He was a sage and a seer who remarked concerning Mormonism: "It presents a problem which the wisest politician has failed to solve, and whose outcome lies in the mystery of the future." It is acknowledged to be the Great Modern Abomination, the most pernicious heresy of this century; and yet in ten years from its origin its devotees numbered thousands, and Joseph Smith, its founder, predicted that it was to be the religious faith of the Western Continent. To-day its membership numbers its hundreds of thousands, its organizations extend over a large part of the globe, and the most careless observer of the times must realize that this institution has become one of the gravest and most difficult religious, social, and political puzzles of the day. Throughout our whole land it is universally despised and execrated; and if popular odium could extinguish it, it would speedily be sunk in the slimy depths of the Great Salt Lake. But thus far it has successfully withstood even the fiercest opposition. That Mormonism is not the weak, empty, insignificant thing which it is so generally assumed to be must be obvious to any one who sets himself seriously to account for its origin, its growth, and its present position and influence. There _must_ be more in the system than is popularly supposed; otherwise the organization could never have grown to be what it is, nor could it now stand up so persistently and even prosperously in the presence of such universal opposition. Very much of what is said and written concerning Mormonism amounts to but very little because of its obvious failure to understand what it denounces; and it will be well for us at the outset to notice A FEW OF THE MISTAKES CONCERNING MORMONISM that are now current. 1. Most people talk as if _Mormonism and polygamy are synonymous_, whereas polygamy is only a comparatively trifling and non-essential part of Mormonism. For ten years after the Church was founded, it was not heard of; and it was not openly taught for twenty years. If it could be brought to a sudden conclusion either by a new revelation, or stamped out by law, Mormonism, with its preposterous claims, its absorption of things political in things ecclesiastical, its ideas, some of them more than heathenish, its intensely secular spirit, its standard of morality lamentably low--MORMONISM, in its worst phases, and in what it is most damaging to souls and fullest of peril to the Republic, would still stand unscathed.