“14. But the book shall be delivered unto a man, and he shall deliver the words of the book, which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust; and he shall deliver these words unto another, but the words that are sealed he shall not deliver, neither shall he deliver the book.
“15. For the book shall be sealed by the power of God, and the revelation which was sealed shall be kept in the book until the own due time of the Lord, that they may come forth; for, behold, they reveal all things from the foundation of the world unto the end thereof.”
No one will question that a Rigdon who would palm off such a fraudulent work as this upon the men who looked to him as a religious teacher would hesitate to suggest to Smith the scheme for a new Bible. During the work of translation, as we learn from Smith’s autobiography, the translators saw a wonderful vision, in which they “beheld the glory of the Son on the right hand of the Father,” and holy angels, and the glory of the worlds, terrestrial and celestial. Soon after this they received an explanation from heaven of some obscure texts in Revelation. Thus, the sea of glass (iv. 6) “is the earth in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state”; by the little book which was eaten by John (chapter x) “we are to understand that it was a mission and an ordinance for him to gather the tribes of Israel.”
It may be added that this translation is discarded by the modern Mormon church in Utah. The Deseret Evening News, the church organ at Salt Lake City, said on February 21, 1900:–
“The translation of the Bible, referred to by our correspondents, has not been adopted by this church as authoritative. It is understood that the Prophet Joseph intended before its publication to subject the manuscript to an entire examination, for such revision as might be deemed necessary. Be that as it may, the work has not been published under the auspices of this church, and is, therefore, not held out as a guide. For the present, the version of the scriptures commonly known as King James’s translation is used, and the living oracles are the expounders of the written word.”
We may anticipate the course of our narrative in order to show how much confirmation of Rigdon’s connection with the whole Mormon scheme is furnished by the circumstances attending the first open announcement of his acceptance of the Mormon literature and faith. We are first introduced to Parley P. Pratt, sometime tin peddler, and a lay preacher to rural congregations in Ohio when occasion offered. Pratt in his autobiography tells of the joy with which he heard Rigdon preach, at his home in Ohio, doctrines of repentance and baptism which were the “ancient gospel” that he (Pratt) had “discovered years before, but could find no one to minister in”; of a society for worship which he and others organized; of his decision, acting under the influence of the Gospel and prophecies “as they had been opened to him,” to abandon the home he had built up, and to set out on a mission “for the Gospel’s sake”; and of a trip to New York State, where he was shown the Mormon Bible. “As I read,” he says, “the spirit of the Lord was upon me, and I knew and comprehended that the book was true.”
Pratt was at once commissioned, “by revelation and the laying on of hands,” to preach the new Gospel, and was sent, also by “revelation” (Sec. 32, “Doctrine and Covenants”), along with Cowdery, Z. Peterson, and Peter Whitmer, Jr., “into the wilderness among the Lamanites.” Pratt and Cowdery went direct to Rigdon’s house in Mentor, where they stayed a week. Pratt’s own account says: “We called on Mr. Rigdon, my former friend and instructor in the Reformed Baptist Society. He received us cordially, and entertained us with hospitality.”*
* “Autobiography of P. P. Pratt,” p. 49.
In Smith’s autobiography it is stated that Rigdon’s visitors presented the Mormon Bible to him as a revelation from God, and what followed is thus described:–
“This being the first time he had ever heard of or seen the Book of Mormon, he felt very much prejudiced at the assertion, and replied that ‘he had one Bible which he believed was a revelation from God, and with which he pretended to have some acquaintance; but with respect to the book they had presented him, he must say HE HAD SOME CONSIDERABLE DOUBT’ Upon which they expressed a desire to investigate the subject and argue the matter; but he replied, ‘No, young gentlemen, you must not argue with me on the subject. But I will read your book, and see what claim it has upon my faith, and will endeavor to ascertain whether it be a revelation from God or not’. After some further conversation on the subject, they expressed a desire to lay the subject before the people, and requested the privilege of preaching in Elder Rigdon’s church, TO WHICH HE READILY CONSENTED. The appointment was accordingly published, and a large and respectable congregation assembled. Oliver Cowdery and Parley P. Pratt severally addressed the meeting. At the conclusion Elder Rigdon arose and stated to the congregation that the information they that evening had received was of an extraordinary character, and certainly demanded their most serious consideration; and, as the apostle advised his brethren ‘to prove all things and hold fast that which is good,’ so he would exhort his brethren to do likewise, and give the matter a careful investigation, and NOT TURN AGAINST IT, WITHOUT BEING FULLY CONVINCED OF ITS BEING AN IMPOSITION, LEST THEY SHOULD POSSIBLY RESIST THE TRUTH.”
* Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, p. 47.
Accepting this as a correct report of what occurred (and we may consider it from Rigdon’s pen), we find a clergyman who was a fellow-worker with men like Campbell and Scott expressing only “considerable doubt” of the inspiration of a book presented to him as a new Bible, “readily consenting” to the use of his church by the sponsors for this book, and, at the close of their arguments, warning his people against rejecting it too readily “lest they resist the truth”! Unless all these are misstatements, there seems to be little necessity of further proof that Rigdon was prepared in advance for the reception of the Mormon Bible.
After this came the announcement of the conversion and baptism by the Mormon missionaries of a “family” of seventeen persons living in some sort of a “community” system, between Mentor and Kirtland. Rigdon, who had merely explained to his neighbors that his visitors were “on a curious mission,” expressed disapproval of this at first, and took Cowdery to task for asserting that his own conversion to the new belief was due to a visit from an angel. But, two days later, Rigdon himself received an angel’s visit, and the next Sunday, with his wife, was baptized into the new faith.
Rigdon, of course, had to answer many inquiries on his return to Ohio from a visit to Smith which soon followed his conversion, but his policy was indignant reticence whenever pressed to any decisive point. To an old acquaintance who, after talking the matter over with him at his house, remarked that the Koran of Mohammed stood on as good evidence as the Bible of Smith, Rigdon replied: “Sir, you have insulted me in my own house. I command silence. If people come to see us and cannot treat us civilly, they can walk out of the door as soon as they please.”* Thomas Campbell sent a long letter to Rigdon under date of February 4, 1831, in which he addressed him as “for many years not only a courteous and benevolent friend, but a beloved brother and fellow-laborer in the Gospel–but alas! how changed, how fallen.” Accepting a recent offer of Rigdon in one of his sermons to give his reasons for his new belief, Mr. Campbell offered to meet him in public discussion, even outlining the argument he would offer, under nine headings, that Rigdon might be prepared to refute it, proposing to take his stand on the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures, Smith’s bad character, the absurdities of the Mormon Bible and of the alleged miraculous “gifts,” and the objections to the “common property” plan and the rebaptizing of believers. Rigdon, after glancing over a few lines of this letter, threw it into the fire unanswered.**
* “Mormonism Unveiled,” p. 112.
** Ibid., p. 116-123.
CHAPTER IX. “THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL”
Having presented the evidence which shows that the historical part of the Mormon Bible was supplied by the Spaulding manuscript, we may now pay attention to other evidence, which indicates that the entire conception of a revelation of golden plates by an angel was not even original, and also that its suggestor was Rigdon. This is a subject which has been overlooked by investigators of the Mormon Bible.
That the idea of the revelation as described by Smith in his autobiography was not original is shown by the fact that a similar divine message, engraved on plates, was announced to have been received from an angel nearly six hundred years before the alleged visit of an angel to Smith. These original plates were described as of copper, and the recipient was a monk named Cyril, from whom their contents passed into the possession of the Abbot Joachim, whose “Everlasting Gospel,” founded thereon, was offered to the church as supplanting the New Testament, just as the New Testament had supplanted the Old, and caused so serious a schism that Pope Alexander IV took the severest measures against it.*
* Draper’s “Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. II, Chap. III. For an exhaustive essay on the “Everlasting Gospel,” by Renan, see Revue des Deux Mondes, June, 1866. For John of Parma’s part in the Gospel, see “Histoire Litteraire de la France” (1842), Vol. XX, p. 24.
The evidence that the history of the “Everlasting Gospel” of the thirteenth century supplied the idea of the Mormon Bible lies not only in the resemblance between the celestial announcement of both, but in the fact that both were declared to have the same important purport–as a forerunner of the end of the world –and that the name “Everlasting Gospel” was adopted and constantly used in connection with their message by the original leaders in the Mormon church.
If it is asked, How could Rigdon become acquainted with the story of the original “Everlasting Gospel,” the answer is that it was just such subjects that would most attract his attention, and that his studies had led him into directions where the story of Cyril’s plates would probably have been mentioned. He was a student of every subject out of which he could evolve a sect, from the time of his Pittsburg pastorate. Hepworth Dixon said, “He knew the writings of Maham, Gates, and Boyle, writings in which love and marriage are considered in relation to Gospel liberty and the future life.”* H. H. Bancroft, noting his appointment as Professor of Church History in Nauvoo University, speaks of him as “versed in history, belles-lettres, and oratory.”** Mrs. James A. Garfield told Mrs. Dickenson that Rigdon taught her father Latin and Greek.*** David Whitmer, who was so intimately acquainted with the early history of the church, testified: “Rigdon was a thorough biblical scholar, a man of fine education and a powerful orator.”**** A writer, describing Rigdon while the church was at Nauvoo, said, “There is no divine in the West more learned in biblical literature and the history of the world than he.”***** All this indicates that a knowledge of the earlier “Everlasting Gospel” was easily within Rigdon’s reach. We may even surmise the exact source of this knowledge. Mosheim’s “Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern” was at his disposal. Editions of it had appeared in London in 1765, 1768, 1774, 1782, 1790, 1806, 1810, and 1826, and among the abridgments was one published in Philadelphia in 1812. In this work he could have read as follows:–
“About the commencement of this [the thirteenth] century there were handed about in Italy several pretended prophecies of the famous Joachim, abbot of Sora in Calabria, whom the multitude revered as a person divinely inspired, and equal to the most illustrious prophets of ancient times. The greatest part of these predictions were contained in a certain book entitled, ‘The Everlasting Gospel,’ and which was also commonly called the Book of Joachim. This Joachim, whether a real or fictitious person we shall not pretend to determine, among many other future events, foretold the destruction of the Church of Rome, whose corruptions he censured with the greatest severity, and the promulgation of a new and more perfect gospel in the age of the Holy Ghost, by a set of poor and austere ministers, whom God was to raise up and employ for that purpose.”
* “Spiritual Wives,” p. 62.
** “Utah,” p. 146.
*** Scribner’s Magazine, October, 1881.
**** “Address to All Believers in Christ;” p. 35.
***** Letter in the New York Herald.
Here is a perfect outline of the scheme presented by the original Mormons, with Joseph as the divinely inspired prophet, and an “Everlasting Gospel,” the gift of an angel, promulgated by poor men like the travelling Mormon elders.
The original suggestion of an “Everlasting Gospel” is found in Revelation xiv. 6 and 7:–
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, “Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water.”** “Bisping (after Gerlach) takes Rev. xiv. 6-11 to foretell that three great events at the end of the last world-week are immediately to precede Christ’s second advent (1) the announcement of the ‘eternal’ Gospel to the whole world (Matt. xxiv. 14); (2)the Fall of Babylon; (3)a warning to all who worship the beast…. Burger says this vision can denote nothing but a last admonition and summons to conversion shortly before the end.”–Note in “Commentary by Bishops and Other Clergy of the Anglican Church.”
This was the angel of Cyril; this the announcement of those “latter days” from which the Mormon church, on Rigdon’s motion, soon took its name.
That Rigdon’s attention had been attracted to an “Everlasting Gospel” is proved by the constant references made to it in writings of which he had at least the supervision, from the very beginning of the church. Thus, when he preached his first sermon before a Mormon audience–on the occasion of his visit to Smith at Palmyra in 1830–he took as his text a part of the version of Revelation xiv. which he had put into the Mormon Bible (1 Nephi xiii. 40), and in his sermon, as reported by Tucker, who heard it, holding the Scriptures in one hand and the Mormon Bible in the other, he said, “that they were inseparably necessary to complete the everlasting gospel of the Saviour Jesus Christ.” In the account, in Smith’s autobiography, of the first description of the buried book given to Smith by the angel, its two features are named separately, first, “an account of the former inhabitants of this continent,” and then “the fulness of the Everlasting Gospel. “That Rigdon never lost sight of the importance, in his view, of an “Everlasting Gospel” may be seen from the following quotation from one of his articles in his Pittsburg organ, the Messenger and Advocate, of June 15, 1845, after his expulsion from Nauvoo: “It is a strict observance of the principles of the fulness of the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ, as contained in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Book of Covenants, which alone will insure a man an inheritance in the kingdom of our God.”
The importance attached to the “Everlasting Gospel” by the founders of the church is seen further in the references to it in the “Book of Doctrine and Covenants,” which it is not necessary to cite,* and further in a pamphlet by Elder Moses of New York (1842), entitled “A Treatise on the Fulness of the Everlasting Gospel, setting forth its First Principles, Promises, and Blessings,” in which he argued that the appearance of the angel to Smith was in direct line with the Scriptural teaching, and that the last days were near.
* For examples see Sec. 68, 1; Sec. 101, 22; Sec. 124, 88.
CHAPTER X. THE WITNESSES TO THE PLATES
In his accounts to his neighbors of the revelation to him of the golden plates on which the “record” was written, Smith always declared that no person but him could look on those plates and live. But when the printed book came out, it, like all subsequent editions to this day, was preceded by the following “testimonies”:–
“THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES
“Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that we through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shewn unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true; and it is marvellous in our eyes, nevertheless the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honour be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.
“OLIVER COWDERY,DAVID WHITMER, MARTIN HARRIS.
“AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF THE EIGHT WITNESSES
“Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jun., the translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen; and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
“CHRISTIAN WHITMER, HIRAM PAGE, JACOB WHITMER, JOSEPH SMITH, SEN., PETER WHITMER, JUN., HYRUM SMITH, JOHN WHITMER, SAMUEL H. SMITH.”
In judging of the value of this testimony, we may first inquire, what the prophet has to say about it, and may then look into the character and qualification of the witnesses.
We find a sufficiently full explanation of Testimony No. 1 in Smith’s autobiography and in his “revelations.” Nothing could be more natural than that such men as the prophet was dealing with should demand a sight of any plates from which he might be translating. Others besides Harris made such a demand, and Smith repeated the warning that to look on them was death. This might satisfy members of his own family, but it did not quiet his scribes, and he tells us that Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Harris “teased me so much” (these are his own words) that he gave out a “revelation” in March, 1829 (Sec. 5, “Doctrine and Covenants”), in which the Lord was represented as saying that the prophet had no power over the plates except as He granted it, but that to his testimony would be added “the testimony of three of my servants, whom I shall call and ordain, unto whom I will show these things, “adding,” and to none else will I grant this power, to receive this same testimony among this generation. “The Lord was distrustful of Harris, and commanded him not to be talkative on the subject, but to say nothing about it except, “I have seen them, and they have been shown unto me by the power of God.”
Smith’s own account of the showing of the plates to these three witnesses is so luminous that it may be quoted. After going out into the woods, they had to stand Harris off by himself because of his evil influence. Then:–
“We knelt down again, and had not been many minutes engaged in prayer when presently we beheld a light above us in the air of exceeding brightness; and behold an angel stood before us. In his hands he held the plates which we had been praying for these to have a view of; he turned over the leaves one by one, so that we could see them and discover the engravings thereon distinctly. He then addressed himself to David Whitmer and said, ‘David, blessed is the Lord and he that keeps his commandments’; when immediately afterward we heard a voice from out of the bright light above us saying, ‘These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God. The translation of them is correct, and I command you to bear record of what you now see and hear.’
“I now left David and Oliver, and went into pursuit of Martin Harris, whom I found at a considerable distance, fervently engaged in prayer. He soon told me, however, that he had not yet prevailed with the Lord, and earnestly requested me to join him in prayer, that he might also realize the same blessings which we had just received. We accordingly joined in prayer, and immediately obtained our desires; for before we had yet finished, the same vision was opened to our view, AT LEAST IT WAS AGAIN TO ME [Joe thus refuses to vouch for Harris’s declaration on the subject]; and I once more beheld and heard the same things; whilst, at the same moment, Martin Harris cried out, apparently in ecstasy of joy, ‘Tis enough, mine eyes hath beheld,’ and, jumping up, he shouted ‘Hosannah,’ blessing God, and otherwise rejoiced exceedingly.”*
* Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, Supt., p. 19.
If this story taxes the credulity of the reader, his doubts about the value of this “testimony” will increase when he traces the history of the three witnesses. Surely, if any three men in the church should remain steadfast, mighty pillars of support for the prophet in his future troubles, it should be these chosen witnesses to the actual existence of the golden plates. Yet every one of them became an apostate, and every one of them was loaded with all the opprobrium that the church could pile upon him.
Cowdery’s reputation was locally bad at the time. “I was personally acquainted with Oliver Cowdery,” said Danforth Booth, an old resident of Palmyra, in 1880. “He was a pettifogger; their (the Smiths’) cat-paw to do their dirty work.”* Smith’s trouble with him, which began during the work of translating, continued, and Smith found it necessary to say openly in a “revelation” given out in Ohio in 1831 (Sec. 69), when preparations were making for a trip of some of the brethren to Missouri, “It is not wisdom in me that he should be intrusted with the commandments and the monies which he shall carry unto the land of Zion, except one go with him who will be true and faithful.”
* Among affidavits on file in the county clerk’s office at Canandaigua, New York.
By the time Smith took his final departure to Missouri, Cowdery and David and John Whitmer had lost caste entirely, and in June, 1838, they fled to escape the Danites at Far West. The letter of warning addressed to them and signed by more than eighty Mormons, giving them three days in which to depart, contained the following accusations:–
“After Oliver Cowdery had been taken by a state warrant for stealing, and the stolen property found in the house of William W. Phelps; in which nefarious transaction John Whitmer had also participated. Oliver Cowdery stole the property, conveyed it to John Whitmer, and John Whitmer to William W. Phelps; and then the officers of law found it. While in the hands of an officer, and under an arrest for this vile transaction, and, if possible, to hide your shame from the world like criminals (which, indeed, you were), you appealed to our beloved brethren, President Joseph Smith Jr. and Sidney Rigdon, men whose characters you had endeavored to destroy by every artifice you could invent, not even the basest lying excepted….
“The Saints in Kirtland having elected Oliver Cowdery to a justice of the peace, he used the power of that office to take their most sacred rights from them, and that contrary to law. He supported a parcel of blacklegs, and in disturbing the worship of the Saints; and when the men whom the church had chosen to preside over their meetings endeavored to put the house to order, he helped (and by the authority of his justice’s office too) these wretches to continue their confusion; and threatened the church with a prosecution for trying to put them out of the house; and issued writs against the Saints for endeavoring to sustain their rights; and bound themselves under heavy bonds to appear before his honor; and required bonds which were both inhuman and unlawful; and one of these was the venerable father, who had been appointed by the church to preside–a man of upwards of seventy years of age, and notorious for his peaceable habits.
“Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Lyman E. Johnson, united with a gang of counterfeiters, thieves, liars and blacklegs of the deepest dye, to deceive, cheat and defraud the Saints out of their property, by every art and stratagem which wickedness could invent; using the influence of the vilest persecutions to bring vexatious lawsuits, villainous prosecutions, and even stealing not excepted…. During the full career of Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer’s bogus money business, it got abroad into the world that they were engaged in it, and several gentlemen were preparing to commence a prosecution against Cowdery; he finding it out, took with him Lyman E. Johnson, and fled to Far West with their families; Cowdery stealing property and bringing it with him, which has been, within a few weeks past, obtained by the owner by means of a search warrant, and he was saved from the penitentiary by the influence of two influential men of the place. He also brought notes with him upon which he had received pay, and made an attempt to sell them to Mr. Arthur of Clay County.”*
* “Documents in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons,” Missouri Legislature (1841), p. 103.
Rigdon, who was the author of this arraignment, realizing that the enemies of the church would not fail to make use of this aspersion of the character of the witnesses, attempted to “hedge” by saying, in the same document, “We wish to remind you that Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were among the principal of those who were the means of gathering us to this place by their testimony which they gave concerning the plates of the Book of Mormon, that they were shown to them by an angel; which testimony we believe now as much as before you had so scandalously disgraced it.” Could affrontery go to greater lengths?
Cowdery and David Whitmer fled to Richmond, Missouri, where Whitmer lived until his death in January, 1888. Cowdery went to Tiffin, Ohio, where, after failing to obtain a position as an editor because of his Mormon reputation, he practised law. While living there he renounced his Mormon views, joined the Methodist church, and became superintendent of a Sunday-school. Later he moved to Wisconsin, but, after being defeated for the legislature there, he recanted his Methodist belief, and rejoined the Saints while they were at Council Bluffs, in October, 1848, after the main body had left for Salt Lake Valley. He addressed a meeting there by invitation, testifying to the truth of the Book of Mormon, and the mission of Smith as a prophet, and saying that he wanted to be rebaptized into the church, not as a leader, but simply as a member.* He did not, however, go to Utah with the Saints, but returned to his old friend Whitmer in Missouri, and died there in 1850. It has been stated that he offered to give a full renunciation of the Mormon faith when he united with the Methodists at Tiffin, if required, but asked to be excused from doing so on the ground that it would invite criticism and bring him into contempt.** One of his Tiffin acquaintances afterward testified that Cowdery confessed to him that, when he signed the “testimony,” he “was not one of the best men in the world,” using his own expression.*** The Mormons were always grateful to him for his silence under their persecutions, and the Millennial Star, in a notice of his death, expressed satisfaction that in the days of his apostasy “he never, in a single instance, cast the least doubt on his former testimony,” adding, “May he rest in peace, to come forth in the morning of the first resurrection into eternal life, is the earnest desire of all Saints.”
* Millennial Star, Vol. XI, p.14.
** “Naked Truths about Mormonism,” A. B. Demming, Oakland, California, 1888.
*** “Gregg’s History of Hancock County, Illinois,” p. 257.
The Whitmers were a Dutch family, known among their neighbors as believers in witches and in the miraculous generally, as has been shown in Mother Smith’s account of their sending for Joseph. A “revelation” to the three witnesses which first promised them a view of the plates (Sec. 17) told them, “It is BY YOUR FAITH you shall obtain a view of them,” and directed them to testify concerning the plates, “that my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., may not be destroyed.” One of the converts who joined the Mormons at Kirtland, Ohio, testified in later years that David Whitmer confessed to her that he never actually saw the plates, explaining his testimony thus: “Suppose that you had a friend whose character was such that you knew it impossible that he could lie; then, if he described a city to you which you had never seen, could you not, by the eye of faith, see the city just as he described it?”*
* Mrs. Dickenson’s “New Light on Mormonism.”
The Mormons have found consolation in the fact that Whitmer continued to affirm his belief in the authenticity of the Mormon Bible to the day of his death. He declared, however, that Smith and Young had led the flock astray, and, after the open announcement of polygamy in Utah, he announced a church of his own, called “The Church of Christ,” refusing to affiliate even with the Reorganized Church because of the latter’s adherence to Smith. In his “Address to Believers in the Book of Mormon, “a pamphlet issued in his eighty-second year, he said, “Now, in 1849 the Lord saw fit to manifest unto John Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery and myself nearly all the remaining errors of doctrine into which we had been led by the heads of the church.” The reader from all this can form an estimate of the trustworthiness of the second witness on such a subject.
We have already learned a great deal about Martin Harris’s mental equipment. A lawyer of standing in Palmyra told Dr. Clark that, after Harris had signed the “testimony,” he pressed him with the question: “Did you see the plates with your natural eyes, just as you see this pencil case in my hand? Now say yes or no.” Harris replied (in corroboration of Joe’s misgiving at the time): “Why, I did not see them as I do that pencil case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith. I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me–though at the time they were covered over with a cloth.”*
* “Gleanings by the Way.”
Harris followed Smith to Ohio and then to Missouri, but was ever a trouble to him, although Smith always found his money useful. In 1831, in Missouri, it required a “revelation” (Sec. 58) to spur him to “lay his monies before the Bishop.” As his money grew scarcer, he received less and less recognition from the Mormon leaders, and was finally expelled from the church. Smith thus referred to him in the Elders’ Journal, July, 1837, one of his publications in Ohio: “There are negroes who wear white skins as well as black ones, granny Parish, and others who acted as lackeys, such as Martin Harris.”
Harris did not appear on the scene during the stay of the Mormons in Illinois, having joined the Shakers and lived with them a year or two. When Strang claimed the leadership of the church after Smith’s death, Harris gave him his support, and was sent by him with others to England in 1846 to do missionary work. His arrival there was made the occasion of an attack on him by the Millennial Star, which, among other things, said:–
“We do not feel to warn the Saints against him, for his own unbridled tongue will soon show out specimens of folly enough to give any person a true index to the character of the man; but if the Saints wish to know what the Lord hath said of him, they may turn to the 178th page of the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and the person there called a WICKED MAN is no other than Martin Harris, and he owned to it then, but probably might not now. It is not the first time the Lord chose a wicked man as a witness. Also on page 193, read the whole revelation given to him, and ask yourselves if the Lord ever talked in that way to a good man. Every one can see that he must have been a wicked man.”*
*Vol. VIII, p. 123.
Harris visited Palmyra in 1858. He then said that his property was all gone, that he had declined a restoration to the Mormon church, but that he continued to believe in Mormonism. He thought better of his declination, however, and sought a reunion with the church in Utah in 1870. His backslidings had carried him so far that the church authorities told him it would be necessary for him to be rebaptized. This he consented to with some reluctance, after, as he said, “he had seen his father seeking his aid. He saw his father at the foot of a ladder, striving to get up to him, and he went down to him, taking him by the hand, and helped him up.”* He settled in Cache County, Utah, where he died on July 10, 1875, in his ninety-third year. “He bore his testimony to the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon a short time before he departed,” wrote his son to an inquirer, “and the last words he uttered, when he could not speak the sentence, were ‘Book,’ ‘Book,’ ‘Book.'”
* For an account of Harris’s Utah experience, see Millennial Star, Vol. XLVIII, pp.357-389.
The precarious character of Smith’s original partners in the Bible business is further illustrated by his statement that, in the summer of 1830, Cowdery sent him word that he had discovered an error in one of Smith’s “revelations,”* and that the Whitmer family agreed with him on the subject. Smith was as determined in opposing this questioning of his divine authority as he always was in stemming any opposition to his leadership, and he made them all acknowledge their error. Again, when Smith returned to Fayette from Harmony, in August, 1830 (more than a year after the plates were shown to the witnesses), he found that “Satan had been lying in wait,” and that Hiram Page, of the second list of witnesses, had been obtaining revelations through a “peek-stone” of his own, and that, what was more serious, Cowdery and the Whitmer family believed in them. The result of this was an immediate “revelation” (Sec. 28) directing Cowdery to go and preach the Gospel to the Lamanites (Indians) on the western border, and to take along with him Hiram Page, and tell him that the things he had written by means of the “peek-stone” were not of the Lord.
* Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, p. 36.
Neither Smith’s autobiography nor the “Book of Doctrine and Covenants” contains any explanation of the second “testimony.” The list of persons who signed it, however, leaves little doubt that the prophet yielded to their “teasing” as he did to that of the original three. The first four signers were members of the Whitmer family. Hiram Page was a root-doctor by calling, and a son-in-law of Peter Whitmer, Sr. The three Smiths were the prophet’s father and two of his brothers.*
* Christian Whitmer died in Clay County, Missouri, November 27, 1835; Jacob died in Richmond County, April 21, 1866; Peter died in Clay County, September 22, 1836; Hiram Page died on a farm in Ray County, August 12, 1852.
The favorite Mormon reply to any question as to the value of these “testimonies” is the challenge, “Is there a person on the earth who can prove that these eleven witnesses did not see the plates?” Curiously, the prophet himself can be cited to prove this, in the words of the revelation granting a sight of the plates to the first three, which said, “And to none else will I grant this power, to receive this same testimony among this generation.” A footnote to this declaration in the “Doctrine and Covenants” offers, as an explanation of Testimony No. 2; the statement that others “may receive a knowledge by other manifestations.” This is well meant but transparent.
Mother Smith in later years added herself to these witnesses. She said to the Rev. Henry Caswall, in Nauvoo, in 1842, “I have myself seen and handled the golden plates.” Mr. Caswall adds:–
“While the old woman was thus delivering herself, I fixed my eyes steadily upon her. She faltered and seemed unwilling to meet my glances, but gradually recovered her self-possession. The melancholy thought entered my mind that this poor old creature was not simply a dupe of her son’s knavery, but that she had taken an active part in the deception.”
Two matters have been cited by Mormon authorities to show that there was nothing so very unusual in the discovery of buried plates containing engraved letters. Announcement was made in 1843 of the discovery near Kinderhook, Illinois, of six plates similar to those described by Smith. The story, as published in the Times and Seasons, with a certificate signed by nine local residents, set forth that a merchant of the place, named Robert Wiley, while digging in a mound, after finding ashes and human bones, came to “a bundle that consisted of six plates of brass, of a bell shape, each having a hole near the small end, and a ring through them all”; and that, when cleared of rust, they were found to be “completely covered with characters that none as yet have been able to read.” Hyde, accepting this story, printed a facsimile of one of these plates on the cover of his book, and seems to rest on Wiley’s statement his belief that “Smith did have plates of some kind.” Stenhouse,* who believed that Smith and his witnesses did not perpetrate in the new Bible an intentional fraud, but thought they had visions and “revelations,” referring to the Kinderhook plates, says that they were “actually and unquestionably discovered by one Mr. R. Wiley.” Smith himself, after no one else could read the writing on them, declared that he had translated them, and found them to be a history of a descendant of Ham.**
* T. B. H. Stenhouse, a Scotchman, was converted to the Mormon belief in 1846, performed diligent missionary work in Europe, and was for three years president of the Swiss and Italian missions. Joining the brethren in Utah with his wife, he was persuaded to take a second wife. Not long afterward he joined in the protest against Young’s dictatorial course which was known as the “New Movement,” and was expelled from the church. His “Rocky Mountain Saints” (1873) contains so much valuable information connected with the history of the church that it has been largely drawn on by E. W. Tullidge in his “History of Salt Lake City and Its Founders,” which is accepted by the church.
**Millennial Star, January 15, 1859, where cuts of the plates (here produced) are given.
But the true story of the Kinderhook plates was disclosed by an affidavit made by W. Fulgate of Mound Station, Brown County, Illinois, before Jay Brown, Justice of the Peace, on June 30, 1879. In this he stated that the plates were “a humbug, gotten up by Robert Wiley, Bridge Whitton, and myself. Whitton (who was a blacksmith) cut the plates out of some pieces of copper Wiley and I made the hieroglyphics by making impressions on beeswax and filling them with acid, and putting it on the plates. When they were finished, we put them together with rust made of nitric acid, old iron and lead, and bound them with a piece of hoop iron, covering them completely with the rust.” He describes the burial of the plates and their digging up, among the spectators of the latter being two Mormon elders, Marsh and Sharp. Sharp declared that the Lord had directed them to witness the digging. The plates were borrowed and shown to Smith, and were finally given to one “Professor” McDowell of St. Louis, for his museum.*
* Wyl’s “Mormon Portraits,” p. 207. The secretary of the Missouri Historical Society writes me that McDowell’s museum disappeared some years ago, most of its contents being lost or stolen, and the fate of the Kinderhook plates cannot be ascertained.
In attacking Professor Anthon’s statement concerning the alleged hieroglyphics shown to him by Harris, Orson Pratt, in his “Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon,” thought that he found substantial support for Smith’s hieroglyphics in the fact that “Two years after the Book of Mormon appeared in print, Professor Rafinesque, in his Atlantic journal for 1832, gave to the public a facsimile of American glyphs,* found in Mexico. They are arranged in columns…. By an inspection of the facsimile of these forty-six elementary glyphs, we find all the particulars which Professor Anthon ascribes to the characters which he says ‘a plain-looking countryman’ presented to him. “These” elementary glyphs “of Rafinesque are some of the characters found on the famous “Tablet of the Cross” in the ruins of Palenque, Mexico, since so fully described by Stevens. A facsimile of the entire Tablet may be found on page 355, Vol. IV, Bancroft’s “Native Races of the Pacific States.” Rafinesque selected these characters from the Tablet, and arranged them in columns alongside of other ancient writings, in order to sustain his argument that they resembled an old Libyan alphabet. Rafinesque was a voluminous writer both on archaeological and botanical subjects, but wholly untrustworthy. Of his Atlantic Journal (of which only eight numbers appeared) his biographer, R. E. Call, says that it had “absolutely no scientific value.” Professor Asa Gray, in a review of his botanical writings in Silliman’s Journal, Vol. XL, No. 2, 1841, said, “He assumes thirty to one hundred years as the average time required for the production of a new species, and five hundred to one thousand for a new genus.” Professor Gray refers to a paper which Rafinesque sent to the editor of a scientific journal describing twelve new species of thunder and lightning. He was very fond of inventing names, and his designation of Palenque as Otolum was only an illustration of this. So much for the “elementary glyphs.”
* “Glyph: A pictograph or word carved in a compact distinct figure.”–“Standard Dictionary.
CHAPTER XI. THE MORMON BIBLE
The Mormon Bible,* both in a literary and a theological sense, is just such a production as would be expected to result from handing over to Smith and his fellow-“translators” a mass of Spaulding’s material and new doctrinal matter for collation and copying. Not one of these men possessed any literary skill or accurate acquaintance with the Scriptures. David Whitmer, in an interview in Missouri in his later years, said, “So illiterate was Joseph at that time that he didn’t know that Jerusalem was a walled city, and he was utterly unable to pronounce many of the names that the magic power of the Urim and Thummim revealed.” Chronology, grammar, geography, and Bible history were alike ignored in the work. An effort was made to correct some of these errors in the early days of the church, and Smith speaks of doing some of this work himself at Nauvoo. An edition issued there in 1842 contains on the title-page the words, “Carefully revised by the translator.” Such corrections have continued to the present day, and a comparison of the latest Salt Lake edition with the first has shown more than three thousand changes.
* The title of this Bible is “The Book of Mormon”; but as one of its subdivisions is a Book of Mormon, I use the title “Mormon Bible,” both to avoid confusion and for convenience.
The person who for any reason undertakes the reading of this book sets before himself a tedious task. Even the orthodox Mormons have found this to be true, and their Bible has played a very much less considerable part in the church worship than Smith’s “revelations” and the discourses of their preachers. Referring to Orson Pratt’s* labored writings on this Bible, Stenhouse says, “Of the hundreds of thousands of witnesses to whom God has revealed the truth of the ‘Book of Mormon,’ Pratt knows full well that comparatively few indeed have ever read that book, know little or nothing intelligently of its contents, and take little interest in it.”** An examination of its contents is useful, therefore, rather as a means of proving the fraudulent character of its pretension to divine revelation than as a means of ascertaining what the members of the Mormon church are taught.
* Orson Pratt was a clerk in a store in Hiram, Ohio, when he was converted to Mormonism. He seems to have been a natural student, and he rose to prominence in the church, being one of the first to expound and defend the Mormon Bible and doctrines, holding a professorship in Nauvoo University, publishing works on the higher mathematics, and becoming one of the Twelve Apostles.
** “Rocky Mountain Saints,” p. 553.
The following page(omitted in this etext) presents a facsimile of the title-page of the first edition of this Bible. The editions of to-day substitute “Translated by Joseph Smith, Jun.,” for “By Joseph Smith, junior, author and proprietor.”
The first edition contains 588 duodecimo pages, and is divided into 15 books which are named as follows: “First Book of Nephi, his reign and ministry,” 7 chapters; “Second Book of Nephi,” 15 chapters; “Book of Jacob, the Brother of Nephi,” 5 chapters; “Book of Enos,” 1 chapter; “Book of Jarom,” 1 chapter; “Book of Omni,” 1 chapter; “Words of Mormon,” 1 chapter; “Book of Mosiah,” 13 chapters; “Book of Alma, a Son of Alma,” 30 chapters; “Book of Helaman,” 5 chapters; “Third Book of Nephi, the Son of Nephi, which was the son of Helaman,” 14 chapters; “Fourth Book of Nephi, which is the Son of Nephi, one of the Disciples of Jesus Christ,” 1 chapter; “Book of Mormon,” 4 chapters; “Book of Ether,” 6 chapters; “Book of Moroni,” 10 chapters. The chapters in the first edition were not divided into verses, that work, with the preparation of the very complete footnote references in the later editions, having been performed by Orson Pratt.
The historical narrative that runs through the book is so disjointedly arranged, mixed up with doctrinal parts, and repeated, that it is not easy to unravel it. The following summary of it is contained in a letter to Colonel John Wentworth of Chicago, signed by Joseph Smith, Jr., which was printed in Wentworth’s Chicago newspaper and also in the Mormon Times and Seasons of March 1, 1842:–
“The history of America is unfolded from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the 5th century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem about 600 years before Christ. They were principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inhabitance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle toward the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country.”
This history purports to have been handed down, on metallic plates, from one historian to another, beginning with Nephi, from the time of the departure from Jerusalem. Finally (4 Nephi i. 48, 49*), the people being wicked, Ammaron, by direction of the Holy Ghost, hid these sacred records “that they might come again unto the remnant of the house of Jacob.”
* All references to the Mormon Bible by chapter and verse refer to Salt Lake City edition of 1888.
To bring the story down to a comparatively recent date, and account for the finding of the plates by Smith, the Book of Mormon was written by the “author.” This subdivision is an abridgment of the previous records. It relates that Mormon, a descendant of Nephi, when ten years old, was told by Ammaron that, when about twenty-four years old, he should go to the place where the records were hidden, take only the plates of Nephi, and engrave on them all the things he had observed concerning the people. The next year Mormon was taken by his father, whose name also was Mormon, to the land of Zarahemla, which had become covered with buildings and very populous, but the people were warlike and wicked. Mormon in time, “seeing that the Lamanites were about to overthrow the land,” took the records from their hiding place. He himself accepted the command of the armies of the Nephites, but they were defeated with great slaughter, the Lamanites laying waste their cities and driving them northward.
Finally Mormon sent a letter to the king of the Lamanites, asking that the Nephites might gather their people “unto the land of Cumorah, by a hill which was called Cumorah, and there we would give them battle.” There, in the year 384 A.D., Mormon “made this record out of the plates of Nephi, and hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records which have been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were those few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni.”* This hill, according to the Mormon teaching, is the hill near Palmyra, New York, where Smith found the plates, just as Mormon had deposited them.
* Hyde gives a list of twenty-four additional plates mentioned in this Bible which must still await digging up in the hill near Palmyra.
In the battle which took place there the Nephites were practically annihilated, and all the fugitives were killed except Moroni, the son of Mormon, who undertook the completion of the “record.” Moroni excuses the briefness of his narrative by explaining that he had not room in the plates, “and ore have I none” (to make others). What he adds is in the nature of a defence of the revealed character of the Mormon Bible and of Smith’s character as a prophet. Those, for instance, who say that there are no longer “revelations, nor prophecies, nor gifts, nor healing, nor speaking with tongues,” are told that they know not the Gospel of Christ and do not understand the Scriptures. An effort is made to forestall criticism of the “mistakes” that are conceded in the title-page dedication by saying, “Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him” (Book of Mormon ix. 31).
Evidently foreseeing that it would be asked why these “records,” written by Jews and their descendants, were not in Hebrew, Mormon adds (chap. ix. 32, 33):–
“And now behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.
“And if our plates had been sufficiently large, we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.”
Few parts of this mythical Bible approached nearer to the burlesque than this excuse for having descendants of the Jews write in “reformed Egyptian.”
The secular story of the ancient races running through this Bible is so confused by the introduction of new matter by the “author”* and by repetitions that it is puzzling to pick it out. The Book of Ether was somewhat puzzling even to the early Mormons, and we find Parley P. Pratt, in his analysis of it, printed in London in 1854, saying, “Ether SEEMS to have been a lineal descendant of Jared.”
*Professor Whitsitt, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, in his article on Mormonism in “The Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, and Gazetteer” (New York, 1891), divides the Mormon Bible into three sections, viz.: the first thirteen books, presented as the works of Mormon; the Book of Ether, with which Mormon had no connection; and the fifteenth book,” which was sent forth by the editor under the name of Moroni. “He thus explains his view of the “editing” that was done in the preparation of the work for publication:–
“The editor undertook to rewrite and recast the whole of the abridgment (of Nephi’s previous history), but his industry failed him at the close of the Book of Omni. The first six books that he had rewritten were given the names of the small plates…. The book called the ‘Words of Mormon’ in the original work stood at the beginning, as a sort of preface to the entire abridgment of Mormon; but when the editor had rewritten the first six books, he felt that these were properly his own performance, and the ‘Words of Mormon’ were assigned a position just in front of the Book of Mosiah, when the abstract of Mormon took its real commencement….
“The question may now be raised as to who was the editor of the Book of Mormon…. In its theological positions and coloring the Book of Mormon is a volume of Disciple theology (this does not include the later polygamous doctrine and other gross Mormon errors). This conclusion is capable of demonstration beyond any reasonable question. Let notice also be taken of the fact that the Book of Mormon bears traces of two several redactions. It contains, in the first redaction, that type of doctrine which the Disciples held and proclaimed prior to November 18, 1827, when they had not yet formally embraced what is commonly considered to be the tenet of baptismal remission. It also contains the type of doctrine which the Disciples have been defending since November 18, 1827, under the name of the ancient Gospel, of which the tenet of socalled baptismal remission is a leading feature. All authorities agree that Mr. Smith obtained possession of the work on September 22, 1827, a period of nearly two months before the Disciples concluded to embrace this tenet. The editor felt that the Book of Mormon would be sadly incomplete if this notion were not included. Accordingly, he found means to communicate with Mr. Smith, and, regaining possession of certain portions of the manuscript, to insert the new item…. Rigdon was the only Disciple minister who vigorously and continuously demanded that his brethren should adopt the additional points that have been indicated.”
Very concisely, this Bible story of the most ancient race that came to America, the Jaredites, may be thus stated:–
This race, being righteous, were not punished by the Lord at Babel, but were led to the ocean, where they constructed a vessel by direction of the Lord, in which they sailed to North America. According to the Book of Ether, there were eight of these vessels, and that they were remarkable craft needs only the description given of them to show: “They were built after a manner that they were exceeding tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish” (Book of Ether ii. 17). This description certainly establishes the general resemblance of these barges to some kind of a dish, but the rather careless comparison of their length simply to that of a “tree” leaves this detail of construction uncertain.
Just before they embarked in these vessels, a brother of Jared went up on Mount Shelem, where the Lord touched sixteen small stones that he had taken up with him, two of which were the Urim and Thummim, by means of which Smith translated the plates. These stones lighted up the vessels on their trip across the ocean. Jared’s brother was told by the spirit on the mount, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. “A footnote in the modern edition of this Bible kindly explains that Jared’s brother “saw the preexistent spirit of Jesus.”
When they landed (somewhere on the Isthmus of Darien), the Lord commanded Nephi to make “plates of ore,” on which should be engraved the record of the people. This was the origin of Smith’s plates. In time this people divided themselves, under the leadership of two of Lehi’s sons–Nephi and Laman–into Nephites and Lamanites (with subdivisions). The Lamanites, in the course of two hundred years, had become dark in color and “wild and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people; full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents and wandering about in the wilderness, with a short skin girdle about their loins, and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow and the cimeter and the ax” (Enos i, 2o). The Nephites, on the other hand, tilled the land and raised flocks. Between the two tribes wars waged, the Nephites became wicked, and in the course of 320 years the worst of them were destroyed (Book of Alma).
Then the Lord commanded those who would hearken to his voice to depart with him to the wilderness, and they journeyed until they came to the land of Zarahemla, which a footnote to the modern edition explains “is supposed to have been north of the head waters of the river Magdalena, its northern boundary being a few days’ journey south of the Isthmus” (of Darien). There they found the people of Zarahemla, who had left Jerusalem when Zedekiah was carried captive into Babylon. New teachers arose who taught the people righteousness, and one of them, named Alma, led a company to a place which was called Mormon, “where was a fountain of pure water, and there Alma baptized the people. The Book of Alma, the longest in this Bible, is largely an account of the secular affairs of the inhabitants, with stories of great battles, a prediction of the coming of Christ, and an account of a great migration northward, and the building of ships that sailed in the same direction.
Nephi describes the appearance of Christ to the people of the western continent, preceded by a star, earthquakes, etc. On the day of His appearance they heard “a small voice” out of heaven, saying, “Behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name; hear ye him.” Then Christ appeared and spoke to them, generally in the language of the New Testament (repeating, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount*), and afterward ascended into heaven in a cloud. The expulsion of the Nephites northward, and their final destruction, in what is now New York State, followed in the course of the next 384 years.
* In the Mormon version of this sermon the words, “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee,” and “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee,” are lacking. The Deseret Evening News of February 21, 1900, in explaining this omission, says that the report by Mormon of the “discourse delivered by Jesus Christ to the Nephites on this continent after his resurrection from the dead… may not be full and complete.”
There is throughout the book an imitation of the style of the Holy Scriptures. Verse after verse begins with the words “and it came to pass,” as Spaulding’s Ohio neighbors recalled that his story did. The following extract, from 1 Nephi, chap. viii, will give an illustration of the literary style of a large part of the work:–
“1.. And it came to pass that we had gathered together all manner of seeds of every kind, both of grain of every kind, and also of the seeds of fruit of every kind.
“2. And it came to pass that while my father tarried in the wilderness, he spake unto us, saying, Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen a vision.
“3. And behold, because of the thing which I have seen, I have reason to rejoice in the Lord, because of Nephi and also of Sam; for I have reason to suppose that they, and also many of their seed, will be saved.
“4. But behold, Laman and Lemuel, I fear exceedingly because of you; for behold, methought I saw in my dream, a dark and dreary wilderness.
“5. And it came to pass that I saw a man, and he was dressed in a white robe; and he came and stood before me.
“6. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, and bade me follow him.
“7. And it came to pass that as I followed him, I beheld myself that I was in a dark and dreary waste.
“8. And after I had travelled for the space of many hours in darkness, I began to pray unto the Lord that he would have mercy on me, according to the multitude of his tender mercies.
“9. And it came to pass after I had prayed unto the Lord, I beheld a large and spacious field.
“10. And it came to pass that I beheld a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one happy.
“11. And it came to pass that I did go forth, and partake of the fruit thereof; and I beheld that it was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen.”
Whole chapters of the Scriptures are incorporated word for word. In the first edition some of these were appropriated without any credit; in the Utah editions they are credited. Beside these, Hyde counted 298 direct quotations from the New Testament, verses or sentences, between pages 2 to 428, covering the years from 600 B.C. to Christ’s birth. Thus, Nephi relates that his father, more than two thousand years before the King James edition of the Bible was translated, in announcing the coming of John the Baptist, used these words, “Yea, even he should go forth and cry in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight; for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose” (1 Nephi x. 8). In Mosiah v. 8, King Benjamin is represented as saying, 124 years before Christ was born, “I would that you should take upon you the name of Christ as there is no other name given whereby salvation cometh.”
The first Nephi represents John as baptizing in Bethabara (the spelling is Beathabry in the Utah edition), and Alma announces (vii. 10) that “the Son of God shall be born of Mary AT JERUSALEM.” Shakespeare is proved a plagiarist by comparing his words with those of the second Nephi, who, speaking twenty-two hundred years before Shakespeare was born, said (2 Nephi i. 14), “Hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs you must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveller can return.”
The chapters of the Scriptures appropriated bodily, and the places where they may be found, are as follows:–
First Edition Utah Edition
Isaiah xlviii and xlix pp. 52 to 56 1 Nephi, ch. xx, xxi Isaiah 1 and li …pp. 76 2 Nephi, ch. vii Isaiah lii …. . pp. 498 3 Nephi, ch. xx Isaiah liv …. . pp. 501, 502 3 Nephi, ch. xx Isaiah ii to xiv . . pp. 86 to 101 2 Nephi, ch. xii to xxiv Malachi iii, iv … pp. 503 to 505 3 Nephi, ch. xxiv, xxv Matthew v, vi, vii . .pp. 479 to 483 3 Nephi, ch. xii to xix 1 Corinthians xiii … pp. 580 Moroni, ch. vii
Among the many anachronisms to be found in the book may be mentioned the giving to Laban of a sword with a blade “of the most precious steel” (1 Nephi iv. 9), centuries before the use of steel is elsewhere recorded. and the possession of a compass by the Jaredites when they sailed across the ocean (Alma xxxvii. 38), long before the invention of such an instrument. The ease with which such an error could be explained is shown in the anecdote related of a Utah Mormon who, when told that the compass was not known in Bible times, responded by quoting Acts xxviii. 13, where Paul says, “And from thence we fetched a compass.” When Nephi and his family landed in Central America” there were beasts in the forest of every kind, both the cow, and the ox, and the ass, and the horse” (ix Nephi xviii. 25). If Nephi does not prevaricate, there must have been a fatal plague among these animals in later years, for horses, cows, and asses were unknown in America until after its discovery by Europeans. Moroni, in the Book of Ether (ix. 18, 19), is still more generous, adding to the possessions of the Jaredites sheep and swine* and elephants and “cureloms and cumoms.” Neither sheep nor swine are indigenous to America; but the prophet is safe as regards the “cureloms and cumoms,” which are animals of his own creation.
* “And,” it is added, “many other kinds of animals which were useful for the use of man, “thus ignoring the Hebrew antipathy to pork.
The book is full of incidental proofs of the fraudulent profession that it is an original translation. For instance, in incorporating 1 Corinthians iii. 4, in the Book of Moroni, the phrase “is not easily provoked” is retained, as in the King James edition. But the word “easily” is not found in any Greek manuscript of this verse, and it is dropped in the Revised Version of 1881.
Stenhouse calls attention to many phrases in this Bible which were peculiar to the revival preachers of those days, like Rigdon, such as “Have ye spiritually been born of God?” “If ye have experienced a change of heart.”
The first edition was full of grammatical errors and amusing phrases. Thus we are told, in Ether xv. 31, that when Coriantumr smote off the head of Shiz, the latter “raised upon his hands and fell.” Among other examples from the first edition may be quoted: “and I sayeth”; “all things which are good cometh of God”; “neither doth his angels”; and “hath miracles ceased.” We find in Helaman ix. 6, “He being stabbed by his brother by a garb of secrecy.” This remains uncorrected.
Alexander Campbell, noting the mixture of doctrines in the book, says, “He [the author] decides all the great controversies discussed in New York in the last ten years, infant baptism, the Trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the questions of Freemasonry, republican government and the rights of man.”*
* “Delusions: an Analysis of the Book of Mormon” (1832). An exhaustive examination of this Bible will be found in the “Braden and Kelley Public Discussion.”
Such is the book which is accepted to this day as an inspired work by the thousands of persons who constitute the Mormon church. This acceptance has always been rightfully recognized as fundamentally necessary to the Mormon faith. Orson Pratt declared, “The nature of the message in the Book of Mormon is such that, if true, none can be saved who reject it, and, if false, none can be saved who receive it.” Brigham Young told the Conference at Nauvoo in October, 1844, that “Every spirit that confesses that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that he lived and died a prophet, and that the Book of Mormon is true, is of God, and every spirit that does not is of Anti-Christ.” There is no modification of this view in the Mormon church of to-day.
CHAPTER XII. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH
The director of the steps taken to announce to the world a new Bible and a new church realized, of course, that there must be priests, under some name, to receive members and to dispense its blessing. No person openly connected with Smith in the work of translation had been a clergyman. Accordingly, on May 15, 1829 (still following the prophet’s own account), while Smith and Cowdery were yet busy with the work of translation, they went into the woods to ask the Lord for fuller information about the baptism mentioned in the plates. There a messenger from heaven, who, it was learned, was John the Baptist, appeared to them in a cloud of light, “and having laid his hands on us, he ordained us, saying unto us, ‘Upon you, my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering angels, and of the Gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins.'” The messenger also informed them that “the power of laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost” would be conferred on them later, through Peter, James, and John, “who held the keys of the priesthood of Melchisedec”; but he directed Smith to baptize Cowdery, and Cowdery then to perform the same office for Smith. This they did at once, and as soon as Cowdery came out of the water he “stood up and prophesied many things” (which the prophet prudently omitted to record). The divine authority thus conferred, according to Orson Pratt, exceeds that of the bishops of the Roman church, because it came direct from heaven, and not through a succession of popes and bishops.*
* Orson Pratt, in his “Questions and Answers on Doctrine” in his Washington newspaper, the Seer (p. 205), thus defined the Mormon view of the Roman Catholic church:–
Q.”Is the Roman Catholic Church the Church of Christ?” A.”No, for she has no inspired priesthood or officers.”
Q.”After the Church of Christ fled from earth to heaven what was left?” A.”A set of wicked apostates, murderers and idolaters,” etc.
Q.”Who founded the Roman Catholic Church?” A.”The devil, through the medium of the apostates, who subverted the whole order of God by denying immediate revelation, and substituting in place thereof tradition and ancient revelations as a sufficient rule of faith and practice.”
Smith and Cowdery at once began telling of the power conferred upon them, and giving their relatives and friends an opportunity to become members of the new church. Smith’s brother Samuel was the first convert won over, Cowdery baptizing him. His brother Hyrum came next,* and then one J. Knight, Sr., of Colesville, New York.** Each new convert was made the subject of a “revelation,” each of which began, “A great and marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.” Hyrum Smith, and David and Peter Whitmer, Jr., were baptized in Seneca Lake in June, and “from this time forth,” says Smith, “many became believers and were baptized, while we continued to instruct and persuade as many as applied for information.”
* Hyrum wanted to start in to preach at once, and a “revelation” was necessary to inform him: “You need not suppose you are called to preach until you are called…. Keep my commandments; hold your peace” (Sec.11).
** Colesville is the township in Broome County of which Harpursville is the voting place. Smith organized his converts there about two miles north of Harpursville.
By April 6, 1830, branches of the new church had been established at Fayette, Manchester, and Colesville, New York, with some seventy members in all, it has been stated. Section 20 of the “Doctrine and Covenants” names April 6, 1830, as the date on which the church was “regularly organized and established, agreeable to the laws of our country.” This date has been incorrectly given as that on which the first step was taken to form a church organization. What was done then was to organize in a form which, they hoped, would give the church a standing as a legal body.* The meeting was held at the house of Peter Whitmer. Smith, who, it was revealed, should be the first elder, ordained Cowdery, and Cowdery subsequently ordained Smith. The sacrament was then administered, and the new elders laid their hands on the others present.
* Whitmer’s “Address to Believers in the Book of Mormon.”
“The revelation” (Sec. 20) on the form of church government is dated April, 1830, at least six months before Rigdon’s name was first associated with the scheme by the visit of Cowdery and his companions to Ohio. If the date is correct, it shows that Rigdon had forwarded this “revelation” to Smith for promulgation, for Rigdon was unquestionably the originator of the system of church government. David Whitmer has explained, “Rigdon would expound the Old Testament Scriptures of the Bible and Book of Mormon, in his way, to Joseph, concerning the priesthood, high priests, etc., and would persuade Brother Joseph to inquire of the Lord about this doctrine and about that doctrine, and of course a revelation would always come just as they desired it.”*
* Whitmer’s “Address to Believers in the Book of Mormon.”
The “revelation” now announced defined the duty of elders, priests, teachers, deacons, and members of the Church of Christ. An apostle was an elder, and it was his calling to baptize, ordain, administer the sacrament, confirm, preach, and take the lead in all meetings. A priest’s duty was to preach, baptize, administer the sacrament, and visit members at their houses. Teachers and deacons could not baptize, administer the sacrament, or lay on hands, but were to preach and invite all to join the church. The elders were directed to meet in conference once in three months, and there was to be a High Council, or general conference of the church, by which should be ordained every President of the high priesthood, bishop, high counsellor, and high priest.
Smith’s leadership had, before this, begun to manifest itself. He had, in a generous mood, originally intended to share with others the honor of receiving “revelations,” the first of these in the “Book of Doctrine and Covenants,” saying, “I the Lord also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things to the world.” In the original publication of these “revelations,” under the title “Book of Commandments,” we find such headings as, “A revelation given to Oliver,” “A revelation given to Hyrum,” etc. These headings are all changed in the modern edition to read, “Given through Joseph the Seer,” etc.
Cowdery was the first of his associates to seek an open share in the divine work. Smith was so pleased with his new scribe when they first met at Harmony, Pennsylvania, that he at once received a “revelation” which incited Cowdery to ask for a division of power. Cowdery was told (Sec. 6), “And behold, I grant unto you a gift, if you desire of me, to translate even as my servant Joseph. “Cowdery’s desire manifested itself immediately, and Joseph almost as quickly became conscious that he had committed himself too soon. Accordingly, in another “revelation,” dated the same month of April, 1829 (Sec. 8), he attempted to cajole Oliver by telling him about a “gift of Aaron” which he possessed, and which was a remarkable gift in itself, adding, “Do not ask for that which you ought not.” But Cowdery naturally clung to his promised gift, and kept on asking, and he had to be told right away in still another “revelation” (Sec. 9), that he had not understood, but that he must not murmur, since his work was to write for Joseph. If he was in doubt about a subject, he was advised to “study it out in your mind”; and if it was right, the Lord promised, “I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you”; but if it was not right, “you shall have a stupor of thought, that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong.” To assist him until he became accustomed to discriminate between this burning feeling and this stupor, the Lord told him very plainly, “It is not expedient that you should translate now.” That all this rankled in Cowdery’s heart was shown by his attempt to revise one of Smith’s “revelations,” and the support he gave to Hiram Page’s “gazing.”
Cowdery continued to annoy the prophet, and Smith decided to get rid of him. Accordingly in July, 1830, came a “revelation,” originally announced as given direct to Joseph’s wife Emma, instructing her to act as her husband’s scribe, “that I may send my servant Oliver Cowdery whithersoever I will.” This occurred on a trip the Smiths had made to Harmony. On their return to Fayette, Smith found Cowdery still persistent, and he accordingly gave out a “revelation” to him, telling him again that he must not “write by way of commandment,” inasmuch as Smith was at the head of the church, and directing him to “go unto the Lamanites (Indians) and preach my Gospel unto them.” This was the first mention of the westward movement of the church which shaped all its later history.
A “revelation” in June, 1829 (Sec. 18), had directed the appointment of the twelve apostles, whom Cowdery and David Whitmer were to select. The organized members now began to inquire who was their leader, and Smith, in a “revelation” dated April 6, 1830 (Sec. 21), addressed to himself, announced: “Behold there shall be a record kept among you, and in it thou shalt be called a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of the church through the will of God the Father, and the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ”; and the church was directed in these words, “For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.” Thus was established an authority which Smith defended until the day of his death, and before which all who questioned it went down.
Some of the few persons who at this time expressed a willingness to join the new church showed a repugnance to being baptized at his hands, and pleaded previous baptism as an excuse for evading it. But Smith’s tyrannical power manifested itself at once, and he straightway announced a “revelation” (Sec. 22), in which the Lord declared, “All old covenants have I caused to be done away in this thing, and this is a new and everlasting covenant, even that which was from the beginning.”
Five days after the formal organization, the first sermon to the Mormon church was preached in the Whitmer house by Oliver Cowdery, Smith probably concluding that it would be wiser to confine himself to the receipt of “revelations” rather than to essay pulpit oratory too soon. Six additional persons were then baptized. Soon after this the first Mormon miracle was performed–the casting out of a devil from a young man named, Newel Knight.
The first conference of the organized church was held at Fayette, New York, in June, 1830, with about thirty members present. In recent “revelations” the prophet had informed his father and his brothers Hyrum and Samuel that their calling was “to exhortation and to strengthen the church,” so that they were provided for in the new fold.
The region in New York State where the Smiths had lived and were well known was not favorable ground for their labors as church officers, conducting baptisms and administering the sacrament. When they dammed a small stream in order to secure a pool for an announced baptism, the dam was destroyed during the night. A Presbyterian sister-in-law of Knight, from whom a devil had been cast, announced her conversion to Smith’s church, and, when she would not listen to the persuasions of her pastor, the latter obtained legal authority from her parents and carried her away by force. She succeeded, however, in securing the wished-for baptism. All this stirred up public feeling against Smith, and he was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.
At the trial testimony was offered to show that he had obtained a horse and a yoke of oxen from his dupes, on the statement that a “revelation” had informed him that he was to have them, and that he had behaved improperly toward the daughters of one of these men. But the parties interested all testified in his favor, and the prosecution failed. He was immediately rearrested on a warrant and removed to Colesville, amid the jeers of the people in attendance. Knight was subpoenaed to tell about the miracle performed on him, and Smith’s old character of a money-digger was ventilated; but the court found nothing on which to hold him. Mormon writers have dilated on these “persecutions”, but the outcome of the hearings indicated fair treatment of the accused by the arbiters of the law, and the indignation shown toward him and his associates by their neighbors was not greater than the conduct of such men in assuming priestly rights might evoke in any similar community.
Smith returned to his home in Pennsylvania after this, and endeavored to secure the cooperation of his father-in-law in his church plans, but without avail. It was four years later that Mr. Hale put on record his opinion of his son-in-law already quoted. Failing to find other support in Harmony, and perceiving much public feeling against him, Smith prepared for his return to New York by receiving a “revelation” (Sec.20) which directed him to return to the churches organized in that state after he had sold his crops. “They shall support thee”, declared the “revelation”; but if they receive thee not I shall send upon them a cursing instead of a blessing”. For Smith’s protection the Lord further declared: “Whosoever shall lay their hand upon you by violence ye shall command to be smitten in my name, and behold, I will smite them according to your words, IN MINE OWN DUE TIME. And whosoever shall go to law with thee shall be cursed by the law.” This threat, it will be noted, was safeguarded by not requiring immediate fulfillment.
Smith returned to Fayette in September, and continued church work thereabouts in company with his brothers and John and David Whitmer.
Meanwhile Parley P. Pratt had made his visit to Palmyra and returned to Ohio, and in the early winter Rigdon set out to make his first open visit to Smith, arriving in December. Martin Harris, on the ground that Rigdon was a regularly authorized clergyman, tried to obtain the use of one of the churches of the town for him, but had to content himself with the third-story hall of the Young Men’s Association. There Rigdon preached a sermon to a small audience, principally of non-Mormons, annoucing himself as a “messenger of God”. The audience regarded the sermon as blasphemous, and no further attempt was made to secure this room for Mormon meetings. Rigdon, however, while in conference with Smith, preached and baptized the neighborhood, and Smith and Harris tried their powers as preachers in barns and under a tree in the open air.
A well-authenticated story of the manner in which one of the Palmyra Mormons received his call to preach is told by Tucker* and verified by the principal actor. Among the first baptized in New York State were Calvin Stoddard and his wife (Smith’s sister) of Macedon. Stoddard told his neighbors of wonderful things he had seen in the sky, and about his duty to preach. One night, Steven S. Harding, a young man who was visiting the place, went with a companion to Stoddard’s house, and awakening him with knocks on the door, proclaimed in measured tones that the angel of the Lord commanded him to “go forth among the people and preach the Gospel of Nephi.” Then they ran home and went to bed. Stoddard took the call in all earnestness, and went about the next day repeating to his neighbors the words of the “celestial messenger,” describing the roaring thunder and the musical sounds of the angel’s wings that accompanied the words. Young Harding, who participated in this joke, became Governor of Utah in 1862, and incurred the bitter enmity of Brigham Yound and the church by denouncing polygamy, and asserting his own civil authority.**
* “Origin, Rise and Progress of Mormonism,” pp. 80, 285
**Stoddard and Smith had a quarrel over a lot in Kirtland in 1835, and Smith knocked down his brother-in-law and was indicted for assault and battery, but was acquitted on the ground of self-defence.
AS a result of Smith’s and Rigdon’s conferences came a “revelation” to them both (Sec. 35), delivered as in the name of Jesus Christ, defining somewhat Rigdon’s position. How nearly it met his demands cannot be learned, but it certainly granted him no more authority than Smith was willing to concede. It told him that he should do great things, conferring the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, as did the apostles of old, and promising to show miracles, signs, and wonders unto all believers. He was told that Joseph had received the “keys of the mysteries of those things that have been sealed,” and was directed to “watch over him that his faith fail not.” This “revelation” ordered the retranslation of the Scriptures.
The most important result of Rigdon’s visit to Smith was a decision to move the church to Ohio. This decision was promulgated in the form of “revelations” dated December, 1830, and January, 1831, which set forth (Secs. 37, 38):–
“And that ye might escape the power of the enemy, and be gathered unto me a righteous people, without spot and blameless:
“Wherefore, for this cause I give unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio; and there I will give unto you my law; and there you shall be endowed with power from on high; and from thence whomsoever I will shall go forth among all nations, and it shall be told them what they shall do; for I have a great work laid up in store, for Israel shall be saved…. And they that have farms that cannot be sold, let them be left or rented as seemeth them good.”
A sufficient reason for the removal was the failure to secure converts where Smith was known, and the ready acceptance of the new belief among Rigdon’s Ohio people. The Rev. Dr. Clark says, “You might as well go down in the crater of Vesuvius and attempt to build an icehouse amid its molten and boiling lava, as to convince any inhabitant in either of these towns [Palmyra or Manchester] that Joe Smith’s pretensions are not the most gross and egregious falsehood.”*
* “Gleanings by the Way.”
The Rev. Jesse Townsend of Palmyra, in a reply to a letter of inquiry about the Mormons, dated December 24, 1833 (quoted in full by Tucker), says: “All the Mormons have left this part of the state, and so palpable is their imposture that nothing is here said or thought of the subject, except when inquiries from abroad are occasionally made concerning them. I know of no one now living in this section of the country that ever gave them credence.”
CHAPTER XIII. THE MORMONS’ BELIEFS AND DOCTRINES–CHURCH GOVERNMENT
The Mormons teach that, for fourteen hundred years to the time of Smith’s “revelations,” there had been “a general and awful apostasy from the religion of the New Testament, so that all the known world have been left for centuries without the Church of Christ among them; without a priesthood authorized of God to administer ordinances; that every one of the churches has perverted the Gospel.”* As illustrations of this perversion are cited the doing away of immersion for the remission of sins by most churches, of the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and of the miraculous gifts and powers of the Holy Spirit. The new church presented a modern prophet, who was in direct communication with God and possessed power to work miracles, and who taught from a Golden Bible which says that whoever asserts that there are no longer “revelations, nor prophecies, nor gifts, nor healing, nor speaking with tongues and the interpretation of tongues,… knoweth not the Gospel of Christ” (Book of Mormon ix. 7, 8).
* Orson Pratt’s “Remarkable Visions,” No. 6.
It is impossible to decide whether the name “Mormon” was used by Spaulding in his “Manuscript Found,” or was introduced by Rigdon. It is first encountered in the Mormon Bible in the Book of Mosiah xviii. 4, as the name of a place where there was a fountain in which Alma baptized those whom his admonition led to repentance. Next it occurs in 3 Nephi v. 20: “I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi.” This Mormon was selected by the “author” of the Bible to stand sponsor for the condensation of the “records” of his ancestors which Smith unearthed. It was discovered very soon after the organization of the Mormon church was announced that the word was of Greek derivation, uopuw or uopuwv
meaning bugbear, hobgoblin. In the form of “mormo” it is Anglicized with the same meaning, and is used by Jeremy Collier and Warburton.* The word “Mormon” in zoology is the generic name of certain animals, including the mandril baboon. The discovery of the Greek origin and meaning of the word was not pleasing to the early Mormon leaders, and they printed in the Times and Seasons a letter over Smith’s signature, in which he solemnly declared that “there was no Greek or Latin upon the plates from which I, through the grace of God, translated the Book of Mormon,” and gave the following explanation of the derivation of the word:
* See “Century Dictionary.”
“Before I give a definition to the word, let me say that the Bible, in its widest sense, means good; for the Saviour says, according to the Gospel of St. John, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’; and it will not be beyond the common use of terms to say that good is amongst the most important in use, and, though known by various names in different languages, still its meaning is the same, and is ever in opposition to bad. We say from the Saxon, good; the Dane, god; the Goth, gods; the German, gut; the Dutch, goed; the Latin, bonus; the Greek, kalos; the Hebrew, tob; the Egyptian, mo. Hence, with the addition of more, or the contraction mor, we have the word Mormon, which means literally more good.
This lucid explanation was doubtless entirely satisfactory to the persons to whom it was addressed.
In the early “revelations” collected in the “Book of Commandments” the new church was not styled anything more definite than “My Church,” and the title-page of that book, as printed in 1833, says that these instructions are “for the government of the Church of Christ.” The name “Mormons” was not acceptable to the early followers of Smith, who looked on it as a term of reproach, claiming the designation “Saints.” This objection to the title continues to the present day. It was not until May 4, 1834, that a council of the church, on motion of Sidney Rigdon, decided on its present official title, “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
The belief in the speedy ending of the world, on which the title “Latter-Day Saints” was founded, has played so unimportant a part in modern Mormon belief that its prominence as an early tenet of the church is generally overlooked. At no time was there more widespread interest in the speedy second coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment than during the years when the organization of the Mormon church was taking place. We have seen how much attention was given to a speedy millennium by the Disciples preachers. It was in 1833 that William Miller began his sermons in which he fixed on the year 1843 as the end of the world, and his views not only found acceptance among his personal followers, but attracted the liveliest interest in other sects.
The Mormon leaders made this belief a part of their early doctrine. Thus, in one of the first “revelations” given out by Smith, dated Fayette, New York, September, 1830, Christ is represented as saying that “the hour is nigh” when He would reveal Himself, and “dwell in righteousness with men on earth a thousand years.” In the November following, another “revelation” declared that “the time is soon at hand that I shall come in a cloud, with power and great glory.” Soon after Smith arrived in Kirtland a “revelation,” dated February, 1831, announced that “the great day of the Lord is nigh at hand.” In January, 1833, Smith predicted that “there are those now living upon the earth whose eyes shall not be closed in death until they shall see all these things of which I have spoken” (the sweeping of the wicked from the United States, and the return of the lost tribes to it). Smith declared in 1843 that the Lord had promised that he should see the Son of Man if he lived to be eighty-five (Sec. 130).* When Ferris was Secretary of Utah Territory, in 1852-1853, he found that the Mormons were still expecting the speedy coming of Christ, but had moved the date forward to 1870. All through Smith’s autobiography and the Millennial Star will be found mention of every portent that might be construed as an indication of the coming disruption of this world. As late as December 6, 1856, an editorial in the Millennial Star said, “The signs of the times clearly indicate to every observing mind that the great day of the second advent of Messiah is at hand.”
* Speaking of W. W. Phelps’s last years in Utah, Stenbouse says: “Often did the old man, in public and in private, regale the Saints with the assurance that he had the promise by revelation that he should not taste of death until Jesus came.” Phelps died on March 7, 1872.
As the devout Mohammedan* passes from earth to a heaven of material bliss, so the Mormons are taught that the Saints, the sole survivors of the day of judgment, will, with resurrected bodies, possess the purified earth. The lengths to which Mormon preachers have dared to go in illustrating this view find a good illustration in a sermon by arson Pratt, printed in the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, of August 21, 1852. Having promised that “farmers will have great farms upon the earth when it is so changed,” and foreseeing that some one might suggest a difficulty in providing land enough to go round, he met that in this way:–
* The similarity between Smith’s early life and visions and Mohammed’s has been mentioned by more than one writer. Stenhouse observes that Smith’s mother “was to him what Cadijah was to Mohammed,” and that “a Mohammedan writer, in a series of essays recently published in London, treats of the prophecies concerning the Arabian Prophet, to be found in the Old and New Testaments, precisely as Orson Pratt applied them to the American Prophet.”
“But don’t be so fast, says one; don’t you know that there are only about 197,000,000 of square miles, or about 126,000,000,000 of acres upon the surface of the globe? Will these accommodate all the inhabitants after the resurrection? Yes; for if the earth should stand 8000 years, or 80 centuries, and the population should be a thousand millions in every century, that would be 80,000,000,000 of inhabitants, and we know that many centuries have passed that would not give the tenth part of this; but supposing this to be the number, there would then be over an acre and a half for each person upon the surface of the globe.”
By eliminating the wicked, so that only one out of a hundred would share this real estate, he calculated that every Saint “would receive over 150 acres, which would be quite enough to raise manna, flax to make robes of, and to have beautiful orchards of fruit trees.”
The Mormon belief is stated by the church leaders to rest on the Holy Bible, the Mormon Bible, and the “Book of Doctrine and Covenants,” together with the teachings of the Mormon instructors from Smith’s time to the present day. Although the Holy Bible is named first in this list, it has, as we have seen, played a secondary part in the church ritual, its principal use by the Mormon preachers having been to furnish quotations on which to rest their claims for the inspiration of their own Bible and for their peculiar teachings. Mormon sermons (usually styled discourses) rarely, if ever, begin with a text. The “Book of Doctrine and Covenants” “containing,” as the title-page declares, “the revelations given to Joseph Smith, Jr., for the building up of the Kingdom of God in the last days,” was the directing authority in the church during Smith’s life, and still occupies a large place in the church history. An examination of the origin and character of this work will therefore shed much light on the claims of the church to special direction from on high.
There is little doubt that this system of “revelation” was an idea of Rigdon. Smith was not, at that time, an inventor; his forte was making use of ideas conveyed to him. Thus, he did not originate the idea of using a “peek-stone,” but used one freely as soon as he heard of it. He did not conceive the idea of receiving a Bible from an angel, but readily transformed the Spaniard-with-his-throat-cut to an angel when the perfected scheme was presented to him. We can imagine how attractive “revelations” would have been to him, and how soon he would concentrate in himself the power to receive them, and would adapt them to his personal use.
David Whitmer says, “The revelations, or the Book of Commandments, up to June, 1829, were given through the stone through which the Book of Mormon was translated”; but that after that time” they came through Joseph as a mouthpiece; that is, he would inquire of the Lord, pray and ask concerning a matter, and speak out the revelation, which he thought to be a revelation from the Lord; but sometimes he was mistaken about its being from the Lord.”* Who drew the line between truth and error has never been explained, but Smith would certainly have resented any such scepticism.
* “Address to Believers in the Book of Mormon.”
Parley P. Pratt thus describes Smith’s manner of receiving “revelations” in Ohio, “Each sentence was uttered slowly and very distinctly, and with a pause between each sufficiently long for it to be recorded by an ordinary writer in long hand.”*
* Pratt’s “Autobiography,” p. 65.
These “revelations” made the greatest impression on Smith’s followers, and no other of his pretensions seems to have so convinced them of his divine credentials. The story of Vienna Jaques well illustrates this. A Yankee descendant of John Rodgers, living in Boston, she was convinced by a Mormon elder, and joined the church members while they were in Kirtland, taking with her her entire possession, $1500 in cash. This money, like that of many other devoted members, found its way into Smith’s hands–and stayed there. But he had taken her into his family, and her support became burdensome to him. So, when the Saints were “gathering” in Missouri, he announced a “revelation” in these words (Sec. 90):–
“And again, verily, I [the Lord] say unto you, it is my will that my handmaid, Vienna Jaques, should receive money to bear her expenses, and go up unto the land of Zion; and the residue of the money may be consecrated unto me, and she be rewarded in mine own due time. Verily, I say unto you, that it is meet in mine eyes that she should go up unto the land of Zion, and receive an inheritance from the hand of the Bishop, that she may settle down in peace, inasmuch as she is faithful, and not to be idle in her days from thenceforth.”
The confiding woman obeyed without a murmur this thinly concealed scheme to get rid of her, migrated with the church from Missouri to Illinois and to Utah, and was in Salt Lake City in 1833, supporting herself as a nurse, and “doubly proud that she has been made the subject of a revelation from heaven.”*
* “Utah and the Mormons,” p. 182.
These “revelations” have been published under two titles. The first edition was printed in Jackson, Missouri, in 1833, in the Mormon printing establishment, under the title, “Book of Commandments for the Government of the Church of Christ, organized according to Law on the 6th of April, 1830.” This edition contained nothing but “revelations,” divided into sixty-five “chapters,” and ending with the one dated Kirtland, September, 1831, which forms Section 64 of the Utah edition of “Doctrine and Covenants.” David Whitmer says that when, in the spring of 1832, it was proposed by Smith, Rigdon, and others to publish these revelations, they were earnestly advised by other members of the church not to do so, as it would be dangerous to let the world get hold of them; and so it proved. But Smith declared that any objector should “have his part taken out of the Tree of Life.”*
* It has been stated that the “Book of Commandments” was never really published, the mob destroying the sheets before it got out. But David Whitmer is a very positive witness to the contrary, saying, “I say it was printed complete (and copyrighted) and many copies distributed among the members of the church before the printing press was destroyed.”
Two years later, while the church was still in Kirtland, the “revelations” were again prepared for publication, this time under the title, “Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, carefully selected from the revelations of God, and compiled by Joseph Smith, Jr.; Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, F. G. Williams, proprietors.” On August 17, 1835, a general assembly of the church held in the Kirtland Temple voted to accept his book as the doctrine and covenants of their faith. Ebenezer Robinson, who attended the meeting, says that the majority of those so voting “had neither time nor opportunity to examine the book for themselves; they had no means of knowing whether any alterations had been made in any of the revelations or not.”* In fact, many important alterations were so made, as will be pointed out in the course of this story. One method of attempting to account for these changes has been by making the plea that parts were omitted in the Missouri editions. On this point, however, Whitmer is very positive, as quoted.
* In his reminiscences in The Return.
At the very start Smith’s revelations failed to “come true.” An amusing instance of this occurred before the Mormon Bible was published. While the “copy” was in the hands of the printer, Grandin, Joe’s brother Hyrum and others who had become interested in the enterprise became impatient over Harris’s delay in raising the money required for bringing out the book. Hyrum finally proposed that some of them attempt to sell the copyright in Canada, and he urged Joe to ask the Lord about doing so. Joe complied, and announced that the mission to Canada would be a success. Accordingly, Oliver Cowdery and Hiram Page made a trip to Toronto to secure a publisher, but their mission failed absolutely. This was a critical test of the faith of Joe’s followers. “We were all in great trouble,” says David Whitmer,* “and we asked Joseph how it was that he received a ‘revelation’ from the Lord for some brethren to go to Toronto and sell the copyright, and the brethren had utterly failed in their undertaking. Joseph did not know how it was, so he inquired of the Lord about it, and behold, the following ‘revelation’ came; through the stone: ‘Some revelations are from God, some revelations are of man, and some revelations are of the Devil.'” No rule for distinguishing and separating these revelations was given; but Whitmer, whose faith in Smith’s divine mission never cooled, thus disposes of the matter, “So we see that the revelation to go to Toronto and sell the copyright was not of God.” Of course, a prophet whose followers would accept such an excuse was certain of his hold upon them. This incident well illustrates the kind of material which formed the nucleus of the church.
* “Address to All Believers in Christ,” p. 30.
Smith never let the previously revealed word of the Lord protect any of his flock who afterward came in conflict with his own plans. For example: On March 8, 1831, he announced a “revelation”