This rude outline of their fortunes and progress will perhaps suffice to fix your interest upon this people, and prepare the way for such reflections as I may be able to submit.
The first fact which arrests the attention of one who looks into the details of this imposture, is the close parallel between the Mormon and the Arabian prophet. The resemblance, indeed, is so obvious that, in common parlance, Smith is designated as “the American Mahomet:” though this title may be assigned only upon the general ground that both sought to found a new religion, and substantially by the same method; both feigned to be inspired, and both palmed upon the world a new revelation from heaven.It would subserve no useful end to trace the minute coincidences between the two; but I cannot, perhaps, better exhibit the Mormon system than by running the parallel in some of the more prominent points.
I. Mormonism and Mohammedism are both clumsy attempts to reconcile and unite conflicting creeds. This idea is the seed from which the two religions unquestionably germinated. It has been already stated that Smith conceived his project immediately after his religious convictions were powerfully awakened, and when he was sorely puzzled to make his election between churches, which perhaps indecently canvassed for his favor. When the angel announced to him that there was no true Church upon earth, it was probably only the skeptical doubt of his own mind putting on a fanatical disguise. The religious element was not, however, to be extinguished thus, by placing it in the exhausted receiver of a negative infidelity. His very superstition drove him to fill the “aching void” with a faith of some sort; and his inventive genius sought to compound existing systems, and to frame a Church which should present attractions to every sect. He evidently jars as slightly against the branches of the Christian Church, by which he was surrounded, as was consistent with the exclusive claims arrogated to his own. The mission of Christ is not denied. On the contrary, predictions were produced from the Nephitic records, in which the Messiah is announced by name, as distinctly as was the Persian Cyrus by Isaiah of old. The Church, as es-
