Mormons

(mor'munz,) or LATTER-DAY SAINTS. (Eccl. Hist.) The name a umed by a sect of religionists in the United States, and derived from the book on which their creed is founded. The originator of this sect was a person called Joseph Smith, (B. in Vermont, 1805,) who pretended to have had a divine revelation. He declared that, being bewildered as to the choice of a religion, he was told that all those already existing were false; that the North American Indians were a remnant of Israel; and that before they had fallen off from the faith, a priest and prophet named Mormon had, by direction of Deity, drawn up an abstract of their national records and religious opinions, and buried it, but that he himself was selected to recover and publish it to the world. He was told, as he pretended, that it contained many prophecies relating to these " latter days," and would give instructions as to the " gathering of the saints " into a temporal and spiritual kingdom, preparatory to the second coming of the Me iah, which was at hand. He a erted that he found a box that contained a number of plates which resembled gold, and were engraved with Egyptian characters; and along with it the Urim and Thummim, in the shape of divining crystals, by means of which he was to decipher the characters. It is a erted that the plates were seen by eleven persons, but all of them, except three, members of Smith's family, or his neighbors. The only document exhibited as a confirmation of these a ertions contained a mixture of Greek, Hebrew, and Roman letters, with cro es and flourishes, and a Mexican calendar given by Humboldt, but altered to prevent its being recognized. His views met with no sympathy from the ma of the people, who had recourse to wicked means in order to exterminate his followers. Yet in spite of two bitter persecutions, accompanied by murder, robbery, and arson, and two expulsions from flourishing settlements, in the course of twenty years the number of firm adherents to this faith has increased to upwards of 200,000, of whom a large number are now settled in Utah Territory. The M. allow polygamy, and Brigham Young, who, in abt. 1845, succeeded Joseph Smith in the post of prophet, rules them with great severity. In 1870, the attention of Congre was called to the development of Mormonism, and this body declared the practice of polygamy to be an offence punishable at common law. An attempt made, in 1872, to carry out the enforcement of the statutory law of the land, by prosecutions commenced against Brigham Young and several of the leaders of Mormonism, fell through, owing to a decision of the Supreme Court of the U. States, to the effect that the mode of procedure adopted with respect to them was an illegal one. [s. 618]