KEEPINGS PACE WITH US.—[An eye open to the progress of the great movements contem-porary with ourselves, is necessary to a know-ing occupation of our place on the planet Earth, and we therefore copy a word or two upon MORMONISM, first quoting a well-known verse:—
"Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there;
And ' twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation."
Thus runs the extract we speak of:—]
"'Mormonism,' says the editor of the Chris-tian Watchman and Reflector, (Boston,) 'grew up amid scenes familiar to our boyhood. The elevation on which the golden plates are said to have been found, was well known to us be-fore it received its present name of Bible Hill. The store in which we performed a short clerk-ship, used to be occasionally swept by the fa-ther of the Prophet, for a glass of grog, or such articles as would sustain his needy family, who were mere vagrants, making shift to live as they could, and spending much of their time in nocturnal money-digging. The men whose testimony and affidavits concerning the family are contained in the book alluded to, which is an expose of the fraud, were several of them our familiar acquaintances. We know that what they say of the money-digging, sight-seeing, fortune-telling, lying and drunkenness of the family, is reliable. Martin Harris, whose farm was mortgaged to print the Golden Bible, and some of the printers themselves, are names familiar to our youth. Those acquaint-ed with the enterprise in its inception, smiled at the clumsy cheat as a thing too contempti-ble for a thought, and that must die in its birth.'
To us, therefore, its subsequent history is one of the most unaccountable things of this unaccountable age. To see Joe Smith hailed as a Prophet of the Lord by seventy-five or a hundred thousand people; to trace his foot-steps through Ohio, Missouri and Illinois; to see his followers threading their way, amid privations inconceivable, across the Great West-ern Desert, and planting themselves in the rich vales of Utah and on the borders of the Great Salt Lake; to know that gorgeous temples have risen under their hands in Ohio and Illi-nois, and that another, the largest structure in the world, is projected at their new home; to observe their missionaries traversing this coun-try, Great Britain, and making their way even to Palestine, multiplying their proselytes by hundreds, and shipping them to their promised land in the West, suggests the idea that some powerful spirit from the other world must pre-side over the movement, like the devils whom Milton represents as dividing themselves among the gods and religions of the ancient heathen nations."
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