We say that God spoke to Joseph Smith and revealed to him the holy law of heaven. You say, "No. Joseph Smith's visions and revelations were the result of some abnormal frame of mind." Can this appear reasonable when we look into the life of the man and the status of his work?

John Bunyan* asserted that God spoke to him; so did George Foxt and Emanuel Swedenborg. In fact every age has had its men who have asserted that divine revelation has been given to them. Whether these men really saw God and talked with Him, I cannot say; but I do know that Joseph Smith has given to the world a book which has caused wise men to think, and students to ponder over its teachings. I refer to the Book of Mormon.

Regarding this work the conscientious person must come to one of two conclusions; either that it is the work of a scholar

place of the crucifix, and was called the Holy Guillotine. All the visible symbols of the ancient religion were destroyed. All emblems of hope in the cemeteries were obliterated, and over their gates were inscribed the words: "Death is eternal sleep." The madness of the Parisian people culminated in the worship of what was called the Goddess of Reason. A celebrated beauty, personating the Goddess, was set upon the altar of Notre Dame as the object of homage and adoration.”—MYERS.

*John Bunyan, an Englishman, was born in 1628. His most noted work is "The Pilgrim's Progress."

†George Fox was the founder of Quakerism. He was born at Drayton, Leicestershire, in 1624. He believed firmly in revelation, and asserted that God commanded him to preach a new religion. He died in 1690.

Emanuel Swedenborg was born at Stockholm, in 1688. He became a student of the natural sciences, but afterwards took up the study of the scriptures. He declared that "Heaven was open to him," and God spoke of the mission he was to perform. His early writings are on science, but, later in life, he issued a voluminous edition of the scriptures according to his own interpretation. The principal of these is the "Arcana Caelestia" in eight quarto volumes, which he printed in London, professing to have derived the whole of it by direct illumination from the Almighty Himself.

whose brain was as great as that of a Kant* or a Bacon,† or that God revealed to the Prophet the records from which it was translated. You may ask the question whether or not the "Principia" of Newton* or the "La Mecanique Celeste" of Laplacet are not greater books. I say, No. The truths of the Book of Mormon could never be the result of mere "man-made" investigation any more than the Bible could be.

In the Book of Mormon, there is philosophically worked out a grand conception of life and its meaning; of death, and the immortality of the soul; and it contains a history that no human brain could concoct.

Joseph Smith left us ideas on all phases of learning. He laid down a philosophy of life, and gave to man a plan of human redemption, which only humble study can make him understand. He has embodied in his teachings an ideal life here on earth. He saw in man grand capabilities and powers, and pointed out the way for him to become free, pure and virtuous; and asserted by his life that the "pure in heart could see God."

Joseph Smith's teachings were utilitarian, yet very ideal in their tendency. He lived a life of sacrifice, thereby teaching the one essential thing in human life-love. He had a sublime feel

*Kant, the greatest philosoper of his age, and one of the greatest of all times, was born in Konigsberg, a city on the Baltic Sea, in Germany, in 1724. His greatest work is the "Critique of Pure Reason," one of the most scholarly productions on philosophy ever written.

I refer to Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare. He based his philosophic doctrine on scientific research, and declared that natural knowledge must be completed by revelation.

*Sir Isaac Newton, the discoverer of the laws of gravitation, was born in England, in 1642. His great work the "Principia" was pronounced by Laplace as the greatest book ever written. It is a work on mathematics and the laws of gravity.

+Laplace, one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers who ever lived, was born in Normandy, in 1749. His greatest mathematical production is his "Mecanique Celeste," a work dealing with the revolutions of planets.

ing for the external world-he had every confidence in the grand development of the human race. He taught the principles of faith, love, and good works, that the glory of God is intelligence; and that knowledge-real knowledge-is the path which leads to heaven. To him the universal brotherhood of mankind is the ultimate reality of society; and he asserted that work, with faith in Jesus Christ, will finally bring the race to this perfection.

It is a sorrowful thing, yet nevertheless true, that Joseph Smith's teachings are not understood today. Neither were the teachings of ancient prophets clearly understood by the peoples of their times. In making a study of the results of the works of our "Mormon Prophet," we can safely say with Temilron, a French writer: "Men's eyes do not focus well enough to note readily the advent hour of the world's Messiahs. By by-paths, not by thoroughfares or by highways, does truth come to its kingdom among men. Good never gallops to victory here in this earth, nor in any instance does truth march to its crown in a dress parade. It enters its kingdom always by Golgotha, a jeering mob, brandishing sticks, accompanying, even its best disciples following afar off, the women staying nearest, and is lifted to its crown on a cross between reviling thieves."

I do not think that the work of Joseph Smith can be explained in its entirety by the psychologist.

There is a higher law than earthly laws. There is the law of Heaven. That law we come to know only through the development of the divine nature within us.

Philosophy has its bounds; but the truths of God are infinite and are only to be known through the Spirit of God. We accept the truths discovered by all investigators; but what Hamlet said to Horatio is true: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

THE INHABITANTS OF SAMOA, THEIR

SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS.

BY W. O. LEE, SAMOAN MISSIONARY.

Three distinct classes of people live on the Samoan Islands. First, the native race of brown-skinned Polynesians; second, the natives from adjacent islands, including the contract laborers or "black boys," from the Gilbert, and other groups; and, lastly, the foreign population, principally from Germany, England and her South Sea colonies, and the United States.

One who has not traveled and seen the actual effect of the white man's civilization (?) upon our brown-skinned proteges, whom Kipling most accurately describes as half devil and half child, might naturally suppose that the natives would be greatly improved through their associations with the superior white race. And so they are, in some respects, and would be in all things if every foreigner who went to the island was actuated by pure motives, and a desire to carry, in truth, the "white man's burden," and lift up, by example and precept, the inferior race. This would be an ideal condition, and the natural desire of every good and pure man, regardless of country or religious opinions. But how different are the actual facts in the case! Avarice, immorality, drunkenness, and profanity, in lieu of good example, follow in the footsteps of the majority of the white men on the islands, and annul, to a great extent, the work of the missionaries. In proof of this broad assertion, we only need to call attention to the following indisputable facts.

Beginning with the lesser evil, profanity, there are no profane words in the native dialect, but the first words learned by a native

in English, as he labors with the white beach-combers of Apia, are terribly mixed with the curses so plentifully used in modern English.

Drunkenness was an unknown factor in the social life of the native until the white man came with his beer, whisky, wine and gin. The charge has often been publicly made that many factional quarrels among the natives, have been fanned into flame by white residents who hoped to reap pecuniary benefits thereby.

As to the more serious crime of immorality, one has but to walk through the streets of Apia, or any other village, where white men have lived, or where the cast-off partner of some white man has returned to her people, and note the tell-tale color of the halfcaste children with no father to own them, to realize that some day, when men are judged according to the deeds done in this life, many a man who has returned to his own country and appeared before his fellows as a good Christian, will have to answer for the betrayal, and casting away of one or more native child-women and their mutual offspring. National pride seems to be a stumbling block to the foreigner who might otherwise honorably marry a Samoan wife. There are, of course, honorable exceptions to the common rule of domestic life among the foreigners on the islands. We know of quite a number of happy and prosperous families where white men have married, and are true to their native wives. The children of the mixed marriages are often sent by their parents to foreign countries to receive their education.

Commercially, the whites are the merchants, the ship and plantation owners, the doctors, lawyers, butchers, bakers, blacksmiths, and carpenters of the larger villages and towns.

The "black boys," contract laborers from the Solomon, Gilbert, and other groups, perform the menial labor on all the large plantations, under the supervision of white overseers. Of these peculiar little people we can say but little, never having lived among them in their native homes. During their three years' contracts, they make good servants and work much harder and more faithfully than do the Samoans, who are far ahead of them in natural intelligence, and physical beauty. These diminutive wooley-headed, spindle-legged, black men remind one of the Darwin theory. If there is any connecting link between man and the monkey tribe,