III. A third parallelism is found in the claim urged by both, to progressive Revelation. Mohammed taught that “God, in divers ages of the world, gave revelations of his will in writing to several prophets”—to Adam, Seth, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and himself. He being the last, prophecy is henceforth sealed up, and no further revelations are to be expected. Those which were made to him came in parcels as exigencies arose—and if one contradicted another, the first was considered abrogated. The canon was complete at his death, and none of the Caliphs who succeeded him ventured to assume his prophetic mantle, or to re-open personal correspondence with the Deity.
The claims of Smith are vastly more extravagant, and development is represented as the peculiar glory of the latter-day Church. He did not, like his Arabian prototype, prudently seal the prophetic roll at his own death; but left the sacred gift as the perpetual inheritance of the saints. “New revelation,” says Orson Pratt, one of the Mormon Apostles, “is the very life and soul of the religion of Heaven,” and without it “there is an end to the very existence of the Church of Christ on earth; there is an end to salvation in the celestial kingdom.” Revelations are necessary to the calling of officers, to instruction in the nature of their duties—necessary to the conveyance of consolation or reproof—to escape from judgments—and to the entire edification of the saints. The sufficiency of all past revelations for the guidance of the Church is stoutly denied. In accordance with these views, Smith, like Mohammed, to the end of his career extricated himself from all dilenmmas by a new disclosure of the Divine will. His successor, Brigham Young, with the shrewdness which. marks his whole administration, is extremely chary of these prophetic announcements. Not enjoying the prestige, with Smith, of having opened this correspondence with Deity, he prudently excuses the sluggishness of his own vaticinations, upon the plea that the revelations of the first prophet have cut out work for several years ahead. The practical judgement of the first President would doubtless close altogether this door to fanaticism, if it were possible to contravene the will of the prophet. But a se-
