SECRETARIES of the home missionary societies of all the leading Protestant bodies in the United States, have united in sounding an alarm to the public regarding the encroachments of Mormonism. In a statement which they have prepared, and sent for publication, they say:— We are moved to this statement by the vitality which the Mormon system has shown, not only in Western States and Territories, but generally throughout the country. We are persuaded that Christian people have no adequate conception of that vitality, nor of the methods, seductive and often successful, by which the hateful system is being pressed upon the public attention. . . . The ambition of Mormons, which they do not even conceal, is to secure control of State after State until, by means of the balance of power, they may make national legislation against Mormonism impossible. Toward this end they are moving by an organization as compact and skillfully devised for its purpose as any that ever engaged the activities of man. . . . It is rapidly growing. The Mormon hierarchy has an unyielding grip on the machinery of the State of Utah and upon all its political and educational interests. Though often denied, there is no doubt that its practice of polygamy continues, in defiance of all the promises made to the United States when Statehood was granted. Its power in contiguous States and Territories is increasing at an alarming rate. By means of colonization it has so affected the States of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Nevada, and the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona, that it will soon secure, if it has not already secured, practical political control in all that region. Its missionary activity throughout the Union is almost incredible. It claims to have now 2,000 missionaries in the field,—1,400 of them in the Southern States,—and to have made last year 20,000 converts. Mormons are also establishing missions in foreign countries on a large scale. For these and many other reasons we make our appeal to the public. We urge upon pastors and teachers to unveil to their people and pupils this system, so seductive and dangerous to all the best interests of every community and of our country. We urge upon the public press the duty of educating the public conscience by unsparingly giving the facts of the nature and the work of Mormonism, and we appeal to Christian and patriotic people everywhere to resist, wherever it appears, a system hostile at once to our free institutions and our Christian faith. There is no doubt that Mormonism is rapidly growing. But it would be a long time, even at the rate of growth here described, before Mormonism could in any way compare as a political power with the papal hierarchy, which is no less "hostile at once to our free institutions and our Christian faith."