MORMONS, a popular pseudonym for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a religious body founded by Joseph Smith (see Sierrit, JOSEPH) at Fayette, N. Y., 6 April 1830. Only six persons took part in the formal organ ization of the Church as a body corporate, such being the minimum requisite under the laws of the State, but the entire number of adherents at the beginning comprised only a few more. The founder averred that in 1823 he was visited by an angel, who revealed to him the reposito of certain records, engraved on plates of gold, buried on the side of a hill near Palmyra, N. Y., and said by the angel to contain the his tory of the aboriginal peoples of the Western Continent. In 1827 these plates were delivered by the angel into the custody of Joseph Smith, with the assurance that through divine assist ance he would be enabled to translate the rec ords, to which labor he was specially appointed. With the plates were two stones set in bows of silver, and these, according to the angel's state ment, were the'Urim and Thummim, the power to use which constituted the special attribute of the seers of ancient days. Smith avowed that by the aid of these instruments under the inspiration of God he was able to read the an cient inscriptions, which consisted of characters said in the body of the record to be Reformed Egyptian and to dictate an exact rendering thereof in the modern tongue. In 1830 he pub lished an English translation of the plates under the title 'The Book of Mormon,' and the work has been distributed by millions of copies through later editions in English and in numer ous foreign languages. In every copy appear as separate affidavits the "Testimony of Three Witnesses' and the "Testimony of Eight Wit nesses,* in which the signers solemnly affirm their personal knowledge as to the plates, the engravings thereon and the genuineness of the translation; and it stands as a remarkable fact that although most of these witnesses aposta tized from the Church, or were excommuni cated, and though they developed bitter animos ity against Joseph Smith, everyone of them stoutly maintained, even unto death, the truth of his testimony concerning the 'Book of Mor mon.' The book sets forth that in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, 600 B.C., an Israelitish prophet named Lehi, to gether with his family and parts of other fam ilies, migrated from Palestine to America under divine direction. In the New World the colony multiplied rapidly; but in course of time the people were rent by dissension and formed two •sing nations, known in the record as Ne , tes and Lamanites. The former, named after
their first chief, Nephi, a younger son of Lehi, cultivated the arts of civilization, built cities in South, Central and North America, and through succession of duly appointed recorders kept a history of their doings. This historical record as later abridged in part and summarized by Mormon, one of their prophets, is the original of the 'Book of Mormon.) The Lamanites, named after Lehi's eldest and rebellious son, Laman, led a nomadic life, neglected agricul ture and productive industry and relied for sub sistence upon war and the chase. They came under the predicted curse of darkness, specifi cally marked by a ruddy skin, and their degen erate posterity are the American Indians. The enmity of the Lamanites toward the Nephites culminated in the utter extermination of the latter at about the close of the 4th century, the final struggle being waged in the region now known as northern New York and near the Hill Cumorah, in which the Nephite records were in modern time disclosed to Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon story, therefore, is seen to cover a period of approximately a thousand years. The Nephites were observers of the Law of Moses, a copy of which together with other Old Testament Scriptures had been brought by Lehi and his colony from Jerusalem. The birth, earthly ministry, death and resurrec tion of Jesus Christ were predicted by Nephite prophets; and the 'Book of Mormon' contains the record of the personal visitation of the res urrected Christ to these 'sheep' other than of ttie Jewish fold, soon after the Lord's ascen sion from Olivet. Among them the Christ es tablished His Church, prescribing the same or dinances, such as baptism by water and of the Spirit, the sacrament of bread and wine, etc., as were instituted among the Jews and ordain ing a body of 12 disciples to whom He gave commission to preach the Gospel and admin ister the ordinances thereof. Mormon's son, Moroni, finished the record of his people about 420 A.D. ; and the angel who in 1823 revealed the depository of the plates to Joseph Smith nounced himself as that same Moroni, the last prophet and historian of the ancient nation. Years after the first publication of the 'Book of Mormon,' a story purporting to explain the modern origin of the book, as a plagiarized and altered version of a work of fiction, attracted some attention; but the theory has been aban doned as utterly untenable. See Boot( OF MOR MON.