The Temple proved to be the last word in luxury and modern convenience. In the most elegant club in London, Paris, or New York I have not seen such luxury and sensual comfort as was in this Temple in the rough wild west. Every room was inlaid with precious woods. The baths and robing-rooms were worthy of a Sultan, the lounge and one-piece carpets all suggested a material heaven. The guide showed us the vast font reposing on the life-size figures of twelve oxen, the symbols of the twelve tribes of Israel. This font was the centre of a stately chamber with galleries running round it. From the galleries the friends of the candidates could watch the ceremony of immersion. The font was large enough to baptize families at once.
“And you can be baptized many times,” said the guide. “For yourself, then for your friends, and then for the dead—for any one you would like to have saved.”
“Baptized for the dead?” said one of the women in horror. “Yes,” said he. “You think it strange, but the early Christians all used to do it. Just turn up First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. ‘What shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?’ which shows plainly that the apostles recommended it.”
“Is the water cold?” asked a farm-girl, timorously.
“Cold,” said the guide ingratiatingly, “oh, no! It’s warmed. It’s just nice. I should say about the temperature of warm milk.”
“Oh!” “Oh!” There was chorus of approval from the women, who had been considering the whole matter from a purely personal point of view.
We were then led to the Creation Room, the Garden of Eden Room, and the Earth-natural Room, all adorned with works of art. There were pictures of the world before Creation, and then of each stage in the process of Creation.
“God don’t love chaos. ’E’s a great organiser. ’E organised it, and ’e divided the water from the hearth and gave us light and made the hanimal creation—yes, all that lives and breeves,” said the guide. “’Ere we meet to meditate on the Creation. Isn’t it a beutiful room?”
Some one asked him if the artists were Mormons. “Yes, all of them,” said he, and then went on—
“You’d think it gets stuffy in ’ere. But no; we ’as the hair taken out and washed and then returned. It’s a new device for washing the hair.”