Romish priests in Ireland. We do not wish them to preach against slavery in the south; this would be not only useless and inexpedient, but actually wrong; for it would be to promote insurrection and ill blood, and tell the people their wrongs; whereas the office of the preacher is to tell them of their duties. But in their private ministrations the clergy should be decided; whilst instilling into the slave the duty of patience and forgiveness under the most diabolical injuries, they should reprove the injurer; they should remind him of his duties and his responsibility of his duty to promote the happiness, the education, the religion, and the morality of those placed within his power. They should endeavour to awaken his mind by degrees to the essential sinfulness of slavery. They should watch for the hour of sickness, and avail themselves of the bed of death. They should represent manumission as one of those acts of mercy which is pleasing to cur common Father. They should denounce slave-breeding as antichristian in principle andˇinfernal in practice. And in every rank of society, in every circumstance of life, every Churchman, whether priest or layman, should give the whole of his influence, moral and political, to the amelioration of the condition of the slaves, and their final emancipation. Oh! that our Sister may repent ere it be too late; but the night cometh when no man worketh. There is a period in the existence of men, of states, AND OF CHURCHES, up to which they are spared by the long-suffering of God; but there is a time when the sun sets, and for ever! There is an hour when the gate is shut—when sorrow becomes vain AND REPENTANCE IMPOSSIBLE—when the Spirit of God, which hath long striven in vain, departs never to return!—when remorse usurps the place of repentance, and hope surrenders her post to despair. May God grant, in his infinite mercy, that such be the fate of neither the Anglo-American Church nor the Anglo-American nation! But, in order to avert His vengeance, the repentance must be general, the restitution complete. "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly! Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and those that suck the breasts; let the bridegroom * Amongst other uncatholic and unchristian proceedings, the rector of a coloured church in Philadelphia is excluded from a seat in the ecclesiastical councils by an express canon of the Diocesan Convention. "We are glad to see that the highly-gifted Bishop of New Jersey has opposed some of these corruptions.” ( Vide "The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery," pp. 37, 38). We are painfully reminded of the injunctions addressed by our Lord to the founders of his Church, and the first links of her ministry (Matt. xx. 26, 27; xxiii. 11, 12). go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; and let them say, 'Spare thy people, O Lord! and give not thy heritage to reproach."" Cry aloud, oh Sister, and spare not. Lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show the people their transgression-their sin against man and God. This is the fast that God hath chosen, the God to whom vengeance belongeth-to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens: TO LET THE OP PRESSED GO FREE, AND THAT YE BREAK EVERY YOKE. ART. III.-The City of the Mormons; or, Three Days at Nauvoo, in 1842. By the REV. HENRY CASWALL, M.A. London: Rivingtons. 1842. IT has been said by a venerable authority, that "there is nothing new under the sun;" but the existence of the Mormon delusion, the features of which we are about to describe, seems to be an exception to this proverb. It is true, however, that the followers of this imposture, being lunatics, are under the moon, so the adage may be saved. At all events, Mormonism is sufficiently new, its followers being content to date the commencement of their religion 1837 years after Christ; so that, unless within these last few years any new form of Dissent, with which we have not had the honour to become acquainted, has sprung from the hotbed of sectarianism, the Mormons are as pre-eminent in novelty as they are remarkable for complete separation from the Christian religion, and consequent distinction from any existing sect. Their present condition, as a "Church militant," could not have been suspected; it is the growth of yesterday, and is now, for the first time, made known to the British public. The recent enquiries of the Commissioners on Employment in Mines and Collieries surprised society in Christian England, by announcing that whole colonies of men, women, and children were doomed to toil and existence in artificial caverns of the earth, beneath our feet, shut out from the light of day, and condemned to "sit" literally "in darkness and the shadow of death," ignorant of religion, untaught, and scarcely civilized. Facts no less unexpected and startling are now announced by Mr. Caswall, who has lately published, in a cheap and convenient form, the experiences of his recent visit to the stronghold of Mormonism, in North America; and, melancholy as it is to see our fellow-creatures deceiving and ready to be deceived, and to witness their blasphemous treatment of the holiest things and mysteries of religion, it is impossible to contemplate without amusement the ludicrous extravagance of the doctrines and proceedings of these new saints. Some few years ago, there arose at Preston, in the manufacturing district of Lancashire, an imposture, which, in the assumed character of a new religion, has since gradually expanded from a crude and shapeless condition into a monster more spiritually fatal, more arrogant, and more hateful, than any of those countless isms and hydra-headed forms of Dissent by which society in the present age is so signally tortured and disgraced. Nothing less than A NEW RELIGION, assuming to be founded on fresh or supplementary revelations from God, on fancied intercourse with the Supreme Being, and on pretended miracles and prophecy, has reared its baneful and impious head -and this not only in the United States, but even in Great Britain, and is said to number at the present moment a hundred thousand adherents, whose preachers defy the world to stop their advancement! This daring imposition, while it professes to admit the inspirations of the Old and New Testaments, and even to acknowledge the Trinity, the atonement and divinity of the Messiah, has substituted for the apostolic Church of Christ a false and pretended institution, impiously styled "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." It has, furthermore, introduced a new book, as containing the revelations of God; which book professes to record the descent of Christ in North America after his crucifixion; and, as Mr. Caswall informs us, has, in practice, almost superseded among the Mormons the sacred Scriptures. Of this fraudulent compilation our author gives the following particulars : "The Book of Mormon contains five hundred and eighty-eight duodecimo pages, consisting of fifteen different books, purporting to be written at different times, and by different authors, whose names they respectively bear. The period of time covered by these spurious records is about a thousand years, commencing with the time of Zedekiah and terminating with the year of our Lord 420. It professes to trace the history of the American Aborigines, from the time of their leaving Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, under one Lehi, down to their final disaster near the hill Camorah, in the State of New York, in which contest, according to the prophet Moroni,' about 230,000 were slain in a single battle, and he alone escaped to tell the tale (!). "These records, with which various prophecies and sermons are intermingled, are declared by Smith [this is the founder of the Mormon religion, its prophet, and high priest] to have been written on golden plates, in the reformed Egyptian character,' and discovered to him by an angel, in the year 1823 " (!). This veracious Book of Mormon assures its misled readers "And ne'er did Faith with her smooth bandage bind that our Lord, having told the Jews that there were other sheep, not of that fold, whom he intended to bring, he had, in accordance with this declaration, and after his ascension into heaven, descended again in America and preached the Gospel to the Indians. The following passage from the "Book of Nephi," in this precious document, is a curiosity, though an awful profanation and parody of the sacred writings, which we should not be led to extract but for the duty of acquainting our readers with the character of this imposture: "And now it came to pass that there were a great multitude gathered together of the people of Nephi; and they cast their eyes up towards heaven, and behold they saw a man descending out of heaven; he was clothed in a white robe, and he came down and stood in the midst of them, and the eyes of the whole multitude were turned upon him; and it came to pass that he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying, 'Behold, I am Jesus Christ, of which the prophets testified that should come into the world; and behold I am the light and life of the world, and I have drank out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world.' It is a circumstance particularly distressing that a large portion of the deluded followers of this imposture are natives of Christian and enlightened England, who have become apostates from the pure religion in which they had been brought up, and have abjured the faith, renounced the ceremonies, and disclaimed the inestimable privileges of the Church of England, having strayed from her fold to follow the deceitful lights of a heresy as impious and preposterous as any that has swayed "the blind belief" of erring man. "I perceived (says Mr. Caswall, in relating his first visit to the Mormon congregation at Nauvoo, in Missouri, on a Sunday) numerous groups of the peasantry of old England-their sturdy forms, their clear complexions, and their heavy movements, strongly contrasting with the slight figure, the sallow visage, and the elastic step of the American. There, too, were the bright and innocent looks of little children, who, born among the privileges of England's Church, baptized with her consecrated waters, and taught to lisp her prayers and repeat her catechism, had now been led into this den of heresy, to listen to the ravings of a false prophet, and to imbibe the principles of a semi-pagan delusion.” Mormonism having hitherto been ridiculed rather than se riously regarded, the British public will now find, with surprise, as well as with regret for human frailty, that this cruel delusion has been taking root, has alienated from the faith and the land of the r fathers thousands of our own countrymen, and has become established on a system, and with a discipline, not unworthy of Rome. It is the hold which, from the apparent confidence and bold assumption of its leaders, this detestable imposture has taken on the minds of persons who have had the inestimable privilege of walking in the light of the Church that is especially lamentable. It is melancholy enough that millions of our fellow-creatures, whom the light of the Gospel and civilization has not reached, should be sunk in heathen darkness; but it is more so, that persons, who have once followed the way of life, should have been tempted, as the deluded followers of Mormonism have been, to desert from their allegiance. The emissaries of Exeter Hall are daily announcing, as if to maintain at fever-heat the zeal and paying disposition of the Fowell Buxton school, the extent of heathen darkness, and are levying contributions for their further discoveries among uncivilized races of mankind, the result merely confirming what the public necessarily knew before. Until the publication of Mr. Caswall's book, however, we were not aware to what extent a body of people, impiously professing the name of Christ, had forsaken his Church, and set up in its place a system, not only of human origin, but the invention of a cunning though illiterate impostor, whom his deluded followers regard as a special prophet of the Almighty. Here is a fine field for the "voluntary" heroes of "Puffington Hall," whom we cordially recommend to transfer their sphere of operations from the banks of the Thames to those of the Missouri. They will find plenty of Indians to convert, and plenty of lost sheep to reclaim. Until Mr. Caswall described the features of this monstrous heresy, as witnessed on his visit to the head-quarters of the deceivers and deceived, we were not aware that the profane and grossly ignorant author of the system had found himself 66 at the head of myriads, blind and fierce;" or that he was not only a prophet, a seer, a merchant, a "revelator," a president, an elder, and an editor-but the general commanding-in-chief "the Nauvoo legion," divided into rifle companies, dragoons, lancers, light-infantry, and artillery; and the arch impostor is stated to have publicly declared, that "if people molested him he would establish his religion by the sword." Like his prototype, the veiled prophet of Khorassan, |