" AND THAT PROPHET, OR THAT DREAMER OF DREAMS, SHALL BE 66 PUT TO DEATH."-Deut. xiii. 5. WHEREFORE REBUKE THEM SHARPLY."-Titus, i. 13. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY PLATT & PETERS, OFFICE OF AMERICAN BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND AMERICAN ECLECTIC, BRICK 35 PATERNOSTER ROW. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. 25108 THE Mormons boast of one hundred thousand adherents in this country, and more than ten thousand in Great Britain, where their faith is making rapid progress. This may be an exaggeration; but, at all events, it is time the absurdities of their scheme were exposed. They are, in truth, the most dangerous and virulent enemies to our political and religious purity, and our social and civil peace, that now exist in the Union: not so much, however, on the ground of their direct, as of their indirect influence. The ravages in the front of their march are far less to be dreaded, than the moral pestilence which follows them. The bubbles of fanaticism, it is true, leap and sparkle around their prow, but the dull and sullen waves of atheism roll, and spread wide, in their wake behind. It has ever been true that they have made one hundred infidels to every dozen converts. This fact has not been properly heeded. There is much reason to believe that many of their popular leaders are at heart infidels. Those who can believe that skeptical and ambitious men, who could not be converted to Christianity, have been really made to believe in Joe Smith, may do so if they choose. The multitudes who fall into their ranks and retire, are, in general, reduced to absolute atheism. Some are recovered again: many are not, but sink into still deeper and stronger delusions. In their public addresses, nothing is more common than to hear them defend the Book of Mormon, in promiscuous assemblies, by attacking and ridiculing the Bible, either directly or indirectly. Their object generally is to show that if the Book of Mormon is ridiculous, in whole or in part, the Bible is so too. By these and similar processes, they succeed in affecting the minds of the thoughtless multitude with the |