“That an illiterate youth of twenty-one, with none of the advantages of our learned divines, with scarce a common school education, poor and despised, alone and unassisted, should have conceived a system of theology, which all the wisdom and learning of the age have not been able to confute, and the progress of which the combined efforts of earth and hell have not been able to resist, exceeds even my powers of belief. When we review his career, and behold him, from the poor despised visionary of Manchester, rising in the short space of fifteen years, to the Presidency of a church numbering not less than 200,000 souls, spread throughout the United States and the Canadas, Europe, and the islands of the sea, we are led to exclaim, ‘a greater than Jonah is here.’ Indeed had he no other claims to inspiration than his actions, and the works he has performed, they would be abundant to stamp him indellibly a Prophet of God.