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THE LATTER DAY SAINTS
I
THE FORERUNNERS OF MORMONISM
The historian of Mormonism has one advantage over the historian of most other revealed religions: he can at least begin by giving a precise
date as that on which his religion was revealed. Since this date is of the few Mormon dates concerning which there is no difference of
opinion among authorities, it is well to mention it forthwith.
On the morning of the 22nd of September 1827 the Angel of the Lord delivered to Joseph Smith a series of records of the aboriginal inhabitants
of North America. These records, graven on plates that had the appearance of gold, declared that the American Indians were the Lost Ten Tribes
of Israel, and from these records and the accompanying instructions of the Angel, Smith received orders for the founding of his faith and
prophecies concerning the future of things in general. In accordance with the instructions thus received, Smith organized the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, now commonly called the Mormon Church, on the 6th of April 1830, the formal organization being effected near the
scene of the
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Angel's visit, in the town of Manchester, Wayne County (then Ontario County), state of New York, U.S.A. 1
So much is relatively simple. To understand, however, how it became possible for a Church to be founded upon the mere statement of Joseph
Smith that he had received these records, and that previous to their receipt he had been visited by many celestial visions, one must briefly
consider both the economic and religious conditions of the United States of America between the years 1790 and 1830 between, in other words,
the moment of the earliest rush of pioneers westward from the thicker settlements of the thirteen original states and the beginning of the
"Reign of Jackson," so-called.
The states were then but loosely bound together. They were so loosely bound that threats of secession were constant, and not until 1830,
when Jackson summarily informed South Carolina that her proposal to secede from the Union would be met with armed resistance, did the various
commonwealths feel the grip of solidarity. Except that they were ready to unite against a common enemy, that they had a national legislative
body devised to make laws for concerns of the Union only, and a purely executive president elected for one or two terms of four years, they
were to all intents and purposes so many separate countries. The interests of Massachusetts and Virginia were as different as those of France
and Russia, and their laws and customs differed accordingly.
There were, to be sure, large tracts of public lands held by the central government, but even these would eventually divide themselves into
various self-governing
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1 History of the Latter Day Saints, by Joseph Smith.
THE FORERUNNERS OF MORMONISM
3
and self-legislating states. Much of these tracts was, moreover, uninhabited save for scattered and nomad tribes of Indians; and the pioneers,
venturing into that wilderness, where, with their own hands, they were compelled to build their own houses, provide their own food and clothing,
found themselves cut off from contact with the towns and from direct communication with each other. Merchandise travelled by lumbering vans
over trails that were for months impassable; newspapers were almost unknown; the post was infrequent and unreliable. Each family shifted for
itself; each family struggled for itself and fought its own war with the forest. In the United States life was then in that halcyon day so loved
of the modern reactionary when the family was indeed the unit of society. As a natural consequence, the pioneer was not disposed to concern
himself overmuch with written rules from Washington.
West of the narrow eastern strip of civilization there was, therefore, little chance for culture. The world worked hard to keep alive. Children
were necessarily brought up in comparative ignorance, and the few existing free schools were hopelessly inadequate, frequented only during
the mid-winter months when they were governed by school- masters whose sole qualifications consisted, usually, of no more than "The Three R's:
readin', 'ritin', an' 'rithmetic." The parents presented the picture of peasants, but peasants of only one generation: they were bound to no
tradition; they were free to explore mentally and morally as well as physically. It was a time and place of chaotic communities and individual
restlessness. The reaching out for new lands to conquer, the ceaseless necessity of satisfying new requirements by new agricultural
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appliances, by better methods of travel, by the natural desire for comradeship and, as the years at last eased them, by more comfortable
conditions, as well as the slowly increasing mingling of people whose religious opinions were dissimilar, caused a general readiness for what
was novel in theology as well as for what was novel in the other departments of life. The pioneer reached for something new to suit his
religious cravings just as he reached for new land and new methods to suit his material desires.
In the cities along the Atlantic Coast, this time was also a time of stress. It was the period of the decline of commerce and the rise of
manufacture, which has found its ablest expositor in Mr A. M. Simons, and the transition from commerce to manufacture, especially in the
introduction of the factory system, was made with far greater speed than characterised the same process in England. In the elder country,
industry progressed toward the factory "from the 'household' stage, in which each family produced for its own consumption, to the 'domestic'
stage, when the family was still the productive unit and the home the only factory, but where production was for the market"; whereas, in the
newer land, the progress " was almost direct from the 'household' to the factory system." 1 In England, again, in the cotton
trade, for example, while machines did the spinning, the weaving was still done in the cottage, whereas in the United States Francis C. Lowell
set up an establishment, the first of its kind, for the entire manufacture of cotton-cloth at Waltham, Massachusetts, as early as 1814.
2 The
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1 See A. M. Simons's admirable Social Forces in American History, to which we are indebted for much of the data immediately following.
2 Industrial Evolution in the United States, by C. D. Wright.
THE FORERUNNERS OF MORMONISM
5
almost immediate result was a full-blown factory system in those northern cities that were to be a part of Smith's recruiting-ground.
It was, as Simons ably demonstrates, a system "based upon the existence of a body of propertyless wage-workers" not only in the cotton trade,
but in most other industries. Though less known, the sufferings of the American proletariat in this period of social evolution correspond
closely to those of their English brothers. In the new country as in the old, "the cradle and the home were robbed to secure victims for the
natal sacrifice of newborn capitalism." On the floor of Congress in 1816, only two years after the building of Lowell's mill, it was declared
that, thanks to Arkwright's invention, the manufacture of cotton was so revolutionized that "five or six men are sufficient for ... a factory
of 2000 spindles," the other hands being mere children. 1 In the same year a Government report estimated that nine-tenths of the
100,000 workers in the cloth-mills were women, boys, and girls. Wages were at their lowest ebb, and work in some cases began at 4.30 a.m. and
continued until night had fallen. President Monroe officially rejoiced in this " fall in the
price of labour, apparently so favourable to the success of domestic manufactures." 1
Nor was that all. Direct voting scarcely existed. The state legislatures, not the people, commonly elected the state governors; the presidential
candidates, themselves chosen not by the people, but by Congressional caucuses, were elected by presidential electors also fixed upon by the
state legislatures; and a property qualification determined the voters for candidates to the legislature.
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1 Benton's Abridgments of the Debates of Congress.
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Thus practically unrepresented among the law-makers, the labourer was indeed lost. He had no lien on his product, and was therefore often
robbed of such small wages as were promised him. His creditors, for no matter how small a debt, could strip him of everything, and, if that
everything did not satisfy the indebtedness, could, and often did, send him to prisons where the State furnished no fuel, food, or clothing;
where the debtor could earn no money, yet where he must remain until the debt was paid. Frequently he remained for years, sometimes for life.
In 1829 the Prison Discipline Society reported that 75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for debt in the United States and that in more
than half the cases the debt was under four pounds.
The Government supplied more prisons than schools. According to Simons, who quotes from the best authorities, 1 "the educational
facilities of the United States were at their very lowest ebb in the years from 1814 to 1828. The old social order had lost its strength;
the new one had not had time to develop educational expression. The most efficient schools were the private academies of New England. The
public schools, the only ones accessible to the wageworkers, were less efficient than at any period before or since. The management of the
schools had been subdivided in response to the individualistic, competitive, separatist spirit of early capitalism until the little school
districts were almost autonomous. Religious education had declined with the overthrow of the theocracy, and the multitude of seceding sects
had not yet built up educational
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1 History of Education in the United States, by Frank T. Carlton ; and the same author's Economic Influences upon Educational
Progress in the United States, the latter a Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin.
THE FORERUNNERS OF MORMONISM
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institutions. Massachusetts, then, as throughout American history, at the head in educational matters, was expending but two dollars and
seventy-five cents per pupil annually in education."
Finally, says Simons, "the religious reflex of the decline of commerce and the rise of manufacture was so like the religious movement that
accompanied the rise of capitalism in Europe that it has been designated as 'The New England Reformation.' The orthodox clergy that had so
long actively participated in the rulership of society were disturbed by the rise of new sects. In the very stronghold of Puritanism the old
orthodoxy was attacked and overthrown by the most liberal of creeds Unitarianism. The Congregational clergy, long a part of the ruling hierarchy,
was split into warring sects.... By the time the lines were clearly drawn it was discovered that the new religious forces had captured Harvard
College. There was also a division of a similar character in the ranks of the Quakers, and numerous peculiar and separatist sects rose
throughout the West." 1
Especially was this true of those agricultural regions that were familiar enough with the hand of man not to present the same difficulties that
were presented by their near neighbours to the pioneer, yet were still outlying districts with no broad interests and no close connection with
the cities of the sea-coast. Here books were luxuries. The Bible was the only volume to be found in most households, and that, as a consequence,
was thoroughly read. Many a man that could not read was at least able to quote more or less accurately whole chapters of Scripture, his teachers,
people of a narrow
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1 See also The Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833, by W. B. Cairns, to which Simons refers.
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faith, not having scrupled to sacrifice his educational to his spiritual welfare. Thus, with the world of politics shut from them, without
literature, with their economic interests simple and few, these people, living in an atmosphere impregnated by a calm acceptance of the charms
and sorceries of the Old Testament, occupied not a little of their leisure with inquiries into the, health of their own souls and unriddling
of whatever was not immediately clear to their simple intelligences in the book that they considered the Word of God. Spme of them became
religious hypochondriacs, and many tortured the text of the King James Version into amazing meanings. The necessarily suppressed emotions of
these people were in part met and in part stimulated by those religious sects, especially the Presbyterians and Methodists, which at this time
started waves of evangelistic meetings called "revivals" and of open-air "camp-meetings" held in the smallest villages and hamlets throughout
the entire country. Many thousands of persons were greatly affected by these meetings, so much so that they yielded their spirits everywhere to
conversion; and, as converts, they would often again alter their views at the breaking of the next wave of meetings over their town, changing
their beliefs within a few years, or even a few months. Their form of worship was as variable as are some men's politics.; there was not one
tide, but many, in the faiths of men.
From 1800 until 1835 new sects were plentiful in the United States. There were the Zoarites, a secession from the Lutheran Church. There were
the "Come-outers," a term applied to a large body that had seceded from various denominations in the northern and eastern parts of the country,
men that disagreed, rather than agreed, in common, but united in their denunciation of
THE FORERUNNERS OF MORMONISM
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chattel-slavery and of all forms of war. Then, too, was organized by John Winebrenner, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a sect that still endures;
that then joined with the "Come-outers" in the declaration against chattel-slavery; that ascribed to their Church the attributes of Visibility,
Unity, Sanctity, Universality, and Perpetuity; and that chose and retained the modest title of The Church of God.
The Bible Christians were another significant expression of their times. They rested on the faith that whenever there is wrong, God will send
a servant to right it. Abuses in the Church brought their own reformer. Noah, they said, Abraham, and Jesus were sent; when the Christian
Church was ill a Luther, a Calvin, or a Melanchthon appeared to cure it. 1 Founded in England by the Rev. William Cowherd, formerly
a clergyman of the Established Church, and once attached to Christ Church, Salfordj this sect taught abstinence from animal flesh and alcoholic
liquors, and in 1817 sent a large number of its members to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Some went farther west to preach their doctrines; others
remained in Philadelphia, where they finally purchased a building and advertised in the newspapers that "the members of the Bible-Christian
Church assembled every Sabbath Day, giving such Exposition of the revealed Word of God as they might be graciously vouchsafed by the goodness
of God." They would begin their work in a city by commenting on the first chapter of Genesis in the morning and the first chapter of St. Matthew
in the evening, and thus, by a sort of stubborn dead-reckoning, work their expository course
through the entire Scriptures.
The German element among the immigrants in the
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1 History of the Bible Christians, by Rev. William Metcalfe.
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United States supplied, as was to be expected, its full share to this confusion of spiritual tongues which explains the beginnings of Mormonism.
The Teutonic division of the list is long, but our present purpose will be served by two examples: the Separatists, and the German Baptists, or
River Brethren.
The former received their name in Germany, where they originated early in the eighteenth century. 1 George Rapp, their founder, came
to the United States in 1803, and about a hundred and twenty-five families of his disciples followed him. They built their church upon the rock
provided by the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth verses of the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
"Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of
the things that were sold,
"And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."
In a word, the Separatists were Primitive Communists, but they carried the principles of primitive communism to such a point that they denied
private property even in the matter of one's own body. They built the town of Economy in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and went at last the way
that must inevitably be gone by a small body of passive-resistance communists completely surrounded by competitive capitalism.
The German Baptists were one of the divisions of the Baptist Church that was, at just this time, torn by bitter contentions. They were
distinguished from their religious cousins by their manner of administering baptism, for, in the most convenient stream, they placed the candidate
in a kneeling posture and then pushed
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1 Handworterbuch von Ehrenfried, article " Separatisten."
THE FORERUNNERS OF MORMONISM
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him, head first, under the water a custom that gained them, from their adversaries, the derisive title of "tunkers" or "tumblers." Besides
these River Brethren there was the Free Will Baptists, who organized an independent General Conference in 1827; and the Seventh Day Baptists, who
adopted the Jewish Sabbath, and some of whom emigrated, as early as 1824, from New Jersey and Virginia, to Ohio. When they had gone, they left
to quarrel on the Atlantic Coast the Baptists pure and simple, the Six-Principle or General Baptists, the Free Communion Baptists, and the Old
School Baptists.
In this mere glance at the more or less peculiar sects that made smooth the way for Mormonism in the public mind, it would be interesting to
include many denominations, some of which still linger, but most of which have long since passed away. It would be interesting to tell at
length of the Albrights, later known as the Evangelical Association, organized in the United States about the first year of the nineteenth
century, and of the Universal Restorationists, who began their universal labours in the town of Mendon, Massachusetts, in the year 1831. But to
show the length to which popular credulity would in those days go, it is necessary here to add only the Millerites and the Wilkinsonians.
The same decade that produced Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church produced also William Miller and his followers, who called themselves Adventists
and whom the profane called Millerites. 1 Miller was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1781. He was poorly educated, but, at an
early age, began to study the Bible through the medium of his own unassisted intelligence. His study brought him to a conclusion not unlike that
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1 History of the Adventists, by Josiah Litch.
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held in times past by men of considerably more scholarship, and not unlike that held in general by the Early Christians themselves. He compared
the various prophecies; he studied the conditions surrounding the fulfilment of such prophecies as had already been fulfilled, and he decided,
from what he thus observed, that the second coming of Christ was an imminent event. He said that this coming was pre-millennial, and he fixed
its date at about 1843. He preached his faith for years, and his words produced a tremendous effect. It was indeed the voice of one crying in
the wilderness, but the wilderness gave startled ear and began to prepare the way of the Lord. He bade his people make ready, even to the
clothes they wore, and many a family slept at night with their "resurrection-robes" ready for donning. His followers came to believe "the coming
of the Lord to be at the door," and hundreds, on the dates when He was expected, placed themselves on housetops to wait. The files of some of
the English newspapers of that period gave descriptions of these preparations which are not so much exaggerated as are, unhappily, some of the
more recent pictures of American life presented by a certain portion of the British press. Several wrong guesses on Miller's part did not
materially weaken the faith of his followers. Land was sold for a song, and personal property given to the poor. In 1843 there were said to be
50,000 persons converted to Miller's views, and only the slow passage of uneventful time disillusioned them.
The Wilkinsonians are equally to the present point. They lived, for the most part, not more than twenty- five miles from Manchester, New York,
the town in which Mormonism was first preached; and, small as their numbers were in comparison with the Adventists,
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they very likely influenced the surrounding countryside and assuredly serve well to indicate the character of its people.
Jemima Wilkinson, the founder of this sect, 1 was known throughout that portion of New York. In October 1776, recovering from an
illness, during which she had "fallen into a syncope, so that she was apparently dead," she declared that she had, in truth, been raised from
the dead and had been divinely appointed to teach mankind. With many followers she at last sought "a new land" where she might lay the
corner-stone of her earthly kingdom, selecting for that purpose a place in Yates County not far from the line of the county in which Manchester
was situated. She called her town New Jerusalem, and there she taught her followers poverty, it is said. As for herself, she lived on the fatness
of the land, and owned most of the property, which she had the forethought to purchase in another's name.
One of her declarations was that commonest to all founders of religions : she could perform miracles. Should the people wish to test her, she
had, she averred, such faith that she could walk on water. In fact, all the necessary preparations, at least all the apparently necessary
preparations, for her doing this were made at Lake Seneca. A multitude gathered. Wilkinson drove up in her carriage, descended, and announced
to the crowd that she was about to walk across the lake and upon its surface. On a path of white handkerchiefs strewn for her by her followers,
she walked to the water's very edge. Then she paused and turned to her spectators. She inquired of the
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1 History of all the Religious Denominations in the United States, edited by John Winebrenner.
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crowd if they had faith that she could reach the other shore, for if they did not share her faith the feat could not be accomplished. The crowd
gave loud assurance that it possessed the requisite credulity, whereupon Wilkinson returned to her carriage, since it was self-evident that if
the crowd really believed in her power, the demonstration would be merely supererogatory. It was a decision of logic equalled only by the Moslem
conqueror's declaration concerning the Alexandrine Library, yet it had no worse effect upon the Wilkinsonians' belief in Jemima's powers to
cure physical ills, to foretell the future, and to work miracles, than the destruction of the library had upon the faith in the Koran. It is
plain, then, that the economic conditions of the day were ready for Joseph Smith, that the economic conditions of the day, indeed, produced him.
"The enormous credulity of the Mormonites in their capacity of followers," said an English writer, 1 "is all a trait of human nature
as old as the hills.... Sensuality in connection with religion, presumption, the prophetic element, the pseudo Old Testament, the expectation of
an earthly paradise or millennium all separately old and well-known manifestations had only to combine and adopt in addition, and as the crowning
trait, the modern and nineteenth-century impulse for emigration, and we have the whole of Mormonism before us." Southey was also among the
prophets: 2 "Were there another Mahommed to arise, there is no part of the world where he would find more scope or fairer opportunity
than in that part of the Anglo-American union into which the elder states continually discharge the restless part of their population."
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1 In the London Times of 5th January 1858.
2 Colloquy X., part ii.
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II
BEGINNINGS
On his father's side, Joseph Smith was descended from a family in which the wander-lust seems always to have been strong and into which
a love of the occult made its way long before the appearance of the founder of Mormonism. That the information is confusing and that various
authorities provide various ancestors is not, perhaps, surprising, since the early days of America were not days in which vital statistics
were always well kept, and since, at any rate, a certain genealogical confusion is not uncommon in the traditions surrounding the originators
of most religions. What is surprising, because it is generally so rare, is the manner in which, in the case of Joseph Smith, even the
accounts of the faithful show their first prophet to have been a logical product of his sires.
Of these the first in America was Robert Smith, who left England for the New World either in 1638 or 1640. From what part of England he came,
nobody appears to know; but he settled in the village of Rowley, near Newberryport, in Massachussetts. His son Samuel is said to have been the
father of Robert Smith, a soldier in the American Revolution, whom some historians name as the grandfather of the first Mormon, while others
declare that the grandfather was named Asael
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Smith and assert that Asael's house was, until recently, standing in the town of Topsfield, Mass. In either case, Joseph Smith, senior, the
father of the founder, was born in Royalston, Vermont, whither his parents had then removed.
The elder Joseph was by inclination a wanderer and by trade a seeker of buried treasure. For the greater part of his life he followed both
inclination and trade, though the latter seems to have been the less successful. Nevertheless, it was a not unusual occupation. In those days
many a superstitious man would go about the country with his "divining-rod," partly believing that, held loosely in his hands, it would
miraculously bend when it passed above soil that concealed golden deposit, and partly accepted by the rural population, who conceded to the rod
the same power for the discovery of hidden water and employed the diviner to discover needed springs. The practice still survives in certain
portions of America and is still to be found, under the name of "dowsing," in odd corners of England. By such means the father of the prophet
earned a more or less irregular livelihood, which, since neither he nor his wife possessed a reputation for over-scrupulousness, and since
both owned what were described as babbling tongues, was from time to time relieved by a long series of petty law-suits. The trade, the wander-lust,
or the law-suits at last drove the family into the state of New York, where, for some years, they lived much as they had lived in New England.
For Joseph the elder had married. While, by some chance, the owner of a farm on the Merrimack River in New Hampshire, 1 he had
married Lucy Mack, who, in
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1 History of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, Turner.
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spite of her neurasthenic temperament, seems to have been of sturdier stuff than her husband.
According to her own account, 1 written for the most part before the prophet's death and under his personal supervision, her father
was Solomon Mack, born in New London County, Connecticut, in 1735. Because his father, Ebenezer Mack, had fallen upon evil days and lost
property of considerable value, Solomon was brought up by a neighbour's family, which he left to enlist as a soldier at the age of twenty-one.
That was the beginning of a life of adventure in which his wife, Lydia Gates, a school-mistress of East Haddon, Connecticut, and their four
children played many parts. They never prospered, and, when it finally occurred to them that ill-doing was sometimes the cause of ill-luck, they
proceeded to pursue religion as devoutly as they had formerly pursued the rainbow. Even the children -- there were three girls and a boy well
named Jason -- were taught to read and study and puzzle over the Bible, and when a daughter suddenly recovered from a desperate illness and
declared her healing due to a miracle, her word was accepted by the surrounding country-folk, and she began to have visions.
Lucy Mack, the mother of Joseph Smith, was born in New Hampshire in July 1776. She was never a healthy child, and at one time was convinced that
life was not worth the living. At length, however, she made up her mind to have a "change of heart." Studiously she set herself to reading the
Bible and to praying, and the more she read and prayed the more bewildered she became by the differences between the denominations that waged
spiritual war in the town about her. She tells us that her difficulty was to find
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1 History of Joseph Smith, Junior, by Mrs. Lucy Smith.
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in any of these sects a resemblance to the "Church of Christ" as the early Christians knew it, and she adds that she had no taste for what
seemed to her the tortured misinterpretations that the existing Churches dragged from the Scriptures. 1 She was still in this mental
mist when she met and married the elder Joseph Smith.
There are few stronger forces than a familiar type of indecision. Mrs Smith's indecision was so strong that it appears at once to have impressed
itself upon the weak will of her husband, who began to worry about his own soul. As is usually the case in such unions, the joint efforts of the
pair effected not a cure, but an intensification. They probed and argued. They experimented with the Universalist faith, and, finding no
soul-satisfaction therein, joined the Methodist. In this sort of religious coquetry they passed six years.
During these six years Lucy's two sisters, including the one formerly cured by a miracle, had died of tuberculosis of the lungs. Her husband,
at the end of that time, let his farm and invested all his money in a cross-roads " store," where odds and ends, from vinegar and molasses to
tobacco, hardware and clothing, were to be bought, and where, of evenings, the village gossips would gather, discussing the affairs of the
neighbourhood and those metaphysical problems that, as we have seen, occupied so much of the minds of their class.
Then Mrs Smith became ill. She sought physicians, one of whom told her husband that she was suffering from the same disease that had slain her
sisters and that she too must die. The elder Joseph indiscreetly communicated this diagnosis to his wife, who, greatly agitated, passed a night
in prayer. She was, according
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1 History of Joseph Smith, Junior, by Mrs. Lucy Smith.
BEGINNINGS
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to her own written words, immediately " healed of her sickness." 1
But though her health was fixed, her religious sentiments remained unsettled. She must, she tells us, be instructed in the way of salvation,
and no one could help her. Nowhere on earth, she concluded, was there an adequate denomination. For several more years she studied the Bible
until many of its words were as familiar to her as were her neighbours' daily words of greeting; and then, forced to some definite action, she
had herself baptized at a spiritual venture, thus, as she reasoned, saving her soul and at the same time leaving herself free to choose a sect
at her leisure.
Meantime, her husband had material worries to add to his worries spiritual. His store did not pay him the profits that he had expected. He
therefore invested all his money in ginseng root, in the belief that the root, when crystallized, was a panacea and especially efficacious in
the treatment of ills then rampant in the village. Perhaps from his wife's dead sister he had contracted an interest in the cure of disease.
So, no doubt, had Mrs Smith's brother, Jason Mack. He now reappeared, after several years' unaccounted absence, and went about performing
miracles, not hesitating, he confessed, to raise the dead. He was having a wonderful success and everywhere held "revivals" crowded by followers.
It was but natural that the Smiths should be sensibly affected by the gospel of Jason. It is not recorded that he attempted any of his powers
for resurrection upon his dead sisters; but there was plenty of ocular evidence on his part that occultism was a better investment
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1 History of Joseph Smith, Junior, by Mrs. Lucy Smith.
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than shop-keeping or ginseng-crystallization. At any rate, Mrs Smith's visions, acute until now, straightway became chronic. She was restless
in her sleep and dreamed always. These dreams of the night she would ponder by day and then endeavour to interpret. Even Joseph senior was not
exempt. He contracted the contagion, and began to have visions of his own. Still unable conscientiously to adhere to any of the existing sects,
he urged his wife forward in her search for a religion with none of the present complexities, a religion that would comply literally with the
interpretation of the Scriptures. He even achieved a point whereat he declared that those who professed the accepted religions were as ignorant
of superhuman matters as those who did not.
The benefits of vision are uncertain. At first nothing came of Smith's save that business decline which is inevitably experienced by the man
who, serving God and Mammon, does not devote himself entirely to his faith. Smith lost money. He slipped back into his old trade of money-finder,
but found little. Then, one night in 1811, having again changed his place of residence, he awoke, we are told, 1 "clapping his hands
together for joy." The cause of his rapture we are not informed of, but concerning its effect we are left in no perplexity: for some years
thereafter the family prospered, and the children were sent to school.
Misfortune, however, had not yet done with the parents of the prophet. It was necessary that they should be driven to that portion of the country
where The Book of Mormon was lying in the earth, awaiting its predestined discoverer. Hardly, therefore, had prosperity substantially
obtained than there came an
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1 History of Joseph Smith, Junior, by Mrs. Lucy Smith.
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epidemic of typhus fever against which both medicine and charms were for a time powerless. The children fell ill, and, when they had recovered,
financial disaster again overtook their father, who then gathered together his few belongings and went to the state of New York.
Arriving destitute at Manchester, N.Y., the family secured in Stafford Street, near the Palmyra line, a small clearing enclosed in underbrush.
Here they built themselves a rude house of logs, and here, scorned by the more successful inhabitants of the two nearest towns, they lived for
four years, when they again moved, this time to a similar place, six miles away, near Manchester.
There were now a number of children in the Smith establishment. Joseph, the second son, the prophet-to-be, had been born in the town of Sharon,
Vermont, on the 23rd of December 1805; 1 but his appearance was not, as one might have expected, heralded by any mystic portents,
and his earlier childhood was, even in his mother's eyes, in no wise remarkable. Indeed, Mrs. Smith had never expressed the opinion that her
son "Joe," as he was called, would be the founder of the faith of which she dreamed. Her visions had brought her to no such conclusion. They
had, nevertheless, impelled her to the belief that a new prophet should appear, and, assuming a more or less personal application for her
revelations, after the manner of seers, she gave out hints that Alvah, her eldest son, was the divinely-appointed. But Alvah [sic], according to
unkind gossip, was a greedy boy, and, one day eating
__________
1 This according to Joseph himself. Richard F. Burton, in his City of the Saints, differs. He gives Whittingham, Vermont, as Joseph Smith's
birthplace, and 1st June 1801 as the date of his arrival there. It is possible that Burton has confused Joseph with his brother Alvah [sic].
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too many green turnips, died. Thus did the mantle descend upon Joseph.
Perhaps the first definitely noticeable inclination of Providence in the direction of Joseph occurred during the typhus fever epidemic before
referred to. The disease left the lad, then about ten years old, suffering from abscesses. One leg was especially troublesome, so much so that a
surgeon decided to amputate; but the mother, declaring -- later -- that she had been providentially inspired, begged the surgeon once more to try
the remedy that had until then failed, and the leg was made well.
In Manchester the dreams and visions continued, mostly to Mrs Smith, until the children came to regard them as an everyday matter. They were all
prepared to receive similar visitations, and, while their minds were thus made fertile, they were living in the midst of general religious
excitement. All the evangelical denominations about them were floating upon a high tide of "revivalism." In Palmyra and Manchester, after the
advent of camp-meetings in the woods on the Vienna road and animated congregational services in the towns proper, contentions arose among the
sects, and the rural brain was plunged into a fog of metaphysical discussion in which it wandered hopelessly mazed. The younger Smiths were at
an age when the effect of all this was a foregone conclusion. Joseph was "converted," and "held forth," although but a boy, both in debates in
the school-house, where he had found a friend in the young school-master, Oliver Cowdery, and in other meetings, until as an extemporaneous
speaker he had acquired ease of manner and power of voice.
Mrs. Smith was moved. She prayed. She asked
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God to direct her toward the sect that was right. She was told, she says, to join no sect that then existed: none represented the will of God.
While the family continued its shiftless existence, Joseph the younger reached the age of fifteen. He is described 1 as being at
this time an awkward, unpopular lad, who would go, too often for his own good, among the gossips that gathered at the nearest grocery-shop. A
well-known figure, he was even then six feet tall, lank, and often to be seen laden with "jags of wood," which he bore from the paternal cabin
to the town, there to exchange them for other commodities. Except that he could exhort well and was of a sociable disposition, he was not liked.
The young people of the town considered him not quite full-witted and, with the cruelty of youth, made him the butt for their practical jokes.
The boy gauged correctly the esteem in which he was held. He could not well fail to do so. The jests were not of the kindest, and the inking
of his face when he visited the printing-office to secure the weekly newspaper was not conducive to his contentment with surrounding conditions.
It is, then, not to be wondered at if, derided, he should wish to make himself respected; if, joked, he should want to retaliate by a joke upon
the community that joked him; if, in short, he should begin as a mere hoax, or a mere vain bid for decent treatment in a rough and ignorant
community, what -- if it was so begun and was not the partial self-delusion of an ill-balanced lad in an environment of superstition was at any
rate to have consequences that even a visionary could scarcely foresee.
Stooping a little as he walked, with high shoulders, a narrow forehead and scanty brows over calm eyes,
__________
1 Turner's History of Philip [sic] and Gorham's Purchase.
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Joseph went his way about the countryside. He seems to have had small opportunity for social intercourse, and he certainly must not have been
liked by the neighbourhood girls; yet, at just about the time of his great discovery, he successfully courted one of them. He married Emma Hale.
And now the time for the discovery had come. In Joseph Smith's own words, this is the story of the formation of the Mormon
Church: -- 1
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was founded upon direct revelation, as the true Church
of God has ever been, according to the Scriptures (Amos iii. 7, and Acts i. 2). 2 And through the will
and blessings of God, I have been an instrument in his hands, thus far, to move forward the cause of Zion....
"My father was a farmer, and taught me the art of husbandry. When about fourteen years of age, I began
to reflect upon the importance of being prepared for a future state; and upon inquiring the place of salvation,
I found that there was a great clash in religious sentiment; if I went to one society they referred me to one
place, and another to another; each one pointing to his
own particular creed as the summum bonum of perfection. Considering that all could not be right, and
that God could not be the author of so much confusion, I determined to investigate the subject more fully,
__________
1 History of the Latter Day Saints, by Joseph Smith, published in 1848, by John Winebrenner, Harrisburg, Pennyslvania, in a
History of all the Religions Denominations in the United States.
2 "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets " (Amos iii. 7).
"Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had
chosen " (Acts i. 2).
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believing that if God had a Church, it would not be split up into factions, and that if he taught one society
to worship one way, and administer in one set of ordinances, he would not teach another principles which
were diametrically opposed. Believing the word of God, I had confidence in the declaration of James, 'If
any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.'
"I retired to a secret place in a grove, and began to call upon the Lord. While fervently engaged in supplication,
my mind was taken away from the objects with which I was surrounded, and I was enrapt in a heavenly vision, and saw
two glorious personages, who exactly resembled each other in features and likeness, surrounded with a brilliant light,
which eclipsed the sun at noonday. They told me that all the religious denominations were believing in incorrect
doctrines, 1 and that none of them was acknowledged of God as his Church and Kingdom. And I was expressly
commanded to 'go not after them,' at the same time receiving a promise that the fulness of the gospel should at some
future time be made known to me.
"On the evening of the 21st September, A.D. 1823, while I was praying unto God and endeavouring to exercise faith in
the precious promises of Scripture, on a sudden a light like that of day, only of a far purer and more glorious
appearance and brightness, burst into the room; indeed, the first sight was as though the house was filled with consuming
fire. The appearance produced a shock that affected the whole body. In a moment a personage stood before me
__________
1 Compare his mother's visions, both those received about the same time and those received before.
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surrounded with a glory yet greater than that with which I was already surrounded. This messenger
proclaimed himself to be an angel of God, sent to bring the joyful tidings that the covenant which God
made with ancient Israel was at hand to be fulfilled;
that the preparatory work for the second coming of the Messiah was speedily to commence ; that the
time was at hand for the gospel in all 'its fulness to be preached in power, unto all nations, that a people
might be prepared for the millennial reign.
"I was informed that I was chosen to be an instrument in the hands of God to bring about some of his
purposes in this glorious dispensation.
"I was informed also concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country, and shown who they were,
and from whence they came ; a brief sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments, of
their righteousness and iniquity, and the blessings of God being finally withdrawn from them as a people,
was made known unto me. I was also told where there were deposited some plates, on which was engraven
an abridgment of the records of the ancient prophets that had existed on this continent. The angel appeared
to me three times the same night and unfolded the same things. After having received many visits from the
angels of God, unfolding the majesty and glory of the events that should transpire in the last days, on the
morning of the 22nd September, A.D. 1827, the angel of the Lord delivered the records into my hands.
"These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold ; each plate was six inches
wide and eight inches long, and not quite so thick as common tin. They were filled with engravings
in Egyptian characters, and bound together in a
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volume, as the leaves of a book, with three rings running through the whole. The volume was something near six inches in thickness, a part
of which was sealed. The characters on the unsealed part were small and beautifully engraved. The whole book exhibited many marks of antiquity
in its construction, and much skill in the art of engraving. With the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called 'Urim
and Thummim,' 1 which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim on a bow fastened to a breastplate.
"Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record, by the gift and power of God.
"In this important and interesting book the history of ancient 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 fifth 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 came directly
from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before
__________
1 Urim and Thummim: according to the Hebrews, the literal significance of these words is (Exodus xxviii. 30) light and perfection,
or the shining and the perfect ; according to St Jerome, doctrine and judgment; at all events, they seem to refer to the stones in
the breastplate of the high priest. " It may suffice us to know that this was a singular piece of divine workmanship, which the high
priest was obliged to wear on solemn occasions, as one of the conditions upon which God engaged to give him answers" (Cruden's Concordance).
"And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in
before the Lord " (Exodus xxviii. 30).
It is interesting to note that Alfred Henry Lewis, the apologist of Diaz, calls the Urim and Thummim angels.
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Christ. They were principally Israelities, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed
about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country.
The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. This book
also tells us that our Saviour made his appearance upon this continent after his resurrection; that he
planted the gospel here in all its fulness, and richness, and power, and blessing; that they had apostles,
prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists; the ordinances, gifts, powers, and blessing, as was enjoyed
on the eastern continent; that the people were cut off in consequence of their transgressions; that the last of
their prophets who existed among them were com-manded to write an abridgment of their prophecies,
history, etc., etc., and to hide it up in the earth, and that it should come forth and be united with the
Bible, for the accomplishment of the purposes of God, in the last days. For a more particular account, I would
refer to The Book of Mormon, which can be purchased at Nauvoo, or from any of our travelling elders.
"As soon as the news of this discovery was made known, false reports, misrepresentation, and slander
flew as on the wings of the wind, in every direction; my house was frequently beset by mobs, and evil-designing
persons; several times I was shot at, and very narrowly escaped, and every device was made use of to get the plates
away from me; but the power and blessing of God attended me, and several began to believe my testimony.
"On the 6th April 1830 the 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' was first organized...."
That is Smith's own story. When comparing its
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earlier portion with the known facts of Smith's younger days, as already set forth in these pages, the reader may notice certain
discrepancies, certain glossings-over. How far the concluding portion is to be judged by these discrepancies may be left to the discretion
of their discoverer. There remains another story to tell -- another story of the finding of The Book of Mormon.
Solomon Spalding 1 was a retired minister in New England, a Presbyterian by latest avowal and practice. He had not succeeded
in the ministry, and finally abandoned that vocation for a trade. Then, his manual ability not sufficiently compensating him for his
efforts, he decided to write a book. This was in 1809, eighteen years before Joseph Smith met the Angel of the Lord on Cumorrah Hill.
Afterwards, Mrs. Spalding, pathetically explained that her husband "thought he had a literary taste, and thought to redeem his fortunes
by the composition of an historical romance."
The resulting volume was entitled The Manuscript Found, and, in five thousand [sic] dull octavo pages of fine print and bad grammar,
fancifully accounted for the American Indians. Spalding used anew the already old idea that these Indians were the descendants of the
Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, traced the fates of the wanderers for the space of a thousand years, from the time of the reign of that king
of Judah whose name
__________
1 Expose of Mormonism, by John Bennett. The case of Spalding, or Spaulding, is well known in the United States, though there are
not lacking non-Mormon critics who declare that the similarity between Spalding's book and Smith's does not justify the accusations of
plagiarism. Thus David Utter: "No one who ever carefully read The Book of Mormon could fail to see that it never in any part was
written for a romance.... Now, at last, the Spalding manuscript has been found, and it rests secure in the library of Oberlin College."
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was changed to Zedekiah, who did "that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," to the fifth century A.D. The son of one Nephi, Mormon,
the fictitious final compiler of the thousand years' records, was credited with having buried the entire manuscript before his death.
The book was painstakingly completed in 1812, fifteen years before Smith's discovery, and a copy then given for publication to a printer
or bookseller in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, a man named Patterson. Here the story created no favourable impression, but was allowed to gather
dust for several years. The author died without seeing his romance in print, and Patterson, on an occasion, lent the manuscript to a
compositor in his employ, Sidney Rigdon, who was also a preacher of chameleon faith. Then. in 1825, Patterson died. Rigdon next came into
view as the right-hand man of Joseph Smith at the start of the Mormon Church.
In 1839 the widow of Spalding published a statement in a Boston, Massachusetts, newspaper, which led to a public meeting. At this meeting
the manuscripts of The Manuscript Found and The Book of Mormon were compared, and it was established beyond question that the
similarity of the two could not be disregarded. The names of the different characters were exactly the same, and whole pages were word for
word alike. Moreover, since Spalding had not been an educated man, traces of illiteracy were observable in his work, and these errors were
repeated in The Book of Mormon. The only rebuttal offered at the time was that issued by Rigdon, whose reply was not worthy of the
name of argument, and whose coarseness did small good to the Mormon cause.
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(remainder of text not yet transcribed)
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