The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1855-02-14

the feur points. They must be sanguine indeed
who see in it any hopes of peace.
The Mormons and Their Destiny.
We publish elsewhere another singular Nor
MOI sermon or lecture, delivered by Elder Or
son Hyde, at Deseret, on the 9th Of October
last. 1t appears to contain nothing particular
~ new, but reiterates, almost in the same old
language, the same old ~fallacies about the Bible
and polygamy, which have been the stock III
trade of the Mormon orators for some time past.
Simultaneously with this discourse, q letter,
genuine or spurious, we will not undertake to
say which, appears in several of the papers,
signed Sarah Young and Eliza Williams, in
which one Of these females announces that she
intends to deliver lectures on Mormondom, and
that she will expose Brigham Young and his
friends thoroughly, having had ample opportu.
mites for acquiring information on this subject
while an inmate Of the harem of that modern
apostle. All this looks very much like the
puff a~nticipatory. Mrs. Sarah Young may have
been, as she says, the spiritual wife Of a Nor
mon chief, and may have seen strange things
in Utah, for aught we know to the contrary;
but her way of announcing the fact reminds one
SO strongly of Joice Hetb, and the Fejee mer-
maid, and the woolly horse and that order of
mon horrors will pass, in the minds Of nine
people out of ten, for a mere trick to draw au-
dienees to her lectures.
1t is pure folly to talk Of the Mormons con-
temptuously and slightingly. They are a great
fact; q living body, growing greater and more
formidable day after day. While thoughtless peo
pie here are s~neering at their polygamy, they are
adding to their numbers by the thousand, and
becoming more jealous in proportion to the
sights put upon them. Planted in the heart
of the continent and acknowledging some sort
of dependence upon the United States, they
still regard themselves as a race apart, talk of
the American people as they would of foreign
ers, and evidently look forward to a separate
and distinct destiny Of their OWE We may
laugh at them, rail at them, threaten them as
we please; they are growing all the better for
our ill-will, and gaining proselytes from all
parts of the world. We cannot, either by con-
tempt or violence, evade the solution of the
problem which is every day drawing nearer and
nearer, and which some day must be solved, if
it cost the Union its existence what is to be
done with the Mormons?
The closer that problem comes, the more in
t~eresting grows the resemblance-so often noted
the followers of Mahomet and those
Of Joe Smith. Events, we know, repeat them
selves in a never varying cycle and it does
seem, on reading the lives of Mahomet and
Joe Smith, as though the latter had been in
tended to play in the nineteenth century the
part the former did in the seventh. Both
founders of new religions, a striking similarity
in the times at which they fourished afforded
both a favorable prospect of success. Sale,
following P~rideaux, says Of the period at
which Mahomet appeared -" What by the
ambition of the clergy, and what by drawing
the abstrusest niceties into controversy, and
dividing and subdividing about them into
endless schisms and contentious, men had
destroyed that peace, love and charity
from among them which the gospel was
given to promote, they had lost the whole
substance Of their religion while they thus
eagerly commended for their own imaginations
concerning it; and in o manner quite drove
Christianity out Of the world by those very
controversies in which they disputed with each
other about it" Would it be possible to paint
the present state Of the Christian world, with
the myriads of sects and churches and various
readings Of the Bible, and countless hollow
forms, in language more vivid than this The
coincidence continues: men of oil condi-
TONS" says Sale, made it their sole business to
get money by any MEANS" This was said Of
Asia in the sixth, not America in the nineteenth
century. AS the Roman and Persian empires
were declining, SO Arabia, at Mohammed's set
ting up was strong and fourishing; having been
peopled at the expense of the Grecisn empire,
whence the violent proceedings Of the domineer-
ing sects forced many to seek refuge in q free
country, as Arabia then was, where they who
could not enjoy tranquility and their con-
science at home, found a secure retreat"
Substitute European for "Roman, Persian
and Grecian, 2 and America" for Arabia" and
this passage might find a fitting place In any
history Of the United States.
We are too near the days of Joe Smith to
Judge him fairly yet, and it is quite Impossible
to find out the truth concerning Brigham Young.
But there is a striking analogy between
their religion and that Of Mahomet. Tie latter
came at a period when men were distracted
by discussions on subordinate points of theolo-
gy and built his system the simple formula
"There is no God but God and Mahomet is his
prophet" Every one understood this at o
glance. The Mormons, as will been by the ser
mon published elsewhere, aim at a similar sim.
plicity. Mahomet appealed to the passions Of
the people, turned their vicious propensities
to his own advantage by legalizing~ polygamy
- -.xl.-- A. n~.crcla k.u.nIc O.. an r.