200 FOUKTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
belie this conclusion. The Prophet was there, what he professed to be, i a simple Preacher and a Warner ;' he was the despised and rejected teacher of a gainsaying people ; and he had appa rently no ulterior object but their reformation. . . . But the scene altogether changes at Medina. There the acquisition of temporal power, aggrandizement, and self-glorification mingled with the grand object of the Prophet's previous life; and they were sought after and attained by precisely the same instrument ality. Messages from heaven were freely brought forward to justify his political conduct, equally with his religious precepts. Battles were fought, wholesale executions inflicted, and territo ries annexed, under pretext of the Almighty's sanction. Nay, even baser actions were not only excused, but encouraged, by the pretended divine approval or command. . . . The student of history will trace for himself how the pure and lofty aspira tions of Mahomet were first tinged, and then gradually debased by a half unconscious self-deception, and how in this process truth merged into falsehood, sincerity into guile, — these opposite principles often co-existing even as active agencies in his conduct. The reader will observe that simultaneously with the anxious desire to extinguish idolatry and to promote religion and virtue in the world, there was nurtured by the Prophet in his own heart a licentious self-indulgence ; till in the end, assuming to be the favorite of Heaven, he justified himself by ' revelations y from God in the most flagrant breaches of morality. He will remark that while Mahomet cherished a kind and tender dispo sition, ( weeping with them that wept/ and binding to his person the hearts of his followers by the ready and self-denying offices of love and friendship, he could yet take pleasure in cruel and perfidious assassination, could gloat over the massacre of entire tribes, and savagely consign the innocent babe to the fires of hell. Inconsistencies such as these continually present them selves from the period of Mahomet's arrival at Medina ; and it is by the study of these inconsistencies that his character must be rightly comprehended. The key to many difficulties of this
I 47. CIIKISTIAN POLEMICS AGAINST MOHAMMEDANISM. 201
description may be found, I believe, in the chapter 'on the be lief of Mahomet in his own inspiration.' When onee he had dared to forge the name of the Most High God as the seal and authority of his own words and actions, the germ was laid from which the errors of his after life freely and fatally developed themselves." l
Note on Mormonism. s o u ii c E s .
THE BOOK OF MORMON. First printed at Palmyra, N. Y., 1830. Written by the Prophet Mormon, three hundred years after Christ, upon plates of gold in the " Reformed Egyptian " ( ? ) language, and translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jun., with the aid of Urim and Thummim, into English. As large as the Old Testament. A tedious historical romance on the ancient inhabitants of the American Continent, whose ancestors emigrated from Jerusalem B. C. 600, and whose degenerate descendants are the red Indians. Said to have been written as a book of fiction by a Presbyterian minister, Samuel Spalding.
THE DOCTRINES AND COVENANTS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF THE LATTER DAY SAINTS. Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. Contains the special revelations given to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young at different times. Written in similar style and equally in>ipi»l as the Book of Mormon.
A CATECHISM FOR CHILDREN BY ELDER JOHN JAQUES. Salt Lake City. 25th thousand, 1877.
We cannot close this chapter on Oriental Mohammedanism without some remarks on the abnormal American phenomenon of Mormonism, which arose in the nineteenth century, and presents an instructive analogy to the former. JOSEPH SMITH (born at Sharon, Vt., 1805 ; shot dead at Nauvoo, in Illinois, 1844), the first founder, or rather BRIGHAM YOUNQ (d. 1877), the organizer of the sect, may be palled the American Moham med, although far beneath the prophet of Arabia in genius and power.
The points of resemblance are numerous and striking : the claim to a supernatural revelation mediated by an angel ; the abrogation of previous revelations by later and more convenient ones ; the embodiment of the revelations in an inspired book ; the eclectic character of the system, which is compounded of Jewish, heathenish, and all sorts of sectarian Christian elements ; the intense fanaticism and heroic endurance of the
1 Life of Mah., IV. 317, 322.