“History of Mormonism.” Southern Quarterly Review (New Orlea

“History of Mormonism.” Southern Quarterly Review (New Orleans) 1, no. 2 (April 1842): 398–413. History of Mormonism ART V.—Mormonism Exposed: being a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Latter Day Saints. New-York. Harper & Brothers. 1841. We take the occasion presented by the appearance of this work, to proclaim open war against imposture in every shape,-in literature, in art, in science, in politics, and in morals. It does positively seem that human gullibility, like a lover’s appetite, ‘grows with what it feeds on,’ until all healthy taste is extinguished, and nothing left in its place, but never-ceasing, gnawing hunger after imposition. From trifles, it has gradually assumed a controlling influence over the graver and more important matters of social and political government. Common sense and common judgment, frightened by the noise and clamor of king humbug and his train, hide their diminished heads, and are no more allowed a place in the counsels which direct men’s actions. He is the general idol. We run after him, we bow down before him, we worship him. We ask of him concerning our business,-our moral and social duties; we invoke his aid in the education of our children; we conjure his presence to the couch of the sick and the dying. If we be elated with some great public excitement, nine times in ten imposition is at the bottom of it. If we weep with commiseration at the woes of our fellow creatures, imposture is even there; and a highsounding society, or something which catches and fills the ear, receives the outpourings of sensibilities, which plain, unvarnished misery would fail to excite. Although we be no great believers in human perfectibility, and the steady progress of intelligence, yet we had believed that that horrible monster, superstition, with its multitudinous heads and horns, which has glutted itself with human victims, from age to age, and from generation to generation, had, at length, fallen before the march of civilization, to rise no more. We had fondly deemed, that burning men at the stake, because they could not see how two and two made five,-or roasting them before a greenwood fire, for opinion’s sake,-or imprisoning them in loathsome dungeons, for daring to make new discoveries in science,-or burning for witches miserable old women who [398] had lost their beauty,-or hanging sober, well-informed citizens, because they persisted in wearing shad-bellied coats, were practices never more to be indulged in.