As a fair sample of the ludicrous may be instanced the new astronomy which was to be taught in the Deseret University, and was to overturn the orthodox theories of science; putting the sun, the great orb Kolob, into the center of the universe, letting it rotate once in a thousand years and all the host of heaven revolve around it, while the law of gravitation was entirely abolished. For was it not so written in the Book of Abraham?

Mormon theology is of a truth fearfully and wonderfully made. It is founded upon the Book of Mormon, modified by innumerable later revelations vouchsafed unto Smith, Rigdon, and Young. According to its prime tenets there is one chief God, Jehovah, who has three persons; this supreme God has a wife, a female deity; from them has sprung a whole pantheon of minor gods and goddesses, besides angels and the human race.

God the Father, according to Joe Smith, "has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's," According to Brigham Young, "God was Adam, and Eve was one of his wives." Mormon apologists do not defend this doctrine, but it was certainly promulgated by Young in a sermon preached April 9, 1852, and is just as authentic as any other revelation or tenet of Smith and his successors. According to later theologians, the supreme God has indeed the form of a man, but his body is composed of spiritual matter that is, matter of extreme fineness. He resides in the center of the universe, near the great star Kolob, each millennial rotation of which marks a divine day. Jesus was literally the son of God, but differs from him only in age and authority seniority presides. The Holy Spirit is matter in its most rarified form, a subtle fluid, like electricity, filling all space.