PREFACE.
Book-making has become so common, that unless some new. subject flits before your eyes; some mighty mystery is found out; some great secret is unravelled; some woful wonder hung up in black and white to touch the very finest sensibilities of human nature; and, finally, if some "Absalom" does not go forth with "more disclosures on Mormonism, booted and spurred" with affidavits of men and women, doubled and twisted, with the most solemn religious sanctity, for,
("'Tis from high life, high characters are drawn.
A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;")[1]
to steal the hearts of the people, the best written and most holy productions, are hooted at as a speculation, got up with an eye to singe fame, and a hand double for cash: but, gentle reader, the "Voice of Truth" is like one crying in the midst of a great city at midnight,—Fire! fire!! fire!!!
The sanctuaries of religion are on fire; the temple of liberty is on fire; the nation is on fire; the world is on fire, and the great mobs of the whole earth, with their dark lanterns glimmering, ever and anon, through the black clouds of vengeance, like the sullen lion's eyes before he leaps upon his prey, are an all-sufficient signal, that towns, cities, nations and kingdoms, will be sacked, pillaged and plundered, and "but few men left"[2] Fear has seized upon all hearts, while the "nobles of the land," instead of exclaiming, "to your tents O Israel!"[3] and watch, for thieves, are now gambling for your rights among the tombs of your
- ↑ Alexander Pope in "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple, Lord Viscount Cobham."
- ↑ Isaiah 24:6 reads, "Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left."
- ↑ 1 Kings 12:16
