Swedenborg, Wesley, Irving, and a numerous host of others, during the last seventeen hundred years, have entirely neglected the gathering, which proves that they were without authority--that a dispensation of the gospel was never committed to them--that the voice from heaven to come out of Babylon had never saluted their ears. Previous to the restoration of the _gospel_ by an angel, God had no people in Babylon, and therefore could not call them out. An unauthorised, uninspired priesthood, preaching a perverted gospel, never could raise up a people of God in Babylon; for they themselves are Babylon, and all their converts or children are begotten after their own likeness with Babylonish inscriptions upon their foreheads. It is only when the gospel, apostleship, and power are again restored in the way and manner predicted, that a people of God can be raised up among the nations. It is then, and not till then, that the voice is heard from heaven, calling that people out from among the nations. Mr. Smith did not forget this. It is marvellously strange, indeed, that he should be an impostor, and yet embrace in his system every particular that was to characterize the great dispensation of the latter times. It matters not how diverse the points of his doctrine were to the popular current among the great modern systems of religion. He seems to have introduced his system without paying the least regard as to what would be popular or unpopular--as to whether it would suit the learned or the unlearned--as to whether it would suit the temporal circumstances of man or not. He did not stop to make the inquiry whether the gathering of the Saints would be congenial to the feelings of those who occupied splendid mansions, upon fine farms, surrounded with every luxury of life. He did not stop to consider any of those things, but spoke as one having authority; saying, "_thus saith the Lord_," upon every point of doctrine which he promulgated. Now, for a young man, inexperienced and illiterate, to profess to give the word of the Lord upon subjects of so great a moment--to reveal doctrines which were directly opposed, not only to his own traditions, but to the teachings and doctrines of the most popular, numerous, and powerful sects of the day, and at the same time have those doctrines exactly accord, not only with the ancient gospel, but with every minute prediction relative to the dispensation of the last days--is an evidence that carries TRUTH upon the face of it, and leaves a deep and lasting impression upon every reflecting mind, and we can hardly refrain from assenting in our hearts, that surely _he must have been sent of God_.