The situation of the Mormon community in Utah has been peculiarly adapted, heretofore, to the eccentricities of its inhabitants.  Isolated from Christendom on the east and west by plains incapable of settlement for generations to come, and encompassed by mountain-ranges, the line of whose summits runs above the boundary of eternal snow, it was independent of the influences of Christian civilization.  No missionary of any Christian sect ever attempted to propagate his doctrines in Utah,—­nor, perhaps, would any such propagation have been tolerated, had it been attempted.  The Mormon religion was free to run its own course and develop whatever elements it possessed of good and evil.  When Brigham Young and his followers from Nauvoo descended the Wahsatch range in the summer of 1847, and took up their abode around the Great Salt Lake, the avowed creed of the Church was different from that proclaimed to-day.  The secret doctrines entertained by its leaders were perhaps the same as at present, but the religion of the people was a species of mysticism which it is not impossible to conceive might commend itself even to a refined mind.  The existence of polygamy was officially denied by the highest ecclesiastical authority, although we know to-day that the denial was a shameless lie, and that Joseph Smith, during his lifetime, had a plurality of wives, and at his death bequeathed them to his successor, who already possessed a harem of his own.  Property was almost equally distributed among the people, the leaders being as poor as their disciples.  In this respect at that time they were accustomed exultantly to compare their condition with that of the early Christians.

Ten years passed, and the change was extraordinary.  The doctrines of Mormonism, if plainly stated, are no longer such as can commend themselves to a mind not perverted nor naturally prurient.  Polygamy is inculcated as a religious duty, without which dignity in the Celestial Kingdom is impossible, and even salvation hardly to be obtained.  Property is distributed unjustly, the bulk of real and personal estate in the Territory being vested in the Church and its directors, between whom and the mass of the population there exists a difference in social welfare as wide as between the Russian nobleman and his serf.  In brief, the Mormons no longer claim to be a Christian sect, but assert, and truly, that their religion is as distinct from Christianity as that is from Mahometanism.  Many of the doctrines whispered in 1847 only to those who had been admitted to the penetralia of the Nauvoo Temple are proclaimed unblushingly in 1857 from the pulpit in the Tabernacle at Salt Lake City.  A system of polytheism has been ingrafted on the creed, according to which there are grades among the Gods, there being no Supreme Ruler of all, but the primeval Adam of Genesis being the deity highest in spiritual rank, and Christ, Mahomet, Joseph Smith, and, finally, Brigham Young, partaking also of divinity.  The