the higher having appellate jurisdiction over the lower. The cope-stone of the entire structure is the Presidency of the High Priesthood. He disburses the public fund accumulated from the payment of tithes; his permission in every case of “sealing” gains him access as a confidential adviser into every household; and the new revelations dispensed from heaven enable him always to speak with “the nod and sanction of a God.” It is hard to see how more absolute power could be vested in any ruler. And the wonderful results attained in the Salt Lake Valley, in the short space of three years, are in evidence that the influence and power thus vested have been practically exerted, and that the Presidency of Brigham Young does not exist alone upon parchment.
In tracing this parallel, I am far from wishing to degrade Mohammed to the intellectual or-moral level of Joseph Smith. He was unquestionably cast in a far nobler mould, and, impostor as he was, never descended to the pitiful forgery of his modern rival. Bald, and even vicious, as his religion was, it was still in advance of the idolatry which it supplanted. So far as he reclaimed his country-men from polytheism to the recognition of the invisible and spiritual God, he was indisputably a reformer; and full of puerilities as the Koran may be, it never drivels in the contemptible blasphemy of the “Book of Mormon.” As a statesman, too, he pushed his country forward, and gave a dignity to her name, such as she never before enjoyed. He found the tribes of Arabia rudely independent and dissociated; he gave them a bond of union, and founded a compact and powerful empire, whose history is illustrated with deeds of prowess equal to any recorded in the annals of the most romantic chivalry. Viewed either as a religious or political movement, Mohammedism was a step in advance of the past; one stage, at least so far as Arabia was concerned, in the mighty march of the race of man. Mormonism, on the contrary, is an open apostacy from the highest type of civilization to that which is most beastly—a rejection of the most spiritual religion in favor of that which is most gross and material—a bold step, taken backward, in defiance of all the lessons of history, and in the face of a people the most intelligent and free upon the globe.
