Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/421

Rh thus, A.D. 1861 is Annus Josephi Smithii 31. In that year Mirabilis the book of Mormon appeared, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was organized, and the Body Ecclesiastic, after the fashion of those preceding it, was exodus'd or hegira'd to Kirtland, Ohio.

The actual composition of the Mormon hierarchy is that of a cadre of officers to a skeleton army of saints and martyrs, which may be filled up ad infinitum. It is inferior in simplicity, and therefore in power, to that which the Jesuit organization is usually supposed to be, yet it is not deficient in the wherewithal of a higher grasp. It makes state government, especially that of Gentile communities, an excrescence upon the clerical body. The first president is the governor; the second is the lieutenant governor; the third is the secretary of state; the High Council is the Supreme Court; the bishops are justices of peace: briefly, the Church is legislative, judiciary, and executive—what more can be required? It has evidently not neglected the masonic, monotheistic, and monocratic element, as opposed to, and likely to temper the tripartite rule of Anglo-American civil government. The first president is the worshipful master of the lodge, the second and third are the senior and junior wardens, while the inferior ranks represent the several degrees of the master and apprentice. It symbolizes the leveling tendencies of Christianity and progressiveism, while its civil and ecclesiastical despotism and its sharp definition of rank are those of a disciplined army—the model upon which socialism has loved to form itself. In society, while all are brothers, there is a distinct aristocracy, called west of the Atlantic "upper crust;" not of titles and lands, nor of bales and boxes, but of hierarchical position; and, contrary to what might be expected, there is as little real social fusion among Mormons as between the "sixties," the "forties," and the "twenties" of silly Guernsey.

Having now attempted, after the measure of my humble capacity, to show what Mormonism is, I will try to explain what Mormonism is not. The sage of Norwich ("Rel. Med.," sect. vi.) well remarked that "every man is not a proper champion of truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity;" and that "many, from the ignorance of these maxims, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies to the enemies of truth." The doctrine may fitly be illustrated by pointing out the prodigious aid lent to Mormonism by the self-inflicted defeats of anti-Mormonism.

The Jaredite exodus to America in dish-like "barges, whose length was the length of a tree," and whose voyage lasted 344 days, is certainly a trial of faith. The authority of Mormonic inspiration is supposed to be weakened by its anachronisms and other errors: the mariner's compass, for instance, is alluded to long before the fourteenth century. The Mormons, however, re-