774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle. He 

 attains a certain degree of physical comfort, and develops a more 

 or less workable theory of life, in such favorable situations as the 

 plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, and then, for thousands and 

 thousands of years, struggles with varying fortunes, attended by 

 infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to maintain himself at 

 this point against the greed and the ambition of his fellow-men. 

 He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all those 

 who first try to get him to move on ; and when he has moved on 

 a step, foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims. 

 He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step 

 yet farther. Aiid the best men of the best epochs are simjjly those 

 who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins. 



That one should rejoice in the good man ; forgive the bad man ; 

 and pity and help all men to the best of one's ability, is surely in- 

 disputable. It is the glory of Judaism and of Christianity to have 

 proclaimed this truth, through all their aberrations. But the wor- 

 ship of a God who needs forgiveness and help, and deserves pity 

 every hour of his existence, is no better than that of any other vol- 

 untarily selected fetich. The Emperor Julian's project was hope- 

 ful, in comparison with the prospects of the new anthropolatry. 



When the historian of religion in the twentieth century is 

 writing about the nineteenth, I foresee he will say something of 

 this kind : 



The most curious and instructive events in the religious his- 

 tory of the preceding century are the rise and progress of two new 

 sects, called Mormons and Positivists. To the student who has 

 carefully considered these remarkable phenomena nothing in the 

 records of religious self-delusion can appear improbable. 



The Mormons arose in the midst of the great Republic, which, 

 though comparatively insignificant at that time, in territory as in 

 the number of its citizens, was (as we know from the fragments 

 of the speeches of its orators which have come down to us) no less 

 remarkable for the native intelligence of its population, than for 

 the wide extent of their information, owing to the activity of their 

 publishers in diffusing all that they could invent, beg, borrow, or 

 steal. Nor were they less noted for their perfect freedom from all 

 restraints in thought or speech or deed ; except, to be sure, the 

 beneficent and wise influence of the majority exerted, in case of 

 need, through an institution known as " tarring and feathering," 

 the exact nature of which is now disputed. 



There is a complete consensus of testimony that the founder of 

 Mormonism, one Joseph Smith, was a low-minded, ignorant scamp, 

 and that he stole the " Scriptures " which he propounded ; not 

 being clever enough to forge even such contemptible stuff as they 



