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Show THE NEWS AND JOSEPH'S PROPHECIES. The Deseret News seems just now to be frantically desirious of establishing the prophetic ! attribute of the late Joseph Smith, and declares j that not one of his many prophecies has been dis-proven, dis-proven, while the fulfillment of others has been almost if not quite startling. We would not, if we could, take one honest wreath from any man's J brow, much less a prophet's, but has the News made a case? The News cites the fact that Joseph Smith foretold the great civil war in this country. Well, that was foretold in every home in the state of New Yoik in which the New York weekly papers were read. Daniel Webster plainly fore-shadowed it in his reply to Hayne. Andrew Jackson plainly prognosticated it when he put down the nullification nullifica-tion in South Carolina. That cannot be ascribed 4 to prophecy; it was merely reasoning from cause to an almost inevitable effect by -those who reas oned it out; those who did not reason it out merely took the forecast of others, and, parrot- BHflllllllllll like, repeated it. We suspect this is what Joseph Smith did, for when he made his phophecy Garrison Gar-rison and Phillips were thundering their anathemas ana-themas aga'jist slavery in the north, and it was n.ot safe for a known abolitionist to visit the ; south. Every year the tension became more and more strained, and then in every town and village in the north there were true souls who were saying say-ing that the north and south were alike responsible for the sin of slavery, and that a just God would, ' through war, exact a terrible pennance from both sections as the stain was wiped away. ' But does the News quote all the prophecy? We have not the books at hand, but are very sure that coupled with the prediction of war, there was something to the effect that the war would be 'I pursued wih such fury that, in their exhaustion, I the remnants of the nation would have to come to Joseph's and Brigham's Zion for refuge and recuperation, and that this Zion was to save the nation from final destruction, Will the News ' tell us about that, and, if possible, kindly fix the V approximate date when.it will probably come to pass? ' , Time is an important factor in this case; it I , must be soon or the remnants, depleted as they , may be, will sadly overcrowd Utah and Zion's suburbs in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, eastern Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. Again, the News has a correspondent in Mexico who is struck by the wonderful similarity of the ancient Aztec or Myran temples going to ruin there, and those which were planned or de- ! scribed by Joseph Smith, and the News dimly outlines a supposition that Joseph in the spirit saw those te. les and copied after them. At least , t what the News says means that or is meaningless. Now the correspondent's eyesight must be won-' won-' derfully magnified by faith to trace the resem blance, because all the descriptions by Le Plongeon and others picture those temples in the fashion of some of the monuments seen in .all burial grounds that contain many dead. At the base a square block of stone or cement; above that another square block of lesser size; sometimes some-times a third of still less size, then a pedestal, then an upright shaft or column. Only in Mexico the base is sometimes four hundred feet square, then the second about one hundred feet less in diameter, and then a structure with rooms, which might have been dwellings for the living or receptacles re-ceptacles for the dead. If any of the outward em-j em-j belishments can be compared to the modern Mor- ' 8 mon temples, a still more striking similarity can I be traced to ruins in Egypt and Asyria, pictures of j which can be found in a dozen old books that were I irTprint in 1830. The News will take note that we A are not disputing that Joseph was a prophet; we , dre merely stating that the proofs so far brought v - forward by the News are too obscure to con- I vince anyone except some one who not only wants I to be satisfied with them but is determined in I advance to be satisfied, I . .. When the smallpox broke out here five or six years ago and the News determined to fly fl iri the face of all modern medical science and keep the Mormon people from being vaccinated, even if they died for the want of it, as many of ! them did, it declared that the writer in the News had seen smallpox patients healed merely by the laying on of the hands of elders. Then we begged the editor of the News to go out and minister '' to the sick, to cure just one for his faith's sake. I e declined. We suspect his proofs of prophecy ' j are on almost as unsubstantial grounds as his recollection of the healing of smailpox patients , yvas, and that he would not take a single risk-to j vindicate his statements, |