divine, the statesman, and the political economist, may each find, in his own department, material for profound speculation.
It is never easy to form a correct estimate of religious impostors. The deceit and falsehood which mark their course, seem scarcely consistent with the religious sentiment that must underlie the character. The great controversy, for example, whether Mohammed was a fanatic or an impostor, proceeds upon the supposed incompatibility of the two; yet. their co-existence is needed to solve the facts of the case. We cannot explain the origin of a religious imposture, without supposing the religious element to be awakened, however it may be afterwards debauched and misdirected. The history of error abundantly shows that the most vicious principles will often mingle with the religious instincts of men, who are driven under this double impulse into the most riotous excesses. The original exciting cause may be slight enough; but the hallucination once entertained of miraculous correspondence with Heaven, an unscrupulous or ignorant conscience will not long hesitate at fraud in accomplishing the holy mission; and when success shall have consecrated the cheat, the impostor becomes fully ensnared in his own lie, and easily credits to supernatural revelation the suggestions of his own fancy. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon sect, is dogmatically pronounced an impostor by thousands who do not stop to inquire how far he may also have been an enthusiast; or to solve the query whether it be possible to control the religious convictions of our fellow men, without a previous excitation of our own religious nature. The biography of this remarkable person opens with the account of his deep spiritual distress during an exciting religious revival through which he passed while still a youth. Perplexed in his choice between conflicting sects and creeds, he was for a time in that state of indecision in which multitudes vibrate between superstition and skepticism. While perhaps upon the verge of infidelity, he swung to the opposite pole, and conceived the project of founding a church, whose comprehensive creed should harmonize all sects, and swallow up dissent: and this lively suggestion of his own mind, a heated imagination
