From their Articles of Faith I take these two:
3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.
4. We believe that these ordinances are: First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Now, since without immersion there is no remission of sins, and since they who are in prison (paradise) are eligible to salvation, therefore some one must be baptized for them and have all the other rites of the plan likewise administered in their name. That “all things may be done decently and in order,” there was received a “revelation” to the end that temples must be built, recorders and other officials appointed, and all the paraphernalia necessary for the work prepared. When these rites are consummated some elder of the church who dies goes to the spiritual prison house and tells the people therein confined that these most meritorious works have been done for them on earth; in fact, 134 this is the chief reason for their going thither. They who will believe this story and repent of their sins are then and there entitled to “a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”
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 135 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: