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Mormonism.
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having forfeited his favour by their apostacy, were given up to be destroyed by their enemies,—and that by the last of their prophets, these records were deposited in the earth, to be brought forth in the fulness of time by a Gentile. The favoured restorer of these ancient oracles is the Mormon Prophet, who is divinely taught to translate the same, and to restore the suspended animation of this long-lost church. 'The first proselytes to this new faith were the different members of his father’s family; who, however, did not render the service of two individuals, Pratt and Rigdon, who were the next converts. With the assistance of these, especially of the latter, the organization of the sect is further matured, and the new doctrines extensively promulged. A temporary gathering of the early converts is made at Kirtland, in Ohio; though, from the beginning, the policy seems to have been to settle his colony upon the frontiers of civilization. It would be the repetition of a familiar tale to recite their settlement in Missouri, or to detail the violence which drove them to find a refuge in Illinois. The building of their city, Nauvoo, and the erection of a magnificent temple,—the murder of their prophet, while underethe sacred guardianship of the law, by a perfidious mob—their expulsion from Nauvoo—the virtual confiscation of their property—the destruction of their temple—the report of all this has long since come to every ear. The death of Smith at this juncture was not, perhaps, injurious to the Mormon interest. It set the seal of martyrdom to a system which to many might otherwise have been only a crazy superstition; it released the prophet himself from the dizzy height to which he had climbed—and which none after him was expected to reach—and it made room for the ascendency of a broader and more practical mind in Brigham Young, the new President. Their successive expulsions from Missouri and Illinois sufficiently proved, what might indeed have been demonstrated a priori, the impracticability of two communities, organically different in their social structure, living peaceably intermingled. Emigration to a country where they should altogether escape the pressure of a surrounding population, was now an established necessity. Never was an emigration better planned or con-