132 The Fundamentals tem, organizing Mormon meetings, and separating families, in the Eastern, Middle, Southern and Northwestern States, patriotic and Christian people everywhere need to have a clear idea of what Mormonism really is, and the shameful way in which it dishonors the Bible and the Christian religion, so that they can help to protect their own communities from the curse. And it is impossible to understand its character, with out understanding its origin, so let us consider that first. T H E OR IG IN O F T H E MORMON SYSTEM 1. A s an organization, it is only eighty-two years old, going back to April, 1830. About this time, or a few months before, the Book of Mormon was published; and on April 6 th, 1830, the Mormon Church was organized with six mem bers, in Fayette, Seneca County, New York. Notwithstand ing the long-continued effort to surround this origin with great mystery, and various spectacular fireworks from heaven, as manipulated by Joseph Smith, there is no mystery about it. The period of eighty-two years is not long enough to take us back to the region of mystery. 2. The two main sources of its origin: The first source is a group of three designing men, who put their profane wits together to palm off on various communities in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, this crude, bogus, man-made system under the garb of Christian phraseology, in order to deceive the unthinking. People in general think of Joseph Smith as the one man above all others who originated the Mormon System. But the facts are solid against such a proposition. Smith was igno rant and illiterate, hardly able to read until after he was a grown man. He knew practically nothing about the Bible, according to his mother’s statement, and there is no substan tial evidence in his life and conduct that he ever had any re ligion in his heart. A religious man, however erratic he might be, who had
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