Lorenzo Snow on Theosis

The Church supports and welcomes the growth of science . . . The religion of the Latter-day Saints is not hostile to any truth, nor to scientific search for truth.

The Gods who dwell in heaven . . . were once in a fallen state . . . they were exalted also, from fallen men to celestial Gods.

I attended prayer meeting in the evening circle. President Young asked Elder Orson Pratt what he thought of his preaching that intelligent beings would continue to learn to all eternity. O. Pratt said that he believed the Gods had a knowledge at the present time of every thing that ever did exist to the endless ages of all eternity. He believed it as much as any truth that he had ever learned in or out of this church.

The time will come when some of these boys, through their faithfulness to the gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intelligence and power, in future eternities.

As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.

We should strive earnestly to establish the principles of heaven within us, rather than trouble ourselves in fostering anxieties like the foolish people of the Tower of Babel, to reach its location before we are properly and lawfully prepared to become its inhabitants. Its advantages and blessings, in a measure, can be obtained in this probationary state by learning to live in conformity with its laws and the practice of its principles. To do this, there must be a feeling and determination to do God’s will.

Seventy years ago this Church was organized with six members. We commenced, so to speak, as an infant. We had our prejudices to combat. Our ignorance troubled us in regard to what the Lord intended to do and what He wanted us to do We advanced to boyhood, and still we undoubtedly made some mistakes, which generally arise from a lack of experience.

Godliness cannot be conferred but must be acquired, a fact of which the religious world seem[s] strangely and lamentably unconscious.

Our errors have generally arisen from a lack of comprehending what the Lord required of us to do. But now we are pretty well along to manhood.