Frontier and pioneer life -- Northwestern States; Northwestern States -- Description and travel
Not only are the people redeemed from all their sins by the pious
ministrations of the many temple-workers, who, like Samuel,
continually serve and minister therein, but as marriage relations are
to continue throughout the endless ages of eternity, and children are
to be born forever and ever, these dead have the hymeneal ceremony
performed "for eternity"; this act is known as the "sealing" process.
Men are here married--by proxy--to others than the actual living wife,
sometimes with her consent, sometimes without it. One old gentleman,
whose name is not to be mentioned, was sealed thus for eternity to
Martha Washington and to Empress Josephine. It sounds farcical and
foolish in the extreme; fit only to be counted as a silly joke,
unworthy the attention of a sane soul for a minute; but it is terribly
sober when it is remembered that there are hundreds of thousands of
innocent, honest, and unsuspecting Mormons who really and truly
believe this to be the only road to eternal life and exaltation.
Added to this is the doctrine of the deification of men. All the true
and faithful Mormons are to become gods by and by, and create and
populate new worlds; hence the value of polygamy; in fact, this world
is but one of the samples of this truth. Adam is the owner and ruler
of earth, and to him we pray. He is our God. As such he is only one in
an endless procession of such beings.
"There has been and there now exists an endless procession of the
Gods, stretching back into the eternities, that had no beginning and
will have no end. Their existence runs parallel with endless duration,
and their dominions are limitless as boundless space."[3]
Possibly the most popular hymn among these people is the following,
written by one of the wives of Joseph Smith, Eliza R. Snow. It is in
their collection and now in use:
HYMN TO FATHER AND MOTHER
O my Father, thou that dwellest
In the high and glorious place!
When shall I regain thy presence,
And again behold thy face?
In thy holy habitation,
Did my spirit once reside?
In my first primeval childhood,
Was I nurtured by thy side?
For a wise and glorious purpose
Thou hast placed me here on earth,
And withheld the recollection
Of my former friends and birth;
Yet ofttimes a secret something
Whispered, "You're a stranger here";
And I felt that I had wandered
From a more exalted sphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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