The Mormons.
This singular sect is rapidly increasing, not only in our own country but in Europe, where they continue to make great progress. All over England they are mak-ing converts, and the London Times thinks their relig-ious services ought not to be protected by the laws.- The British army in Turkey contains several Branches of the Church. At Hamburg, the authorities have pro-hibited their meetings. The Mormon emigration of next year to the United States will be very large.-[Ex-change paper.
Judging from the manner in which Mormonism is rapidly spreading itself over the Christian world, and from the nature of its faith, discipline, and civil polity, it is not unlikely that in some fifty years, unless sub-dued by the civil power, it will become one of the larg-est, if not the largest denomination in the Christian su-perstition.
The books of the Bible and different sects are, in geo-metrical progression, both in number and spirit, on the increase. In fact, we have the first terms of an infinite series in superstition itself; and any particular kind, when predominant, must be governed by the same gen-eral rules and retain the same nature as preordinate con-duct to the same result. The priests find "the book of the law of the Lord ; "the third century gathers up, and having rejected "all the spurious gospels and epistles," presents us with the New Testament, and, that we may not doubt, it comes through the hands of the sacerdotal order at a time in which the original Greek was spoken in its utmost purity throughout the civilized world; the nineteenth century hands forth "The Book of Jasher" and of "Mormon" the former confirming the truth of the Old Testament by most marvellous incidences and stories, and the latter not only "confirming the truth of Holy Writ" but giving us the events of Ancient Am-erica as far back at least as the flood" being in short "an historical and religious record written in ancient times by a Branch of the house of Israel that peopled America from whom the Indians are descended." Now this is exactly as it should be. "Moses and Jesus were prophets, but Mahomet is a greater."
Mormonism has its elders, bishops, high priests, a pa-triarch, and prophet. It teaches that immersion entitles to the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Its disciples testify, prophecy, speak with tongues, inter-pret, and relate visions and revelations. The facility of admission to all the hopes and privileges of the church, the nature and variety of their exercises, the degrees and elevation in clerical honor, and, above all, the high position which they have assumed, would seem to war-rant us in the supposition which we have made. The persecutions they experience enlist in their behalf the sympathies of the liberal-minded ; scatter them abroad, and will ultimately spread over their origin and creden-da of faith all that obscurity which superstition needs to make it imperishable and eternal. The "metallic plates" on which the Book of Mormon was engraved, will in pretension be lost, and the thing as matter of his-toric fact fully established. The sect itself will lead the van in the Christian hierarchy, and the Book of Mor-mon become a part and a canonical part of the Bible.
Why not? Flourishing at a later day and grafting it-self on the Christian and Jewish superstition, as the Christian did on the Trojan, Braminical, and Hebrew, and accommodating itself to the natural constitution of man as regards his pride, vanity, pleasure, and supersti-tious feelings, it has most assuredly as much the advan-tage as a sect as the Christian bad as a religion above al| l others. Do we demur, and call for fact and proof? Do we insist on having the fact of the discovery of the "metallic plates" hid for centuries, being discovered and their originality duly tested ? That St. Joseph Smith said so, and the book itself coinciding with the Scriptures and giving us a true history of "Ancient America as far back as the flood" which no other history ever did, and that God has said it, is evidence enough. But it was long the custom of the church to commit pious frauds- the most apparently sincere declarations of a visit to heaven and hell have been made by priests and princes confirming doctrines, establishing successions, persuad-ing to deeds of benevolence or wrath, in order to secure the glories of the one and escape the horrors of the oth-er; and after confirmation by oath and sacrament, and the signature of many witnesses, consigned to the cus-tody of massy walls, dilapitated towers and castles, in expectation of their future efficiency. May not the de-positing of these "plates" have been but a part of the same design ? If in the original Hebrew, may not some Christianized Rabbi have done it? Who can admeasure the rust of thirty or ten centuries? If the Indians are Jews and "the ten lost tribes" where is their language, customs, race? Why not as well suppose the ten tribes in the heart of Africa, as to imagine that having erected fortifications, cities, and mounds, they should have sunk to savages and wigwams ?
But why do we interrogate? We may as well go to the cemetery of Persepolis, Elephanta, or Balbec, and demand of its dead, as to interrogate the church in order to the confirmation of truth. "Thus it is written" - "Thus saith the Lord" is the ipse dixit to eternal silence and sufferance under its superstition, ignorance, and ty-ranny. The Bible teaches that there are witches. Lord Mansfield and Chief Justice Coke, two of the ablest ju-rists that ever sat on the English Bench, believed in them and condemned hundreds to be burnt or hung- therefore there are witches, and we believe it. Pro-found reasoning! legitimate conclusion! Alas! poor human nature ! How penetrating and great, yet how simple and little is man ! In natural science he will ad-mit nothing but demonstration in the light of observation and experiment, and again and again has labored for centuries until he has weighed and ascertained the changes of every planet in the solar system ; but in theological disquisition he will take anything as giant-ed, and accredit as solemn and eternal truth that which is not only without foundation but in itself contemptible, puerile, and absurd.
