ply that the "Liahona" of their Holy Book is not a compass, and that if it were, nothing could be said against it: the Chinese claim the invention long before the days of Flavio, and the Moslems attribute it to one of their own saints.[1] The "reformed Egyptian" of the Golden Bible is ridiculed on the supposition that the Hebrew authors would write either in their own tongue, in the Syrian, or in the Chaldaic, at any rate in a Semitic, not in a Coptic language. But the first disciples of the Gospel Church were Jews, and yet the Evangel is now Greek. As regards the Golden Plates, it is contended that the Jews of old were in the habit of writing upon papyrus, parchment, and so on, not upon metal, and that such plates have never been found in America. But of late years Himyaritic inscriptions upon brass tablets have been forwarded from Yemen to the British Museum. Moreover, in 1843, six brass plates of a bell shape, covered with ancient glyphs, were discovered by a "respectable merchant" near Kinderhook," United States, proving that such material was not unknown to the ancient Semites and to the American aborigines. The word "Christ" often occurs ("Book of Mormon," p. 8, etc.) long before the coming of the Savior. But the Book of Mormon was written in the "reformed Egyptian:" the proper noun in question was translated "Christ" in English by the prophet, an "unlearned young man," according to his own understanding, and for the better comprehension of his readers. The same argument applies to such words as "synagogues," "alpha and omega," "steel," "S.S.E.," etc.; also to "elephant," "cow," "horse," "ass," "swine," and other pachyderms and solidunguls, which were transported to America after the Columbian discovery: they are mere translations, like the fabulous unicorn of the Old Testament and the phœnix of the apocryphal New Testament (Clement I., xii., 2): elephant, for instance, manifestly means mastodon, and swine, peccary. Ptolemy's theory of a moving earth is found anticipated. But who shall limit revelation? and has not the Mosaic Genesis, according to a multitude of modern divines, anticipated all the latest discoveries? The Lord describes America to Jared ("Book of Mormon," p. 78) as an "isle of the sea," and the accuracy of the geography is called in question. But in the Semitic and other Eastern tongues, insula and peninsula are synonymous. Moreover, if Dr. Kane's open circumpolar ocean prove aught but a myth, the New World is wholly insulated even by ice from the Old. Other little contradictions and inaccuracies, which abound in the inspired books, are as easily pooh-pooh'd as objections to the conflicting genealogies, and the contradictory accounts of the Crucifixion by the professors of the elder faith.
The "vulgarity" of Mormonism is a favorite theme with the anti-Mormon. The low origin and "plebbishness" of the apostles' names and of their institutions (e.g., the "Twelve," the "Seven-
