MORMONS, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints, are a religious sect founded by Joseph Smith
at Manchester, New York, in 1830, and for the last thirty-six
years settled in Salt Lake City, Territory of Utah, United States. Smith was born 23d December 1805 at Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont, from which place ten years later his parents, a poor, ignorant, thriftless, and not too honest couple, removed to New York, where they settled on a small farm near Palmyra, Wayne county (then Ontario). Four years later, in 1809, they removed to Manchester, some 6 miles off; and it was at the latter place when fifteen years old that Joseph began to have
his alleged visions, in one of which on the night of 21st
September 1823 the angel Moroni appeared to him three
times, and told him that the Bible of the Western Continent, the supplement to the New Testament, was buried in a certain spot near Manchester. Thither, four years later and after due disciplinary probation, Smith went, and had delivered into his charge by an angel of the Lord a stone box, in which was a volume, 6 inches thick, made of thin gold plates 8 inches by 7, and fastened together by three gold rings. The plates were covered with small writing in the “reformed Egyptian” tongue, and were accompanied by a pair of supernatural spectacles, consisting of two crystals set in a silver bow, and called “Urim and Thummim;” by aid of these the mystic characters could be read. Being himself unable to read or write fluently, Smith employed as amanuensis one Oliver Cowdery, to whom, from behind a curtain, he dictated a translation, which, with the aid of a farmer, Martin Harris, who had more money than wit, was printed and published in 1830 under the title of The Book of Mormon, and accompanied by the sworn statement of Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris that an angel of God had shown them the plates of which the book was a translation. This testimony all three, on renouncing Mormonism some years later, denounced as false; but meanwhile it helped Smith to impose on the credulous, particularly in the absence of the gold plates themselves, which suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. The Book of Mormon, in which Joseph Smith was declared to be God's “prophet,” with all power and entitled to all obedience, professes to give the history of America from its first settlement by a colony of refugees from among the crowd dispersed by the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel down to the year 5 A.D. These settlers having in course of time destroyed one another, nothing of importance occurred until 600 B.C., when Lehi, his wife, and four sons, with ten friends, all from Jerusalem, landed on the coast of Chili. All went well until the death of Lehi, when the divine appointment to the leadership of Nephi, the youngest son, roused the resentment of his elder brothers, who were in consequence condemned to have dark skins and to be an idle mischievous race, — hence the North-American Indians. Between the Nephites and the bad Hebrews a fierce war was maintained for centuries, until finally, in spite of divine intervention in the person of the crucified Christ, the Nephites fell away from the true faith, and in 384 A.D. were nearly annihilated by their dark-skinned foes in a battle at the hill of Cumorah, in Ontario county, New York. Among the handful that escaped were Mormon and his son Moroni, the former of whom collected the sixteen books of records, kept by successive kings and priests, into one volume, which on his death was supplemented by his son with some personal reminiscences and by him buried in the hill of Cumorah, — he being divinely assured that the book would one day be discovered by God's chosen prophet. This is Smith's account of the book; but in reality it was written in 1812 as an historical romance by one Solomon Spalding, a crack-brained preacher; and the MS. falling into the hands of an unscrupulous compositor, Sidney Rigdon, was copied by him, and subsequently given to Joseph Smith. Armed with this book and with self-assumed divine authority, the latter soon began to attract followers. On 6th April 1830 the first conference of the new sect, called by their neighbours Mormons, but by themselves subsequently Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ, was held at Fayette, Seneca county, New York, and in the same year another revelation was received by Smith, proclaiming him “seer, translator, prophet, apostle of Jesus Christ, and elder of the church.” Smith now began to baptize; but, his character, which was none of the best, being too well known in Fayette, he