By the doctrine of the ether, it is made evident all the happenings in the universe are indelibly inscribed upon the record of nature. A word is spoken. The air movements that it causes disturbs the ether. The ether waves radiate into space and can never die. Anywhere, with the proper instrument, one of the waves may be captured, and the spoken word read. That is the simple method of wireless telegraphy. It is thus that all our actions shall be known on the last great day. By the ether, or the Holy Spirit as named by the Prophet, God holds all things in His keeping. His intelligent will radiates into space, to touch whomsoever it desires. He who is tuned aright can read the message, flashed across the ether ocean, by the Almighty. Thus, also, God, who is a person, filling only a portion of space is, by His power carried by the ether, everywhere present.
The ether of science though material is essentially different from the matter composing the elements. So, also, in Mormon theology, is the Holy Spirit different from the grosser elements. In science there is a vast distinction between the world of the elements, and that of the ether; in theology, there is an equally great difference between the spiritual and material worlds. Though the theology of Joseph Smith insists that immaterialism is an absurdity, yet it permits no overlapping of the earthly and the spiritual.
[Sidenote: Joseph Smith stated the existence of a universe-filling substance before science had generally accepted it.]
It must not be overlooked that the broad statement of this doctrine was made by Joseph Smith, at least as early as 1832, at a time when the explanation of light phenomena on the hypothesis of a universal ether was just beginning to find currency among learned men; and many years before the same hypothesis was accepted in explaining the phenomena of heat and electricity.
The idea of an influence pervading the universe is not of itself new. Poets and philosophers of all ages have suggested it in a vague, hesitating manner, without connecting it with the phenomena of nature, but burdening it with the greatest absurdity of religion or philosophy, that of immaterialism. Joseph Smith said the doctrine had been taught him by God, and gave it to the world unhesitatingly and rationally. The men of science, to whom Joseph Smith appears only as an imposter, and who know nothing of his writings, have later discovered the truth for themselves, and incorporated it in their books of learning.