ing the gift of the Holy Spirit do not receive at the same time the same identical particles, though they each receive a substance exactly similar in kind. It would be as impossible for them to receive the same identical atoms at the same instant as it would be for two men at the same time to drink the same identical pint of water."
I will offer another instance of the danger of meddling with such edged tools as mind and matter—concerning which mankind knows nothing beyond certain properties—in the following answer addressed by Mr. Pratt to the many who have been "traditionated in the absurd doctrines of immaterialism." "The resemblance between man and God has reference, as we have already observed, to the shape or figure: other qualities may or may not resemble each other. Man has legs, so has God, as is evident from his appearance to Abraham. Man walks with his legs; so does God sometimes, as is evident from his going with Abraham toward Sodom. God can not only walk, but he can move up or down through the air without using his legs as in the process of walking (Gen., xvii., 22, and xi., 5, and xxxv., 13)—'a man wrestled with Jacob until the breaking of day;' after which Jacob says, 'I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved' (Gen., xxxii., 24–30). That this person had legs is evident from his wrestling with Jacob. His image and likeness was so much like man's, that Jacob at first supposed him to be a man. God, though in the figure of a man, has many powers that man has not got. He can go upward through the air. He can waft himself from world to world by his own self-moving powers. These are powers not possessed by man, only through faith, as in the instances of Enoch and Elijah. Therefore, though in the figure of a man, he has powers far superior to man."
This part of the subject may profitably be concluded by quoting the venerable adage, "Qui nescit ignorare nescit sciri."
I now offer to the reader a few remarks upon the fourteen articles of the Mormon doxology,[1] leaving him to settle whether it be a kakodoxy or a kakistodoxy.
I. "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and his Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."—Of the thousand sects and systems that have used this venerable Kalmah or formula of Christian faith, none have interpreted it more peculiarly than the Mormons.
The First Person is a perfected man, once a dweller upon earth: advancing in intelligence and power, he became such that in comparison with man he may be called the Infinite. Mr. Joseph Smith, in his last sermon preached at Nauvoo, thus develops his remarkable anthropomorphosis: "First, God himself, who sits enthroned
- ↑ From an article published in the "Frontier Guardian," then edited by the Apostle Orson Hyde.
