THE MORMON JUBILEE.
Joseph Smith, founder of the sect of Latter Day Saints, began to have vi-sions in 1823, when a lad of eighteen years. In these visions the angel Mo-roni appeared to him and announced that God had a work for him to do, and that a record of Jehovah's dealings with his people would be found written on plates of gold which were hid in a hill not far from his father's farm in the present county of Wayne, in the State of New York. Four years later Smith professed to have discovered the plates, and, with a blanket hung over him to conceal the wondrous tablets from profane eyes, he read off the "Book of Mormon" to an amanuensis. The book was printed in 1830, and the Mormons of Utah recognized the event in their annual conference last month as the origin of their faith, and spoke of the year upon which they are now en-tering as their year of jubilee. At this conference the strength of Mormonism in Utah was stated to be 112,000 mem-bers; the losses of the previous year being 600 and the gains 1500. It was resolved to send out fifty missionaries to those parts of the civilized world where they would be likely to accom-plish most good.
In spite of the fact that Smith's golden plates were a gross fabrication, suggested by the tablets of stone of Moses, and that his book was a bung-ling imitation of the Bible, a consid-erable number of ignorant people in Utah accept his revelation as true, and regard him as a sincere prophet of the truth. In his public address at the recent conference. President Taylor re-ferred to the beneficial influence of Mormonism upon woman. The system “gives an opportunity for woman to fill the position designed for her, and accomplish the object of her creation." He spoke of polygamy as an institution which permits "a large-souled honora-ble man to care for the neglected por-tion of womankind." He referred to the growth of the church, and urged faithfulness in paying tithes, saying that the prosperity of the institution will be assured it the people pay their debts to the Lord. And his allusion to the future of Mormonism in con-nection with its past fifty years sug-gests the inquiry to the people of the United States, what Mormonism is to become in the next fifty years. Is the degrading practise which the Mor-mon chief describes as beneficial to woman to be permitted to continue ? Has not fifty years been long enough for the nation to suffer the disgrace of such a faul social system ? It is to be hoped that it has, and that fifty years hence, except as the memory of a social blot, Mormonism will be un-known in the land.
