" (i6iJ. p. 34). "Persons are only tabernacles, and truth is the God that dwells in them. When we speak of only one God, and state that he is eternal, etc., we have no reference to any particular person, but to truth dwelling in a vast variety of sub- Stances" (ibid. p. 25; comp. also Stenhouse, p. 484 sq.).