The question is often asked, what do the "Mormons" believe, and wherein do their doctrines differ from those of other religious denominations? A reply will be found in the following epitome of "Mormonism," or rather of its leading principles, for it embraces all truth from every source.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the proper name of the body of religious worshipers commonly known as "Mormons." It was organized by the authority and commandment of God in the State of New York on the 6th day of April, 1830. It derives all its doctrines, ordinances, discipline and order of Priesthood from direct divine revelation.
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
The first principle of the Gospel as taught by this Church is faith. This embraces faith in God the Father and in his son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost.
The Father is a glorified and perfect person, and Jesus Christ the Son is in His express image and likeness. One is an individual as much as the other. Each is a spirit clothed with a spiritual, yet tangible, immortal body. Spirit is substance, not immateriality. It is eternal in its essence, and so are the elements of that which is known as matter.
The Holy Spirit is not a personage of tabernacle, and His influence permeates all things and extends throughout the vast domain of space, which is boundless and occupied by limitless elements, and that Spirit, proceeding from the presence of God, gives life and light to all things animate, and is the power by which they are governed, and by which the Father and the Son are everywhere present.
Man is a dual being, also in the image of God, who is the Father of his spirit and the Creator of his body. Jesus was the First-born in the spirit and the Only-begotten in the flesh. All men and women are the sons and daughters of God, and Jesus is their Elder Brother. By obedience to His Gospel in all things, mankind, through the redemption He has wrought, may be exalted with Him as joint-heirs to the eternal inheritance of the Sons of God, and become like Him and reign with Him in the Ineffable Presence forever.
Faith in God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost leads to the second principle of the Gospel, which is repentance. That is, conviction of sin, regret for its commission, and reformation by turning away from it, by ceasing to do evil and beginning and continuing to do well.
Repentance leads to remission of sins, which comes through baptism administered by one having authority, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Baptism is the third principle, and is immersion in water in the likeness of a burial, succeeded by a birth. Becoming dead to sin by repentance, the believer is buried in the liquid grave and brought forth from the womb of waters, thus being born of water to a new life in Christ Jesus.