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THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,

of Mormon, as Smith called it, or, according to the name by which they designated themselves, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." The book, such as it is, is supposed to have been written by a person of the name of Spaulding as a sort of novel, and offered to a publisher, who declined having anything to do with it, and it eventually fell into the hands of one Rigdon, a friend of Smith, and as it was written something in the style of the Old Testament, and purported to be an account of the adventures of a portion of the tribe of Joseph, who sailed for America under the guidance of a Prophet called Nephi, and became the fathers of the red Indians, they determined to pass it off as a new Revelation. It is evidently the production of a very ignorant person, whose whole knowledge of antiquity was acquired from the English Bible. The sect became so numerous in a little time, that a settlement was made in the State of Missouri; but the sturdy people of the West rose up against them and banished them. They next settled down in Illinois, and founded a city which they called Nauvoo, near the Mississippi. A temple on a magnificent scale was commenced, and a residence for the Prophet, who took especial care that his revelations should all turn to his own profit. He established two orders of priesthood—the order of Melchizedec, consisting of high priests and elders, and the order of Aaron, containing bishops, priests, and deacons; but "my servant, Joseph Smith," was of course the autocrat of the whole system, and the others were but his tools. Not alone from the States, but even from the manufacturing districts of England, did multitudes flock to the land of promise. Disputes, however, arose. The prophet, Joe Smith, was killed by a mob in 1846, at Carthage, in Illinois, and most of his fanatical followers dispersed. Numbers have emigrated to California, and intend forming establishments in that country, and time alone will tell whether the delusion will have any duration. The temple remains unfinished, like the Tower of Babel, a standing monument of human folly. The scattered followers of Smith some time since settled down near the great Salt Lake, in the western territory of the United States, and founded a settlement called Utah. Here they have hitherto been permitted to carry out, to its fullest extent, the last and most complete development of Protestantism. Their proselytes are chiefly recruited from Wales and the manufacturing towns of England, where the population is distinguished for profligacy. Polygamy and divorce are most revoltingly practised, and Mahometanism is pure, and paganism holy, compared with Mormonism, the last offshoot of the "glorious Reformation." The late governor of Utah had, it is said, nineteen wives at one time, and the elders a proportionate number, and frequent divorces and interchanges, "sealing and unsealing," as they call it, have made the modern Sodom a portent of iniquity. We may hope that in a little time the central