they hold Christ to be "the first of God's creatures," a "perfect creature, but still a creature." They are Moslems in their views of the inferior status of womankind, in their polygamy, and in their resurrection of the material body: like the followers of the Arabian Prophet, they hardly fear death, because they have elaborated "continuation." They take no leap in the dark; they spring from this sublunary stage into a known, not into an unknown world: hence also their worship is eminently secular, their sermons are political or commercial, and—religion being with them not a thing apart, but a portion and parcel of every-day life—the intervention of the Lord in their material affairs becomes natural and only to be expected. Their visions, prophecies, and miracles are those of the Illuminati, their mysticism that of the Druses, and their belief in the Millennium is a completion of the dreams of the Apocalyptic sects. Masonry has evidently entered into their scheme; the Demiurgus whom they worship is "as good at mechanical inventions as at any other business." With their later theories, Methodism, Swedenborgianism—especially in its view of the future state—and Transcendentalism are curiously intermingled. And, finally, we can easily discern in their doctrine of affinity of minds and sympathy of souls the leaven of that faith which, beginning with the Mesmer, and progressing through the Rochester Rappers and the Poughkeepsie Seer, threatens to extend wherever the susceptible nervous temperament becomes the characteristic of the race.
The Latter-Day Saints do not deny this agglomeration.[1] They maintain that, being guided by the Spirit unto all truth, they have sifted it out from the gross mass of error that obscures it, and that whatever knowledge has been vouchsafed to man may be found in their possession. They assert that other sects were to them what the Platonists and the Essenes were to Christianity. Moreover, as has been seen, they declare their faith to be still in its infancy, and that many dark and doubtful subjects are still to be decided by better experience or revelation.
I borrow the following résumé of Mormonism from Lieutenant Gunnison—a Christian writer—of course, without endorsing any one of his opinions.
"In Mormonism we recognize an intuition of Transcendentalism—intuition, we say, for its founder was no scholar in the idealistic philosophy. He trampled under foot creeds and formulas, and soared away for perpetual inspiration from the God; and by the will, which he calls faith, he won the realms of truth, beauty, and happiness. Such things can only be safely confided to the
- ↑ "One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism" (says Mr. Joseph Smith in his sermon preached on the 9th of July, 1843) "is to receive truth, come whence it may." . . . . "Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Mohammedans, etc., are they in possession of any truth? Yes, they have all a little truth mixed with error. We ought to gather together all the good and true principles which are in the world, and keep them, otherwise we shall never become pure Mormons."
