door of the room in which the prisoners were incarcerated, and having broken in, fired upon the four all at once. Hyrum Smith was instantly killed. Joseph, with a revolver, returned two shots, hitting one man in the elbow. He then threw up the window, and attempted to leap out, but was killed in the act by the balls of the assailants outside. Both were again shot after they were dead, each receiving not less than four balls.One of the two Mormons who were with them was seriously wounded, but afterwards recovered; and the other is said to have escaped without a hole in his robe.' Here then ends the life and prophetic mission of Joseph Smith. Henceforth the Mormons are left to be guided by another leader. Of him (Joseph) it has been said; He founded a dynasty which his death rendered more secure, and sent forth principles that take fast hold on thousands in all lands; and the name of the Great Martyr of the nineteenth century, is a tower of strength to his followers. He lived fourteen years and three months after founding a society with six members, and could boast of having 150,000 ready to do his bidding when he died; all of whom regarded his voice as from Heaven. Among his disciples he bears a character for talent, uprightness, and purity, far surpassing all other men with whom they ever were acquainted, or whose biography they have read.'........ Saint or sinner, Joseph Smith must be reckoned a remarkable man in his generation; one who began and accomplished a greater work than he was aware of; and whose name, whatever he may have been while living, will take its place among the notabilities of the world.'

The narrative from which the foregoing extracts have been made proceeds, from page 24th where we have left it, to describe the success of the Mormons under the leadership of Brigham Young, the prophet who succeeded Smith; their migration to the Great Salt Lake Valley; their plurality of wives, and so on. But the reader is recommended the perusal of the pamphlet itself, which is sold for one penny; and also that of the History of the Mormons, by Lieutenant Gunnison, or by apostle Orson Pratt. Also, Chandler's Visit to Salt Lake City, just published, is worth reading. The reviewer of this last-named work remarks that "the hitherto triumphant course of the vulgar imposture called Mormonism is a significant and startling fact. Fanaticism has had many victories, but none so strange or so humiliating. Self-styled prophets and seers of all sorts the world has had, but none so unromantic and contemptible as Joe Smith and Brigham Young. Yet this heresy has taken deep root, and produced results of a permanent and substantial kind. On the high road from the State of California, it has founded flourishing settlements in the pathless wilderness, and reared a city which holds its place amongst the capitals of the New World. From the quiet homes of England it has lured bands of enthusiasts to its Promised Land, and, strange to say, its monstrous creed and revolting customs are sanctioned and supported by the sober zeal and stedfast faith of the Anglo-Saxon character. Never was there a sect so pretentious in its aims, or more daring and determined in action. It is at this moment doubtful whether the Central Government of the United States will be able to impose on the rebellious community the slightest check of municipal law. In the history of the world there is no instance of such stupendous power wielded by men so coarse, selfish, and sensual; such

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potent and puerile fraud, deceiving, or appearing to deceive a multitude so greatly distinguished for energy, shrewdness, and perseverance."*

Now, the reader, who before may have known but little of the religion of the Latter-Day Saints, will be the better enabled, by the foregoing sketches of this curious Creed, to institute a comparison between the success of Mormonism and that of Christianity on their first promulgation. The similarity between the tenets of the two religions, and the circumstances under which they were set forth, must appear to him very striking. Like Christianity, Mormonism has its divine founder-a person commissioned by Heaven, who has visions, holds special communications with the Deity, has revelations made to him, is a prophet and predicts future events, works miracles, is persecuted, and dies a martyr.-It has its apostles and elders, who have the power of working miracles, the gifts of miracles, the gifts of prophecy, of casting out devils, of healing, and of speaking with strange tongues. It has its inspired records, and it believes and inculcates the near approach of the End of the World, the second coming of Christ to reign on earth, and the certainty that all who join this religion shall enjoy eternal life.-Its converts also are in the habit of selling their possessions, and laying the price at the apostles' feet. In a word, there are a thousand points of similarity between Mormonism and Christianity— between Joe Smith and Jesus-between the apostles of the latter and those of the former. Mormonism in its infant state, as it is yet, furnishes a perfect reflex of what Christianity was in its primitive condition, some of its more barbarous practices, however, excepted. The former supplies a real index to the history of the latter, and throws a flood of light upon the obscure and imperfect accounts which from benighted ages have descended to us, as to the causes of its early success. Human nature is the same in every age, and fanaticism, under similar circumstances, produces similar results.

But let us compare the respective successes of these two religions which we have seen so similar. Jesus preached, for about three years, and also sent his disciples to preach; but we do not read that during his lifetime he made many converts. When he was apprehended, the Christian converts did not, in thousands, come forward to his rescue. Unlike the whole people of the State of Missouri, in the case of Joe Smith, we do not find the whole people of Jerusalem, "ranged either on the one side or the other," in regard to Jesus. We do not find him with Christians "to the number of 15,000, taking refuge" in any place. He is attended only by one or two of his twelve disciples, at a crisis when one would expect that his converts by thousands, if they existed, must have "ranged" themselves on his behalf. Joseph Smith's missionaries came to England, “and in three or four years the sect numbered in this country upwards of 10,000 converts." "While settled at Nauvoo," in 1838-only ten years after the first promulgation of the doctrine-"they boasted of having 100,000 persons professing their faith in the United States." Joseph Smith lived only fourteen years to promulgate his doctrine, before he died a martyr to his religion; but in this short space we read that 150,000 of his converts "regarded his voice as from heaven." He first made his appearance as a

Weekly Dispatch, July 5th, 1857.

prophet in 1823, and in 1853-the space of thirty years-his followers numbered not less than 300,000 people"!. From that time to the present they have proportionately and gradually increased. Did such great success attend the preaching of Christianity the first fourteen years, or even the thirty years it was promulgated? We have no account of such success.— The writer of the Acts of the Apostles, who is very particular in recording the number of converts, gives us nothing like the number of the converts to Mormonism. According to Biblical Chronology, Christ was 33 years old when he began to promulgate the Gospel, and in about eight, or according to some, ten years after, Saul was converted; but we have no proof that during this period of about ten years there had been 100,000 converted to Christianity. In the case of Joe Smith, however, we have positive proof, that in ten years this vast number had been converted (most of them from Christianity) to Mormonism. In the year A.D. 64, when Christianity had been preached about thirty-one years, Paul was made prisoner at Rome; but where is the proof that there had then been 300,000 people converted to Christianity? The Mormonites are now able to show alive this number converted to their religion in thirty years. Where then is the proof which the early success of Christianity furnishes of its divine origin? Cannot Mormonism also boast of the same, nay, far greater proof, such as it is, that it is divine? Will Christians admit that Joe Smith and his apostles were and are true prophets, work real miracles, and are divinely inspired?-that the Book of Mormon is a revelation from God, and the religion of the Latter-Day Saints a religion from heaven? To be consistent, the only alternative for them is either to admit all this, or to admit that the early as well as the late success of Christianity is no proof of its supernatural character.

It is not denied that about the close of the first century, and during the three following centuries, very great success attended the preaching of Christianity; but it is equally true, that during these centuries not greater success, to say the least, attended it than has attended the preaching of Mormonism during the time it has as yet existed. Supposing that these fanatics will increase for four centuries at the rate they have hitherto increased,—and we have no proof that they will not do so,-they will then number about four millions. We have no proof that the Christians at the end of the fourth century amounted to this number. Although ancient authors mention a great number of provinces in which Christianity had been preached at a very early date, yet, as Mr. Gibbon very properly remarks, the number of the converts that were made, and their proportion to the unbelieving multitude are now buried in obscurity or disguised by fiction and declamation." Although Pliny in a letter to the Emperor Trajan, at the commencement of the second century, states that in Pontus and Bithynia, owing to the number of Christians, the temples were almost deserted, and the sacred victims found scarcely any purchasers, yet the Christian religion does not appear to have taken a very deep hold of the people even there; for in the middle of the third century there were no more than seventeen believers in the extensive diocese of Neo-Cæsarea.* Even at Antioch, where the followers of Jesus were first greeted with the appellation of Christians, where apparently this sect was most numerous, See Gibbon and Authoritics-Decline and Fall, c. xv. Note 156.

and where the population appears to have been, at least, half-a-million, the Christians, after they had enjoyed the sunshine of Imperial favour for sixty years, did not number more than one hundred thousand persons.But to whatever number the Christians increased in the second, third, and following centuries, it is sufficient for our present purpose to know that within the first thirty years of the preaching of the religion of the LatterDay Saints, Joseph Smith and his apostles have made a much greater number of converts than Jesus and his apostles made during the first thirty years that Christianity was preached to the world. This fact alone, on the ground of early progress, destroys the argument of the divine origin of Christianity, and places it on a level, at least, with Mormonism, which we know to be one of the wildest species of fanaticism that human passions ever displayed. If indeed the divine origin of a religion could be proved by its rapid progress, Mormonism, according to the success it has hitherto met, has a better claim than Christianity to such an origin. It is true that, owing to the similar character of the doctrines and pretensions of both, they have both met with considerable success, and have had a deep hold on the minds of the credulous. The inculcation of the near approach of the End of the World has proved most serviceable to both, and has been the means of intimidating thousands to flee to them for salvation. The preaching of this doctrine, in a modified form, is found very useful even among Protestants of the present day. We hear scarcely a sermon in which it is not enforced in some shape. The same terrors of the day of judgment-the same unquenchable fire-the same lake of fire and brimstone-the same worm that dieth not-the same outer darkness—the same weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, descend in thundering threats from our pulpits now as were fulminated by the apostles. And, as already noticed, many are the cases on record in which persons of timid minds have been driven by these denunciations into despair-madness-irrecoverable insanity-death. As in the apostolic times, so now-fear is the Gospel incentive to obedience ! "The fear of the Lord"-"the fear of God"-" fear came upon all"-such is the language of the Bible; and such, consequently, is the language of the Christian preachers of the present day, a language which, wherever it has any effect, debases and demoralises the human mind. We are not asked to become religious, or in other words, virtuous, because of the intrinsic value, happiness, and beauty of virtue, but because God is "angry with the wicked every day," and is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation"-because there is a kingdom of heaven and eternal life prepared for those that fear the Lord! Fear is continually held forth as the motive to become a Christian. A more unmanly, poor, paltry, selfish, and mischievous incentive to action was never devised. Can man be ameliorated by no other means than by making him a coward, and his Creator a tyrant-by chilling his feelings with portraits of the pangs of hell, or exciting his selfish passions with pictures of the joys of heaven?-a mode which during sixteen centuries of Gospel preaching has been tried, and is as far from deterring him from vice, and inspiring him with the love of virtue, now, as the very moment when the Prophet of Nazareth denounced that whosoever should say, Thou fool! should be in danger of hell-fire.

CHAPTER VI.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE CORRECTNESS OF THE ALLEGED FULFILMENT OF CHRIST'S PROPHECIES-THAT HE WOULD RISE FROM THE GRAVE ON THE THIRD DAY AFTER HIS BURIAL-THAT THE ACT OF THE WOMAN WITH HER BOX OF OINTMENT WOULD BE MENTIONED WHEREVER THE GOSPEL WAS PREACHED-AND THAT MIRACULOUS SIGNS WOULD FOLLOW BELIEVERS.

SECTION I. THE COURSE TO BE PURSUED IN TREATING THE SUBJECT.— THE BURDEN OF PROOF.-NEUTRAL REMARKS.-JEWISH MODE OF COMPUTING TIME.-COMMENCEMENT OF A JEWISH DAY.

Another of Christ's predictions, the fulfilment of which forms a matter of dispute, is that which relates to his resurrection from the dead on the third day, a prediction recorded in the Gospels as having been uttered by Christ on various occasions, and expressed in various modes. It is proposed in this chapter to discuss the fulfilment of this prophecy in the same mode as that prediction of Christ already considered has been discussed, with the exception that, instead of devoting a whole chapter to the arguments on each side, only a section of this chapter must suffice. In one distinct section all the arguments of any strength which are usually adduced by Christians, and any others of which the writer can think, shall be stated in the fairest and strongest manner he is able, with a view to show that this prediction has been fulfilled; in the next, the arguments adduced by the opponents of Christianity shall be stated; and in the section following, the writer's own conviction as to the side on which the truth lies, together with any inferences that may naturally be drawn, shall be placed before the reader. As to the predictions regarding the box of ointment, and the signs which were to follow believers; these are not so strenuously and unqualifiedly contended to have been fulfilled, and therefore will be treated in a more summary manner.

Christians maintain that Christ predicted that, after being put to death and buried, he should rise from the grave on the third day, and that he did rise on the third day, actually fulfilling this prediction. Their opponents, on the other hand, deny the correctness of this affirmation, and