For more than a half-century the Mormon Church has been teaching its doctrines. Wherever it has had an organization its practices have been more or less subject to observation. It would seem, therefore, that there should be little doubt as to the nature of the one, or the effect and tendency of the other. Nor would there be much question as to either were the doctrines of that church as fully proclaimed elsewhere as they are in Utah; and were its practices everywhere as transparent as they are in its strongholds. The publication and wide circulation of the aforementioned defense of the Mormon Church is the ground of our communication, in which we join hands with the authors of the defense in "establishing a more perfect understanding respecting" themselves and their religion. We could wish that some of the points touched upon in their paper might have had more ample elucidation, both as ministering to a better understanding on the part of residents of non-Mormon communities, and as forestalling the necessity for this review upon our part. But, since this defense obscures so much that it is necessary for people to know, who would desire to form an intelligent judgment concerning the Mormon Church, we discuss those things alluded to in the "address" that seem to us of the gravest importance. It will be noted at the very outset that a supreme claim is made for the Mormon Church. Adding no spiritual truth to the aggregate of things already revealed, fostering no virtues not already taught by Christian churches, and exemplified in Christian lives, showing no superiority of Christian ideals or of Christian character, contributing nothing original to civic righteousness, to commercial integrity, to domestic virtue, to reverence for God or to justice and mercy toward men--this sect, whose activities are chiefly confined to a few countries already Christianized, claims to be the only divinely authorized church of Jesus Christ on the earth; its very name, so it is affirmed, being given by divine revelation. In harmony with this claim it sets up a wholly unbiblical test of salvation. "Joseph Smith is a new witness for God; a prophet divinely authorized to teach the Gospel and re-establish the church of Jesus Christ on earth."--"New Witness for God." by B. H. Roberts. "Every spirit that confesses that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that he lived and died a prophet, and that the Book of Mormon is true, is of God, and every spirit that does not is of anti-Christ."--Brigham Young, Millennial Star, volume 5, page 118. "If plural marriage be unlawful, then is the whole plan of salvation through the house of Israel a failure, and the entire fabric of Christianity without foundation."--A compendium of the doctrine of the Gospel published for missionaries. 1898. "Q. What doth the Lord require of the people of the United States?