resurrection, augmenting his train. Naturally, from this view of probation in the spirit-world, flows the doctrine of Metempsychosis, almost in the old Brahminical sense. As the souls begotten of God had originally the choice to remain as they were, or to take a material body, and ascend by obedience to greater glory and power; so, if they fail in the first probation, the soul takes a lower tabernacle, pays the forfeit for its offences, and retraces its steps to celestial glory. It is needless to show how this doctrine takes possession of the sympathies of the soul, at that moment when the rupture of earthly ties causes the heart to bleed, and the remembrance of the dead is a holy exercise of the soul.
I need not enlarge these remarks. Enough has been said to show that Mormonism, not content with the transcendentalisms of its own age, has adopted all the strange dreams of the mystics in pastages. We have the ancient Hindoo myth respecting God and the universe, almost literally re-produced; the gnostic theory of emanations is given us in the generation of human souls; the Pythagorean dogma of transmigration is presented almost without modification; while the sympathy of living and departed spirits, and the attendance of one upon the other, is but the wild notion which underlies the spirit-rappings of the present day. It is, in short, a strange composition of all the pantheism and mysticism in all periods of the world, with a strong tincture of the peculiar metaphysics of the age which gave it birth.
It would not be wholly uninteresting now to scrutinize he tortuous lines in the palm of this coarse imposture, and prognosticate its future. But, apart from the peril that attends all predictions, I am warned by the sands of the hour-glass not to enter upon any new line of thought. We cannot fail to glean, from the rapid survey which this lecture has taken, the elements of decay which must eventually work its overthrow. The liberal course of education which they are projecting cannot but open the eyes of the inquiring to the extravagance of their superstitions: and the effort to corrupt science, and to push their frauds into the kingdom of nature, must tumble the whole crazy enterprize to the ground. The weakening, too, of family ties, is in reality drawing away the very
