MORMONISM FROM A MORMON POINT OF VIEW. 169 



with two iron wires, almost entirely corroded, and were found, along 

 with charcoal, ashes, and human bones, more than twelve feet below 

 the surface of a mound of the sugar-loaf form common in the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley. Large trees growing upon these artificial mounds 

 attest their great antiquity, and doubtless they contain much that 

 will reward future investigation. No key has yet been discovered 

 for the interpretation of the engravings upon these brass plates, or of 

 the strange glyphs upon the ruins of Otolum, in Mexico ; but when 

 an amount of talent, learning, and labor, equal to that bestowed upon 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics or Assyrian cuneiform characters, has been 

 devoted to American antiquities, we may hope to learn something of 

 those mysterious races whose history the Book of Mormon professes 

 to tell. 



But if we admit that the plates themselves may have been genu- 

 ine, our faith in the founder of Mormonism, as a sincere religious 

 enthusiast, is staggered by his mode of interpreting their contents. 

 He tells us that he found along with the records an instrument, called 

 by him the Urim and Thummim, and described as consisting of " two 

 transparent stones set in the rim of a bow." Through the medium of 

 this instrument, he says that he translated the unsealed portion of 

 these scanty records, the result being a bulky volume in English, but 

 he does not explain whether he aised it as a magnifier, nor how it 

 proved to be a Rosetta stone for his hieroglyphics, merely asserting 

 that it was " by the gift and power of God." That Joseph Smith 

 believed in his own mission, his character and career alike appear to 

 indicate, and the many ecstatic visions which he describes were prob- 

 ably real enough to him, but the compilation of the Book of Mormon 

 was an act involving much time and labor, and cannot be accounted 

 for by ecstasy. 



In these days of La-Salette and Paray-le-Monial it is, perhaps, 

 too much to say that a miracle, in order to find acceptance among 

 educated persons, must be relegated to a remote age and country, and 

 must be invested with a certain amount of external dignity. It is, 

 however, a severe test of faith to be called upon to accept miracles 

 and revelations from a prophet well known to men yet living as " Joe 

 Smith," and referred to as " Mr. S." in the writings of so eminent a 

 disciple as Mr. Orson Pratt. A most remarkable man Mr. S. un- 

 doubtedly was, capable of inspiring alike inestinguibil odio, eel indo- 

 mato amor. The bitter hostility of his opponents was more than 

 equaled by the devoted zeal of his converts, and, although murdered 

 by mob violence at the early age of thirty-eight, he had already so 

 well accomplished his work that the new creed, instead of dying with 

 him, continued to spread with increasing rapidity, and was preached 

 by his apostles and elders in every quarter of the globe. He was a 

 New-Englauder, born a. d. 1805, in the State of Vermont, and began 

 to have visions when he was about fourteen years of age. In 1830 



