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The Founder of Mormonism
THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM '
A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr. by
L WOODBRIDGE RILEY
ONE-TIME INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY
Prof. GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD
I
, J ' J 1
NEW YO RK
DODD, MEAD £sf COMPANY 1 902
^i^
THF LiBRARV OF CONGRESS.
Two Cc>P'^*=i RtCEIVEO
JIJN. 6 1902
E FLIGHT ENTRY a XXc No. COPY B.
Copyright^ igo2 By Dodd, Mead & Company'
First edition published in May, 1902
■ • • • V • • •
• • •♦ • • ,
• • • *! • '
THE CAXTON PRESS NEW YORK.
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Introductory Preface
The rise and growth of Mormonism is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the nineteenth century. It is deserving of thorough investiga- tion, whether the investigation be conducted from the point of view of the sociologist, the psychologist, or of the student of politics or of religion. But from whatever point of view it is re- garded, a correct understanding of its origin and development can be gained only by the method which is applicable to all similar phases in the life of man ; and this method may be described, although somewhat unsatisfactorily, as that of historical and comparative psychology. In Mormonism, as in all religions and religious communities, we have to deal only with peculiar and complex combinations of the same ideas, feelings, motives and deeds, that are common to the entire human race.
This essay of Mr. Riley is a conscientious and painstaking study of the founder of Mormonism, as one among not a few instances of the astonishing results that follow from the concurrent action of the individual man and the favoring opportunity afforded
vi ' INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
by the prevalent intellectual and social environment. Without Joseph Smith's personality being taken largely into the account, no account can be given of the rise and grow^th of the religious movement which he started. But Joseph Smith, under other conditions than those w^hich actually surrounded him in the first third of the last century, or Joseph Smith under the conditions actually existing any- where in the country in the last third of the same century, could not have become the founder of Mormonism. Man and environment were neces- sary for a new religion that should claim to be based upon a succession of revelations and miracles, recorded for the world to pass judgment upon, in the form of printed books. Hence the necessity for studying the man, not only in his own inherit- ance and personal characteristics and experiences, but also in his surroundings — the people of his neighborhood and time.
The material for this study in psychology has been somewhat peculiarly difficult to acquire and to handle. At the time when the subject of the study lived, there was little or no disposition or fitness for considering such manifestations of abnormal psy- chical development from the scientific point of view. And so far as I am aware no very thorough attempt at such a study of the personal sources of Mor- monism has hitherto ever been made. This should
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE vii
be borne in mind by the reader who is fitted to form an expert opinion upon the success of the author in his effort to explain the facts from points of view now somewhat firmly held by the modern student of physiology and psychology. There is plainly room for a justifiable difference of opinion as to the relative amounts of shrewd insight, self-deception, disease of imagination and judgment, and conscious, intentional fraud, which must be admitted. Un- doubtedly, the mixture of all these factors varied greatly from time to time, — as in the career of all men who at all resemble Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. I am sure, however, that no student of such phenomena can fail to appreciate the value of the services rendered by the author. The larger circle of readers, who make no claim to a special interest in abnormal psychology, even when it manifests itself within the sphere of man's religious life, will find much to interest and instruct them in this volume. I take pleasure, therefore, in thus briefly introducing Mr. Riley's essay to all classes of readers.
George Trumbull Ladd.
Yale University^ New Havens May^ igo2.
Author's Preface
This study has been offered to the Philosophical Faculty of Yale University as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Materials 1 gathered at Salt Lake City in 1894 were utilized in 1898 for a Master of Arts thesis on the ' Metaphysics of Mor- monism.' The sources employed in the present work, as given in the appended Bibliography, are, in the main, to be found in the Berrian collection of the New York Public Library.
Beside rare first editions and Church publications suppressed by the Utah Saints, use is here made of some hitherto unpublished manuscripts. For these I am indebted to various correspondents, and es- pecially to Mr. William Evarts Benjamin of New York City. For suggestions and criticisms my thanks are also due to Prof. William H. Brewer, of the Sheffield Scientific School, and to Prof. Charles j. Bartlett of the Yale Medical School.
The aim of this work is to examine Joseph Smith's character and achievements from the stand-
X PREFACE
point of recent psychology. Sectarians and phrenol- ogists, spiritualists and mesmerists have variously interpreted his more or less abnormal performances, — it nov^ remains for the psychologist to have a try at them.
New Haveuy Conn,, May, igo2.
Contents
CHAPTER I Ancestry and Dreams Partisan Treatment of Joseph Smith's Character. — Advantages of the Standpoint of Physiological Psychology. — The Man in His Maturity Described by Eye-witnesses. — ' A Phenomenon to be Ex- plained.'— Smith's Ability and His Absurdities. — His Writings Supplemented by Suppressed Sources. — The Origin of Mormonism. — Its Impelling Forces in the Eighteenth Century. — Joseph's Strange Ancestry. — His Grandfather Mack's Nar- rative,— The Latter's Life of Adventure and Hard- ship.— The Old Soldier's Ailments and His Re- ligious Experiences. — He Sees Visions and Hears Voices. — Similar Experiences of the Grandson. — Mack's Belief in Faith Healing and Mu-aculous Cures. — Erratic Tendencies Transmitted. — The Prophet's Mother. — Her Book, and its Works of Wonder. — Her Revivalistic Dream. — The Smith Pedigree Traced Back to 1666. — The Prophet's Father, His Restlessness of Mind and Body. — His Seven Dreams. — Their Local Color. — Their In- corporation Into the Book of Mormon, — Their
xii CONTENTS
Mystic Interpretation. — Their Physiological Basis. Elements of Illusion and Hallucination. — They Re- flect the Dreamer's Notions and Beliefs. — Relation to the Visions of Joseph, Junior - - -
CHAPTER II
Environment and Visions
Western New York in 1815. — Backwardness of the Country. — Mental Effects : Lack of Education, Scarcity of Books Religious Literature Predomi- nant.— Some Rationalism, More Sectarianism. — Fanatic Sects. — Revivals, Their Unnatural Meth- ods and Abnormal Results. — The Young Be- wildered From the Clash of Creeds, Depressed From the Sombre Theology. — Joseph Smith's Ac- count of His First Three Visions. — The Psycho- logy of Such Religion. — Emotional Pressure and Resultant Hallucinations. — Religious Hypnosis and the Abnormalities of Conversion. — Parallel with John Bunyan. — Joseph Smith's Greater Abnormal- ities Due to Heredity. — His Neuropathic Ancestry. — His Grandfather's ' Fits.' — Neural Instability of the Second Generation. — ^Joseph's Juvenile Ail- ments.— Causes Provocative of His First Seizure. — Intoxication and the Second Seizure. — Psycho- physical Description of the First Two * Visions.' — Melancholic Depression and Infernal Phantasms. Smith Neither Demented nor a Dissembler. — His Condition Probably Epileptic. — Its Non-discovery Due to Ignorance of His Parents. His Fanciful Explanations. — The Symptoms Inadvertently Given in the Biographical Sketches and Elsewhere. — Cor-
CONTENTS xiii
relation of Ancestry and Progeny. — Seizures In- frequent and Cure Spontaneous. — After Effects on His Character. — His Mental Ability and Emo- tional Instability. — Interpretations of His Followers, 37
CHAPTER III
The Book of Mormon : The Documents
An Alleged Indian Record in ' Reformed Egyptian.' — The Psychological Problem Twofold. — Belief in the Actuality of the * Gold Plates.' — Theory of Their
Levitation. — The So-Called Transcription Its
Transmission and Translation. — Judgments of Early Critics. — Pronounced Untranslatable. — Analogous to Automatic Writing. — A Home-made Pro- duction.— Concealed Autograph. — Joseph Smith a Crystal Gazer. — Reversal of Signature. — Uncon- scious Cerebration. — The Visions of Moses, — The Revised Translation of the Bible, — Confidence in His Own Learning. — His Interpretation of the Word Mormon, — His Early Ignorance. — His Use of Men, not Books. — Sidney Rigdon. — ^Joseph as a Linguist. — The Book of Abraham, — Original Manu- script of the Book of Mormon, — Changes in It and in the Prmted Editions. — The Cowdery Manu- script One of Several. — The First Duplicate Copy. — Disappearance of the First Original. — ^Joseph's Three Scribes. — Characteristics and Date of the Alleged Original. — The Cowdery Copy Prob- ably the Nearest to the Original. — Proof from the Famous Anti- Polygamy Passage. — The Author's Preface. — Agreement with Joseph's Confession of Illiteracy 'j']
xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV The Book of Mormon : The Sources
Size and Aim of the Book. — Contents According to the Prophet. — Admission of Authorship. — The Environ- ment Suggests the Sources, — A Scriptural Para- phrase. Biblical Borrowings. — Biographical Hints. — The Dream of Nephi and of Joseph Smith, Senior. — Grammatical and Rhetorical Errors. — Geography made Indefinite and History Obscure. — Visions of America. — ^Joseph's Imaginative Gifts. — Lamanites are Modern Indians in Disguise. — The Aboriginal Monuments of New York State. — Theories of Indians being the Lost Tribes of Israel. — ^Joseph's Summary. — Parallels with Pri-est's American An- tiquities.— Local Sources of These Theories. — Popular Errors in the Narrative. — ^Joseph's Fanciful Explanations. — Mental Habits of the Lamanites. — Their Resemblance to Local Sects. — The Speech of Nephi Traced to its Sources. — ^Joseph's De- pendence on Local Theology - - - - iQ5
CHAPTER V
The Author's Mentality
Joseph's Imagination Stronger Than His Reason. — His Theory of the Usefulness of Evil. — His Emotional Revolt Against Calvinism. — Allusions to Baptist Doctrines. — The Methodist Exhorter and the Speech of Amulek. — The Mormon Hierarchy. — The Clash of Creeds not Harmonized. — Three
CONTENTS XV
Minor Movements Reflected Tirades Against
Romanism, Infidelity and Free Masonry. — The Book of Mormon as a Criterion of Mental Habits. — Joseph's Constructive Imagination ; its Materials and Limitations. — A Good Memory, but a Poor Judgment. — Mixture of Sense and Nonsense. — A Fanciful Family and an Emotional Environment. — The Marks of the Book are the Marks of the Man. — Mental Restlessness Characteristic of the West. — A Comparison w^ith Young Chatterton and the Rowley Myth. — The Literature of Dis- guise in America. — The Spaulding Theory Un- tenable.— The Book of Mormon Authentic and Indigenous. — The Gradual Evolution of the Work 139
CHAPTER VI
Prophet, Seer and Revelator
This Title a Growth. — Variety in Prophecies. — Common Belief in the Predictive. — The Miller- ites. — ^Joseph's Indefinite Millennium. — Some Timely and Untimely Warnings. — The Personal Element. — Prophecy of the Civil War. — ^Joseph the Seer. — His Crystal Gazing. — The Prevalent use of ' Seeing Stones.' — ^Joseph as a * Peeper ' and as an ' Interpreter.' — Methods of Auto-Hypnosis. — How Joseph 'Translated.' — Abnormalities in the Book of Mormon. — Similarities to the Trance Medium. — Automatic Writing. — ^Joseph and His Scribes. — Clairvoyant and Telepathic Embellish- ments.— Self-deception and Conscious Duplicity. —
xvi CONTENTS
Methods of Concealment. — The Ecstatic Condition. — ^Joseph Applies to Others the Principles of Sug- gestion.— Persecuted and Made Notorious. — His Acts as a Revelator - - - - -175
CHAPTER VII
Joseph the Occultist
The Testimony of Three Witnesses. — Was it an Hypnotic Hallucination? — Three Productive Fac- tors.— The Suggestibility of Cowdery. — His Ex- pectant Attention Aroused by Smith. — The Latter's Preparatory Successes. — The Baptismal Vision. — Whitmer's Persistent Belief. — Hypnotism Suggested as a Cause. — The Third Witness Less Susceptible. — How Harris was Approached by Smith. — The * Eye of Faith ' and Long Continued Prayer. — Joseph's Account of the Vision of the Gold Plates. — Pseudo-Explanations of Smith's Influence. — Al- leged Magnetic Influence. — The Religious Leader's Captivation. — Varieties of Hallucination. — The Vision of the Plates Induced by Positive Suggestion. — Loss of Extra- Mental Consciousness but not of Memory. — Association of Ideas. — Additional In- centives to the Psychic Mirage. — The Testimofiy of Eight Witnesses, — Various Theories. — Collective Hypnosis. — Epidemics of Hallucination. — Scanty Historic Connection with Other Movements. — Smith's Case Sporadic, His Achievements Empirical. — Western New York an Occult Locality. — Swe- dcnborgianism. — Mesmerism. — Animal Magnetism. — Spiritualism. — Primitive Beliefs of the Minor
CONTENTS xvii
Sects. — Mormon Metaphysics. — Smith a Crass Ma- terialist.— His Crude Explanations. — His Tests for Evil Spirits. — His Editorial on * Try the Spirits' - 209
CHAPTER VIII
Joseph the Exorcist
Great Manifestations of Spirits.' — The Outward Signs of the Growth of Mormonism. — Elements of Suc- cess.— A Patriotic Bible. — Profuse Revelations. — The Book of Commandments. — Its Relation to the Book of Mormon, — A Book of Discipline, of Ex- egesis, and of Business. — Revamped Into the Doc- trine and Covenants. — Its Canonization. — The Latter-day Dispensation. — Its Puny Beginnings. — Sectarian Narrowness and Pride. — ^Joseph's Oppor- tunism.— The First Miracle. — Restoration of Primi- tive * Gifts.' — Newel Knight, the Demoniac. — Devils * Spiritually ' Viewed. — Faith in Joseph Smith. — The Coming of Sidney Rigdon. — His Influence Over Smith. — His Mental Unsoundness. — His Frenzied Preaching. — Revival Ecstasy in the Western Reserve. — The Kirtland Frenzy. — ' Gifts ' of Tongues, of Interpretation, of Prophecy. — The Philosophy of Religious Mania. — ^Joseph's Theory of False Spirits. — The Power of the Priesthood. — Other * Mighty Works.' — Catalepsy and Ob- session.— Smith's Final Standpoint of Repression. — The Mormon Missionaries and the Demoniacs. — Hypnotic Suggestion and Unbelief. — Collective Hysteria and * Evil Spirits.' — Witchcraft and Black Art. — Mormon Demonology - - - - 245
xviii CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX Joseph the Faith Healer Casting Out Devils Leads to Casting Out Diseases.— Joseph ^ Rebukes ' the Cholera. — His Followers De- mand Miracles of Healing. — His early Ignorance and Overconfidence. — His Later Crude But Real Knowledge of Mental Healing. — Mormon Medi- cine.— The Doctrine of Signatures, and Indian Herb Remedies. — ^Joseph's Uncle, Jason Mack, an Alleged Faith Healer. — The Irvingites and Mir- acles.— The Faith Promoting Series. — Holy Oil and Consecrated Flannels. — The Insistence on Faith, and Mental Suggestion. — Subjective Expecta- tions,— * Silent Treatment.' — The Mischief Done by the Missionaries. — Public Opposition. — Cred- ulity of the Laity. — Smith Recognizes Certain Limitations. — Seven Lectures on Faith, — The Ap- proximation to Suggestive Therapeutics. — Stress on the Mystical and Sacerdotal. — The Variety in Joseph's * Cures.' — His Failures with Children. — His Authority Over Adults. — Ephemeral Results. — One Authentic Success. — Due to Simple or Hyp- notic Suggestion ? — Joseph's Medieval Point of View. — The Use of the Talisman. — The Prophet's Impressive Manner. — Favorable Conditions Among the Mormons — Wholesale * Cures,' and Collective Hypnosis - 283
CHAPTER X Final Activities Last Proofs of Smith's Restlessness and Instability. — Communism in Goods and in Wives. — ^Joseph the
CONTENTS xix
Socialist. — Communistic Societies in this Country. — The Shakers, and Owen's New Harmony. — How Smith Derived His Views. — Rigdon's Kirtland Common Stock Company. — Smith's Biblical Em- bellishments.— Tithing. — ^Joseph the Financier. — The Safety Society Bank and the Nauvoo House. — Plans and Specifications for the New City of Zion. — Smith's Various Commercial and Ecclesiastical Schemes. — ^Josepli the Soldier. — Mormondom a Military Church. — ^Joseph the Agitator. — His Strange Mastery of His Followers. — How He Gained the Ascendency. — Excommunication of the Three Witnesses. — Conflict Between Church and State.— Mental Effects of these Vicissitudes. — His Political Abnormalities. — A Candidate for the Presi- dency.— His Views on the Government. — His Last Utterances. — His Colossal Conceit. — The Final question : Was He Demented or Merely De- generate? ------- 305
APPENDICES
I. Contents OF THE Book OF Mormon - - 331
II. Epilepsy and the Visions - - - - 3^3
III. The Spaulding-Rigdon Theory of the Book
OF Mormon ----- 367
IV. Polygamy and Hypnotism - - . - 397 V, Bibliography ..--..- 427
CHAPTER I ANCESTRY AND DREAMS
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS
To read the flux of books on the founder of Mor- monism, one might think there were no middle course between vilification and deification. To sec- tarians Joseph Smith appears an ignoramus, a fa- natic, an impostor, and a libertine; to his followers — a prophet, a seer, a vicegerent of God, and a martyr/ While two generations of writers have been presenting Smith's character in its mental and moral extremes, they have been ignoring the all-im- portant physical basis of his personality. If a solu- tion of his perplexing individuality is wanted, the pathological grounds must be examined. The state of his body goes far to explain the state of his
1 Compare the early official Mormon organ, the * Times and Seasons,' 5, 856: — * Joseph Smith. With his friends: — God's vicegerent, a prophet of Jehovah, a minister of religion, a lieuten- ant general, a preacher of righteousness, a worshipper of the God of Israel, a mayor of a city, a judge upon the judicial bench. With his ene??iies : — A tavern keeper, a base libertine, a ruler of tens of thousands and slave to his own base unbridled passions, a profane swearer, a devotee of Bacchus, a miserable bar-room fid- dler, an invader of the civil, social and moral relations of men.'
3
4 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
mind, and his ancestry to explain both. Like the distorted views of his grandfather 'Crook-necked Smith ' Joseph's mental abnormalities are to be con- nected with physical ills.
Before getting at the roots of his ramigerous fam- ily tree and grubbing in the neural subsoil, it is well to obtain an idea of what the man was like in his maturity. Within a year of Smith's death and in the heyday of his power, four different persons visited Nauvoo, met the head of the Mormon Church, and wrote down what they saw. As out- siders their impressions are worth having. The first ^ said that General Smith was not a fool, but somewhat of a jockey; that his socialistic schemes were crude, but that he had a clear insight into the grosser principles of human nature. The next eye- witness was an Englishwoman, the sister of a Mor- mon convert. With feminine intuition she saw into the paradoxical nature of the man, and pictures
« * Universalist Union,' 9, 376. Interview of * W. S. B.' August 20, 1843. * Joe Smith is not a fool, though he is somewhat of a jockey. He has a clear insight into the grosser principles of human nature and adapts himself and his theories to a taste and disposi- tion he finds common enough among men — credulity and self in- terest. Assuming much for himself, and promising everything to his followers, he is able to draw around him a class of men who prefer being led to being starved ... he sets up that he and his followers are superior to all other men. . . . Theirs is the crudest kind of socialism.'
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 5
him as sensuaP and shrewd, boastful and popular, conceited and kind-hearted. If these descriptions are objected to as prejudiced, there remain two ac- counts which the Mormons quote with approval. The first was given by the legal counsel of the Saints in their Missouri troubles. He portrays Smith as of unprepossessing appearance, ordinary conversational powers, and limited education, and yet withal of indomitable perseverance, strange and striking views and great influence over others, ene-
^ 'Joseph Smith is a large, stout man, youthful in his appearance, with light complexion and hair, and blue eyes set far back in the head, and expressing great shrewdness, or I should say, cunning. He has a large head and phrenologists would unhesitatingly pro- nounce it a bad one, for the organs situated in the back part are decidedly most prominent. He is also very round shouldered. He had just returned from Springfield, where he had been upon trial for some crime of which he was accused while in Missouri, but he was released by habeas corpus. I, who had expected to be over- whelmed by his eloquence, was never more disappointed than when he commenced his discourse by relating all the incidents of his journey. This he did in a loud voice, and his language and manner were the coarsest possible. His object seemed to be to amuse and excite laughter in his audience. He is evidently a great egotist and boaster, for he frequently remarked that at every place he stopped going to and from Springfield people crowded around him, and expressed surprise that he was so "handsome and good looking." He also exclaimed at the close of almost every sentence, " That's the idea ! " . . . They say he is very kind hearted, and always ready to give shelter and help to the needy.* — Charlotte Haven. * A Girl's Letters from Nauvoo,* January 22 and February 13, 1843, i^ ^^^ Overland Monthly ^ December, 1890.
6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
mies and followers alike.* Of all these pen portraits, the latest is probably the most impartial. As the church historian gives it only in part/ it is need-
< p. H. Burnett, ' Recollections of an Old Pioneer,' 1890, p. 66 : — 'Joseph Smith, Jr., was at least six feet high, well formed, and weighed about 180 pounds. His appearance was not prepossessing and his conversational powers were but ordinary. You could see at a glance that his education was very limited. He was an awkward but vehement speaker. In conversation he was slow, and used too many words to express his ideas, and would not generally go directly to a point. But, with all these drawbacks, he was much more than an ordinary man. He possessed the most indomitable perseverance, was a good judge of men, and deemed himself born to command and he did command. His views were so strange and striking, and his manner was so earnest, and appar- ently so candid, that you could not but be interested. ... He had the capacity for discussing a subject in different aspects, and for proposing many original views, even of ordinary matters. His illustrations were his own. He had great influence over others. . . . In the short space of five days he had managed so to mollify his enemies that he could go unprotected among them without the slightest danger.'
6 Contrast G. Q. Cannon, *The Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet,' p. 355, with Quincy, * Figures of the Past,' pp. 376-399 : — ' It is by no means improbable that some future text-book, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this : What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen ? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written : Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants. History deals in sur- prises and paradoxes quite as startling as this. The man who es- tablished a religion in this age of free debate, wlio was and is to-day accepted by hundreds of thousands as a direct emissary from the Most High, — such a rare human being is not to be disposed of by
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 7
ful to sum up the whole. In May, 1844, forty- three days before his assassination, Smith was vis- ited at his headquarters by Josiah Quincy, who left
pelting his memory with unsavory epithets. Fanatic, impostor, charlatan, he may have been ; but these hard names furnish no so- lution to the problem he presents us. . . . The most vital questions Americans are asking each other to-day have to do with this man and what he has left us.'
* General Smith proceeded to unfold still further his views upon politics. He denounced the Missouri Compromise as an unjusti- fiable concession for the benefit of slavery. It was Henry Clay's bid for the presidency. Dr. Goforth might have spared himself the trouble of coming to Nauvoo to electioneer for a duellist who would fire at John Randolph but was not brave enough to protect the Saints in their rights as American citizens. Clay had told his people to go to the wilds of Oregon and set up a government of their own. Oh yes, the Saints might go into the wilderness and obtain justice of the Indians, which imbecile, time-serving poli- ticians would not give them in the land of freedom and equality. The prophet then talked of the details of government. He thought that the number of members admitted to the Lower House of the National Legislature should be reduced. A crowd only darkened counsel and impeded business. A member to every half million of population would be ample. The powers of the President should be increased. He should have authority to put down rebellion in a state without waiting for the request of any governor ; for it might happen that the governor himself would be the leader of the rebels. It is needless to remark how later events showed the executive weakness that Smith pointed out ^ — a weakness which cost thousands of valuable lives and millions of treasure; but the man mingled Utopian fallacies with his shrewd suggestions. He talked as from a strong mind utterly unenlightened by the teachings of history.'
8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
him *a phenomenon to be explained/ The general was described as 'a man of commanding appear- ance; capacity and resource were natural to his stal- wart person; and left an impression of rugged power.' But there were not only high lights in the picture. Smith gave the impression of kingly power, but his talk was garnished with forcible vulgarisms; he had a statesmanlike prevision in ad- vocating the buying of slaves, eleven years before Emerson advocated that scheme, but with it all be- trayed unexampled absurdities in showing off his museum, containing Egyptian mummies and the autograph of Moses. *The man,' says Quincy in conclusion, 'mingled Utopian fallacies with his shrewd suggestions. He talked as from a strong mind utterly unenlightened by the teachings of his- tory.'
Personal interviews furnish as good a way as any to get at a solution of * the enigma of Palmyra.' Since these are few and fragmentary, recourse must be had to information furnished by the prophet under his own name. But, again, since Smith's writings have all the defects of personal in- terviews of an author with himself, there is need of considerable reading between the lines. This is fortunately supplied by various early works, which were so strongly apologetic that they were ulti- mately suppressed. For example, SmitWs Journal
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 9
and his History,^ are supplemented by Thompson's
6 Compare H. H. Bancroft, « History of Utah,' p. 109:— 'The most complete history of the early Mormon church is the Journal of Joseph Smithy extracts from which were made by himself, so as to form a consecutive narrative, under title of History of Joseph Smithy and published in " Times and Seasons " beginning with Vol. III. No. 10, March 15, 1842, and ending February 15, 1846, after the prophet's death. The narrative would fill a good-sized i2mo volume. It is composed largely of revelations, which, save in the one point of commandment which it was the purpose specially to give, are all quite similar. Publication of the " Times and Seasons " was begun at Commerce, afte;rwards called Nauvoo, Illinois, November, 1839, and issued monthly. The number for May, 1840, was dated Nauvoo. Later it was published semi-monthly, and was so continued till February, 1846. It is filled with church pro- ceedings, movements of officers, correspondence of missionaries, history, and general information, with some poetry. . . .'
•At the organization of this church, the Lord commanded Joseph the prophet to keep a record of his doings in the great and important work that he was commencing to perform. It thus became a duty imperative. After John Whitmer and others had purloined the records in 1838, the persecution and expulsion from Missouri soon followed. When again located, now in Nauvoo, Illinois, and steamboat loads of emigrants were arriving from England via New Orleans, the sound thereof awakened an interest in the coun- try that led Hon. John Wentworth, of Chicago, to write to the prophet, Joseph Smith, making inquiries about the rise, progress, persecution, and faith of the Latter-day Saints, the origin of this work, the ** Book of Mormon," the plates from which the record was translated, etc. ; and it is the answer to this letter contained in " Times and Seasons," March i, 1842, that precedes or prefaces the present history of Joseph Smith, which is the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This request of Mr. Went- worth's seemed to forcibly remind the prophet of the importance of having the history of his wonderful work restored to such a condition that correct information could be given to editors, authors, publishers, and any or all classes of inquirers that might
lo THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Evidences'^ and Lucy Smith's Biographical Sketches^ the latter being a sort of homeopathic antidote to her son's unctuous autobiography/ So much for the sources, now for the movement and the man.
apply, and he undertook with his clerks, recorder, and all avail- able aid from private journals, correspondence, and his own in- delible memory, and made it a labor to get his own history, which was indeed that of the church in all the stages of its growth, while he remained with his people, compiled and written up to date, which with his own current journal enabled the historian to complete the history to the time of his assassination, with the utmost fidelity to facts as they occurred. Our method of verifica- tion, after compilation and rough draft, was to read the same be- fore a session of the council, composed of the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles, and there scan everything under consideration.' Richards' ' Bibliography of Utah,' MS., 2-6.
7 Charles Thompson, * Evidences in Proof of the Book of Mor- mon,' p. 1 86. * Let us here enumerate all the accusations against him : " a money digger, a fortune teller, intemperate, a profane swearer, quarrelsome, a liar and a deceiver." '
8 TTie History of Joseph Smithy as given in the * Times and Sea- sons,' 3, 326-945, is conveniently reprinted in the * Pearl of Great Price.' The opening paragraphs, as here quoted, are followed by the accounts of the three Visions [See Chapter II Environment and Visions].
* Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation by evil designing persons in relation to the rise and progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all of which have been designed by the authors thereof to militate against its char- acter as a Church, and its progress in the world, I have been in- duced to write this history, so as to disabuse the public mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts as they have transpired in relation both to myself and the Church so far as I have such facts in possession.
In this history I will present the various events in relation to this Church, in truth and righteousness, as they have transpired, or
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS ii
Mormonism began before its founder. However strange was the appearance of this new prophet, whose 'creed was singular and wives plural,' there were preparatory influences back of him. The cult was no more peculiar than its causes. It was in western New York that the son of an obscure farmer gazed in his magic crystal, automatically wrote *a transcription of gold plates,' dictated the Book of Mormon, and after strange signs and wonders, started his communistic sect. The move- ment arose between 1820 and 1830; its impell- ing forces began two generations before. Joseph Smith dreamed dreams, saw visions, and practiced healing by faith; so did his father, his mother and his maternal grandfather. It is with the latter that the investigation properly begins, for there are ex- tant hitherto unused materials antedating the Revolutionary War. About 18 10, Solomon Mack, a
as they at present exist, being now the eighth year since the or- ganization of the said Church.
I was born in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and five, on the twenty-third day of December, in the town of Sharon, Windsor County, State of Vermont. My father, Joseph Smith, senior, left the State of Vermont, and moved to Palmyra, Ontario (now Wayne) County, in the State of New York, when I was in my tenth year. In about four years after my father's arrival at Palmyra, he moved with his family into Manchester, in the same county of Ontario. His family consisted of eleven souls, namely: my father, Joseph Smith, my mother, Lucy Smith (whose name previous to her marriage was Mack). , . .*
12 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
broken down old soldier, put forth a pamphlet with this suggestive title : —
A Narrative of the Life of Solomon Mack, con- taining an account of the many severe accidents he met with during a long series of years, together with the extraordinary manner in which he was con- verted to the Christian Faith, To which is added a number of Hymns, composed on the death of several of his relations, Windsor : Printed at the expense of the author,^
In this rare Yankee chap-book there earliest ap- pears the proneness of the Smith tribe to illusions of the mind. These are described, towards the close of the book, with an air of simple belief. But be- fore that there are two-score ill-spelt pages, which throw a flood of light on the life of one of the de- pendent classes a hundred years ago. Yet along with its quaint fancies and pleasing humors, Mack's little work discloses three poor traits of the writer's descendants, — their illiteracy, their restlessness and their credulity. Lucy Mack, daughter of the fighting beggar-man and mother of the prophet, in her own book smoothed the style and corrected the gram- matical errors of the Narrative, Lest the raciness and air of truth be left out, it is well to return to the original. The author opens with a quaint ap-
9 Of the two reputed copies, the one in the Berrian Collection, is here used.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 13
peal to the piety of his hearers and recounts the hardships of an apprentice bound out to farm work: —
'My father went to the door to fetch in a back-log, and returned after a fore-stick and instantly droped down dead on the floor. You may see by this our lives are dependant on a sumpreme and independant God. . . . My Master was very careful that I should have little or no rest. From labour ^he never taught me to read or spoke to me at all on the subject of re- ligion. . . . My mistress was afraid of my commencing a suit against them, she took me aside and told me I was such a fool we could not learn you. I was never taught even the principles of common morality, and felt no ob- ligation with regard to society ; and was bom as others, like the wild ass's colt. I met with many sore accidents during the years of my minority.' ^°
The writer next gives an instance of his practical cleverness, but adds thereto a confession of his lack of book learning. Recounting his adventures in the French and Indian war, near Fort Edward in 1757, he says:
' I espied at about thirty rods distance, four
Indians coming out of the wood with their
tomma-hawks, scalping knives and guns. I
was alone, but about twenty rods behind me
10 « Narrative,' pp. 3, 4,
14 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
there was a man by the name of Webster. I saw no other way to save myself only to de- ceive them by stratagem — I exclaimed like this — Rush on ! rush on / Brave Boys, we'll have the Devils I We'll have the Devils — I had no other weapon only a staff; but I ran towards them and the other man appearing in sight, gave them a terrible fright, and I saw them no more but I am bound to say the grass did not grow under my feet.'
3K ^ H^ H^ He ^K
'In the spring, 1754, I set out on another campaign. I went to Crown Point, and there I set up a sutler's shop which I kept two years, by means of a clerk I employed for that pur- pose, not knowing myself how to write, or read, to any amount, what others had written or printed.' "
After giving the author's further experiences as a backwoodsman in Connecticut, an artilleryman in the American army, a sailor from Liverpool to Mount Desert and a privateersman in Long Island Sound, the Narrative is taken up with an Iliad of woes, a list of sufferings and accidents doubtless lengthened out to create sympathy and make the little book sell. In Mack's catalogue of fever sores, smallpox, and broken bones there is little of really vital interest, until mention is made of falling fits.
" * Narrative/ pp. 5,9. Table of Errata in Appendix makes the date 1754 to be 1759.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 15
These are causally connected with the seizures which afflicted his descendant sixty years later. The case reads like epilepsy ; at any rate, thus early appear those symptoms, which go far to explain the ' visions and revelations ' and other abnormalities of grandfather and grandson alike. But to resume the story at a later point: With his bodily suffer- ings in old age, Solomon's religious experiences be- gin and there are blended with these certain char- acteristic mental hallucinations; the narrator con- tinues : —
' In the 76th year of my age, I was taken with the Rheumatism and confined me all winter in the most extreme pain for most of the time. I under affliction and dispensation of providence, at length began to consider my ways, and found myself destitute of knowledge to extole me to enquire. My mind was imagining, but agi- tated. I imagined many things ; it seemed to me that I saw a bright light in a dark night, when contemplating on my bed which I could not account for, but I thought I heard a voice calling to me again. I thought I saw another light of the same kind, all which I considered as ominous of my own dissolution. I was in distress that sleep departed from my eyes and I literally watered my pillow with tears that I prayed eagerly that God would have mercy on me.* ''
" • Narrative,' p. 19.
i6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Psychologically these phenomena will demand closer scrutiny, historically they are by no means unique. From the bishop of Hippo to Jonathan Edwards, such visions and voices have had mystic interpretation.^' The fantasies of the simple minded Revolutionary soldier may be connected with the past, their real significance lies with a coming gen- eration. To the grandfather these impressions are vague, inchoate and hard to explain; to the grand- son they are clear manifestations with a definite purpose,— they are messages of the angel Nephi an- nouncing the Mormon dispensation.
The last pages of the Narrative are of interest as disclosing an almost medieval way of looking at peculiar mental experiences. This New Englander of the eighteenth century felt and thought like the English Puritan of the sixteenth. Mack's confession, for example, intimately resembles Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. There bodily ailments are followed by mental apparitions, but the two are scarce conjoined; it did not occur to the inspired tinker, that his physical hardships on Hounslow Heath were a cause of his imaginary fights with Apollyon in Bedford Gaol. So is it here, — the physical cause is stated, but the religious interpretation is predominant: —
w Compare * Revue Philosophique,' 44, 636, — H. Joly, * Psycho- logie des Saints.'
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 17
' Another night soon after I saw another light as bright as the first, at a small distance from my face, and I thought I had but a few moments to live, and not sleeping nights, and reading, all day I was in misery ; well you may think I was in distress, soul and body. At an- other time, in the dead of the night I was called by my christian name, I arise up to answer to my name. The doors all being shut and the house still, I thought the Lord called and I had but a moment to live. ... I have often thought that the lights which I saw were to show me what a situation I was in. . . . The calls, I believe, were for me to return to the Lord who would have mercy on me.* "
It is this referring of everything unnatural to the supernatural that continued as a mark of Joseph's family during three generations; dreams are warn- ings, visions are messages from on high. Even more characteristic is the belief in healing by prayer. The prophet constantly practiced this on his fol- lowers; his mother gave several instances; while his grandfather cited his own case at the end of his life:—
* All the winter I was laid up with the rheu- matism. ... I thought like this as I was setting one evening by the fire, I prayed to the Lord, if he was with me that I might know it by this token — that my pains might all be eased
** * Narrative,' p. 22.
1 8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
for that night ; and blessed be the Lord, I was entirely free from pain that night. * ^^
There remains one more incident which clearly displays the heights to which a persistent credulity may go, for the tale is repeated by Joseph Smith's mother. The old man gives in his appendix the following curious story: —
* Quite a mericle of my daughter in the town of Sun- derland in the State of Massachusetts, the wife of Joseph Tuttle. She was sick about one year. . . . For three days she eat only the yolk of one egg — she was an anatomy to appearance. Her friends were often weeping around her bed expecting every moment to be her last.
The day before her recovery, the doctor said it was as much impossible to raise her, as it would one from the dead. The night following she dreamed a dream; it was that a sort of wine would cure her ; it was imme- diately brought to her, and she drank it. The next morning she awoke and called to her husband to get up and make a fire — he arose immediately, but thought she was out of her head ; but soon he found to the contrary ; quickly she arose up on end in the bed (said the Lord has helped body and soul) and dressed herself. • . . Soon after the same morning she went to the house of her father-in-law, (which was about ten rods) and back again on her feet her eyes and countenance appeared lively and bright as ever it was in her past life.' ^®
>** Narrative/ p. 12.
16 < Narrative,' pp. 42, 43. — A psychological explanation of this in- cident would puzzle a member of the Society for Psychical Research. It might be labelled a symptomatic dream, such as when the somn-
^-
r
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 19
The study of the Mormon leader's ancestry is more than a study in atavism: nature has not skipped a generation. The erratic tendencies in Joseph's mind appear constitutional because they are continuous. His mother acknowledges as much in her Biographical Sketches^'^ of her son, which, at
ambulist, or the deep sleeper, is alleged to diagnose the disease and to prescribe the remedy. This theory is based on the fanciful induction that, inasmuch as states of the internal organs are prevo- catives of dreams, the dream-desires have value as curative in- stincts. But over against this theory is the fact, that, even in the waking condition, there is but a vague consciousness of the seat of organic sensations. The incident, nevertheless, has value. It throws light on the mental development of both Solomon and his daughter, for reliance on the health-prescriptions of dreamers was a superstition of the middle ages. — Compare Du Prel, < The Philos- ophy of Mysticism,* Volume I, Chapter 5 * Dream a Physician.* Contrast Sully, in Encyclopaedia Brittannica, 7, 459.
17 The full title reads : ' Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet^ a7id his Progenitors for many generations,^ The book's authenticity is undeniable. Published in Liverpool in 1853 for Orson Pratt, it was put forth with a flourish of approbation and publicly commended in the official foreign organ of the Mormons. The Millennial Star, XV. 169, 682, gives these two notices: « The manuscripts containing this information, with the exception of the portion relating to his martyrdom, were written by the direction and under the inspection of the prophet. . . . Being written by Lucy Smith, the mother of the prophet, and mostly under his inspection, will be ample guarantee of the authenticity of the narrative.*
Orson Pratt's preface to the book begins : — * The following pages . . . were mostly written previous to the death of the prophet, and under his personal inspection. Most of the historical items and occurrences related have never before been published. They will therefore be exceedingly interesting to all Saints, and sincere inquirers after the truth.'
J
20 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
first, had a wide circulation as ' Mother Smith's History,' but has since been discredited by the Utah Mormons, for it tells too plain a story.^^ From this now scarce work, Joseph's mental outfit is seen to be largely a matter of inheritance. In his ma- ternal grandfather there is disclosed an unthinking credulity, in his mother a positive hankering after the supernatural. She notes with relish every detail of her husband's seven dreams, as well as all the omens, visions and faith cures of her seven brothers and sisters. This book is all important as a source, yet a question of historic validity arises. If it was written 'under the inspection of the prophet,' may not its facts have been garbled ? It was the practice of Joseph, as head of his church, to work over and amend his earlier writings; such are the gram- matical corrections in the Booh of Mormon and the doctrinal changes in the Book of Commandments. The doubt as to validity is legitimate, but the solu- tion is at hand. In these Biographical Sketches there are published ' historical items and occurrences ' — of such a kind that Joseph the wonder-seeker did not want them changed. The book teems with dreams, visions and miraculous cures. These were, in truth, 'events of infinite importance' to one who was not wont to distinguish between subjective illusions and objective realities.
>8 A. T. Schroeder, < The Origin of the Book of Mormon,' p. 55.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 21
If, then, the book has not been seriously tampered with, because its subject-matter exactly suited the mind of the prophet, some plain facts about this ' remarkable family ' may be extracted from it. To begin with, the education of Lucy Mack was of the most meagre sort.^*
Closely related to the partial illiteracy of the mother is her entire credulity. She too believes in miraculous recovery, and in dreams as heavenly ad- monitions. Her version of her sister's unexpected upraising is more sensational than the parallel ac- count of Solomon. Mrs. Tuttle being bedridden for two years, suddenly exclaims : ' The Lord has healed me, both soul and body — raise me up and give me my clothes. I wish to get up. Connected with this recovery is the inevitable vision. The patient gives the recital of the strange circumstance in the crowded church, and addresses the audience as follows : * I seemed to be borne away to the world of spirits, where I saw the Saviour, as through a veil, which appeared to me about as thick as a spider's web,
*9 * The Narrative * of her father discloses this. • In 1761,' Solomon Mack is made to say, * we moved to the town of Marlow. When we moved there, it was no other than a desolate and dreary wilder- ness. Only four families resided within forty miles. Here I was thrown into a situation to appreciate more fully the talents and vir- tues of my excellent wife ; for, as our children were deprived of schools, she assumed the charge of their education, and performed the duties of an instructress.*
22 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
and he told me that I must return again to warn the people to prepare for death . . . that if I would do this my Hfe would be prolonged.' '"
It was on these fables of the family and tales of a grandfather that the incipient prophet was fed.^^ But this is only a beginning of the signs and won- ders among Joseph's people. His mother also hears a supernal voice and has a miraculous recovery. Sick of a hectic fever and meditating upon death, she heard a voice saying: 'Let your heart be com- forted.' From that time, she asserts, she became quite well as to bodily health, but her mind was considerably disquieted. It was naturally in this period, when there was only a ' faint glimmer of light beyond the gloom,' that the author's most notable psychic experience took place. A condensed extract will give the spirit of the dream : —
^ While we were living at Tunbridge, my mind became deeply impressed with the subject of re- ligion. I began to attend Methodist meetings and, to oblige me, my husband accompanied me ; but when this came to the ears of his father and eldest brother they were displeased. I was considerably hurt by this; after praying some time I fell asleep and had the following dream :
*> « Biographical Sketches,' pp. 25, 26, 47.
2» Compare ' Biographical Sketches/ p. 108. In 1827 Joseph takes a * hint from the stratagem of his Grandfather Mack.'
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 23
I thought that I stood in a large and beauti- ful meadow ; a pure and clear stream of water ran through the midst of it. I discovered two trees standing upon its margin. I gazed upon them with wonder and admiration and I saw that one of them was surrounded with a bright belt that shone like burnished gold. Presently, a gentle breeze passed by, and the tree encircled with this golden zone, bent gracefully before the wind. I turned my eyes upon its fellow, which stood opposite; but it was not sur- rounded with the belt of light as the former, and it stood erect and fixed as a pillar of mar- ble. I wondered at what I saw, and said in my heart. What can be the meaning of all this? And the interpretation given me was, that these personated my husband and his oldest brother, Jesse Smith ; that the stubborn and unyielding tree was like Jesse ; that the other, more pliant and flexible, was like Joseph my husband ; that the breath of heaven, which passed over them, was the pure and undefiled Gospel, which Gos- pel Jesse would always resist, but which Joseph, when he was more advanced in life would hear and receive.* ^*
Already there is disclosed a threefold resemblance between Lucy Mack and her father: each heard voices, saw visions and believed in miraculous cures. And there is another element which was transmitted to the daughter. Solomon has his religious doubts,
*«* Biographical Sketches,' pp. 56, 57.
24 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
but they are of a simple and personal kind; Lucy is afflicted with a more complex depression of spirits." This melancholia, allied with a positive intolerance of the sects, was destined to exert an important in- fluence on the young son's mind. In the case of the mother, at any rate, it led to a marked aloof- ness from denominationalism. A Methodist ex- horter and a Presbyterian minister both attempted to gain her adherence, but she maintained her religious independence throughout. 'At length I considered it my duty to be baptized, and, finding a minister who was willing to baptize me, and leave me free in regard to joining any religious denomination, I stepped forward and yielded obe- dience to this ordinance; after which I continued to
59 Again while at Tunbridge, Vt., she writes : * The grief occas- ioned by the death of Lovina was preying upon my health . . . I was pensive and melancholy, and often in my reflections I thought that life was not worth possessing. In the midst of this anxiety of mind, I determined to obtain that which I had heard spoken of so much from the pulpit — a change of heart. To accomplish this, I spent much of my time in reading the Bible, and praying ; but, notwithstanding my great anxiety to experience a change of heart, another matter would always interpose in all my meditations — If I remain a member of no church, all religious people will say I am of the world ; and if I join some one of the different denomina- tions, all the rest will say I am in error. No church will admit that I am right, except the one with which I am associated. This makes them witnesses against each other ; and how can I decide in such a case as this, seeing they are all unlike the Church of Christ as it existed in former days ! ' — « Biographical Sketches,' p. 27.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 25
read the Bible as formerly, until my eldest son had attained his twenty-second year."*
The book now takes up the pedigree of Joseph, senior, whose ancestors originally came from Eng- land. His line is traced back through seven genera- tions to first Samuel Smith, born 1666 in Essex County, Massachusetts. The education of the hus- band was not so defective as that of his wife, since at one time he eked out his living by teaching school. How much knowledge this would imply is conjec- tural. The course of study in a Vermont district school at the beginning of the last century did not consist of much more than reading, writing and arithmetic.^ At any rate with this equipment of the three Rs, Joseph's father as Patriarch of the Mormon Church in the Middle West, was author- ized to dispense written blessings to the Saints at a moderate tariff. If Joseph, senior, was, strictly, not illiterate, he still resembled his father-in-law in his restless habits. His occupations were varied, even for a Connecticut Yankee. He first owns a farm at Tunbridge, Vermont; he then moves to Royalton and then to Randolph and keeps a store. In the meanwhile he hunts for 'gensang' root for
'* ' Biographical Sketches,* pp. 48, 49.
•• Z. Thompson, * History of Vermont,' p. 212. « The founders of Vermont were able to read, write and compute, but few were yersed in the rules of grammar.'
26 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the China trade. He next rents a farm in Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, but soon moves to Lebanon, New Hampshire; after that he migrates to Norwich, where his crops fail; and finally, when the boy Joseph was eleven years old, he takes up a land claim at Palmyra, Seneca County, New York. About this time he is described, by an eyewitness, as of gaunt and haggard visage, with the rusty clothes of a vagabond.^^
During these years of wandering Joseph, senior, was visited with a panorama of visions. They started about the year 1811, and were completed only with the mystic number of seven. The first two must be examined later, for the vision of the Magic Box gives the clue for the young prophet's discovery of the Golden Plates, and the vision of the Fruit Tree is substantially reproduced in the Book of Mormon,
Two things are noticeable in the whole series: first, that they arose in times of mental agitation, and, second, that the stuff the dreams were made of was largely derived from every-day waking ex- perience. On the one hand the phantasms be- gan, when the dreamer's mind 'was much excited upon the subject of religion. '^^ On the other
36 Editorial in Norwich, N. Y. Union, April 28, 1877, by W. D. Purple, who took notes at the trial of Joseph Smith, senior, on a charge of vagrancy before Justice of Peace Albert Neeley.
«7 « Biographical Sketches,' p. 56.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 27
hand, the details are commonplace; the language is scriptural, but the color is local. For example, besides the vision of the Meeting House, there is that of the Magic Box, which is discovered in a wilderness of 'dead fallen timber'; and of the Fruit Tree which spread its branches ' like an um- brella,' and ' bore a kind of fruit in shape much like a chestnut burr.' The third vision is that of the Twelve Images which bow in deference to the father of the coming prophet, like the sheaves of Joseph's brethren of old. Here the dreamer enters a flower garden with ' walks about three and one-half feet wide, which were set on both sides with marble stones.' ^^ In the sixth vision there is more than a reproduction of the ordinary sights of a new New England village and more than a repetition of an Old Testament story. The conflict between the claims of Mercy and Justice is an echo of the theol- ogy of the day, an effort of the sleeper's mind to harmonize a nightmare with a doctrine of Calvin- ism. This dream is worth quoting at length: —
' I thought I was walking alone ; I was much fatigued, nevertheless I continued travelling. It seemed to me that I was going to meeting, that it was the day of judgment, and that I was going to be judged. When I came in sight of the meeting house, I saw multitudes of people
88* Biographical Sketches,* p. 71.
28 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
coming from every direction, and pressing with great anxiety toward the door of this great building ; but I thought I should get there in time, hence there was no need of being in a hurry. But, on arriving at the door, I found it shut; I knocked for admission, and was in- formed by the porter that I had come too late. I felt exceedingly troubled, and prayed ear- nestly for admittance. Presently I found that my flesh was perishing. I continued to pray, still my flesh withered upon my bones. I was al- most in a state of total despair, when the porter asked me if I had done all that was necessary in order to receive admission. I replied, that I had done all that was in my power to do. *'Then,** observed the porter, ''justicemust be satisfied ; after this, mercy hath her claims.*' ' "
Examining the next dream critically, it is clear that the higher mental activity of conception, not of mere reproduction, has a beginning but is not carried out. Evidently some involuntary muscular movement of the sleeper's body was made and the train of thought was interrupted. Says Joseph, senior: —
' I dreamed that a man with a pedlar's budget on his back, came in, and thus addressed me : ''Sir, will you trade with me to-day? I have now called upon you seven times, I have traded with you each time, and have always found you
«9 « Biographical Sketches,' p. 72.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 29
strictly honest in all your dealings. Your measures are always heaped, and your weights overbalance ; and I have now come to tell you that this is the last time I shall ever call on you, and that there is but one thing that you lack, in order to secure your salvation." As I ear- nestly desired to know what it was that I still lacked, I requested him to write the same upon paper. He said he would do so. I then sprang to get some paper, but, in my excite- ment, I awoke.* ^
This seventh and last vision was 'received' in 1 8 19, but the family habit was not interrupted. In the following year Joseph, junior, began his opera- tions, and in twenty-three years was vouchsafed those four hundred octavo pages of 'revelations,' found in the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.
As has been suggested, the dreams of the elder Smith have evidently undergone a process of redac- tion; the smooth and unctuous style points to the corrective hand of Joseph. For all that, their gen- eral validity may be accepted; — as they are re- corded, so they happened. They could scarcely have been made out of whole cloth by the prophet in his later days of deception, for the Vision of the Fruit Tree was incorporated into the first edition of the Book of Mormon, To accuse Joseph of making
»o « Biographical Sketches,* p. 74.
30 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
up this vision and that of the Magic Box at the age of twenty-five, is to make him a juvenile forger rather than an unv^itting plagiarist. As the case stands, it is damaging enough to the Saints, instead of be- ing ' a divinely inspired record w^ritten by the fore- fathers v^hom we call Indians,' ^^ the Booh of Mormon is disclosed as a home-made product of infant in- dustry. Of the authenticity of the dreams," whether in or out of the Record^ there is abundant evidence, — those commonplace and homely details which crop out from amid the flowery language. But as regards inward significance they reflect the ideas and opinions of the persons concerned. They first tell how the Smith tribe interpreted their thoughts of the night.^ From the comparative ethnic point of view their theory was an intermediate one: '* they did not, like primitive man, look on nocturnal ex- periences as of equal reality with those of the day;
31 Charles Thompson, « Evidences in proof of the Book of Mormon,' 1 84 1, p. 192. Compare James E. Talmage, * Divinity of the Book of Mormon/ Salt Lake City, 1 901.
*2 A negative proof of authenticity is found in Lucy's statement, p. 72, regarding her husband that ' He received two more visions, which would probably be somewhat interesting, but I cannot re- member them distinctly enough to rehearse them in full.*
M For the principles here applied consult James Sully, * Illusions,' New York, 1897 '* ^^^ ^is article on Dream in the Encyclopaedia Brittannica, 9th edition ; also Carl Du Prel, « Philosophy of Mysti- cism,' Volume I, Chapter 2.
^ Compare Herbert Spencer, * Principles of Sociology,' New York, 1892, Volume I, Chapter 10.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 31
much less did they give them a material and phys- ical explanation. Theirs was the mystic view: dreams are warnings from on high, visions are symbolic messages sent to guide the soul. Three stages in the conception of dreams are exemplified in the history of Joseph and his progenitors: first, personification, — to Joseph the deity sends a mes- senger or angel of radiant form ; second, communi- cation,— to Solomon Mack the divine message is heard by the dreamer, not by means of a material figure, but as an external voice; third, objectivation, — to Lucy and her spouse a symbolic picture is unrolled, with or without interpretation.
Inasmuch as the Smiths insisted on the super- naturalness of their dreams, it remains to give their natural conditions and causes. A difficulty arises at the start: if the physiological explanation is at- tempted, the data are either entirely lacking, or are wanting in exactness. Mother Smith's work is meant to be a faith-promoting handbook; and shed wells with delight on supernatural remedies and miracu- lous cures. When she does go in for morbid anat- omy, the ailments and diseases are given obsolete and indeterminate names.'^ In one place, however,
" Lucy's own comforting dream fits in with her hectic fever, but the typhus which afflicted her offspring was probably typhoid. Ref- erences to the epidemics of influenza, typhus, etc., in Vermont, during the first decade of the nineteenth century are of no avail, for Lucy herself generally neglects to give the date of the sicknesses which so
32 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
nervous depression is given as a precondition of a dream. Immediately before her vision of the Two Trees, Lucy states that she had attended a Metho- dist meeting, when 'she returned to the house, much depressed in spirit, which state of feeling continued until I retired to my bed/^*
Turning to the psychic correlations, a tentative use may now be made of the two ordinary forms of dreams, namely: — the illusion, or imitation of a sense perception, and the hallucination, or projec- tion of a mental image outwardly. The latter is exemplified in Solomon Mack, when he saw a bright object at a small distance from his face. To him this seemed an extra-mental reality; to the physiologist the apparent patch of flame is due to changes of blood pressure on the eye-ball. The brightness and apparent nearness of the light would appear to uphold the theory that, if the nerve ex* citation arises in the organ of sight, the structure of the retina is reproduced perceptibly." Although it is contended that the psychologist has nothing whatever to do with the physiology of the
often preceded the visions. Moreover the local historian talks like a horse doctor. Compare Z. Thompson, * History of Vermont,* 1842, p. 221*? * 1800, Typhus prevalent. 1802-3, Canker rash or throat distemper. 1807, Influenza in Vermont and throughout the United States.'
3«« Biographical Sketches,' p. 54.
37 Du Prel, p. 203 : Schemer's theory.
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 33
retina,^ yet this experience of Mack's fulfils three out of the five general causes of hallucination given by the physiologist. There was no specific statement as to local diseases of the organ of sense, nor to drugs, but there was exhaustion of body and mind, a morbid emotional state of fear and outward calm and stillness.*^ As the old man's statement runs:— being confined with rheumatism, he was not sleep- ing well, was in misery and distress soul and body, and, at the dead of night, when the house was still, the * lights * came.*^
Returning to the illusion, or imitation of a sense- perception, the actions of the senses are variously illustrated in the dream series. The lower senses, as usual, here play little part. There is possibly a single case of an illusion of sense in the reference to delicate flowers; yet there are two instances of illusory taste, as when the dreamer starts to eat the
38 E. W. Scripture, 'The New Psychology,' 1897, p. 384.
w Sully, p. 115, quoting Griesinger.
40 The theory that disease brings much dreaming is not upheld in the history of Joseph's parents. Lucy's health was « preyed upon by the death of her sister,' and she * suffered from a hectic fever, which threatened to prove fatal,' yet in these troublous times she had only one dream, while her sturdy vagabond 0/ a husband had seven. Regarding the visions of Joseph, as will be seen, — there were other and more specific causes of hyperideation. The only pertinent conclusion, from the story of his progenitors, is that Joseph inherited from his male progenitors, on both sides, the dreamy diathesis. See * Biographical Sketches/ pp. 37, 46.
34 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
contents of the Magic Box, and when he scoops up ' by double handf uls * the white particles of the Fruit-Tree. The tactual element is also to be found, as when the dreamer is much fatigued in walking or seems to go lame. The auditory illusions are general, — the guide, or attendant spirit, audibly commands. Finally the visual element is universal, all the dreams were counted visions. The exciting causes of these phantasms are more or less con- jectural." When the new settler had the night- mare of * beasts, horned cattle and roaring animals bellowing most terrifically,' was the cause digestive discomfort, or did the sleeper dimly hear some commotion in the barnyard ? Whether the stimu- lation came from without or within is a physiolog- ical question : there yet remain varieties of brain ex-
<» How the illusions of smell should arise, is here, as elsewhere, indeterminable. That of taste is explicable only by negation, — fasting causes dreams, the hungry wanderer longs for rich feasts. Illusions of touch or pressure are attributable to the condition of the muscles, — Joseph, senior, in his search for a home, had traveled from Vermont to the Genesee valley and had there cleared thirty acres of land. As to sight and touch, it is hard to determine whether the excitation was peripheral or central. It is here that the hard and fast distinction between illusion and hallu- cination is seen to be untenable ; for the latter like the former may arise inwardly. There appear to be dream-images due to direct central stimulation, — the brain, in and of itself, producing * stars,* • lights,* ' waving bands ' — the last being exemplified in Lucy's dream of the tree with the golden zone and with branches * danc- ing as lively as a sunbeam.*
ANCESTRY AND DREAMS 35
citation, which may be more pertinently expressed in terms of psychology. Direct excitations are pre- sentative and are connected with the immediate present; indirect excitations are representative, and are connected through the law of association with the past, — the brainly merely reviving impressions previously received.
The point of interest in all this is that the dreams of Joseph's progenitors hold the mirror up to na- ture, reflect their innermost notions, beliefs and modes of thought. Thus Solomon Mack connects those midnight flames with 'the horrible pit of sin in which he lay'; Lucy interprets 'the breath of heaven' which passed over the two trees as the * pure and undefiled gospel '; and Joseph, the elder, attributed the 'withering of the flesh upon his bones ' to the demands of Justice over Mercy.
The dreams of Joseph's ancestors are, at the best, but a dim avenue into their brains. In his own case there is more profit in reversing the process, — in studying the source of his phantasms before the fantastic in his character. Without a knowledge of his environment, his visions are inexplicable.
/
CHAPTER II ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS
CHAPTER II
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS
When the Smith family moved to central New York in 1815, the country was by no means settled. Only the year before, the Holland Land Com- pany had bought up the tract west of Seneca Lake, originally held in speculation by Phelps and Gorham, and was now offering special inducements to settlers/ Joseph Smith, senior, joining in this emigration from New England, and taking up his claim in Ontario County,^ found that his farm had literally to be burned out of the woods. The land was called the western wilderness and there was a spice of danger in the life. Rochester consisted of not more than two or three log houses, and the Indians but two years before had desolated the whole Niagara frontier.' President Timothy Dwight in his Travels draws a vivid picture of the
1 E. H. Roberts, « The Planting and Growth of the Empire State,' 2, 458.
« J. H. Hotchkin, * A History of the Purchase and Settlement of Western New York,' 1848, p. 375 : — Palmyra was number 12 in the second and third ranges of Phelps and Gorham's purchase.
9 Hotchkin, p. 94.
39
40 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
region. He has a keen eye for the lonely forests and the traces of the red man; he mentions the packs of wolves which drive the wayfarer to the trees ; in his journey over the military route he care- fully enumerates the expansions of mud, in their order, and asserts that in all this tract there was nothing, which may be called a town except Ge- neva and Canandaigua/
To this locality, remote and unfriended, Lucy Smith brought her family. She followed the state road, opened from the Mohawk to the inner lakes, by which even a post rider took two weeks be- tween Albany and the Genesee valley.* It was not for a decade that the canal was completed between the Hudson and Lake Erie,* and, by the time the Book of Mormon was in circulation, the journey from New York city to the centre of the state was a slow pilgrimage by stage coach, canal boat, and horse railroad.^
The physical environment had its mental effects. Owing to the wretched means of communication and the rudeness of the country, the education obtainable by the Smith children, whether at Pal- myra or Manchester, was necessarily meagre. If
< President Timothy Dwight, 'Travels in New England and New York/ 1822, Letters II and III.
ft Roberts, p. 453. c Roberts, p. 537.
' A. B. Hart, * American History told by Contemporaries,' 3, 566.
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 41
one of his own disciples complained of the proph- et's inability to read long words/ the cause for such illiteracy was obvious. He had attended school for less than a year in his native state.* There the educational provisions of the state con- stitution had as yet not been fulfilled, ^^ while of the founders of Vermont it was said that few were versed in the rules of grammar." A like state of affairs existed on the frontiers of New York; where the average school attendance was but three months" in the year and where, at the time of the writing of the Booh of Mormon, there were not two academies to a county.^' Moreover in their toils in the backwoods the boys were needed at home; one prominent Mormon is not loth to confess that at sixteen he had his last schooling for many years.^*
8 Interview with David Whitmer in the Missouri TimeSy n. d.
9 < Biographical Sketches,* p. 60.
^0 Report of Commissioner of Education, 1868, p. 90. The Ver- mont Constitution of 1793, Article 41 reads : < A competent number of scholars ought to be maintained in each town for the convenient instruction of youth . . . and one or more grammar schools in each county.'
" Z. Thompson, ' History of Vermont,' 1842, p. 212.
*2 Report of Commissioner of Education, ' Early Common Schools in New York, etc.,* 1897, P- 224:— « Up to the revision of the state constitution in 1822, each school district had $20 from the state. A three months' term of common schooling was secured by state and local taxation.'
^•Roberts, p. 554.
»«P. P. Pratt, « Autobiography,' 1888, p. 18.
42 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Another reports, with a humorous touch of truth, the local saying that 'none of them Smith boys ever went to school, when he could get out of it/^^ As the prophet himself said in later years : ' I am a rough stone. The sound of the hammer and chisel was never heard on me until the Lord took me in hand. 1 desire the learning of heaven alone.' ^^
Along with these shortcomings in education went an equal scarcity of books. Every house had its Bible, " but of general reading there was a woful lack. If at this time it cost a day's wages to carry a letter from Boston to Cincinnati,*^ books could not have been widely circulated by mail. Moreover the state library was not founded at Albany until 1818 and local libraries were rarer than Indian reser- vations. It is reported by an adverse critic that Joseph had a special fondness for Captain Kidd's Life and for the Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs.^^ The latter is not improbable, for the book was published in Albany in 181 1 and its author hailed from Han- over, New Hampshire, one of the abiding places of
** Elder Edward Stevenson, * Reminiscences of the Prophet, 1893, P- ^So*
16 G. Q. Cannon, 'Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet,* 1888, p. 496-
'7 A. De Tocqueville, * Democracy in America,' 1833, i, 406 : — * The backwoodsman penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, and some newspapers.*
18 Roberts, p. 676.
19 J. H. Kennedy, 'Early Days of Mormonism,' 1888, p. 13.
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 43
the Smiths. At any rate, this strange adventurer's description of himself betrays a certain prophetic affmity to his young reader. He was educated * in all the rigors of sectarianism, which illy suited his volatile and impatient temper of mind. ^° However large the list of books that the prophet read and recorded in his later days of self-education, there is no positive evidence as to his youthful literary pabulum. His mother said of him in his nineteenth year that he 'had never read the Bible through in his life; he seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children.'" Neverthe- less the classes of books available to the backwoods boy may be fairly conjectured. One Mormon emi- grant from Otsego County to Ohio mentions taking with him McKenzie's Travels in the Northwest and Lewis and Clarke's Tours on the Mississippi and Colorado. " But the very books of adventure had a religious tinge. Burrough's autobiography discloses a sanctimonious sinner; Lewis and Clarke's volume contains speculations as to the American Indians being the lost ten tribes of Israel. ^' The wide cur- rency of this peculiar belief will be examined later in its bearings on Joseph's own writings.
20< Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs,* Albany, i8ll, p. 5.
21 * Biographical Sketches,' p. 84.
22 Pratt, p. 27.
''* The Travels of Lewis and Clarke,' London, 1809, p. 228.
44 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Meanwhile, it is evident that the books which chiefly influenced him were of a religious cast. ^* There yet survived, after the Puritan fashion, ac- counts of memorable providences and ponderous controversial treatises. ^^ if the Smiths possessed any native Vermont books they would have borne such titles as these: Baylies' Free Agency, Burnap's Ether ial Director, Hopkin's Primitive Creed. '^^ Of such tomes their mere bulk, the force of their gravity, was an incubus on young minds.
There was need for a change; but when a new stir of thought reached the masses it was anything but a message of sweetness and light. French ra- tionalism furnished the main intellectual stimulus," and * Tom ' Paine was the popular representative of brains. An enormous edition of the Age of Reason was printed in France and shipped to America, to be sold for a few pence the copy, or distributed
«< De Tocqueville, 2, 65, notes the * Enormous quantity of reli- gious works. Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes, controversial divinity and reports of charitable societies.* Compare G. W. Fisher, * Early History of Rochester,* p. 1 1 : of the two earliest Rochester papers, one bore the title of the Gospel Luminary. Compare also Rochester Daily Advertiser, August 31, 1832. In a bookseller*s advertisement of that date, religious works take up the largest share of the list.
*6 Henry Ferguson, * Essays in American Literature,* 1894, p. 65.
2« Z. Thompson, * History of Vermont,* 1842, p. 173 : Books issued from the Press of Vermont.
•7 Noah Porter, Appendix to Ueberweg*s, < History of Philosophy,* 2,451-
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 45
gratis.^® Thus, by the time that clubs of Free Thinkers sprang up in western New York,^ the Mor- mon prophet's mind was set, and he could see noth- ing in free thought, but rank infidelity. Later there may be found a few interesting hints of the Deistic controversy in the Book of Mormon, but the great- est force in the author's early mental environment was not rationalism but religiosity. He grew up in a perfect maze of sectarianism. In a denomina- tional encyclopedia, to which Joseph Smith, as head of his church, contributed a characteristic article, there were set down forty-three sects of standing in the United States. The multiplying of religious bodies was particularly noticeable in Joseph's forma- tive period. For example, in the sixteen years be- tween the moving to Palmyra and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, four schisms occurred in the Methodist body alone.^ This reckless process of scission was one reason for the rise of Mormon- ism. Another was the length to which sectaries went in their beliefs and practices. Smith's native state had its share of fanatical bodies, and there was
*9 Timothy Dwight, * Religion of New England, in Travels,' 4, 380.
89 Hotchkin, p. 26.
30 1. D.R upp, * He Pasa Ekklesia, or Religious Denominations in the United States,' 1849, passim: *The Reformed Methodists' started in 1814; the 'Methodist Society' in 1820; the 'True Wesleyan Methodist Church' in 1828 and the 'Methodist Protes- tants ' in 1830.
46 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
one which appeared as a strange prototype of the Mormon movement. The ' Pilgrims ' were a vaga- bond swarm in the south of Vermont. Sickness had rendered the founder visionary; he asserted that he was a prophet and claimed immediate inspiration from heaven. Property was held in common and the leader controlled all the affairs of his followers from marriages to punishments. This band, in its search for the 'promised land/ attempted to com- bine with the Shakers, passed through central New York and disappeared in the West.^^
Although the larger denomination and not the petty sects held sway in Joseph's locality, their in- fluence was abnormal. The pioneer churches had been founded by the missionary boards of New England, but the methods of work were borrowed from the Southwest. The doctrines were Calvin- istic, the means of grace revivalistic. The camp- meeting had originated in Kentucky in 1799, and strange phenomena were seen, when thousands fell in convulsions and ' the formal professor, the deist, the intemperate were collected and laid out in order on the meeting house floor. '^^ The methods of wholesale conversion spread from the West east- ward, and it is significant that, in New York State,
»i Thompson, p. 203.
32 H. Howe, ' Historical Collections of the Great West/ Cincinnati, 1857, p. 216.
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 47
the Great Revival began in Joseph's own town. A letter of an itinerant evangelist of the Connecticut Missionary Society thus describes the movement: ' The seriousness began at Palmyra. The youth and children seem to be roused up to inquire, What must we do to be saved ? A few drops from the cloud of glory have fallen upon Pittstown. There is uncommon attention to public worship in Canan- daigua. It has been difficult during the winter to get places large enough to accommodate, or even contain the people. The countenances of many show how anxious their minds are to know how they may flee from the wrath to come.' ^ The other side of the picture may be here given and from a Mormon standpoint. A brother of Brigham Young gives this fragment of experience: *A Methodist revival occurred, and religious excitement ran so high that it became fashionable to make a profes- sion of religion. Every young person but myself professed to receive a *' saving change of heart.'' Meetings were held nightly. It was the custom to request those who were '* seeking religion " to come forward to some seat reserved for that purpose, to be prayed for. . . . When I failed to come to the ** anxious seat" Elder Gilmore told me I had sinned away the day of grace and my damnation was sure.' ^
35 Hotchkin, pp. 36, 37.
34 Lorenzo D. Young, * Fragments of Experience,' 1882, p. 25.
48 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
The psycho-physical effect of all this may be judged from the experience of another Mormon. He says that in one of the protracted meetings * a continual stream of glorious truths passed through my mind, my happiness was great, and my mind so absorbed in spiritual things that all the time the meeting lasted, which was about fifteen days, I scarcely ate or drank anything. . . . The spirit of the Lord so operated on my system that I felt full at the time, and had no desire to eat or partake of anything.' ^^ The unnatural exaltation, here por- trayed, was not such an evil result as the morbid depression. Even if the bodily effect was not at once manifested, there was an immediate and bale- ful influence on the mind. Mental bewilderment and melancholia were the accompaniments of youth- ful conversion. Confused by the practices of rival sectaries, one young 'seeker' wondered why the Presbyterians only sprinkled water in the face, while the Baptists immersed, and why the Methodists did not baptize for remission of sins but demanded an 'experience.' So Parley Pratt maintains that he went West to escape the wrangling about sects and creeds and doctrines. ^^
The converse of the proposition, that confusion in thought, in turn, propagated new sects is one of
5^5 Benjamin Brown, 'Testimonies for the Truth,* 1853, p. 5. 38 * Autobiography,* 1888, pp. 23, 26.
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 49
the problems in the founding of the Church of Latter-day Saints. But in the case of the individual, mental bewilderment passes over into an abhor- rence of the doctrines taught. Benjamin Brown, the same boy who had experienced an undue ex- altation of spirits, was of Quaker parentage. Liv- ing on a farm in Washington County, he had gained, in his isolation, a strong faith in the Bible. Moving to the town, where the sects warred, the jarrings and uncertainties of the new ideas shook his sim- ple faith. * There,' he relates, *the Universalist system appeared most reasonable; the horrible hell and damnation theories of most of the other part- ies, being in my idea inconsistent with the mercy and love of God.'^^
The accounts of the Mormon perverts are borne out by the report of the very missionary who started the Palmyra revival. He observes: — *The doctrines to awaken and convince sinners are Calvinistic, — the doctrines of man's entire depravity of heart by nature and alienation from God; his inability while remaining in this state to do any- thing acceptable to God; man's particular obligation to do the whole law of God; [and] the particular election of a select number of the human family to final salvation.'^ How such doctrines could have been privately believed and publicly set forth, has
31 * Testimonies,' pp. 3, 4. 38 Hotchkin, p. 39.
so THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
been but lamely explained. It is alleged that the itinerant preacher traveling from month to month through the gloom of almost sunless forests ac- quired a ' pensive turn of thought/ ^^
If the cause is conjectural, the effect is not: a sombre theology brought an intense melancholy, — ' as the exhorters grew^ enthusiastic, the people were much exercised over their sinful condition.' ^ Now^ such were the preconditions of young Joseph Smith's peculiar psychic experiences, of which he gives the following account:—"
First Vision.
^ Some time in the second year after our re- moval to Manchester, there was in the place
39 Howe, p. 303.
40 H. Caswell, 'The Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet,* 1888,
P- 34.
<i * Pearl of Great Price,' pp. 84-98, extracts from the History of Joseph Smith, written by himself in * Times and Seasons,' Volume III. There is also Joseph's parallel account written to the Chicago Democrat in 1842. Compare ' Handbook of Reference,' pp. 9, 10 : — • When about fourteen years of age, I began to reflect upon the importance of being prepared for a future state, and upon enquiring upon the plan of salvation, I found that there was a great clash in religious sentiment ; if I went to one society, they referred me to one plan, 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, 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,
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 51
where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. ... I was at this time in my fifteenth year. . . . During this time of great excitement, my mind was called up to
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 enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious per- sonages, who exactly resembled each other in features and likeness, surrounded with a brilliant light, which eclipsed the sun at noon- day. They told me that all religious denominations were believ- ing in incorrect doctrines, and that none of them was acknowledged of God as His church and kingdom. And I was expressly com- manded 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 unto me.*
Orson Pratt gives a third account of Joseph's first vision in his book entitled * Remarkable Visions,' 1841. It is a paraphrase, and, yet being written a year before the Chicago Democrat version, may contain some first-hand information : —
* He, therefore, retired to a secret place, in a grove, but a short distance from his father's house, and knelt down and began to call upon the Lord. At first, he was severely tempted by the powers of darkness, which endeavored to overcome him, but he continued to seek for deliverance, until darkness gave way from his mind, and he was enabled to pray in fervency of the spirit, and in faith ; and while thus pouring out his soul, anxiously desiring an answer from God, he saw a very bright and glorious light in the heavens above, which at first seemed to be at a considerable distance. He continued praying, while the light appeared to be gradually de- scending towards him; and, as it drew nearer, it increased in
52 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
serious reflection and great uneasiness ; but though my feelings were deep and often pun- gent, still I kept myself aloof from all those
brightness and magnitude, so that by the time that it reached the tops of the trees, the whole wilderness, for some distance around, was illuminated in a most glorious and brilliant manner. He ex- pected to have seen the leaves and boughs of the trees consumed, as soon as the light came in contact with them ; but, perceiving that it did not produce that effect, he was encouraged with the hope of being able to endure its presence. It continued descending slowly until it rested upon the earth, and he was enveloped in the midst of it. When it first came upon him, it produced a peculiar sensation throughout his whole system ; and, immediately, his mind was caught away from the natural objects with which he was sur- rounded, and he was enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages, who exactly resembled each other in their features or likeness. He was informed that his sins were forgiven. He was also informed upon the subjects which had for some time previously agitated his mind, namely, that all religious denomi- nations were believing in incorrect doctrines ; and, consequently, that none of them was acknowledged of God as His church and kingdom. And he was expressly commanded to go not after them : and he received a promise that the true doctrine — the fulness of the gospel — should, at some future time, be made known to him ; after which, the vision withdrew, leaving his mind in a state of calmness and peace indescribable.*
* * ^ ik * *
*0n the evening of the 2ist of September, A. D., 1823, while I was praying unto God, and endeavoring 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 be- fore me surrounded with a glory yet greater than that with which I was already surrounded/
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS S3
parties, though I attended their several meet- ings as often as occasion would permit. . . .
It was on the morning of a beautiful clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the at- tempt to pray vocally.
After I had retired into the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when im- mediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such as- tonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick dark- ness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden de- struction. But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction, not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such a marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being. Just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the Sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself de- livered from the enemy which held me bound.
54 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
When the light rested upon me, I saw two per- sonages whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me. . . . When I came to myself again I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven.'
Second Vision.
I continued to pursue my common avoca- tions of life until the twenty-first of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three, all the time suffering severe persecution at the hands of all classes of men, both religious and irreligious, because I continued to affirm that I had seen a vision.
During the space of time which intervened between the time I had the vision, and the year eighteen hundred and tAventy-three, (having been forbidden to join any of the religious sects of the day, and being of very tender years, and persecuted by those who ought to have been my friends, and to have treated me kindly, and if they supposed me to be deluded to have en- deavored, in a proper and affectionate manner, to have reclaimed me,) I was left to all kinds of temptations, and mingling with all kinds of society, I frequently fell into many foolish er- rors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the corruption of human nature, which I am sorry to say led me into divers temptations, to the gratification of many appetites offensive in the sight of God. In consequence of these things I often felt condemned for my weakness
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 55
and imperfections ; when on the evening of the above mentioned twenty-first of September, after I had retired to my bed for the night, I betook myself to prayer and supplication to Almighty God, for forgiveness of all my sins and follies, and also for a manifestation to me, that I might know of my state and standing before him; for I had full confidence in ob- taining a divine manifestation, as I had pre- viously had one.
While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in the room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when imme- diately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor.
♦ * * * *
While he was conversing with me about the plates, the vision was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were de- posited, and that so clearly and distinctly, that I knew the place again when I visited it.
After this communication, I saw the light in the room begin to gather immediately around the person of him who had been speaking to me, and it continued to do so, until the room was again left dark, except just around him, when instantly I saw, as it were, a conduit open right up into heaven, and he ascended up till he entirely disappeared, and the room was left as it had been before this heavenly light had made its appearance.
56 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
I lay musing on the singularity of the scene, and marveling greatly at what had been told me by this extraordinary messenger, when, in the midst of my meditation, I suddenly dis- covered that my room was again beginning to get lighted, and in an instant, as it were, the same heavenly messenger was again by my bed- side. He commenced, and again related the very same things ^hich he had done at his first visit, without the least variation. But this time, so deep were the impressions made on my mind, that sleep had fled from my eyes, and I lay overwhelmed in astonishment at what I had both seen and heard ; but what was my surprise when again I beheld the same mes- senger at my bedside, and heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same things as before . . . almost immediately after the heavenly messenger had ascended from me the third time, the cock crew, and I found that day was approaching, so that our interview must have occupied the whole of that night.
Third Vision. I shortly after arose from my bed, and, as usual went to the necessary labors of the day, but, in attempting to labor as at other times I found my strength so exhausted as rendered me entirely unable. My father, who was laboring along with me, discovered something to be wrong with me, and told me to go home. I started with the intention of going to the house, but, in attempting to cross the fence out of the
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 57
field where we were, my strength entirely failed me, and I fell helpless on the ground, and for a time was quite unconscious of anything. The first thing that I can recollect, was a voice speaking unto me calling me by name; I looked up and beheld the same messenger standing over my head, surrounded by light, as before. He then again related unto me all that he had related to me the previous night, and commanded me to go to my father, and tell him of the vision and commandments which I had received. I obeyed, I returned back to my father in the field and rehearsed the whole matter to him.* "
« These three visions as well as the rest of the series are to be gathered from various sources. They are here collated for the first time in order to determine Smith*s psycho-physical state. For a technical discussion of the subject and for the authorities referred to in the text, see Appendix II. It is to be noticed that mother Smith alone gives the series complete. To begin with the third vision, supplying the dates so far as obtainable. * Biographical Sketches,* pp. 81-105, [September 24, 1823.] * The next day, my husband, Alvin, and Joseph, were reaping together in the field, and as they were reaping Joseph stopped quite suddenly, and seemed to be in a very deep study. Alvin, observing it, hurried him, saying, *We must not slacken our hands or we will not be able to complete our task.' Upon this Joseph went to work again, and after laboring a short time, he stopped just as he had done before. This being quite unusual and strange, it attracted the attention of his father, upon which he discovered that Joseph was very pale. My husband, supposing that he was sick, told him to go to the house, and have his mother doctor him. He, accord- ingly, ceased his work, and started, but on coming to a beautiful green, under an apple-tree, he stopped and lay down, for he was so weak he could proceed no further. He was here but a short time,
58 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Were these early visions of Joseph entirely due to his religious environment and revivalistic ex- periences ? The question is partially ansv/ered by
when the messenger whom he saw the previous night, visited him again, and the first thing he said was, * Why did you not tell your father that which I commanded you to tell him ? ' Joseph replied, ^ I was afraid my father would not believe me.' The angel re- joined, ' He will believe every word you say to him.* Joseph then promised the angel that he would do as he had been commanded. Upon this, the messenger departed, and Joseph returned to the field, where he had left my husband and Alvin ; but when he got there, his father had just gone to the house, as he was somewhat unwell. . . . The ensuing evening, when the family were all together, Joseph made known to them all that he had communi- cated to his father in the field, and also of his finding the Record, as well as what passed between him and the angel while he was at the place where the plates were deposited. Sitting up late that evening, in order to converse upon these things, together with over-exertion of mind, had much fatigued Joseph.'
[September 22, 1824] 'Joseph again visited the place where he found the plates the year previous. In the moment of excitement, Joseph was overcome by the powers of darkness, and forgot the in- junction that was laid upon him. Having some further conversation with the angel on this occasion, Joseph was permitted to raise the stone again, when he beheld the plates as he had done before. He immediately reached forth his hand to take them, but instead of getting them he was hurled back upon the ground with great vio- lence. "When he recovered, the angel was gone, and he arose and returned to the house, weeping for grief and disappointment.'
[September(?) 1825 and 1826.] That further visions occurred about this time is implied in Joseph's statement : * According as I had been commanded, I went at the end of each year, and at each time I found the same messenger there, and received instruct- ion and intelligence from him at each of our interviews.'
The next vision is described by Lucy, [January (?) 1827].
* Joseph . . . the next January returned with his wife, in
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 59
applying the principles of the modern psychology of religion, as derived from cold-blooded statistics. According to these tests, Joseph's conversion oc-
good health and fine spirits. Not long subsequent to his return, my husband had occasion to send him to Manchester, on business. As he set off early in the day, we expected him home at most by six o'clock in the evening, but when six o'clock came, he did not ar- rive ; we always had a peculiar anxiety about him whenever he was absent, for it seemed as though something was always taking place to jeopardize his life. But to return. He did not get home till the night was far spent. On coming in, he threw himself into a chair, apparently much exhausted. — My husband did not observe his appearance, and immediately exclaimed, " Joseph, why are you so late ? has anything happened to you ? We have been much distressed about you these three hours." As Joseph made no an- swer, he continued his interrogations, until, finally, I said, " Now, father, let him rest a moment, he is very tired." The fact was I had learned to be a little cautious about matters with regard to Joseph, for I was accustomed to see him look as he did on that oc- casion, and I could not easily mistake the cause thereof. Presently he said, " I have taken the severest chastisement that I have ever had in my life ... it was the angel of the Lord ; as I passed by the hill of Cumorah, where the plates are, the angel met me." * [September 22, 1827.] * Joseph started for the plates . . . secreted about three miles from home. . . . Joseph coming to them, . . . placed them under his arm and started for home. After proceeding a short distance, he thought it would be more safe to leave the road and go through the woods. Traveling some dis- tance after he left the road, he came to a large windfall, and as he was jumping over a log, a man sprang up from behind it, and gave him a heavy blow with a gun. Joseph turned around and knocked him down, then ran at the top of his speed. About half a mile further he was attacked again in the same manner as before ; he knocked this man down in like manner as the former, and ran on again; and before he reached home he was assaulted the third time. In striking the last one he dislocated his thumb, which,
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curring a year before the average, and therefore shows a not uncommon emotional development, but the accompanying visions put him in the rarer third of youth v^ho have dreams and hallucinations.
however, he did not notice until he came within sight of the house, when he threw himself down in the corner of the fence in order to recover his breath. As soon as he was able, he arose and came to the house. He was still altogether speechless from fright and the fatigue of running. . . . When the chest came, Joseph locked up the Record, then threw himself upon the bed, and after resting a little, so that he could converse freely ... he showed them his thumb, saying, * I must stop talking, father, and get you to put my thumb in place, for it is very painful." *
Compare with the above official accounts the following collat- eral evidence: Historical Magazine ^ May, 1870, p. 305. Fayette Lapham in an interview with Joseph Smith, senior, narrates: — * Joseph, senior, was a firm believer in witchcraft and other super- natural things. ... In the course of a year Joseph aided by some supernatural light found the treasures. Before he could get hold of them he felt something strike him on the breast, which was repeated a third time, always with increased force, the last such as to lay him upon his back. As he lay there and looked up his vision was repeated. (Soon after joining the church he had a singular dream.) Next year (after his marriage) — a host of devils began to screech and to scream and to make all sorts of hideous yells for the purpose of terrifying him. . . . As he returned and was getting over the fence, one of the devils struck him a blow on his side, where a black and blue spot remained three or four days. ... At this point the interview came to an end ; and my friend and myself returned home, fully convinced that we had smelt a large mice.*
Compare also, Tiffany* s Monthly ^ May, 1859. Interview with Martin Harris, January, 1859: — *When Joseph got the plates, on his way home, he was met by what appeared to be a man who struck him with a club on his side, which was all black and blue.'
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 6i
Nevertheless with him, as with all, there were ante- cedent causes leading up to conviction, — months of high mental tension compounded of emotional pressure from other religionists and the demands of established institutions. Again, his experiences at conversion were not unusual: others have felt a shock in the body, a feeling of strangling, a load on the shoulders, have seen rays of light and glory and heard imaginary sounds. With others, likewise, there have been the same after effects, — confusion, dejection and the sense of sin, followed by joy and exultation, lightness of heart and clarified vision.
The point of consideration in these common ex- periences is that they may be put in terms of psychic functioning, and may be largely explained by the influences of suggestion and hypnotism. Just as the so called spontaneous awakenings are the fructification of the convert's previous longings and strivings, so the ecstatic state is the result of the abnormal methods of revival leaders. Such are insistence on faith and the monotonous repetition of prayers, unconscious suggestion and the laying on of hands. If these means for the religious hypnosis are viewed in pairs, they present a twofold, a psycho-physical aspect. Hence the abnormalities of conversion can be further expressed in terms of nervous functioning. The exhaustion and helpless- ness, the falling to the ground and unconsciousness
62 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
are attributable to 'decentralization': the higher cerebral centres losing control, there is a consequent lessening power of rational self-restraint. This lack of inhibitory force accounts for the fact that chronic religious excitement may be followed by sensual excesses, conveniently covered by the revivalistic term 'backsliding,' — or, as Joseph Smith expressed it, the being * entangled again in the vanities of the world/
In the attempt to construe these visions, a former parallel may be of avail. In his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners^ John Bunyan recounts anal- ogous experiences. Formerly, it has been said, these have been referred to mere theological associations and ideas, or to somewhat abnormal, but loosely- defined hallucinatory delirium.*' Only recently has Bunyan's story been read in its psychological aspects, — how as a child he showed some of the familiar signs of a sensitive brain; how he was possessed with nocturnal terrors of devils and waking fears of the day of judgment; how the period of melancholic depression and undue elation was finally passed over, and Bunyan's reasoning power was left formally unaffected.'** This rough outline holds true of Joseph Smith; but the vision- ary of Manchester alone has a family history in
*3 Compare T. B. Macaulay, reviewing the • Pilgrim's Progress.* 4< Josiah Royce, * Studies of Good and Evil,' 1898.
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which there is positive evidence of serious hered- itary weakness. A reexamination of Joseph's ancestral line discloses a paradox : marked longevity, but also a strange heritage of fleshly ills. Of his grandmother, Mary Duty Smith, nothing is known; but his grandmother, who lived until eighty, had a well-nigh fatal illness at forty-seven. His grand- father, Asahel Smith, at the age of eighty-six, was described as ' just recovering from a severe fit ' and of 'weak mind.' In early manhood he was nick- named 'Crook-necked Smith,' and with the twist in his body there went a twist in his mind.*^ How- ever, if three-fourths of the first generation is counted a negligible quantity, there is a sufficient reason for the young Joseph's terrifying seizures. Whatever they may turn out to be, they took place on an already prepared ground; the Cadmean seed was sown by his maternal grandfather. Solomon Mack's abnormal mental experiences have already been described; of his physical vicissitudes the most
**Nehemiah Cleaveland, *An Address at Topsfield, Massachu- setts,'New York, 185 1, p. XXV : 'Asahel Smith removed about 1793, to Tunbridge, in Vermont. This man, like ** Ammon's great son, one shoulder had too high ; '' and thence usually bore the signifi- cant and complimentary designation of " Crook-necked Smith." He was so free in his opinions on religious subjects, that some re- garded his sentiments as more distorted than his neck. When he went to Vermont, a son, Joseph, then eight or ten years old, ac- companied him.'
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notable were his ' fits/ *® The time of these was not in his senile infirmity — described by an eyewitness*^ — but in the prime of his manhood; their cause was not his self-admitted intoxication as a sailor; it was after he was injured in the head, by the falling of a tree that the * fits ' came. Furthermore, al- though this affliction of the grandsire was accidental, its connection with the grandson was not.
The inference is obvious; Joseph Smith, junior, inherited through his mother, what may be called for the present a liability to neural instability. So far as the records go, Lucy Mack has given dispro- portionately fewer details of her own state of health, than of her seven brothers and sisters. She had her mental delusions, but her physical constitu- tion was strong,— judging from the amount of work she did to support her young family. Her
<6 * Narrative,* pp. lo, i8: — <I afterwards was taken with a fit, when traveling with an axe under my arm on Winchester hills, the face of the land was covered with ice. I was senseless from one until five P. M. When I came to myself I had my axe still under my arm, I was all covered with blood and much cut and bruised. When I came to my senses I could not tell where I had been, nor where I was going ; but by good luck I went right and arrived at the first house, was under the doctor^s care all the winter. . . . At another time I fell in a fit at Tunbridge [Vt.], and was sup- ported for the benefit of my soul and others.*
^T Historical Magazine, November, 1870 : — 'Solomon Mack . . . an infirm old man, who used to ride around on horse- back on a side-saddle.'
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shiftless husband deserves little notice, except that his ' excitement upon the subject of religion ' was followed by an annual vision. Until his death, at three score and ten, he seems to have fallen ill but twice. Now in any hunt for neuropathic antece- dents, it is alleged that the collaterals are of import- ance, especially on the female side. It is, then, significant that Joseph's uncles were robust men, but that his aunts were a morbid and unhealthy lot. Lovisa Mack, * cured by a mericle,' died two years after of consumption; Lovina succumbed to the same disease, after lingering three years.
Coming down to the third generation, Lucy Mack Smith's ten children ran the usual gauntlet of juvenile ailments. There are but too exceptions: Sophronia recovered of a ' typhus, through prayer ' ; the first-born, Alvin, was ' murdered ' by a doctor through an overdose of calomel. Concerning the ailments of the incipient prophet no details are omitted, and it is in giving these that the mater- familias inadvertently lets go the truth. In describ- ing the boy's nervous disposition, and the ravages of an infectious fever at the age of six, and also the ancestral ulceration calling for a painful surgical operation, most pluckily borne, the fond mother piles up the preconditions for that 'strange and unusual' something which afflicted her offspring. Besides the remote causes, the exciting causes of the
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seizures were equally marked. Chronic religious excitement at the age of fourteen was brought to a head by a bad fright from the discharge of a gun, and this was followed by what was known as Joseph's first vision.
Taken by itself this initial abnormality may be attributed to a sense illusion, such as affected the grandfather. But the second vision demands more specific description, and also a more specific exci- ting cause. The latter has been supplied by the prophet himself in a suspiciously enigmatic form. What took place between the first and second visions was described by Joseph as the ' weakness of youth, foolish errors, divers temptations and gratifications of appetites offensive in the sight of God.* Stripped of verbiage this means, for one thing, — drunkenness. Concerning this unpleasant fact no reliance is to be placed in the multiplied affidavits of jealous neighbors, who swore on oath that there was much intoxication among the Smiths; people in those days had the affidavit habit. The sources here used are provided by the Saints. Martin Harris one time said that, ' Brother Joseph drank too much liquor while translating the Book of Mormon * ; upon pressure from the church council, he modified this charge to the assertion that 'this thing occurred previous to the translating.'"
<8 « Times and Seasons,' 6, 99a.
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For this statement the Mormon Thersites was rep- rimanded, yet his evidence was not quashed. But the most pertinent item is to be found in an early apologetic/^ which was naturally suppressed for its ingenuousness; the author grants that the prophet was intoxicated twice, but asks the reader if he would have done any better, — if he had lived in those bibulous days. This acknowledgment has much to do with the case, — alcoholism is first in the
<9 Charles Thompson, < Evidences in Proof of the Book of Mor- mon,' Batavia, New York, 1841. (* Brigham Young called in all the copies that the Saints hid.' Mrs. Pond, Nauvoo, Illinois, May, 1887.— Pencil note on fly leaf). Pp. 184-5 ' * ^^ what extent was he intemperate ? D. P. Hurlburt obtained upwards of eighty names in Ontario County, signed to documents against Smith's character, and published in ** Mormonism Unveiled," and yet but bare two instances could all these men name where they saw him intoxicated ; and even then, he was capable of attending to his own business. And now I ask, who there is that has lived thirty years in this world and at a time when it was fashionable for all people to make use of ardent spirits as a beverage, and have not as much as twice drank too much ? But it is said that " he was quarrelsome when intoxicated." Well, this is not very strange.'
The following statement is conveniently definite, but is the sort of testimony to be especially avoided. Some uncritical reviewer in the In^^r Oc^an, March, 12, 1899, quotes L. B. Cake, * Old Mormon Manuscript Found — Peep Stone Joe exposed,* New York, 1899: — • Reed Peek who was an officer of the Danite Band, who delivered Joe Smith over to the state troops just in time to avert a bloody battle narrates : " September 21, 1823, Joe is drunk. He claims God sent an angel to him that day, while he was in bed, and the angel makes revelations about the plates. Next morning, September 22, he goes to the hill of Cumorah, finds the stone box, looks at the gold plates, sees the angel, has a struggle with imps of the air." *
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list of causes prevocative to those seizures which afflicted Joseph.
But briefly to interpret the first two visions. They may be put in psycho-physical terms, for the apparent objective manifestations were ac- tually subjective symptoms. It bespeaks a good memory on the part of Smith, that the theophanic portions of his visions are precisely what occur in a certain form of visual disturbance akin to vertigo. The parallel is exact in both the variety and the sequence of the phenomena. It is told how a patient, experiencing this symptom for the first time, describes it as a dimness or blindness, followed by a dazzling comparable to that of the sun. A second time — as in the second vision — a more exact description is given: — 'the luminous ball of fire enlarges; its centre becomes obscure; gradually it passes beyond the limits of the visual field above and below, and the patient sees only a portion of it, in the form of a broken luminous line, which continues to vibrate until it has entirely dis- appeared.'
Up to this point, Joseph's first two visions may be put in the technical terms of ophthalmic migraine. Further explanation is needed of his additional statements that ' I was seized upon by some power ... as to bind my tongue. ... I was ready to sink into despair. ... I saw two
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personages . . . one of them spake unto me.' It may be said that these phrases are the prophet's way of stating the symptoms of a certain form of melancholic depression; — in this the patient mani- fests a sudden terror, violent palpitations of the heart, difficulty in breathing and, along with these physical indications, hallucinations of seeing faces and hearing voices. No small psychological interest lies in Joseph's luminous phantasms and in the ap- paritions of known or imaginary beings, with whom converse was held. There are examples from Mohammed to Swedenborg of persons, who have similarly taken themselves for prophets, have conversed with the Deity, received predictions and commandments. But with the latter-day prophet the hallucinatory progression is more complex and more serious. The thrice-repeated vision of glory is succeeded by terrifying visions and the delirium of persecution. His father said that Joseph heard the devils shriek and felt their blows; his mother reports that the very angel of light turned and chastised him.
Thurlow Weed, when first Joseph submitted to him the Book of Mormon^ said that he was either crazy or a very shallow impostor. There is no call for so harsh a judgment: the visionary seizures were not consequent on dementia, nor were they feigned. There is a truer and, at the same time,
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more charitable explanation, — it is, in a word, that Joseph Smith, junior, was an epileptic. Previous non-discovery of this condition is no disproof of its validity. The boy's parents were entirely ignorant of natural causes: his father believed in witchcraft, his mother was more conversant with demons than with diseases. For all that, both suspected that something was the matter. In the third visitation, Joseph's pallor and his vacant expression attracted the attention of his father. After the sixth visita- tion, from which he returned home exhausted and speechless, his mother admitted: 'We always had a peculiar anxiety about him whenever he was absent, for it seemed as though something was always taking place to jeopardize his life.' The mother also said she had * learned to be a little cautious about matters in regard to Joseph,' but the father was persistently credulous; in the last vision, when Joseph was knocked down by assassins, he 'went in pursuit of those villains.'
Steeped in ignorance and superstition, it was not to be expected that the parents could diagnose the case. It required keener eyes than theirs to locate the trouble, inasmuch as veritable epileptic fits may be so slight and transitory, that bystanders do not notice them, and the patient himself underrates them. Moreover in Joseph's case there was a special limitation: with but one exception, his
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 71
'visits from the angels* took place away from observation, — at night, or far from home. Yet the very fact that the first seizures were nocturnal, and that the severest attacks occurred in his all-day wanderings, furnish cumulative evidence of true epileptic convulsions. In the flight of epileptics, it is asserted, the patient hastily leaves his domicile and commits acts which are often strange and inco- herent. So here: Joseph is away all day, on return- ing he gives fanciful explanations of his self-inflicted injuries. While at the hill Cumorah, hunting for the gold plates, he is hurled back upon the ground, or chastised by an angel, or assaulted by assassins. He returns home, late at night, exhausted or speechless with fright, with a bruised body or a dislocated thumb.^ This violent flexure of the
wFor legendary accretions compare 'Times and Seasons,' 5. 635 : — * Joseph Smith was knocked down by a handspike near the hill Cumorah;' also, 'The Martyrs,' p. 15: — «As Joseph stood by the sacred deposit " gazing and admiring, the angel said, 'Look!' And as he thus spake, he beheld the Prince of Dark- nesst surrounded by his innumerable train of associates. All this passed before him, and the heavenly messenger said, * All this is shown, the good and the evil, the holy and impure, the glory of God, and the power of darkness, that you may know hereafter the two powers, and never be influenced or overcome by the wicked one. Behold, whatsoever enticeth and leadeth to good and to do good is of God, and whatsoever doth not is of that wicked one. It is he that fiUeth the hearts of men with evil, to walk in darkness and blaspheme God ; and you may learn from henceforth that his ways are to destruction, but the way of holiness is peace and rest.
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thumb into the pahn is one of those seemingly tri- fling symptoms, which — occurring paroxysmally — are said to deserve careful analysis.
But to pass on to the more obvious things. The abrupt onsets described by mother Smith are vari- ously connected with bodily injury, loss of con- sciousness and protracted stupor. On the contrary the first two visions, as described by the prophet, are little more than psychic paroxysms. Was there any ulterior motive behind this limitation? Granting that Joseph did not manage to forget what was best to forget and that * in later life he believed what he asserted,' ^^ the visions, as they stand, furnish evi- dence of epilepsy. The first, as a sensorial migraine, may be considered the equivalent of a convulsive paroxysm; while the second, which followed in- toxication, furnishes just those symptoms pre- monitory of the real seizure next day. In the night the boy had a sense-illusion of dazzling flame and consuming fire; the next morning he found his strength exhausted, and, starting to cross a fence, fell helpless to the ground and for a time was quite unconscious of anything. In recounting the all- night interview with the angel, the narrator fur-
You cannot, at this time, obtain this record, for the commandment of God is strict, and if ever these sacred things are obtained, they must be by prayer and faithfulness in obeying the Lord." ** G. Q. Cannon, • Life of Joseph Smith,' p. 335.
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 73
nishes the very sensation warnings of epilepsy; it remains for his mother to supply the further tell-tale particulars. It is more than a coincidence that the boy's strange actions, while working in the field, precisely correspond to one of those epileptic attacks designated vacuity." Elsewhere is given a fuller examination of the rest of Joseph's seizures.^ The psychic premonitions and the physical after- effects, from the delirium of persecution to the dis- location of the thumb, — all are accounted for under the supposition of epilepsy. It is no forced analogy ; the details attach themselves to the scheme as natur- ally as barnacles to a rock.
To explain Joseph's more abnormal experiences, one must rest content with epilepsy as a working hypothesis. Yet, as such, it binds together a further series of otherwise irrelated facts : through it both ancestry and progeny fall in line. Looking back- ward to the first generation there is antecedent probability in the grandfather's ' fits ' on Winchester Hills ; looking forward there is corroboration in the
52 According to Dutil, < Trait6 de Medecine,* this attack is limited to loss of consciousness with temporary pallor. < Immovable, with his eyes fixed, and a strange air, he remains as if unconscious, see- ing nothing, hearing nothing, in a sort of ecstasy. It all lasts only several seconds. The patient shortly returns to himself, takes up the conversation at the point where he had left off or returns to his work.*
63 See Appendix II.
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circumstance that * fits ' have reappeared in the fifth generation. But confining attention to the life of the prophet: although he stood midway in the atavistic line of neuropathies, that was no bar to later health and strength. The long intervals be- tween his seizures, and their cessation at about twenty-one, point to one of the more favored cases of spontaneous cure. Of his mental robustness the same may be said. It is going too high to cite the tradition of epileptics such as Caesar and Napoleon, since epilepsy vulgarly and commonly may exist in an absolutely healthy state of mind. Contrary to the opinion of some alienists, there is statistical proof that epilepsy does not always lead to mental dis- orders. So on the one hand, the attenuated form of Joseph's case and the infrequency of his youth- ful attacks, and on the other his many successful enterprises, especially the management of his can- tankerous followers, preclude the idea of absolute mental deterioration.
As to moral deterioration the psychologist is not obliged to pass judgment, except to note that the psychiatric definition of the epileptic fits the prophet to a dot.*^ Yet this one persistent mental trait should
M Compare R. V. Krafft-Ebing, 'Psychiatric,' 1897, s. 470: 'Armen Epileptikcr, welche das Gebetbuch in der Tasche, den liebcn Gott auf der Zunge und den Ausbund von Canaillerie im Leibe tragen.* (Saint.)
ENVIRONMENT AND VISIONS 75
be noted: in youth Joseph was secretive and dis- trustful, after the first impulsive delirium at Cu- morah he spoke of ^the necessity of suppressing these things ' ; ^Mn maturity he said ' no man knows my history; I cannot tell it.''' In the same way there is psychological connection between his early emotional instability and those private practices which led up to the ' Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, Including the Plurality of Wives/ But not to peer into this murky and dis- agreeable corner of his character, it remains to be said that the words of his friends speak louder than his own actions, that his self-disclosures are not so damaging as the apologies of his followers. Thus his ever-faithful scribe Cowdery says: * While young, I have been informed, he was afflicted with sickness. . . . You will remember that I said two invisible powers were operating upon the mind of our brother while going to Cumorah. In this, then, I discover wisdom in the dealings of the Lord: it was impossible for any man to translate the Book of Mormon by the gift of God, and endure the afflic- tions, the temptations and devices of Satan, with- out being overthrown, unless he had been previously benefited with a certain round of experience.' But to leave this anatomy of melancholy and turn
S5 * Biographical Sketches,' p. 84. 66 'Times and Seasons,' 5, 617.
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to a less irksome task, — the Booh of Mormon, its documents, its sources, and its author's mentality. To one who has waded through this sea of swash there will occur the words of Doctor Johnson con- cerning young Chatterton, 'This is the most ex- traordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.'
CHAPTER III THE BOOK OF MORMON : THE DOCUMENTS
CHAPTER III
THE BOOK OF MORMON: THE DOCUMENTS
The Book of Mormon is unique in Americana. John Eliot translated a bible for the Indians, Joseph Smith translated a bible of the Indians. In assert- ing their belief that this ' record of the forefathers of our western tribes'^ was 'filled with Egyptian characters and hieroglyphics/' the Mormons have offered a regular psychological puzzle in credulity. Yet the nut is not so hard to crack by literary methods, and the fiction is mixed with enough fact to warrant study.
The problem of the original materials of the Book of Mormon has two aspects : one theoretical, as to the * gold plates,' the other practical, as to the state of the extant manuscripts. The Mormons still pro-
»* Times and Seasons,' 5, 707.
* Orson Pratt, < Remarkable Visions,' title page. Pratt's mental calibre is shown by his attempts at * fonetik refawrm/ Compare : — • The Deseret Second Book, by the Regents of the Deseret Uni- versity. Printed in the Deseret alphabet, invented by Orson Pratt and W. W. Phelps, to be used in the Mormon Literature.' 74 pp. 1868.
79
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fess belief in the actuality of the plates, written, as they say, by the hand of Mormon, about 300 a. d. ; hid up in the hill Cumorah in New York State and found by Joseph Smith, junior, in these latter days.' To account for the final disappearance of these ' en- gravings of old records which are ancient,' they have evolved a theory of levitation.* The so-called transcription of the alleged gold plates is still in ex- istence.^ It is proved the authentic document from a comparison with the characteristic signature of Joseph Smith, junior,® and also from the directness of transmission. It was long in the possession of David Whitmer,^ the second of the three witnesses
3 The apologetic works on the * Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon* are endless. The most characteristic are Orson Pratt's 'Remarkable Visions,' 1841 ; Thompson's 'Evidences,' 1841; Reynolds' 'The Story of the Book of Mormon,' 1888; James E. Talmage, * Divinity of the Book of Mormon,* 1901.
♦While in Salt Lake City in June, 1894, I heard of some alleged squeezes of the gold plates. On inquiry at the Deseret Museum, a curator informed me they had been ' levitated,' I asked him how he believed that. He replied, * By faith.'
6 In the possession of Mr. William Evarts Benjamin, of New York City, through whose courtesy I am enabled to present a photo- graphic reproduction, reduced by one-fourth.
6 As shown in the following document, also in the possession of Mr. Benjamin : < License issued to Christian Whitmer, signifying and proveing that he is a Teacher of this Church of Christ. [Signed] Joseph Smith, Jr., first elder; Oliver Cowdery, second elder. Fayette, N. Y., June 9th, 1830.'
7 David Whitmer, « Address,' 1887, P- ^ '• — * ^ ^^ve in my posses- sion the original paper containing some of the characters tran- scribed from one of the golden plates, which paper Martin Harris
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to the Booh of Mormon, and from him passed to his grandson/
On the opposite page there is given a photo- graphic reproduction of the ' Caractors ' as curiously written by young Smith. He says that, in Decem- ber, 1827, he commenced copying the characters of the plates, and by means of the Urim and Thum- min he translated some of them.* Their genesis is thus given by the prophet's mother: * After bringing home the plates . . . Joseph began to make arrangements to accomplish the translation of the Record. The first step that he was instructed to take in regard to this work, was to make a fac- simile of some of the characters, which were called reformed Egyptian, and to send them to some of the most learned men of this generation and ask them for the translation thereof.' ^° The 'facsimile' was first submitted to a local pundit, by Martin Harris, Joseph's financial backer; the former de- scribed it as * a slip of paper which contained three or four lines of characters, as unlike letters or
took to Professor Anthon, of New York, for him to read " the words of a book that is sealed,^'* *
8 Mr. George W. Schweich, of Richmond, Missouri, writing, March 7, 1899, described the slip of paper containing the 'carac- tors * as * the supposed or alleged transcription or tracing taken by Martin Harris to Professor Anthon, of Amherst College, from the gold plates then in the hands of the promoters.*
s • Pearl of Great Price,' p. 103.
>o * Biographical Sketches,' pp. 107, 109.
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hieroglyphics of any sort as well could be produced were one to shut up his eyes and play off the most antic movements with his pen upon paper.'" In February, 1828, Harris took a secondary copy of this document to Professor Anthon of New York city.^^ He pronounced it ' a singular scroll. It con- sisted of all kinds of crooked characters, disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters, in- verted or placed sideways, were arranged and placed in perpendicular columns.'^'
11 J. A. Clark, then at Palmyra, N. Y. His book * Gleanings by the Way' gives one of the few reliable early accounts of Mor- monism.
»2 < Biographical Sketches,' pp. 107, 109.
'3 Letter of February 17, 1834, in New York Independent. In a letter of April 3, 1 841, in the Church Record^ Professor Anthon said that the characters were a * singular medley of Greek, Hebrew and all sorts of letters, more or less distorted either through unskilful- ness or design, and intermingled with sundry delineations of half- moons, stars and other natural objects and the whole ending in a rude representation of the Mexican Zodiac, evidently copied from Humboldt, but in such a way as not to betray the source.' Note that this tail piece belonged to a secondary copy which is thus de- scribed in Mormon fashion by F. G. Bishop, * Address,' p. 48 : — * The characters on these plates, as seen through the Interpreters, have the appearance of Hieroglyphics, or something resembling pictures of a great variety of shapes. On the last plate is a circle with rays proceeding from it resembling the sun, as commonly sketched, and around this circle are twenty-four circles more composed of figures resembling stars and half-moons.'
THE BOOK OF MORMON 83
A garbled account of this interview was after- wards published by the prophet." In this the scholar is made to assert that the untranslated characters from the plates were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac and Arabic, but that he could not read that part of
J^ ' Pearl of Great Price,* pp. 103-4. « Some time in this month of February, the aforementioned Mr. Martin Harris came to our place, got the characters which I had drawn off the plates, and started with them to the city of New York. For what took place relative to him and the characters, I refer to his own account of the circumstances as he related them to me after his return, which was as follows :
I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Pro- fessor Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic, and he said that they were the true characters. He gave me a certificate, certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct. I took the certificate and put it into my pocket, and was just leaving the house, when Mr. Anthon called me back, and asked me how the young man found out that there were gold plates in the place where he found them. I answered that an angel of God had revealed it unto him.
He then said unto me, " Let me see that certificate." I accord- ingly took it out of my pocket and gave it to him, when he took it and tore it to pieces, saying that there was no such thing now as ministering of angels, and that if I would bring the plates to him, he would translate them. I informed him that part of the plates were sealed, and that I was forbidden to bring them ; he replied, "I cannot read a sealed book." I left him and went to Dr. Mitchell, who sanctioned what Professor Anthon had said respect- ing both the characters and the translation.'
84 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the plates which was sealed, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, that the learned could not read the words of a book that was sealed. ^^
At the time, young Smith doubtless believed in the supernatural origin of his transcript. The reason for this was that it was written under more or less unconscious conditions. The man who first saw it almost hit the nail on the head when he said such characters could be produced if one were to shut up his eyes. As will be seen, the paper bears marks of being written under the influence of veritable crystal gazing. In that self-induced, trance-like state Joseph's involuntary scratchings would appear to him occult, mysterious, true revelations from heaven. For a scientific explanation of the matter there is no need to call in the activities of a 'second personality,'^^ but merely those of the subconscious self. The scrawl is analogous to the scribblings of the undeveloped automatically-writing hand,"
J5 * Whitmer Address,' p. 1 1.
^ 6 Proceedings of the 'Society for Psychical Research,* 12, 318. • The bulk of automatic writings, including the first scrawls of the planchette, are not indications of the formation of the second per- sonality.'
1"^ Taine, * De V Intelligence/ third edition, pp. 16, 17, cites the case of a woman who, while conversing, wrote with a handwriting different from ordinary style ; the fingers were stiff, the movement automatic ; the writing finished with the signature of a deceased person and bore the impress of secret thoughts, — of a mental back- ground which the author was not inclined to divulge.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 85
such as is found even among the uncivilized.^® If the ultimate solution of this document is a problem for abnormal psychology, its make up is no great mystery. As the contents of the Booh of Mormon can be traced to indigenous sources — the ideas which Joseph picked up in the Indian country where he lived — so it is with these characters. The more elaborate resemble the picture writing of the aborig- ines, such as would interest a boy.^' It is going too far to hunt for Greek and Hebrew letters, for the tables of foreign alphabets had not yet appeared in current dictionaries.^ The job is home-made: if Joseph had not taken the matter so seriously, this might be considered an amusing burlesque on a farmer's almanac, for he has only half concealed the signs of the Zodiac and those cabalistic aspects and nodes which may go with the planting of potatoes. That which betrays the puerility, and, at the same time, the genuineness of the document, is the curi- ous fact that the youth's own name appears twice in a soit of cryptogram. His neighbors called him ' peep-stone Joe,' his mother said that he was ' given
>8 Albert Moll, * Hypnotism,' London, 1901, p. 267.
»9 Imitation of Indian glyphics are also to be seen on various tombstones in Joseph's native state, commemorating the Indian raids of 1754.
'0 Noah Webster's Dictionary of this date has only tables of moneys, weights and measures. Thus the pound sterling sign oc- curs in the top line of the * caractors.'
86 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
to deep meditation and study,' he himself described his * Interpreters ' as crystals, — all this, taken in con- nection with his manner of 'translating,' furnish the clue to this original autograph. As his scribe, Martin Harris, affirmed: * Brother Joseph knew not the contents of the Book of Mormon until it was translated/ " As is elsewhere shown, Joseph's con- dition, under the influence of his ' Urim and Thum- mim,' was semi-hypnotic." Now it is a common- place of experiment that while in this state, which is hardly more than reverie, the subject often writes back-handed, or backwards, or even left-handed with the right hand.^ Now if the transcription be turned over and read through from the back there may be deciphered towards the right end of the third line, below ' Caractors,' first, the letters JOE, back- hand and rather indistinct; and, second, the letters
21 ' Times and Seasons/ 6, 992.
'• The only previous suggestion of this has been put in terms of clairvoyance ; it is that * Joseph gazed upon that Urim and Thum- mim until his mind became psychologized, and the impressions that he received he dictated to his scribe.* T. B. H. Stenhouse, ' Rocky Mountain Saints,* p. 551. This book is the most suggestive of any of the works of apostates. Stenhouse had lived abroad but evi- dently knew nothing of the continental psychology. Compare his works written before he left the church : La Rkjlecteur^ a Mor- mon paper, published at Geneva, and, « Les Mormons et leurs Ennemis,* at Lausanne.
'5 Compare Binet and F6r6, * Animal Magnetism,' New York, 1898, figures 13 and 14, p. 298.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 87
S O J, more upright and better formed." In other words, the youth, without knowing it, wrote his nickname entire and half of his given name in reverse. That unconscious cerebration played a large part in the evolving of the gold plate scheme is not improbable. The youthful prophet's self-obfusti- cation is likely from an antecedent heritage of credulity. There may not have been continuous faith in his continuous revelations, but there was, throughout his life, a naive confidence in his own learning. As Voltaire said of Habbakuk, he was
"Exactly how this scrawl was written is immaterial. The probability that the reversal of the script was due to a general ab- normal condition is only increased by the prophet's later explana- tion, that it was Hebraic in character. This was a clever after- thought, borrowed either from Sidney Rigdon, who owned a He- brew Lexicon, or from a polyglot Bible which Joseph somehow ob- tained. Compare 'Times and Seasons,' 5, 614, also Littlefield, • The Martyrs,' p. 21. * In relation to the title of the book, Joseph says, in his history : < I wish to mention here, that the title page of the " Book of Mormon " is a literal translation, taken from the very last leaf, on the left-hand side of the collection or book of plates, which contained the record which has been translated, the language of the whole running the same as all Hebrew writing in general ; and that said title page is not by any means a modern composition, either of mine or any other man's who has lived or does live in this generation. Therefore, in order to correct an er- ror which generally exists concerning it, I give below that part of the title page of the English version of the ** Book of Mormon " which is a genuine and literal translation of the title page of the original " Book of Mormon," as recorded on the plates —
The Book of Mormon.
An account written by the hand of Mormon^ upon Plates^ taken
from the Plates of NephV
88 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
capable de tout. In April, 1829, he translated a 'parchment written and hid up by John the be- loved disciple/'^ As soon as the Book of Mormon was on the market, he started on the Fisions of Moses ; six months later there were revealed the Writings of Moses.^^ In March, 1833, the prophet was told not to translate the Apocrypha, for it was 'mostly translated correctly/" In July, 1834, he
w « Book of Commandments,' Chapter VI.
26 1 Pearl of Great Price,' pp. i-6 ; 8-49. In these curious bib- lical paraphrases Joseph seems dimly to reproduce his own ab- normal experiences ; < And it came to pass that Moses looked and beheld the world upon which he was created, and as Moses beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created of the same, he greatly marveled and wondered. And the presence of God withdrew from Moses, that his glory was not upon Moses ; and Moses was left unto himself. And as he was left unto himself, he fell unto the earth. And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man ; and he said unto himself, now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed ; but now mine eyes have be- held God; but not my natural, but my spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld ; for I should have withered and died in his presence ; but his glory was upon me ; and I be- held his face, for I was transfigured before him.*
37 « Revelation given through Joseph, the Seer, at Kirtland, Geauga County y Ohio, March gth, i8jj.
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha, there are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly ;
There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.
Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 89
had completed a ' Revised Translation of the Old and New Testaments'; as he said: Mt was appar- ent that many important points touching the salva- tion of man, had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled.' ^® In 1842, as editor of the notable third volume of the Times and Seasons, he published a * Translation of some Ancient Records, that have fallen into our hands from the Catacombs
Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth ;
And whoso is enlightened by the Spirit, shall obtain benefit therefrom ;
And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited, therefore it is not needful that it should be translated. Amen.*
88 < Times and Seasons,' 5, 592. Compare Smith's second Lec- ture on Faith ; * Doctrine and Covenants,' p. 13 : —
* We next proceed to present the account of the direct revelation which man received after he was cast out of Eden, and further copy from the new translation —
After Adam had been driven out of the garden, he < began to till the earth and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had com- manded him.' And he called upon the name of the Lord, and so did Eve, his wife, also. « And they heard the voice of the Lord, from the way towards the garden of Eden, speaking unto them, and they saw Him not, for they were shut out from His presence; and He gave unto them commandments that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer the firstlings of their flocks for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was obedient unto the com- mandments of the Lord.
*And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying, ** Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord ? " And Adam said unto him, *'I know not; save the Lord com- manded me."
« And then the angel spake, saying, " This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, who is full of grace and truth. And thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son for evermore." And in that day the Holy Ghost fell upon Adam, which beareth record of the Father and the Son.'
90 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
of Egypt, the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Booh of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon Papyrus/ ^^ Six months before his death the prophet said : * I combat the error of ages and I solve mathematical problems of universi- ties WITH TRUTH, diamond truth/ ^^ On August 20th, 1843, he told a visitor at Nauvoo that, relying on the *gift of tongues,' he could * read Greek as fast as a horse can run.'*^ Finally he promulgated his famous refutation of the statement, that the word Mormon is borrowed from the Greek word, signify- ing a bugbear or hobgoblin:—
I may safely say that the word Mormon stands independent of the learning and wisdom of this generation. Before I give a definition, however, to the word, let me say that the Bible in its widest sense, means *good,' for the Sa- viour 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, Goda; the German, Gut; the Dutch, Goed ;
«9 * Pearl of Great Price/ pp. 49-69. 30 'Times and Seasons,' November 13, 1843. 31 < Universalis! Union,' 9, 376; interview of 'W. S. B.' on August 20th, 1843.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 91
the Latin, Bofiiis ; the Greek, Kalos ; the He- brew, Tob ; the Egyptian, Mon ; hence with the addition of niore^ or the contraction, mor^ we have the word Mormon^ which means liter- ally, 7nore good, *
To the followers of the prophet, all this was very wonderful; it satisfied their greed for the unknow- able, and was proof of the supernaturalness of his wisdom. To clinch the matter, the apologists for the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, lay stress on the author's early lack of education. One gives him but a hmited understanding of the three rudi- ments;^^ another calls attention to the misspelling of the word ' Caractors/^^ Where then did he get his esoteric linguistics ? To the faithful it is a mystery : the stream rises higher than its sources. It is here that extremes meet; the devout exaggerate their founder's ignorance to heighten the wonder of his writings, the profane to prove that his works were another's. Neither considers the possibihties of his
32 T. Horton, *A True History,' Geneva, N. Y., 184-, p. 3. « He could read without much difficulty, and write a very im- perfect hand ; and had a very limited understanding of the ground rules of arithmetic*
33 Stevenson, * Reminiscences,' p. 33. « It was well known that Joseph was not learned, and claimed to be only a farmer's boy with- out the opportunities for a scholastic education. . . . Permit me to offer some striking evidence to show that the prophet was not learned, by the word directly over the lines of characters. •« The Seven Lines of Characters " are headed " Caractors." '
92 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
mentality, — that along with what he called a ' fear- ful imagination/^* he had an adhesive memory, and that whatever fell in his way stuck fast. It is true that he had little use for books,*^ but he utilized men. The learning of his contemporaries was poor but he made it his own. His absorptive acts were many and various. He was directed by revelation to 'study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people.' So the Visions and Writings of Moses came out with the appearance on the scene of Sid- ney Rigdon the peripatetic prodigy of the Western Reserve.^^ Again Joseph began publicly to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures, some time after 'Messrs. Peixotto and Noah' had been impressed into the ' department of Hebrew in the University of Nau- voo.'^^ But in the biblical tongues he apparently
34 < Times and Seasons,' 6, Ii2i.
35 Smith read at least the following, the <Book of Martyrs,' « Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,' the < United States Constitution.' He also, later, had access to his partner Rigdon's library, which < was a very good student's collection, Hebrew, Greek and Latin lexicons and readers, stray volumes of Shakespeare, Scott, Irving's works and a number of other valuable books.' Overland Monthly f December, 1890, letter of Charlotte Haven fromNauvoo, March 26th, 1843.
36* Book of Commandments,' Chapter 39. *A Revelation to Joseph and Sidney,' December, 1830, — * It is not expedient that ye should translate any more until ye shall go to the Ohio.'
37 < Joseph the Seer,' p. 84. Compare also the prospectus in < Times and Seasons,' Volume 3, where Sidney Rigdon has charge of the * Department of Belles Lettres,'
THE BOOK OF MORMON 93
got no further than this: 'I will make a comment on the very first sentence of the history of creation in the Bible, BerosheiV Finally before his poly- glot audiences ^^ he flourished a polyglot Bible, and ' preached a little Latin, a little Hebrew, Greek and German.' ^^
All this the Saints believed came as the result of a revelation to Joseph to study the languages. But Smith's linguistic masterpiece was the Booh of Abraham, Joseph announced this to be ' a transla- tion of Some Ancient Records, that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt ';^ an Egyptologist pronounced it to be an account of the Resurrection of Osiris.^^ But the Frenchman took the Yankee Tartuflfe more seriously than he took himself. Josiah Quincy said there was an unmis- takable wink in Smith's eye after showing oflf ' the Egyptian Mummies, and the autograph of Moses.' "
38 « Times and Seasons,* 2, 496 ; In the city of Nauvoo were to be found 'the enterprising Englishman, the hardy Scotchman, the warm hearted son of Erin, the Pennsylvania Dutchman, and the honest Canadian.' For the mixture of races in Mormonism com- pare also the various translations of the * Book of Mormon ' into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Welsh, etc.
39* Times and Seasons,' 5, 614, report of Smith's Conference Ser- mon, April, 1833.
40 < Times and Seasons,' 3, 704.
41 Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, « A Journey to Great Salt Lake City,' 2, 536.
" ' Figures of the Past,' p. 384.
94 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
It is a relief to find this single gleam of humor in the dreary sketch of seriousness. But that the prophet anticipated Artemus Ward in the show business would hardly be allowed by the Saints. Of the evolution of the Book of Abraham, *^ the official Mormon account is as follows: — *July 3d, 1835, Michael H. Chandler came to Kirtland to exhibit four Egyptian mummies and two or more rolls of papyrus, covered with hieroglyphic figures and devices. They were afterwards purchased by some
« « Pearl of Great Price,' p. 59, gives * a facsimile from the " Book of Abraham." ' The explanation of the cut shows that even Joseph's imagination could suffer from over straining :
Fig. I. Kolob, signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or residence of God. First in government, the last per- taining to the measurement of time. The measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit. One day, in Kolob, is equal to a thousand years, according to the measurement of this earth, which is called by the Egyptians Jah- oh-eh.
Fig. 5. Is called in Egyptian Enish-go-on-dosh ; this is one of the governing planets also, and is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun, and to borrow its light from Kolob through the medium of Kae-e-vanrash, which is the grand Key, or, in other words the governing power, which governs fifteen other fixed planets or stars, as also Floeese or the Moon, the Earth and the sun in their annual revolutions. This planet receives its power through the medium of Kli-flos-is-es, or Hah-ko-kau-beam, the stars represented by numbers 22 and 33, receiving light from the revolutions of Kolob.
Fig. 6. Represents the earth in its four quarters.
Fig. 7. Represents God sitting upon his throne revealing through the heavens, the grand Key- Words of the Priesthood ; as also, the sign of the Holy Ghost unto Abraham, in the form of a dove.
Fig. 8. Contains writing that cannot be revealed unto the world ; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God.
Fig. 9. Ought not to be revealed at the present time.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 95
of the Saints, and Joseph Smith, junior, translated some of the characters on the rolls. One was found to contain the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph in Egypt.'"
To return to the writings of the latter day Joseph in America, and to take up the practical question of the state of the original manuscript of the Booh of Mormon. The printed editions furnish no exact information: they only serve to give a hazy idea of the immense number of successive corrections. The Mormon preaching of continuous revelation is like the Mormon practice of continuous emendation. Comparing a late with the earliest edition, two thousand changes have been counted.*^ But the publishers themselves admit editorial correc- tions. While the title page of the third edition*® reads,— * Carefully revised by the translator,' the preface of the second edition*^ is more frank as to the possibility of variations : —
'Individuals acquainted with book printing, are aware of the numerous typographical errors which always occur in manuscript editions. It is only necessary to say, that the whole has been carefully reexamined and compared with the original manu- scripts, by elder Joseph Smith, junior, the transla-
**< Handbook of Reference,' p. 45.
*5 Lamoni Call, ' Two Thousand Changes in the Book of Mor- mon,' 1898. <6 Nauvoo, Illinois, 1840. 41 Kirtland, Ohio, 1837.
96 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
tor of the Booh of Mormon, assisted by the present printer, brother O. Cowdery, who formerly wrote the greatest portion of the same, as dictated by brother Smith/ *^
There is further, definite, first-hand information and from Mormon sources. The typesetter of the first edition said that he suppHed all the punctua- tion, but did not change the spelling of more than one or two words/^ In fine, from extant testi- mony,^'' it is hard to show that the changes in the
48 Compare also « Times and Seasons,' 6, 8oo, joint letter of Smith, Rigdon and Williams to W. W. Phelps June 25, 1833 : — ' As soon as we can get time, we will review the manuscripts of the " Book of Mormon." *
49 George Reynolds, * The Myth of the Manuscript Found,* pp. 58-9. Interview with John Gilbert, March, 1881 : — * I am the party that set the type from the original manuscript for the " Book of Mormon." I would know that manuscript to-day if I should see it. The most of it was in Oliver Cowdery's handwriting. Some in Joseph's wife's ; a small part though. . . . We had a great deal of trouble with it. It was not punctuated at all. They did not know anything about punctuation, and we had to do that our- selves. . . . We never changed it in the least. I believe that I did change the spelling of one, and perhaps two [words] , but no more.' Compare * American Bookseller,' 4, 617, quoting an interview in the Detroit Tribune of December 2, 1877, i^ which J. H. Gilbert the typesetter avers that the < Book of Mormon,' was written on fools- cap in a good clear hand ; the handwriting was Oliver Cowdery's ; there was not a punctuation mark in the whole manuscript ; it took eight months to set up and print.
60 Pomeroy Tucker of Palmyra, New York, who did the press- work, is reported to have had in his possession the first sheets, with printer's corrections, which he pulled off himself.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 97
Booh of Mormon are of more than secondary im- portance.
To take up the more important question of origins and the vicissitudes of the original docu- ment, in the handwriting of Joseph's scribes. Its fate has been compared to that of young McPher- son's Ossianic documents, which were never forth- coming.^^ The case is hardly analogous: so late as 1887, David Whitmer, one of the three witnesses, claimed to have in his possession the very original, in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery and others." This Cowdery manuscript is now in New York City, having been transmitted to the present pos- sessor," through Whitmer's grandson.^* That this is close to the original, is to be surmised from the interest taken in it by the Utah Mormons. It is contended that Whitmer did not sell it, fearing in- terpolation in the pages containing the condemna-
51 For the Ossianic controversy, compare The Academy^ 46, 205 ; Edmund Gosse, < History of Eighteenth Century Literature,' pp. 335-337 ; Macmillan^s Magaziney 24, 113 ; H. A. Beers, « History of English Romanticism,' pp. 306-338 ; Shairp, * Aspects of Poetry,' p. 228.
62* Address,' p. 11.
53 Mr. William Evarts Benjamin, through whose courtesy the fol- lowing data were obtainable.
5-* Mr. George W. Schweich, of Richmond, Missouri, who writes, January 27, 1902, that he still has in his possession the manuscript history of the early Church by John Whitmer. The latter was *set apart by revelation as historian of the Church,' March 8, 1831. The Saints claim that these records were purloined in 1838.
98 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
tion of polygamy/' There is some ground for believing that Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith considered the manuscript genuine. In view of the Mormon's handling of the alleged Spaulding prototype of the Book of Mormon, their critical opinion is w^orthless.
To examine the document in question. There are three bits of external evidence, which imply the existence of a number of first hand copies. The second edition uses the plural, — 'original manu- scripts'; Whitmer himself mentions another partial transcription '' while at the same time, he asserts
55 Jacob T. Child writes to George W. Schweich, August 28, 1896 : — * I was present when Elders Orson Pratt and Smith, from Salt Lake City, called on your grandfather in regard to the manu- script of the " Book of Mormon," and upon it being shown to them Elder Pratt recognized the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery and Mrs. Smith. After some conversation Elder Pratt asked Mr. Whitmer if he would dispose of the manuscript, stating that he would give anything in reason for it, as the archives of the Church were incomplete without it. There was no fixed sum named but your grandfather was afraid that if he parted with it that they might interpolate.' Compare affidavit of Jacob T. Child, April 8th, 1902: < The authenticity of the manuscript of the "Book of Mormon," owned by David Whitmer and falling to George W. Schweich, his grandson, is exactly as it was placed in the hands of the printer; . . . [this] can be easily seen from the " takes " and finger-marks. ... I also have a copy of the Palmyra edi- tion in which David Whitmer asserted that this is a true and correct printed copy of the original manuscript.'
56 « Address,* p. 32. — * In August, 1829, the * Book of Mormon,' was still in the hands of the printer, but my brother. Christian Whitmer, had copied from the manuscript the teachings and
THE BOOK OF MORMON 99
that his copy is the original. But the promoters themselves furnish considerable information. The most definite statement is that regarding a com- mandment, received by Joseph soon after June 11, 1829, when the book was copyrighted. It was to the effect that Oliver Cowdery should transcribe the whole manuscript and that he should take but one copy at a time to the office, so that if one copy should get destroyed, there would still be a copy remaining."
That the original has disappeared, and that the manuscript in hand is the secondary Cowdery copy, remains to be proved. Negatively, the state of the manuscript does not agree with the statements of the author. Joseph employed three scribes in dic- tating the translation of the Record. These were, in order, his wife, Emma Hale; a schoolmaster, Oliver Cowdery; and a farmer. Christian Whitmer.'^
doctrine of Christ, being the things which we were commanded to preach.*
51 « Biographical Sketches,' 142-3. An earlier revelation, April, 1829, speaks of * other records.' See * Book of Commandments,* Chapter 8.
5^ Chronology t from Mormon sources : —
Two or three years before September, 1 827, the plates were mentioned to Martin Harris :
January 18, 1827. Joseph married Emma Hale ; she writes for him only a short time.
April 5, 1829. Joseph met Oliver Cowdery for the first time.
April, 1829. Revelation to Oliver, when employed a scribe for
Joseph;
L.oFC.
100 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Now the three amanuenses would eventuate in three distinct styles of handwriting, but here the script is throughout the characteristic and authenti- cated hand of Cowdery. More positively the uni- form quality of the paper, the continuation of the water marks and like signs ^' go to show that this
June, 1829. Joseph removed to the residence of the Whitmers.
June 1 1, 1829. The * Book of Mormon ' copyrighted.
The earliest date of composition is given by an anti-Mormon writer. In Scribner's Magazine, August, 1880, p. 613, Thurlow Weed said that, as editor of the Rochester Telegram in 1825, he was approached by Joseph Smith, with the view of pubhshing the <Book of Mormon,* and that he already had the first chapter written.
5^ There is change in the quality of the ink and the smoothness of the pen, but not in the individualities of letter formation. The continuous crabbed hand is that of Oliver Cowdery as authenticated by another document also in the possession of Mr. W. E. Benjamin, viz. : — License issued to Christian Whitmer * signifying and proveing that he is a teacher of this Church of Christ. [Signed] Joseph Smith, Jr., first elder; Oliver Cowdery, second elder. [Dated] June 9th, 1830, Fayette, N. Y.'
More positively this manuscript is unmistakably the work of one person, and not the occasional dictations of several, from the quality of the paper. Its size is uniform, while there appear throughout the same water marks O & H, which validate not only the pages on which they stand, but also the connected folios. From the latter circumstance, the present holder deduced that a quantity must have been obtained at one time, ergo the purchaser must have known the extent of the copying to be done. Finally the absence of printer's smudge and the lack of proof-reader's marks furnish incidental proof that this was not the copy that went to E. B. Grandin's printing office. Of the other persons concerned in these transactions little is known, except that the printer's devil was * a
THE BOOK OF MORMON loi
manuscript is not the piecemeal original, but the work of one person.
Leaving these material signs, there remain verbal and literal tests ^ for determining the further ques- tion of date, for finding out how early this docu- ment really was. From a comparison of several passages with the first three editions of the Book of
young man by the name of Robinson.' Compare * Biographical Sketches/ p. 143.
«o The transmitter calls attention to the erasures or crossed out items, and the minor corrections somewhat different from any of the publications, and thereby seeks to prove that this is the original manuscript. It is true that glosses and interlineations do not im- pair primary validity, for the original fair copy may be deciphered underneath. Yet if the latter was not verbally changed by the compositor, and yet does not verbally agree with the first edition, it cannot be considered the printer's copy. But to examine the top- most of the two strata. As it stands, the manuscript agrees with neither of the first three editions in spelling, punctuation or capi- talizing. Of three passages, selected at random, the verbal agree- ments are more numerous with the second edition, while there is little resemblance to the first. Nevertheless, the underlying text, without the superimposed corrections bears a striking likeness to the original, notably in such archaisms as the use of which for who, and of saith for said. Thus page 373 has who substituted for which twelve times. Also page 19 contains a phrase that appears only in the first edition : (Fair copy) * Eternal God & Jesus Christ which is ' ; (corrected copy) * Eternal God & Mosiah who is * ; (first edition) < Eternal God, and Jesus Christ which is ' ; (second edition) * Eternal God, and the Messiah who is ' ; (third edition) « Eternal God, and the Messiah who is.'
To sum up thus far: the corrected copy is secondary, being mainly revamped after the model of later editions, but the fair copy is a close approach to the earliest printed edition.
102 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Mormon, from a close scrutiny of spelling, punctu- ation, capitalizing and phrasing, it is fair to conclude that this is a complete contemporary copy trans- cribed from the original. There may be taken in evidence of this the famous anti-polygamy passage reproduced on the opposite page.®^
But to return to the original proposition,®^ these characteristic textual erasures and scribal repetitions lead one to the conclusion that this is the veritable duplicate copy hurriedly transcribed by Oliver Cov^dery, betv^een the copyright in June, 1829, and the completion of the printing early in 1830.^ In final proof of this is the notew^orthy circumstance that the author's impossible preface, suppressed after the first edition, is here presented with all its blemishes and blunders. For literary purposes, then, this Cowdery copy is of extreme importance. In all probability, this is a literal transcript of the only part of the Book of Mormon where Joseph Smith set his pen to paper. Cowdery was a dis- trict schoolmaster,^ and his spelling and spacing
*i From a photographic reproduction of page 97 of the Cowdery copy, in the possession of Mr. W. E. Benjamin.
62 For an obvious case of repetition compare page 73, containing a quotation from Isaiah 7:5,6: (Fair copy) < because Syria, Ephraim, & the Son of Remaliah ; because have taken evil coun- sel'; (corrected copy) 'because Syria, Ephraim & the Son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel.'
63 < Biographical Sketches,' p. 143, says : * Oliver Cowdery com- menced the work immediately after Joseph left ' — which was soon after the copyright was secured.
6*< Biographical Sketches,' p. 128.
J^^
's'
Mlvl'^15^'''
III 1 ^f
1^
vi' # ^.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 103
only occasionally suffer a relapse, but this preface ^^ agrees with the prophet's confession of youthful illiteracy.^
PREFACE.^^ To THE Reader —
As many fals reports have been sirculated respecting this the following work & also many unla I wful measures taken by evil desineing persons to destroy me & also the work I would I inform you that I translated by the gift & power of God & caused to be written one I hundred and sixteen pages the which I took from the Book of Lehi which was an ace I ount abridged from the plates of Lehi by the hand of Mormon which said account |
"The words in italics were in the fair copy and have been crossed out in the corrected copy.
66 'Times and Seasons/ 3, 771.
67 The printed preface of the first edition avoids all the errors in the above. The episode referred to was the loss of 116 pages of manuscript through Joseph's first scribe, Martin Harris. It is also recounted at greater length, in what was probably the first tedious draft out of Joseph's head. The first fifteenth of it reads as fol- lows : — * A Revelation given to Joseph in Harmony, Pennsylvania, May, 1829, informing him of the alteration of the manuscript of the forepart of the " Book of Mormon."
Behold, they have sought to destroy you ; yea, even the man in whom you have trusted.
And for this cause I said that he is a wicked man, for he has sought to take away the things wherewith you have been en- trusted ; and he has also sought to destroy your gift.
And because you have delivered the writings into his hands, be- hold, they have taken them from you :
Therefore, you have delivered them up ; yea, that which was sacred unto wickedness.
And, behold, Satan has put it into their hearts to alter the words which you have caused to be written, or which you have translated, which have gone out of your hands.' * Book of Commandments,' Chapter IX.
104 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
some person or persons have stolen & kept from me not withstanding my utmost exer | sion to recover it again & being commanded of the Lord that I should not translate | the same over again for Satan had put it into their hearts to tempt the Lord their God | by altering the words that they did not read conterary from that which I translated & | caused to be writ- ten & if I should bring forth the same words again or in other words if I | should translate the same over again they would publish that which they had stolen & | Satan would stir up the hearts of this generation that they might not receive this work | but behold the Lord said unto me I will not suffer that Satan shall accomplish | his evil design in this thing there- fore thou shalt translate from the plates of Nephi I untill you ye come to that which ye have translated which ye have retained & | behold ye shall publish it as the record of Nephi & thus I will confound those which | have altered my words I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work yea I | will shew unto them that my wisdom is greater then the cunning of the Devil | wherefore to be obe- diant unto the commandments of God I have through his grace | and mercy accomplished that which he hath commanded me respecting this thing | I would also inform you that the plates of which hath been spoken were was found in | the township of Manchester Ontario County New York
The Author.
CHAPTER IV THE BOOK OF MORMON: THE SOURCES
CHAPTER IV
THE BOOK OF MORMON: THE SOURCES
The Booh of Mormon^ is about one-third the size of the Bible. It purports to be ' the Sacred History of Ancient America from the Earliest Ages after the Flood to the Beginnings of the Fifth Century of the Christian Era.' The author's aim was to invent a
1 The quotations are here taken from a copy of the first edition bearing the signature of Brigham Young. For convenience the paging is given as in the third edition, 1891, Salt Lake City, 'with division into chapters and verses, with references, by Orson Pratt, senior.* » ,
«0. Pratt, 'Remarkable Visions,' 1841 : 'The Lamanites [In- dians] originally were a remnant of Joseph, and in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, King-of Judah, were led in a miraculous man- ner from Jerusalem to the eastern borders of the Red Sea, thence for some time along its borders in a nearly southeast direction, after which they altered their course nearly eastward, until they came to the great waters, where by the command of God they built a ves- sel in which they were safely brought across the great Pacific Ocean, and landed upon the western coast of South America. The original party included also the Nephites, their leader being a prophet called Nephi ; but soon after landing they separated, be- cause the Lamanites, whose leader was a wicked man called La- man, persecuted the others. After the partition the Nephites, who had brought with them the Old Testament down to the time of Jere- miah, engraved on plates of brass, in the Egyptian language, pros-
107
io8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
series of fictitious writers, on whom to father all his own compositions. The names of these worthies range from Jarom to Mormon, from Nephi to Zeniflf. Their works have been thus summarized by the prophet himself:'
<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 six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Is- raelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jare- dites 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. The remnant are the Indians^ who now inhabit this country. This book also tells us that our Saviour
pered and built large cities. But the bold, bad I^amanites, origi- nally white, became dark and dirty, though still retaining a na- tional existence. They became wild, savage, and ferocious, seek- ing by every means the destruction of the prosperous Nephites, against whom they many times arrayed their hosts in battle ; but were repulsed and driven back to their own territories, generally with great loss to both sides. The slain, frequently amounting to tens of thousands, were piled together in great heaps and over- spread with a thin covering of earth, which will satisfactorily ac- count for those ancient mounds filled with human bones, so numer- ous at the present day, both in North and South America.* ' Rupp, p. 406.
THE SOURCES 109
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 same order, the same priesthood, the same 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 was commanded to write an abridgment of their prophecies, history, 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.' *
In the second and subsequent editions it is stated that the book was * translated by Joseph Smith, jun-
* Compare American Law Review^ 34, 219-221, * The Law of the Book of Mormon.' * There are five periods : (i) a kingdom, (2) a republic under judges, (3) anarchy, (4) Messianic dispensation, (5) second anarchy.
It bears traces of the hand of a citizen of the United States. There was no privileged class. Slavery was unknown. The king or judge had no council or parliament. Salaried judges were elected for life or during good behavior, the election being proba- bly vivd voce by acclamation. They had to take an oath of office, and to judge according to the Mosaic decalogue, which was adopted en bloc. No jury was used. A writ of false judgment lay to a kind of Court of Delegates. . . . The people had a right of peti- tion. Death was inflicted only for murder and treason. A debtor was arrested and taken before a judge. The law of contract and succession was quite undeveloped. Three witnesses were gen- erally required. . . . Sorcery, witchcraft, and magic were among the crimes rife in the land.*
no THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
ior,' but on the title page of the first edition is an important variation,— Joseph Smith was not the translator but the author:—
' The Book of Mormon : an account written by The Hand of Mormon, upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi ; and also of the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the House of Israel ; and also to Jew and Gentile ; written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of Prophecy and of Revelation. Written, and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed ; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile ; the interpreta- tion thereof by the gift of God. An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether. Also, which is a Record of the people of Jared ; which were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people when they were building a tower to get to Heaven ; which is to shew unto the remnant of the House of Israel how great things the Lord hath done for their fathers ; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever ; and also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, mani- festing Himself unto all nations. And now if there be fault, it be the mistake of men ; wherefore condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ. By Joseph Smith, junior, Au- thor and Proprietor, Palmyra. (Printed by E. B. Grandin, for the author, 1830.) *
THE SOURCES in
This inadvertent admission of authorship is in- valuable. Being reiterated and gratuitous, it points to the authenticity of the book; hence an analysis of its contents will serve as an analysis of the prophet's mind, an intimate means of judging his early mental ability. Yet a mere repetition of the story* is not so illuminating as a study of the sources. How did the young writer come by these curious notions about Old Testament history, the lost ten tribes, ancient America and the like ? The elements of the environment provide a satisfactory answer, — ^Joseph's life in the backwoods, the books he read, the education he received, the sermons he heard, — these, and all the rest of his experiences, furnished the matter for this * account of the abo- rigines of America.' Thus the dedication to the Lamanites or Indians may be laid to the author's situation in the heart of the Iroquois country, just when Fenimore Cooper was evolving his Leather- Stocking Tales.^ The manner of writing likewise reflected the times, — it took the easy form of scrip- tural paraphrase much like the current parody of the Boston Tea Party entitled The First Book of the American Chronicled
5 For contents of the * Book of Mormon,* see Appendix I.
6 The Spy appeared in 1822; The Pioneer m 1823; The Last of the Mohicans in 1826.
' Moses Coit Tyler, < The Literary History of the American Revo- lution,' New York, 1897, '• 257. Compare also a Mormon parody
112 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
But to take up in order the links between the volume and the surroundings. The atmosphere being oversaturated with religion, its borrowings were necessarily biblical. Most obvious are lengthy excerpts from the King James' version: than which 'the sense is materially better and clearer, in the texts from the Book of Mormon^ says the apologist. Yet the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are given in their entirety, and eleven chapters of Isaiah are * taken by Nephi from the brass plates ; ® while the whole work is a mosaic of Old Testament allusions and New Testa- ment proof-texts.^ In addition to these verbal quo- tations, there are elaborate adaptations: — a long imitation of the chapter in Hebrews on faith, new variations in the woes against the Pharisees, and twenty-six pages of the suppositious sayings and doings of the Lord in his advent to America.'" There are finally numerous transformations of canonical matter; for example, the parable of the dying olive-tree is grafted on the metaphor of the
of Psalm lii. * To the Chief Musician, Maschil, a Psalm for Joseph when Boggs the Edomite came and told Carlin, and said unto him, Joseph is come to the city of Nauvoo.' * Times and Seasons,* 2, 464.
8 < Book of Mormon,' footnote, p. 87.
0 Hyde, p. 233. Counts 298 New Testament quotations in 426 pages of the first edition.
10 < Book of Mormon,' pp. 119, 597-9. It should be noted that interpolations and variations are acknowledged by the Mormons, e,g.t * this sentence not in the present versions of the Bible.'
THE SOURCES 113
wild olive-tree and the whole, with its ramifications, spreads over nine pages. These quotations, vari- ations and expansions are a considerable block to be subtracted from the original mass."
The method of manufacture is further revealed by the discovery that, in many parts, the Book of Mor- mon is nothing but a thinly veiled autobiography. As The Pilgrim's Progress contained hints of Bun- yan's life,^^ so in this unwitting allegory the thread of fact frequently comes to the surface. How completely this line of actuality runs through the book will be seen only at the conclusion of the an- alysis. Yet the opening verse furnishes the clue: the name of the prophet is Nephi, but the acts are the acts of Joseph:— 'I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught some- what in all the learning of my fathers; and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days — nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days.'
"Kidder, p. 291, estimates one-eighteenth of the whole to be borrowed from the Bible, viz. : Isa. 2, 14, 18, 19, 21,48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54 ; Mai. 3 ; Matt. 5, 6, 7 ; I Cor. 13.
1'^ Compare edition of 187 1, p. 186: — ' Now Reader, I have told my Dream to thee ; see if thou canst interpret it to me. . . , Put by the Curtains, look within my Vail ; turn up my Metaphors/ etc.
114 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
An assurance that Nephi is Joseph, junior, is found in the coincidence that the dream of his father Lehi, is none other than the dream of Joseph, senior. The account in the Booh of Mormon is inflated with scriptural phrases, but the ideas — with but trifling exceptions — are the same throughout.'^
^3 [ * Book of Mormon,' pp. 15, 16. The dream of Lehi.]
* Behold, I have dreamed a dream ; or, in other words, I have seen a vision. . . . For behold, me thought I saw a dark and dreary wilderness. 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. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, and bade me follow him. And it came to pass that as I followed him, I beheld myself that I was in a dark and dreary waste. And after I had traveled for the space of many hours in the darkness, I began to pray unto the Lord, that He would have mercy on me, according to the multitude of His tender mercies. And it came to pass after that I had prayed unto the Lord, I beheld a large and spacious field. And it came to pass that I beheld a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one
[ * Biographical Sketches,* pp. 58» 59* Joseph Smith, senior's vision of 181 1.]
* I thought I was traveling in an open, desolate field, which appeared to be very barren. As I was thus traveling, the thought suddenly came into my mind that I had better stop and re- flect upon what I was doing, before I went any further. So I asked myself, " What motive can I have in traveling here, and what place can this be ? " My guide who was by my side, as before, said, «*This is the desolate world; but travel on." The road was so broad and bar- ren, that I wondered why I should travel in it ; for, said I to myself, " Broad is the road, and wide is the gate that leads to death, and many there be that walk therein ; but narrow is the way, and straight is the gate, that leads to everlasting life, and few there be that go in thereat." Traveling a short dis-
THE SOURCES
115
This quotation implies and reverts to ancestry; even more does it disclose environment. Its poverty of style at once evinces the scanty education within
happy. And it came to pass that I did go forth, and partake of the fruit thereof; and I be- held 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. And as I partook of the fruit thereof, it filled my soul with exceeding great joy; wherefore, I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also ; for I knew that it was desirable above all other fruit. And as I cast my eyes round about, that perhaps I might discover my family also, [I] beheld a river of water ; and it ran along, and it was near the tree of which I was partaking the fruit. And I looked to behold from whence it came; and I saw the head thereof a little way off; and at the head thereof, I beheld your mother Sariah, and Sam, and Nephi ; and they stood as if they knew not whither they should go. And it came to pass that I beckoned unto them ; and I also did say unto them, with a loud voice, that they should come
tance further, I came to a nar- row path. This path I entered, and, when I had traveled a little way in it, I beheld a beautiful stream of water, which ran from the east to the west. Of this stream I could see neither the source nor yet the termination; but as far as my eyes could extend I could see a rope, running along the bank of it, about as high as a man could reach, and beyond me, was a low, but very pleasant valley, in which stood a tree, such as I had never seen before. It was exceedingly handsome, insomuch that I looked upon it with wonder and admiration. Its beautiful branches spread themselves somewhat like an umbrella, and it bore a kind of fruit, in shape much like a chest- nut burr, and as white as snow, or, if possible, whiter. I gazed upon the same with consider- able interest, and as I was doing so, the burrs or shells commenced opening and shed- ding their particles, or the fruit which they contained, which was of dazzling whiteness. I drew near and began to eat of
ii6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
reach of the boy. With the disappearance of the original manuscripts there is no way of judging the sum total of grammatical errors : their quantity may
unto me, and partake of the fruit, which was desirable above all other fruit. And it came to pass that they did come unto me, and partake of the fruit also. And it came to pass that I was desirous that Laman and Lemuel should come and par- take of the fruit also; where- fore, I cast mine eyes towards the head of the river, that per- haps I might see them. And it came to pass that I saw them, but they would not come unto me. And I beheld a rod of iron ; and it extended along the bank of the river, and led to the tree by which I stood. And I also beheld a straight and narrow path, which came along by the rod of iron, even to the tree by which I stood; and it also led by the head of the fountain, unto a large and spacious field, as if it had been a world ; and I saw numberless concourses of people ; many of whom were pressing forward, that they might obtain the path which led unto the tree by which I stood. And it came to pass that they did come forth, and commence in the path
it, and I found it delicious be- yond description. As I was eating, I said in my heart, " I cannot eat this alone, I must bring my wife and chil- dren, that they may partake with me." Accordingly, I went and brought my family, which consisted of a wife and seven children, and we all commenced eating, and praising God for this blessing. We were exceedingly happy, insomuch that our joy could not easily be expressed. While thus engaged, I beheld a spacious building standing op- posite the valley which we were in, and it appeared to reach to the very heavens. It was full of doors and windows, and they were all filled with people, who were very finely dressed. When these people observed us in the low valley, under the tree, they pointed the finger of scorn at us, and treated us with all man- ner of disrespect and contempt. But their contumely we utterly disregarded. I presently turned to my guide, and inquired of him the meaning of the fruit that was so delicious. He told me it was the pure love of God,
THE SOURCES
117
yet be inferred from the rhetorical quality of the present editions.
which led to the tree. And it came to pass that there arose a mist of darkness ; yea, even an exceeding great mist of dark- ness, insomuch that they who had commenced in the path, did lose their way, that they wandered off and were lost. And it came to pass that I be- held others pressing forward; and they came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron ; and they did press forward through the mist of darkness, clinging to the rod of iron, even until they did come forth and partake of the fruit of the tree. And after they had partaken of the fruit of the tree, they did cast their eyes about as if they were ashamed. And I also did cast my eyes round about, and be- held, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building ; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth ; and it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceeding fine ; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their finger towards those who had come at, and were partaking of the fruit.*
shed abroad in the hearts of all those that love Him, and keep His commandments. He then commanded me to go and bring the rest of my children. I told him that we were all there. ** No," he replied, " look yonder, you have two more, and you must bring them also." Upon raising my eyes, I saw two small children, standing some distance off. I immediately went to them, and brought them to the tree ; upon which they commenced eating with the rest, and we all rejoiced to- gether. The more we eat, the more we seemed to desire, until we even got down upon our knees, and scooped it up, eating it by double handfuls. After feasting in this manner a short time, I asked my guide what was the meaning of the spacious building that I saw. He re- plied, "It is Babylon, it is Babylon, and it must fall. The people in the doors and windows are the inhabitants thereof, who scorn and despise the Saints of God, because of their humility." I soon awoke, clapping my hands together for joy.'
Ii8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Barbarisms and solecisms abound, due to what Smith called his ' lack of fluency according to the literati,* Over and above these are unique ex- pressions, which well deserve the name of * Smith- isms.' Thus:-— 'Nephi did molten ore out of the rock, that he might engraven upon them the record of the more history part.' The author's meagre schooling is not indicated so much by these verbal peculiarities, as by the lack of ideas derived from primary education. There are some references to geography and history, but the former is made so indefinite and the latter so obscure, that much eluci- dation is called for. Lest the profane read with one eye shut, the Saints have provided annotations. Take for example Nephi's vision of the future, and Moroni's prayer for the land : —
' And it came to pass that I looked and beheld many waters (the Atlantic Ocean) ; and they divided the Gen- tiles from the seed of my brethren. And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles (Columbus), which was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my breth- ren, which were in the promised land. And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles (the Pilgrim fathers) ; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters. And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gent-
THE SOURCES 119
iles upon the land of promise ; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren (the Indians) ; and they were scattered before the Gentiles, and were smitten. And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles ; that they did prosper, and obtain the land of their inheritance. . . . And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles who had gone forth out of captivity, did humble themselves before the Lord ; and the power of the Lord was with them. And I beheld that their mother Gentiles (the British) was gathered together upon the waters, and upon the land also, to battle against them. And I beheld that the power of God was with them ; and also that the wrath of God was upon them, that were gathered together against them to battle. And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity (the United States), were delivered by the power of God, out of the hands of all other nations. . . .
And the prophet Moroni prayed that the cause of the Christians, and the freedom of the land might be favored. And it came to pass that when he had poured out his soul to God, he gave all the land both on the north and on the south, a chosen land, and the land of liberty. Nevertheless they were not fighting for mon- archy nor power, but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties ; yea for their rites of worship and their church. Therefore for this cause were the Nephites contending with the Lamanites (In- dians), to defend themselves, and their families, and their lands, their country, and their rights, and their re- ligion. And thus it did come to pass that the people of Nephi began to multiply and spread, even until they did cover the whole face of the land, from the sea west to the
120 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
sea east. And the Lamanites did give unto us the land northward (North America) ; yea even to the narrow passage which led into the land southward (South America.* "
All this was written by a youth who was not much 'inclined to the study of books.' But if the sphere of knowledge was small, — by a sort of imagi- native aeration, it swelled to a large bulk. Joseph's wits were early at work; three years before the gold plates were delivered, his mother said, ' During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasion- ally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this country, their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole Hfe with them.' ''
The boy's inventions naturally reappeared in his book. As those that ' went forth out of captivity ' were the Pilgrim fathers seen through a haze of tradition, so the Lamanites were the Indians of yesterday, with an air of mysterious antiquity thrown about them. The novehst in an adjoining
1* Compiled from * Book of Mormon,' pp. 26-29, 370, 371, 363, 460, 552.
16 4 Biographical Sketches/ p. 85.
THE SOURCES 121
county succeeded in idealizing the last of the Mohi- cans. The inexperienced youngster failed to make him anything but the ignoble red man. Here is the composite portrait: — In appearance, the Lamanites 'were a dark, loathsome, filthy and idle people, they wore a girdle about their loins, their heads were shaven, they had marked themselves with red in their foreheads/ As to their habits, 'they dwelt intents; seeking in the wilderness for beasts of prey; at night they did rend the air with their cries and howlings and their mournings for the loss of the slain/ In war ' they carried the bow, the cimiter and the axe, they smote off the scalp of their ene- mies; they took many prisoners and tortured them/^'
And these were ' the seed of Abraham, remnants of the house of Israel.' The Book of Mormon is in- deed the ' record of a fallen people ' ; the degenera- tion is so complete that, when, in the parable, this branch of the wild olive-tree is said to be ' of no worth,' the commentator hastens to refer this to the present condition of the Indians. " But the annota- tion does not agree with the text; these same Lamanites were those who left behind 'bones as heaps, and works of timbers upon the top of the
^« ' Book of Mormon,' pp. 25, 15 1, 240, 302, 366, 607. Compare * Times and Seasons,' 2, 474, Poem on the Red Man. IT i Book of Mormon,' p. 142.
122 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
ridges of earth, or in other words,— the ancient mounds of North America.' '®
The Mormons were hard pressed to explain why the Indians had lost their theological traditions, ^^ so they laid great stress on their material remains. Yet here is manifest if at all, the influence of Joseph's surroundings. He lived in a country full of mysterious aboriginal monuments. '^ Along the shores of Lake Ontario there was a series of ancient earthworks, entrenched hills and occasional mounds or tumuli. These works spread over the lands of the Holland Land Company,*' where Joseph, senior, had taken up his claim. At Canandaigua, only nine miles away, there was an embankment on a hill, where human bones and relics were found. At Livonia,*' in adjacent Livingstone County, there was an artificial embankment and ditch inclosing an area of sixteen acres. The other way, in Seneca County,
18 1 Book of Mormon,' p. 595, and footnote, 383. »9 * Times and Seasons,' 2, 473.
20 The following facts, unless otherwise specified, are taken from E. G. Squier, « The Aboriginal Monuments of New York State,* 1 85 1, being Vol. II of the « Smithsonian Contributions to Knowl- edge.'
21 H. O'Reilly, « Sketches of Rochester,' 1838, p. 377.
22 Canandaigua and Livonia are mentioned in * Biographical Sketches,' pp. 96 and 135. The distances in Joseph's time can only be approximated as the roads were few. The principal re- mains here mentioned can nowadays be reached from Manchester in a day's tramp.
THE SOURCES 123
there were ancient caches full of art relics and frag- ments of pottery. But there were more notable re- mains nearer home; if not within walking distance, at least within the circle of rumor. Just east of Geneva was a so-called Indian Castle; here stumps of the palisades were struck by the plough, when the land was first cultivated, and the holes formed by the decay of the pickets were still visible in 1847. Finally, in the vicinity of Manchester, enough hatchets and spear heads were dug up to supply the local blacksmiths with iron. Now popular opinion regarded the origin of these remains as buried in antiquity. Governor De Witt Clinton, in his pamphlet of 181 1," dubbed these mound-build- ers 'the Romans of the Western World.* Examin- ing the three works near Canandaigua and counting the rings in the trees growing upon them, he esti- mated that they were one thousand years old; hence not the work of present Indians, nor of European explorers. Other writers held views more positive, if less probable; these were the re- mains of Phoenician and Scandanavian colonists, — of the apocryphal Madoc with his ten ships.
But the theory of Hebraic origin was the favorite. It began with the very discovery of America, con- tinued through Puritan times and was rife in these
23 De Witt Clinton, * Discourse,* published in 18 11, not 1 8 18 as O'Reilly states.
124 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
parts when Joseph was growing up. There is an abundant literature on the subject. The early Span- ish priests identified the native Americans with the lost ten tribes of Israel; in 1650 a Jewish Rabbi advocated it;'* the same year appeared Thorow- good's 'Jews in America, or Probabilites that the Americans are of that Race;' two years after, John Eliot, apostle to the Indians, wrote an essay to the same effect. Since the conversion of the abo- rigines was one of the aims in settling New Eng- land and was enjoined also in the charters of other colonies, ^^ both New England divines and founders of states welcomed these speculations. The line of belief persisted through Mayhew Mather, Roger Williams, William Penn, Jonathan Edwards down to Elias Boudinot's work in 1816, en- titled A star in the West, or an attempt to discover the lost Ten Tribes of Israel.''''
Interest in these theories was wide; as was said by Ethan Smith in his * View of the Hebrews or the Tribes of Israel in America,"''' — the import- ance of the question 'Where are the ten tribes
'<< Jewish Encyclopedia,' 1900, i, 495. Manasseh ben Israel in his < Hope of Israel,' considered that the Dispersion was thereby complete.
25 Ethan Smith, < View of the Hebrews,' 1825, p. 248, note.
26 Justin Windsor, « Narrative and Critical History of America/ 1889, I. 115, 116.
«7 Ethan Smith, Preface, p. i.
THE SOURCES 125
of Israel/ brought about a speedy sale of the first edition. This work was published in Poultney, Vermont, next to Windsor County, where Joseph's parents once lived, and by 1825 had circulated to westernmost New York. A letter to the author, from a clerical reader in Erie County, mentions a general religious revival which had taken place among the Senecas seven years before. Dis- satisfied with their old rites they had brought together their wise men, who say they are per- suaded they are the people of God, but have lost their way. Hence, this observer concludes, these Indians are the outcasts of Israel, for they have a manifest shadow of the Mosaic rituals, — the feasts of first-fruits, and of ingathering; a day of atone- ment, and peace offerings. ^^ The author's cumula- tive proof, derived from the accounts of travelers, is this:^ the Indians must be the lost tribes of Israel because they have one origin ; their language appears Hebrew;^ they have acknowledged one and only one God; they are in tribes; they have
28 Ethan Smith, p. vi, Extract from letter to the author from J. B. Hyde. On the other hand, the Indians sometimes resented the propaganda. Compare the * Speech of Red Jacket against the Foundation of a Mission among the Senecas in 1805,* in Stedman and Hutchinson, * A History of American Literature,* 1890, 4. 36.
29 Ethan Smith, p. 85.
30 H. H. Bancroft, * Works,' 5, 89, quotes Meyer's statement * The name Iowa is derived from Jehova.'
126 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
cities of refuge; they have sacrifices and anointings, high-priests, festivals, feasts and purifications. The compiler also quotes with approval Adair's twenty- three reasons for the Indians being Jews. "
As has been already noted, a volume containing these arguments was in the possession of one young Mormon from New York. But if there was any book, akin to Joseph's fancy, it was one pub- lished in Albany about this time,^' namely,— Priest's American Antiquities. An Exhibition of the Evi- dence that an ancient population peopled America many centuries before its Discovery, and Inquiries into their Origin. The wording of this title should be compared with a portion of the Prophet's first vision; he says:
I was informed also concerning the aboriginal inhab- itants of this country, and shown who they were, and
31 Argument, i. Their division into tribes; 2. Worship of Jehovah ; 3. Notions of a theocracy ; 4. Belief in the ministrations of angels; 5. Language and dialects; 6. Manners of counting time; 7. Prophets and high priests; 8. Festivals, fasts and religious rites; 9. Daily sacrifices; 10. Ablutions and anointings; 11. Laws of uncleanness; 12. Abstinence from unclean things; 13. Marriages, divorces and punishments of adultery; 14. Several punishments; 15. Cities of refuge; 16. Purifications and cere- monies preparatory to war ; 17. Ornaments; 18. Manner of curing the sick: 19. Burial of the dead; 20. Mourning for their dead; 21. Raising seed to a deceased brother; 22. Choice of names adapted to their circumstances and the times ; 23. Own traditions.
"The first edition appeared in 1833; two others followed in that year.
THE SOURCES 12;
from whence they came ; — a brief sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments, of their right- eousness and iniquity, and the blessings of God being finally withdrawn from them as a people, was made known unto me.*
Moreover the contents of this book resembles that of the plates of Nephi. The chapter on the course of the lost ten tribes is suggestive of the wanderings of the Nephites. In 1841 the prophet, reviewing a volume of Mormon evidences, noted four parallel passages drawn between Priest's work and the Book of Mormon.^ The fact that the Mor- mon book was subsequently called in by Brigham Young, would excite a suspicion of Joseph's orig- inal plagiarism from Priest's American Antiquities, except that the latter appeared in 1833. However Smith frequently printed in his newspaper curious notices of the current works on American archaeology, and pointed with triumph to various 'ancient records,' as they were dug up from time to time.^
33* Times and Seasons,' 3,640; Priest, pp. 97, 160, 165, 169; * Book of Mormon,' (second edition) pp. 378, 382, 383, 479. Smith borrows these parallels from Charles Thompson's ' Evidences in proof of the " Book of Mormon," being a divinely inspired record, written by the forefathers of the natives whom we call Indians, (who are a remnant of the tribe of Joseph,' etc.), Batavia, N. Y. 1841.
34 Smith's interest in Americana is universal ; in Volume IV of the 'Times and Seasons,' he notices (p. 181) the six brass plates discovered at Kinderhook as giving authenticity to the * Book of
128 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Whether or not the boy in the log cabin had a chance to read Priest's volume or any of the series, these judaizing theories were in the air, and were especially prevalent among the clergy.'^ Hence the source of Joseph's antiquarian fancies need not have been literary; what he heard from the pulpit was enough to set his fancy at work. In this western district the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians was active,'^ and a certain mis- sionary to these lost branches was, at one time, in charge of the Presbyterian Church in Palmyra." Tradition also fired the young boy's brain. His Uncle Stephen had launched forth on the frontiers at Detroit as an Indian trader.^^ Moreover three of the
Mormon*; (p. 201) he issues the 'Prospectus of the Nauvoo Museum, for ancient records, manuscripts, paintings and hiero- glyphics' ; (p. 346) he notes that Stephen's * Incidents of Travels in Central America ' has in two years gone through twelve editions. For the persistent Mormon interest in antiquities compare * Times and Seasons,' 2, 440; 5, 755 and S. T. Walker, < Ruins Revisited,' and also * Archaeological Committee Report,' for later search for evidences in support of the * Book of Mormon.'
35 Compare the layman James Buchanan, * Sketches, etc., of the North American Indians,' New York, 1824, 2, 7: — < Affinities were discovered which existed nowhere but in the fancy of the in- ventor.' Compare also L' Estrange, 'Americans nojewes.*
86 See ' Signs of the Times,' 18 10.
3"^ Hotchkin. In 18 17 the pastor was D. S. Butrick, 'for many years a faithful missionary among the Cherokee Indians.'
38* Biographical Sketches,' p. 31. Parley P. Pratt in 'The Voice of Warning,' 1854, Chapter iv, 'Origin of the American Indians,' quotes both Priest and Boudinot.
THE SOURCES 129
Green Mountain villages, in which his family once sojourned, had been destroyed by the savages not a generation before his birth ;^^ in New York the Cherry Valley massacre was still remembered,*® and in 1805 an itinerant Methodist said that *the shining tomahawk and the glittering scalping-knife were within sight/" These things lay back of the por- trayal of the Lamanites as * wicked, wild and fero- cious,— a people who delighted in murdering the Nephites and robbing and plundering them/*^ Be- sides local hearsay, the youth had his own eyes to give him information; around him lay the reserva- tions of the Six Nations containing, at this time, between three and four thousand warriors.*^ Nat- urally it was his own knowledge of the Iroquois that he transferred to the ancient inhabitants.
Finally one of his occupations provided him with an excuse for mystification. He confesses, with some reluctance, that he was hired as a money digger.** Since Indian mounds were the favorite
^'^ Vermont Gazeteer, pp. 977, 11 16. Tunbridge, Randolph and Royal ton were sacked and burned by the Indians in 1780 on their return to Canada.
40 DeWitt Clinton, p. 377.
41 H. Stevens, * History of American Methodism,' p. 451. 42 « Book of Mormon,' pp. 284, 435.
43 < United States Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs/ 1853, p. 15. In 1846 there were 3,843 Iroquois in New York state.
44 < Pearl of Great Price,' p. icx) ; ' Hence arose the very preva- lent story of my being a money digger.' This refers to the opera-
130 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
haunts of money diggers/^ this search for hidden treasure furnishes the clue to Joseph's passion for the antique. He mixed up what he knew about living Indians, with what he could gather about the dead ones, and the amalgam was the angel Moroni's * brief sketch concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country/ The mixture of the two elements, present and past, is shown by the popular errors embedded in the narrative. The great number of skeletons in the burial mounds were not due to ter- rible massacres,*^ but to the Indian custom of col- lecting the bones of their dead at stated times.*^ So with the Indian * forts ' or 'castles,' described as the 'high places of Israel.'*^ In 1615 Champlain cited those palisaded works.*^ They were not prehis- toric, but were taught to the natives by nameless adventurers from Europe. So the Iroquois body- coverings of thick hide, such as the Nephites wore, were an imitation of European armor.^^ And the
tions of 1825. Joseph's father-in-law, Josiah Stoal, of Susquehanna County, Pa., hired Joseph to hunt for a lost Spanish silver mine with his seer stone or crystal. Compare Appendix III and < Bio- graphical Sketches,' p. 92.
45 Squier, p. 41.
46 « Book of Mormon,' p. 560. Such as when the slain between Nephites and Lamanites amounts to 230,000.
4' Squier, p. 68.
48 Ethan Smith, p. 201.
49 Champlain, « Oeuvres,' Quebec, 1870, 5, 261,— * Fagon de guer- royer des Sauvages.*
60 F. S. Dellenbaugh, * The North American Indians of Yester- day,' 1 90 1, p. 260.
THE SOURCES 131
numerous hatchets and arrow-heads in Joseph's fabulous Zarahemla, were to be found on the sites of Kenandaga and Seneca villages of the seven- teenth century/^ The explanation of scientific in- vestigators being unknown at that time, there was nothing to prevent the throwing of an air of primitive mystery around more or less historic facts. So in Joseph's lucubrations the mounds which the Indians regarded with great reverence, and of which they had lost the tradition," were built by Moroni as defenses of his people against the Lamanites; while the caches of arms were due to the penitent Lamanites burying their weapons rather than commit sin/'
In the mental habits^attributed to his aborigines the author's inventive powers fail, and he unwittingly falls back on current thought. The religious ideas of the Lamanites were not archaic and pagan, but only what Joseph's contemporaries erroneously at- tributed to the natives. He said the Lamanites be- lieved in a great spirit; ^' a writer of the same dec- ade cites, among the manners and customs of the various Indian tribes, — their belief in a great
^* Squier, p. 9.
62 D. G. Brinton claimed that tradition among the Indians is un- trustworthy after three generations. Lectures at Yale University, 1898.
" * Book of Mormon,* pp. 383, 308.
^* * Book of Mormon,* p. 287.
132 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
spirit.^ The modern critic says that the primitive red man had no idea of a great spirit, and that the ob- servations of early w^riters were made upon savages who had been for generations in contact with the doctrines of Christianity/^ This interpretation of the religious opinions of the Indians, after preconceived ideas of the times, offers another point of contact between the Booh of Mormon and the author's sur- roundings. Like the Senecas, thirty miles away, who had lately performed the sacrifice of the white dog/^ Joseph's Lamanites * did worship idols/ And yet, at the same time, they held the various beliefs of local Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists.
Strange as it may seem, the earliest tribes were Old School Presbyterians. If the speech of Nephi, to his brethren, be compared with the Westminster Standards, a close parallelism will be disclosed.^®
55 J. D. Hunter, * Manners and Customs of the Various Indian Tribes,' 1823, p. 222.
56 F. Parkman, «The Jesuits in North America,* 1896, p. Ixxiv. ^i O'Reilley, p. 276. This had happened at Rochester within
ten years.
58[ <Book of Mormon,' p. 15. [* Confession of Faith,' chap-
Nephi interprets the dream of ters 32 and 33, — « Of the state
the tree and river :] * Doth this of Man after Death '; « Of the
mean the final state of the soul Last Judgment ' :] 'After death
after the death of the body ? the souls of the wicked are cast
... It was a representation of into hell, where they remain in
that awful hell, prepared for torments, reserved to the judg-
the wicked, and the devil is the ment of the great day. In
preparator of it. And the jus- which day all persons shall ap-
THE SOURCES
133
In all this the authors borrowings were the easiest possible. Even if the rest of the family did not re- main good Presbyterians,^^ the Westminster Confes- sion was to be had in other ways; it appeared, for instance, in the frequent reprints of the New England Primer, so that as children thumbed its quaint pages, they sucked in Calvinism.^ But if the young prophet had once learned what 'man's chief end ' was, he did not continue to believe that Mn Adam's Fall we sinned all'; early in his book he began to drift towards Universalism, saying that
tice of God did also divide the wicked from the righteous for- ever and ever. It was a repre- sentation of things both temporal and spiritual ; for the day should come that they must be judged of their works. Wherefore, they must be brought to stand before God, and, if their works be filthy, they cannot dwell in the Kingdom of God. Where- fore, the final state of the souls of men is to dwell in the King- dom of God, or to be cast out because of that justice of which I have spoken.'
59 « Biographical Sketches,* p. 74.
*o « The Assembly of Divines* Catechism * was to be found in the current reprints of the New England Primer. Compare edition of 1806.
pear before the tribunal of Christ, to give an account of their thoughts, words and deeds, and to receive according to what they have done in the body, whether good or evil. The end of God's appointing this day is for the manifestation of His jus- tice. For then shall the right- eous go into everlasting life, but the wicked shall be cast into eternal torments.'
134 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
'the way is prepared from the fall of man/ and that * salvation is free for all/®^
This marked transition in habits of thought is to be gathered from the elements of the reaction. The Booh of Mormon is said to present orthodox Trinitar- ianism ; the reverse is the truth : it is a hodge-podge of heterodoxy. How the author came by the variant doctrines is a pertinent question, for it shows his absolute dependence on his own times. Absurd attempts have been made to trace to the old world,
61 By comparing the speech of Lehi with the * Confession,* chap- ters 3 and 17, there are presented some of the agreements and dis- agreements of the * Book of Mormon * with the five points of Calvinism : — Absolute predestination is implied in the phrase — * God*s eternal purposes,* but negatived in the explanation, — < God to bring about His eternal purposes in the end of man, gave unto man that he should act for himself/ Total Depravity is set forth in the sentence — * God shewed unto all men that they were lost, be- cause of the transgression of their parents * ; but this statement is limited by another, namely that — * men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil.* Of the remaining three points, none are here upheld : there is nothing about Irresistible Grace and its correlate, the Perseverance of the Saints, — * that God from His absolute sovereignty bringeth whom He will unto salvation, and that the elect can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace.* Both these articles are contradicted by one Mormon sen- tence ; * men are free forever to act for themselves and not to be acted upon/ So is it with the fifth point — of Particular Redemp- tion,— * the appointment of the elect unto glory, and of the rest of mankind unto dishonor and wrath/ In contrast with this, there is a notable drift towards Universalism, — * the way is prepared from the fall of man, and salvation is free ; because of the intercession for all, all men come unto God.*
THE SOURCES 135
the peculiar tenets of the American sectary." It is true that towards the five points of Calvinism, he had an Arminian attitude, but Joseph Smith knew as little about Arminius as Arminius did about Joseph Smith. It was from the voice of the wilder- ness preacher that he obtained notions at variance with Presbyterian dogma. A document of the times gives a lively idea of local theologic Donny- brook fairs. In the Western Memorial of 1834, the Presbytery of Geneva was charged by the General Assembly with 'sixteen gross errors in doctrine.'^ In answer, it was said that these errors were ad- vanced and strenuously propagated in Western New York, but not by Presbyterians. One apologist adds,^ in defense, that the local churches, in good standing, still believed in original sin, infant dam-
62 For the attempt of a German writer to resolve Mormonism into a conscious syncretism of Gnosticism, Mohammedanism, etc., see M. Busch, < Die Mormonen, Ihr Prophet, Ihr Staat und Ihr Glaube,' Leipsic, 1855, s. 158, seq. Contrast * Times and Seasons,' 2, 305, 'There is error in comparing the "Book of Mormon " to the " Koran " of Mahomet. Mahomet had not the ad- vantage of the Urim and Thummim, by which the ancients were constituted seers.' It was after Smith's death that it was said, * Nauvoo and Carthage will become the Mecca and Medina of the Mormon Prophet.* * Times and Seasons,' 5, 621.
63 « Digest of the Acts and Deliverances,' 1861, p. 483. The General Assembly of 1837 adjudge that the four synods of Gene- see, Geneva, Utica and Western Reserve were * out of connection with the Presbyterian Church.'
64 Hotchkin, p. 234.
136 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
nation, and man's inability to obey the commands of God. Another writer " goes deeper, and gives reasons for the undermining of High Calvinism. At this time, he observes, there was a suspicion that Western New York was altogether unsound ; in the conflict between the old doctrines and the new metaphysics, dangerous errors came through the candidates sent out as home missionaries,^^ with the consequence that there was an alarming loose- ness among young preachers.
Now all this had no small bearing on the mentality of the founder of Mormonism. The prophet of the backwoods was at an infinite remove from a thinker like Channing in his Moral Argument against Calvinism. ^'^ Yet the freer thought of the East had already reached these parts. It was to the ' New England influence ' that the Presbyterians hereabouts charged these ' dangerous errors.' ^^ Con- sidering the number of itinerants from the various
65 E. H. Gillet, 'History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America,' 1864, 2, 452.
66 By the Berkshire, Hampshire, Connecticut and other societies. For complete list see J. H. Dill, * Congregationalism in Western New York; Its Rise, Decline and Revival,' 1858, p. 10.
6T John Nichol, « American Literature,' 1882, p. 132 ff: — * New England Rationalism.'
68Gillett, 2, 452, cites the various overtures and deliverances. Drs. Taylor and Dwight were counted as * dangerous ' but Dr. Samuel Hopkins was held chiefly responsible for the fact that * within the bounds of the Presbyterian Church there were many, who supported, either wholly or in part, Hopkintonian Sentiments.'
THE SOURCES I37
home missionary societies at work in the Genesee country, it was not surprising that these new views ultimately found a devious way into the Book of Mormon. The steps between source and destination may be traced with some assurance/^ — with New England as the ' fountain head of heresy/ and the Geneva presbytery as the channel, a few trickles of rationalism were bound to seep into Joseph's skull. "^^
«9 For the * partial disintegration of Calvinism in communities where it has long been established,' compare George P. Fisher, ' History of Christian Doctrine,* 1896, p. 549. See also A. H. Strong, ' Systematic Theology,' 1893, Table of Old School and New School Views ; compare also Lewis Cheesman, * Differences between Old and New School Presbyterians,' 1848, p. 5 : * heresies privily brought in have corrupted a large part of the Presbyterian communion and are still artfully concealed under various dis- guises.* That Hopkins was the representative intermediary is evident from the list of his ninety-eight subscribers in New York State, as printed in his < System of Doctrines,* 1793. Compare Nathan Bangs, < Errors of Hopkinsianism,* New York, 1815 ; also, E. S. Ely, ' A contrast between Calvinism and Hopkinsianism,' New York, 181 1. From the latter it may be seen how Hopkins' views came to be verbally cited, among the * sixteen gross errors,* of the Western Memorial,
■^oBy comparing the 'Book of Mormon,' beginning with II Nephi, with the following table, it can be seen how Smith came to modify the Five Points into a Predestination not absolute, a De- pravity not total, a Grace not irresistible and so on.
HOPKINS* WORKS WESTERN MEMORIAL
I, 341. * Man has natural abil- § 9. * Man is in full possession
ity to perform every act which of all the ability necessary to a
God requires of him. full compliance with all the
I, 261. Men are sinners from commands of God,
138 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
birth through a divine constitu- tion, but are capable of dis- cerning the right and wrong.
I, 211, 235. Men will begin their existence as sinners but their sin is their own and a free act.'
§ 6. The posterity of Adam will always begin to sin, when they begin to exercise moral agency, but that original sin does not include a sinful bias.
§§6 and 14. Men will always begin to sin when they begin to exercise moral agency but with- out impairing the same.'
CHAPTER V THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY
CHAPTER V
THE author's mentality
In following up the sources of the Booh of Mor- mon, there is given a reconnaissance map of the author's mind. From the way he took in both cur- rent archaeology and its errors, and Calvinism and its contradictions, it is evident that, while his mental horizon was widening, his receptivity was greater than his reasoning, his imagination stronger than his discrimination. Furthermore, a volume that took at least two years to excogitate, plus nearly two years to write, should manifest some logical de- velopment. Such is not the fact: in I Nephi the writer swallowed Calvinism in a lump, in II Nephi he mixed with it some liberalism, but there the leavening process stopped. In the midst of seeming consistency there appear undigested fragments. One such is the speculation regarding the useful- ness of evil. The prophet falls foul of the problem of sin and this is his solution : —
* It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass; neither
141
142 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
wickedness; neither holiness nor misery; neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a com- pound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body, it must needs remain as dead, having no life, neither death nor corruption, nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of nought ; where- fore, there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God, and His eternal purposes ; and also, the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. And if ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteous- ness, there be no happiness. And if there be no right- eousness nor happiness, there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not, there is no God, And if there is no God, we are not, neither the earth : for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon ; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.' *
This is a fair sample of Joseph's early reasoning powers, yet what he lacked in logic he made up in feeling. Of impulsive nature, taking up thoughts as he found them in the air, he was forced at last into an emotional revolt against Calvinism. These were the days of total depravity, when the preacher affirmed that * Adam's sin, being made ours by im- putation, has exposed innumerable infants to Divine
• Book of Mormon,' pp. 62, 63. Speech of Nephi.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 143
wrath.' There was of course a public reaction against such teachings/ shown in the increase of more humane sentiments.* But since these moving forces were, as yet, in the background, it speaks well for the young prophet's heart, if not for his head, that he could misinterpret in such kindly fashion the abstract injustice of dogma. Like an- other writer, not far off, he makes a short apology for infants.'^ In the book of Mosiah, he says, ' infants fall in Adam, or in nature, yet none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little chil- dren. ' «
'Sermon of Dr. Twiss, prolocutor of the General Assembly, from the Christian Disciple ^ May and June 1823, quoted in G. E. Ellis, ' Half Century of the Unitarian Controversy,* 1857, p. 82.
sHotchkin, p. 136: 'Under the plain, unadulterated and un- adorned exhibitions of gospel truth, small children, in connexion with confirmed infidels and bold blasphemers, were heard mingling their cries for mercy.'
* Compare Henry Adams, « History of the United States,' 1891, pp. 239, 240 : — * In the second administration of Madison the struggle for existence was mitigated ; its first effect was the increasing cheer- fulness of religion. . , . For the first time in history, great bodies of men turned aside from the old religion, giving no better reason than it required them to believe in a cruel Deity.'
*John Read, *A Short Apology for Infants,' Poughkeepsie, New York, 1816.
6< Book of Mormon,' pp. 68-9, compare also : — (168) * The in- fant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; (197) And little children also have eternal life; (617) Little children cannot repent, wherefore it is an awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them.'
144 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Thus far it is clear that the author could manage a metaphor better than a syllogism. But this is only a tenth part of the ancient record, the remainder of which, according to the revelation of July, 1828, ' does contain all those parts of my gospel, which my holy prophets desired should come forth unto this people/ This body of divinity is what Smith constantly referred to as the ' plain and simple gos- pel/ That it was not plain is seen from its distor- tions of Presbyterianism, and that it was not simple from its other dogmatic borrowings. In evidence, one need but briefly glance at the other two sects which Joseph mentioned at the time of his first vision. With the spread of Baptist principles at this time,^ and with seven varieties of the denomination existing near by,^ it is natural that there should be set forth such variations as adult baptism, total im- mersion and baptism unto repentance.^ Further- more, in this Western Circuit, there was another
7 T. F. Curtis, ' The Progress of Baptist Principles in the last One Hundred Years,' 1855.
8 Near Ithaca there were * Hard Shell,' < Free Will,' and « Seventh Day * Baptists, also * Foot Washers,' ' Christ-ians ' and * Campbell- ites.' Compare also J. Chadwick, « New Light on the Subject of Infant Baptism,' 1832, Geneva, Cayuga County, N. Y.
9 'Book of Mormon,' (616) < It is solemn mockery before God that ye should baptize little children ' ; (503) * Ye shall immerse them in water ' ; (494) * Many were baptized unto repentance.'
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 145
denomination of larger numbers/^ and of greater influence upon the youthful convert. In after years Smith acknowledged that in 1820 he was 'some- what partial to the Methodist sect.'" This admis- sion goes far to explain the rhetorical tone of his book, — the peculiarity that the speeches of the an- cient prophets are filled with camp-meeting echoes, and catchwords of the old-time Methodist exhorter. Take for example the following:
'And now it came to pass that after Alma had spoken these words unto them, he sat down upon the ground, and Amulek arose and began to teach them, say- ing : My brethren, I think that it is impossible that ye should be ignorant of the things which have been spoken concerning the coming of Christ, who is taught by us to be the Son of God ; yea, I know that these things were taught unto you, bountifully, before your dissention from among us, and as ye have desired of my beloved brother, that he should make known unto you what ye should do, because of your afflictions; and he hath spoken some- what unto you to prepare your minds ; yea, and he hath exhorted you unto faith, and to patience ; yea, even that ye would have so much faith as even to plant the word in your hearts, that ye may try the experiment of its good- ness. . . .
Now there is not any man that can sacrifice his own blood, which will atone for the sins of another. Now if
*o Methodists claimed an enrollment of half a million in the United States in 1820. 'Encyclopaedia Brittanica,' article, * Meth- odism/
H * Biographical Sketches,' p. 75.
146 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
a man murdereth, behold, will our law, which is just, take the life of his brother? I say unto you, Nay. But the law requireth the life of him who hath murdered ; therefore there can be nothing, which is short of an Infi- nite atonement, which will suffice for the sins of the world ; therefore it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice : . . . this being the intent of this last sacrifice, to bring about the bowels of mercy, which overpowereth justice and bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance. And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exer- ciseth no faith unto repentance, is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice ; therefore, only unto him that hath faith unto repentance, is brought about the great and Eternal plan of redemption. Therefore may God grant unto you, my brethren, that ye may begin to exercise your faith unto repentance, that ye begin to call upon His holy name, that He would have mercy upon you; yea, cry unto Him for mercy; for He is mighty to save; yea, humble yourselves, and continue in prayer unto Him ; cry unto Him when ye are in your fields ; yea, over all your flocks ; cry unto Him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, midday, and evening ; yea, cry unto Him against the power of your enemies ; yea, cry unto Him against the Devil, who is an enemy to all righteousness. And now as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore I be- seech of you, that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end ; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness, wherein there can be no labor per-
THE AUTHOR^S MENTALITY 147
formed. Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.* ^'
Amulek's speech, with its offer of a present, free and full salvation, is reminiscent of the Wesleyan pietism once taught in Palmyra.^* Elsewhere in the book there are the more ordinary Methodist teach- ings, as to backsliding and restoration.^* Yet on the whole, the influence here exerted was more prac- tical than theoretical; one cause of the rapid spread of Mormonism was its partial adaptation of the ways and means of Methodism. Out of the latter s marvelous organization of local and itinerant clergy, with their various conferences, societies and circuits, the founder of the church of the Latter-day Saints extracted a dislocated hierarchy with unprecedented functions. What were the offices and duties of Mormon apostles and elders, evangelists and bish- ops, priests and teachers and deacons, may be ob- scurely seen in the last of the fourteen books.
12 « Book of Mormon,' pp. 335-8.
13 Hotchkin, p. 375. In 1807, at Palmyra, the preacher was an English Wesleyan.
14 « Book of Mormon,' (64) ' That they might repent, their state became a state of probation'; (551) 'The day of grace was passed with them. They did not come with contrite hearts.'
148 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Judging from a parallel revelation given in June, 1830,^^ this little book of Mormon is essentially a book of discipline and has presumably been added as an afterthought.*®
Without entering the penumbra of minor creeds," some idea has been gained of ' the confusion and strife among the different denominations/ in Joseph's fifteenth year. It is now ten years later and he has done little to reconcile the differences; instead he has but transferred to paper his ov^n obf ustication ; his ancient record, like an old-fashioned mirror, gives back images vague and ill defined.
To complete the framework of environment, and to show how it quadrates with the book, it is need- ful to examine a few incidental references, certain semi-political movements which disturbed the new settlements. These were, — fear of the Church of Rome, hatred of Infidelity and the agitation against Free Masonry. The strongest hints against Roman Catholicism occur early in the book, such as in the preface of Nephi's vision of the future of America: —
^5 * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 24.
^6 * Book of Mormon,* p. 609, * Wherefore, I write a few more things, contrary to that which I had supposed ; for I had sup- posed not to have written any more; but I write a few more things, that perhaps they may be of worth unto my brethren, the Lamanites, in some future day according to the will of the Lord/
^■^ For a general tirade against the sects, compare * Book of Mor. mon,' 566, « O ye wicked and perverse. . , . O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers,* etc.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 149
' And it came to pass that I saw among the nations of the Gentiles the foundation of a great church. And the angel said unto me, Behold the foundation of a church, which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity.
And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abomi- nable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it. And I also saw gold, and silver, and silks, and scarlets, and fine twined linen, and all manner of precious clothing ; and I saw many harlots. And the angel spake unto me, saying. Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church ; and also for the praise of the world, do they destroy the Saints of God, and bring them down into captivity.' ^^
This covert and virulent attack may perhaps be traced to Joseph's reading; for it is in keeping with the sentiments of the day. In 1831, the prophet condescended to approve of Fox's Book of Martyrs.^''
18 < Book of Mormon/ pp. 25, 26. Compare also 31, 56, 113, 117, 120, 234, 322, 337.
19 E. Stevenson, * Reminiscences of Joseph the Prophet/ p. 5 : * In parting from under our roof, the prophet expressed a desire to have a loan of a large English " Book of Martyrs," which we pos- sessed, promising to return it to us when he should meet us again in Zion, in the State of Missouri, which he did, and on returning it said, " I have by the aid of the Urim and Thummim, seen those martyrs, and they were honest, devoted followers of Christ, accord- ing to the light they possessed, and they will be saved." *
ISO THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
If before this he had not run across one of the popu- lar ' Cruelty Books/ yet, as a boy, it is not unlikely that he had a look at the ubiquitous New England Primer with its gruesome woodcuts of the victims of Bloody Mary, burning at the stake.'° At any rate, the young convert's spiritual advisers fomented the hatred of Roman Catholics. Any back-country exhorter was welcome to throw a stick at the Man of Sin, while the anti-popery campaign literature comprised works fit only for the expurgated list of decency."
But in this era of political good feeling, bigotry did not stop with words. On the very field, where two centuries before Brebeuf and other Jesuit mis- sionaries had suffered death at the hands of the sav- ages," a Protestant family, it was alleged, now ran a fearful risk in harboring a Romanist.'' Finally the
20 Compare P. L. Ford, ' The New England Primer ' ; various cuts of the Man of Sin. The edition of 1779 contains a picture of the burning of Mr. John Rogers, 1554. * A few days before his death he wrote the following advice to his children : " Abhor the arrant whore of Rome and all her blasphemies, And drink not of her cursed cup; obey not her decrees." *
21 Harriet Martineau, * Society in America,* 1837, 4th edition, 2, 322 : « Parents put into their children's hands, as religious books, the foul libels against the Catholics, which are circulated through- out the country. In the west, I happened to find a book of this kind, which no epithet but filthy will describe.* Compare Maria Monk, « Awful Disclosures,* 1836.
22 Francis Parkman, 'Jesuits in North America,* 1896, p. 122.
23 J. G. Shea, 'History of the Catholic Church in the United States,* 1890, p. 498.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 151
opposition took an organized form, and the Protest- ant Association, with its organ The Protestant gath- ered old calumnies and framed new ones. To trace the growth of this early form of the A. P. A., is going beyond the limits of the Book of Mormon. All that should be noted is that the author shared in the popular narrowness and misapprehension.
To proceed to another sign of the times, which left a water mark in the Mormon documents. The agitation against Papistry was matched by the agi- tation against Infidelity. For the sake of continuity a specific line of resistance may be followed as far back as 1735. In the first heresy trial in the Presby- terian church in America, one of Benjamin Frank- lin's friends ^^ was condemned for preaching that Christianity was largely a revival or new edition of the laws and precepts of nature." But the deistic drift could not be stopped. Especially after the Revolution, was the critical period in politics, en- joined with a critical period in orthodoxy. Then came the strictures of the General Assembly of 1798, which fulminated against the ' abounding infidelity, which, in many instances, tends to atheism itself . . . which assumes a front of daring impiety and possesses a mouth filled with blasphemy.'"
24 Compare, ' A Letter to a Friend in the Country,' 1735. 25Briggs, p. 231. 26Gillet, I, 296; 2, no.
152 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
The New England clergy also warned against the danger of infidel philosophy," and, in 1810, a mis- sionary of the Connecticut Society, who had pene- trated into the neighborhood of Lake Erie, reported that infidelity abounded to an alarming degree and in various shapes in the district, west of the Military Tract. '^
The rate of movement in philosophic thought is one thing, how it affected the masses another. The tastes of the people being given so largely to affairs of state and matters of theology, greater po- litical freedom was followed by greater religious freedom. Indeed, to many eyes, after the second war with England," the land of liberty threatened to become a land of license.^^ The political relations with France had already prepared the way for French infidelity. ^^ On the Ohio there arose free- thinking societies, affiliated with the Jacobin club
2' Compare Barrett Wendell, < A Literary History of America,' New York, 1900, p. 127. 28Gillett, 2, no.
29 J. F. Jameson, < The History of Historical Writing in America, 1891.
30 Compare Dr. Charles Caldwell, * A Defense of the Medical Profession Against the Charge of Infidelity and Irreligion,' 1824; also Timothy Dwight, * The Nature and Danger of French Infi- delity,* 1798, and < Infidel Philosophy,* 1798.
31 Noah Porter, < Deism in America,* in Ueberweg*s * History of Philosophy,* 1892, 2, 451.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 153
of Philadelphia;''' on the Genesee ^^ there was an infi- del club, with a circulating library comprising the works of Volney and Hume, Voltaire and Paine.
It is with the last writer that the concern lies. The others were discussed in educated circles; *Tom' Paine's sayings were bandied about by the ig- norant.^* His Age of Reason being sold cheap or sometimes given away, Joseph may have laid hands on a copy,^^ but, as heretofore, other than literary sources were open to him. The people's lyceum was now in its golden age, and the boy who was noted among his companions for his seriousness,''* would have taken naturally to the portentous gravity of the local Thespian society or debating junto. ^^ Even without membership in the latter, the topics of the day reached the lad's ears; he now made visits to town to get the weekly paper, ^® and to sit chatting in the rustic row. There, in the
32Gillett, 1,420.
33 At Scottsville, near Caledonia. Hotchkin, p. 90.
34 W. H. Venable, * Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley,' 1891, pp. 235, 238.
35 G. Q. Cannon, < Life of Joseph Smith,' 1888, p. 335 : — * Joseph in later life believed what he asserted against the opinions of a scep- tical and materialistic age, when Voltaire and Tom Paine were the authorities.'
36 Newel Knight, * Journal,' p. 47.
3^ A Hall of the Young Men's Association existed at Palmyra in l830.--Kennedy, p. 14. 38 < Biographical Sketches/ p. 98.
154 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
^country store, the subjects of discussion were as varied as the wares, and in the tavern, religion, like politics, was the delight of those that talked for talk's sake. As the boy, through inclination and through poverty, ^^ was less of a reader than a talker, it is not meant to connect him, except remotely, to the culture of the day. In truth, as regards polite learning, he was on the margin of cultivation; the recent awakening of American letters had no in- fluence on him; he was farther in spirit than in space from such contemporaries as Brockden Brown, Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving. For all that, he had his intellectual interests; local creeds were his aids to reflection, and freethinkers his stimulus to controversy. Before discovering how, in the Book of Mormon, he incorporated, only to re- fute, the current deistic arguments, the narrow spirit of the times should be noted.
The hard lot of the thinker who would be free was recorded by the novelist and observed by the traveler. One of Cooper's heroines is applauded for being 'properly impressed with the horrors of a deist's doctrine,* while another 'shrunk from his company.' *° A foreign traveler observed that unbe- lief was treated as a crime.*^ This social ostracism
39 'Times and Seasons,' 3, 771.
40 T. R. Lounsbury, < Life of Fenimore Cooper,' p. 26.
41 Harriet Martineau, p. 335, « I was told of one and another.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 155
came near leading to political disability. Some wished to see regulations made by which deists should be excluded from oflRce. But the Jefferson administration, although suspected of infidelity," allowed no tampering with the rights of conscience." But the good sense and moderation that forestalled any approach to a reunion of church and state, was not to be found in the sectary. The author of the Book of Mormon represents America as indeed a land of free speech, yet the advocate of a prehistoric deism is called Anti-Christ. He quotes opaquely from the Age of Reason and for his hardness of heart is punished both by the High Priest and the Chief Judge:—
* And it came to pass in the seventeenth year of the reign of the Judges, there was continual peace. But it came to pass in the latter end of the seventeenth year, there came a man into the land of Zarahemla ; and he was called Anti-Christ, for he began to preach unto the people against the prophecies which had been spoken by
with an air of mystery, like that with which one is informed of any person being insane, or intemperate or insolvent, that so and so was thought to be an unbeliever.*
42 < Of this dangerous, deistical and Utopian school, a great per- sonage from Virginia is a favored pupil. . . , His principles relish so strongly of Paris, and are seasoned in such a profusion of French Garlic, that he offends the whole nation.* Joseph Dennie in the Portfolio^ Number I, 1805, quoted in Stedman and Hutch- inson, * A Library of American Literature,* 1890, 4, 250.
*3 James Schouler, « History of the United States,* 1882, p. 251.
IS6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the prophets, concerning the coming of Christ. Now there was no law against a man*s belief. . . . And this Anti-Christ, whose name was Korihor, and the law could have no hold upon him. And he began to preach unto the people, that there should be no Christ. And after this manner did he preach, saying : O ye that are bound down under a foolish and vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things? Why do ye look for a Christ? For no man can know of anything which is to come. Behold, these things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by the holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers. How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see ; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ. Ye look for- ward and say, that ye see a remission of your sins. But behold, it is the effects of a phrensied mind : and this derangement of your minds comes because of the tradi- tion of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so. And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life, according to the management of the creature ; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength ; and whatsoever a man did, was no crime. And thus he did preach unto them, leading away the hearts of many, causing them to lift up their heads in their wickedness ; yea, leading away many women, and also men, to com- mit whoredoms ; telling them that when a man was dead, that was the end thereof. . . .
And it came to pass that the High Priest said unto him, Why do ye go about perverting the ways of
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 157
the Lord ? Why do ye teach this people that there shall be no Christ, to interrupt their rejoicings ? Why do ye speak against all the prophecies of the holy prophets? Now the High Priest's name was Giddonah. And Kori- hor said unto him because I do not teach the foolish tra- ditions of your fathers, and because I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordi- nances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but be brought down according to thy words. Ye say that this people is a free people. Behold, I say they are in bondage. Ye say that those ancient prophecies are true. Behold, I say that ye do not know that they are true. Ye say that this people is a guilty and a fallen people, because of the transgression of a parent. Be- hold, I say that a child is not guilty because of its parents. And ye also say that Christ shall come. But behold, I say that ye do not know that there shall be a Christ. And ye say also, that He shall be slain for the sins of the world ; and thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires ; and ye keep them down, even as it were, in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, that they durst not look up with boldness, and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges ; yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own, lest they should offend their priests, who do yoke them according to their desires, and have brought them to believe by their traditions, and their dreams, and their whims, and their visions, and their pre- tended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offend some unknown
158 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
being, which they say is God ; a being who never has been seen or known, who never was nor ever will be. Now when the High Priest and the Chief Judge saw the hardness of his heart ; yea, when they saw that he would revile even against God, they would not make any reply to his words ; but they caused that he should be bound ; and they delivered him up into the hands of the officers, and sent him to the land of Zarahemla, that he might be brought before Alma and the Chief Judge, who was governor over all the land.
And it came to pass that when he was brought be- fore Alma and the Chief Judge, he did go on in the same manner as he did in the land of Gideon ; yea, he went on to blaspheme. And he did rise up in great swelling words before Alma, and did revile against the priests and teachers, accusing them of leading away the people after the silly traditions of their fathers, for the sake of glutting in the labors of the people.' **
44 Compare, in order, with the above passage the following ex- tracts from ' The Writings of Thomas Paine,* edited by Moncure D. Conway, 1896.
« Book of Mormon.' * Alma,* « Age of Reason,' Part I, edi-
Chapter xvi, pp. 321-324. *Ye tion of 1793. * As Mystery and cannot know of things which ye Miracle took charge of the past do not see. and the present. Prophecy took
charge of the future. Those to whom a prophecy should be told, could not tell whether the man
Ye say that ye see a remis- prophesied or lied, or whether sion of your sins. But this de- it had been revealed to him, or rangement of your minds comes whether he conceited it. Moral because of the traditions of your justice cannot take the innocent fathers. . . . There could be no for the guilty, . . . the fabulous atonement made for the sins of theory of redemption, that one
THE AUTHOR^S MENTALITY 159
The spirit of intolerance diffused through the
men, but every man fared in this life according to the man- agement of the creature. When a man was dead, that was the end thereof.
A child is not guilty because of its parents.
person could stand in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services for him.
I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. That God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, , . . This is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
The means employed in all time to deceive the people. . . . The church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue. The trade of priest is for the sake of gain. From the first preachers the fraud went on, . . . till the idea of its being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true. Wild and whim- sical systems of belief have been fabricated. The three means to impose upon man- kind are Mystery, Miracle and Prophecy.' Closer examination of this passage from Alma betrays the usual haphazard borrowing. Alma's counter-argument of the * planets which move in their regular form,' was taken from the enemy ; it was, in fact one of the chief deistic arguments for belief in a First Cause. (Compare « Age of Reason,' Part I, Chapters 9, 1 1 and espec- ially 13, * The Religious Ideas inspired by Nature,' and also in Paine's citation of Addison's Paraphrase of the 19th Psalm, the lines * and all the planets as they roll,' and * the hand that made us is divine.') If Joseph here showed a lack of logic, the fault was not individual but collective. People confused deism with athe- ism; Paine was justly called 'Citizen Egotism,' but he was no atheist
Under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests ... ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, . . . that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, — lest they should offend their priests, who have brought them to believe by their traditions, and their dreams, and their whims, and their visions, and their pretended mysteries.*
i6o THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Book of Mormon has meaning; it places the docu- ment well within the first third of the century, the 'fermenting period' of American thought. And there is a third and final popular movement herein reflected, which fixes, not only the time, but the place of the record. The frequent allusions to 'wicked and secret societies, wicked and secret combinations,**^ point to the agitation against Free Masonry in New York State, beginning in 1826. The abduction and alleged murder of William Mor- gan by some of the Masonic fraternity, although without the consent of the central authority, caused an unparalleled excitement This mechanic of Ba- tavia, reported to be preparing a book divulging the secrets of the order, was seized, haled off to Fort Niagara and suddenly made away with.'^^ It was be- lieved that judges, juries and witnesses, if Masons, would exonerate the culprits ; at any rate, the outrage resulted in the abolishing of local lodges,*^ and in the rise of the Anti-Masonic party. It is not because of its political,*^ but its religious effects that traces of this agitation are to be found in the Mormon Bible; the testimonies of Masons were considered to be
*6 * Book of Mormon,* pp. 589, 595, 596.
46 Jenkins, • History of the Political Parties in the State of New York,' Auburn, 1846, pp. 327-332.
<7 Butler and Crittenden, < Rochester Semi-Centennial,' 1884, p. 63.
48 McClintock and Strong, * Encylopedia,' article Mormonism, 6, 624 ff.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY i6i
Jesuitical evasions, and, above all, the so called de- istical tendencies of their formulae v^ere alleged to be destructive of Christianity.*^ Inasmuch as this affair took place in the year in which Joseph came of age, as the victim was arrested at Canandaigua, only nine miles away, and as rumor, even in the wilderness, was swift, '° without the aid of the cur- rent pamphlets of exposure," the Morgan excite- ment got into the young prophet's brain and was bound to come out in his writings." The passage from the 'abridgement taken from the Book of Ether,' may be offered as a final bit of internal evi- dence, as to the time, place and circumstances at the coming forth of the Booh of Mormon : —
* But behold, satan did stir up the hearts of the more part of the Nephites, insomuch that they did unite with those bands of robbers, and did enter into their cove- nants, and their oaths, that they would protect and pre- serve one another, in whatsoever difficult circumstances they should be placed in, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings.
And it came to pass that they did have their signs,
49 Isaac Sharpless, * Two Centuries of Pennsylvania History,' 1900, pp. 291-2.
50 De Tocqueville, p. 406, * It is difficult to imagine the incred- ible rapidity with which thought circulates in the midst of these deserts.'
" Jenkins, p. 355.
52 Compare also ' Book of Commandments,' p. 55.
i62 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
yea, their secret signs, and their secret words; and this that they might distinguish a brother who had en- tered into the covenant, that whatsoever wickedness his brother should do, he should not be injured by his brother, nor by those who did belong to his band, who had taken this covenant ; and thus they might murder, and plunder, and steal, and commit whoredoms, and all manner of wickedness, contrary to the laws of their country and also the laws of their God ; and whosoever of those who belonged to their band, should reveal unto the world of their wickedness and their abominations, should be tried, not according to the laws of their coun- try, but according to the laws of their wickedness, which had been given by Gadianton and Kishkumen. Now behold, it is these secret oaths and covenants, which Alma commanded his son should not go forth unto the world, lest they should be a means of bringing down the people unto destruction. . . .
And now I, Moroni, do not write the manner of their oaths and combinations, for it hath been made known unto me that they are had among all people, and they are had among the Lamanites, and they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speak- ing, and also the destruction of the people of Nephi; and whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinat- ions, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed, for the Lord will not suffer that the blood of His saints, which shall be shed by them, shall always cry unto Him from the ground for vengeance upon them, and yet He avengeth them not ; wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom in God that these things should be shewn unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 163
combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain, and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you ; yea, even the sword of the justice of the eternal God, shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction, if ye shall suffer these things to be; wherefore the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you, that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you, or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain ; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who build it up.' "
Without further quotation or digression, it re- mains to get at a psychological estimate of the Booh of Mormon. As literature it is not worth reading, — the educated Mormons fight shy of it; ^* as history it merely casts a side light on a frontier settlement in the twenties; but as biography it has value, it gives, as it were, a cross section of the author's brain. The subject may be most inclusively studied from the standpoint of the constructive imagina- tion, its materials and range, its phases aesthetic and intellective, its aspects emotional and possibly moral." So first, as in the case of the progenitors and their dreams, the objects and scenes and inci-
^3 « Book of Mormon,' pp. 446, 588, 589. " Woodward, p. 4.
^^ Compare James Sully, * The Human Mind,* 1892, Chapter v, •The Productive Imagination.*
i64 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
dents of experience furnished the stuff for the growth of Joseph's mental inwards. In sticking to the plenary inspiration of the Book of Mormon, the Saints make Smith greater than a genius, for whom there is no such thing as a perfectly new creation, or freedom from the bounds and checks of his situ- ation. But to go on: like the events already cited, this entire 'Sacred History of America' is woven out of those ideas which interested the people of Western New York about 1830. Despite such lim- itation, the range of Joseph's fancy was extensive; his imagination was not trammeled by his under- standing; his information came orally, and there were few books to check him: hence his anachron- isms. From the same lack of knowledge, his pre- cognitions of the future are naught. Joseph's prophecies are pseudographs, — events that had happened put as if they were yet to happen. ^^ And the aesthetic was as lacking as the prophetic. The ' poems of Joseph ' are not half bad, but they are not his; while the picture of his favorite Lam- anites is not poetic but prosaic; Cooper idealized the Indian, Smith made him repulsive.
Of the intellective phase of his imagination, some- thing more favorable can be said, yet with strength
5« Contrast Thompson, p. 229, < The " Book of Mormon " is a true and divinely inspired record, therefore the prophecies and promises contained in it will all be fulfilled.'
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 165
there was weakness. The Booh of Mormon, as a storehouse of sectarianism, implies a retentive mem- ory and, at the same time, a lack of discriminative judgment. Granted that the style was inflated, be- cause that was the style of the day," and that the thoughts were diffuse, because dictated, yet the feebleness of the critical faculty is shown in various ways. In the midst of the ancient story, modern inventions are grotesquely inserted; the language is biblical, but the ideas are local. The lost tribes of the Jews emigrate to America in vessels which are a cross between Noah's ark and an Erie canal boat. This occasional mixture of sense and nonsense may be matched among his co-religionists, for other readers took the Scriptures literally and interpreted fancifully;'' nevertheless Joseph's imagination ap- pears to have been seldom controlled by the judicial spirit. In the recension of the first edition he evinced no capacity to select and reject; to this day there remain strange puerilities. After the natural
^' De Tocqueville, 2, 184, gives a characteristic explanation
* Why American Writers and Orators often use an Inflated Style *: —
• In democratic communities, each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he perceives only the immense form of society at large, or the more imposing aspect of mankind.'
58 « Book of Mormon,' p 53, Orson Pratt, in footnote, interprets (Isaiah, 49), *my highways shall be exalted,' as railways exalted in the Rocky Mountains.
i66 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
outburst against free masonry, there occurs the fol- lowing curiosity of literature: —
< And now I, Moroni, proceed with my record. There- fore behold, it came to pass that because of the secret combinations of Akish and his friends, behold they did overthrow the Kingdom of Omer. And the Lord warned Omer in a dream that he should depart out of the land, wherefore Omer passed by the hill of Shim, and came to a place which was called Ablom ; and after that he had anointed Emer to be king the house of Emer did pros- per exceedingly and they had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms ; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the ele- phants and cureloms and cumoms/®
Joseph must have been thinking of these his pre- historic Jabberwoks, when he told his followers to
59 * Book of Mormon/ pp. 588-590. Another puzzle in etymology is to be found on p. 571 : — * Ether was a descendant of Coriantor; Coriantor was the son of Moron ; and Moron was the son of Ethem ; and Ethem was the son of Ahah ; and Ahah was the son of Seth ; and Seth was the son of Shiblon ; and Shiblon was the son of Com ; and Com was the son of Coriantum ; and Coriantum was the son of Amnigaddah; and Amnigaddah was the son of Aaron; and Aaron was a descendant of Heth, who was the son of Hearthom ; and Hearthom was the son of Lib ; and Lib was the son of Kish ; and Kish was the son of Corum ; and Corum was the son of Levi ; and Levi was the son of Kim ; and Kim was the son of Morian- ton ; and Morianton was a descendant of Riplakish ; and Riplakish was a son of Shez; and Shez was the son of Heth; and Heth was the son of Com ; and Com was the son of Coriantum ; and Corian- tum was the son of Emer ; and Emer was the son of Omer ; and Omer was the son of Shule ; and Shule was the son of Kib ; and Kib was the son of Orihah, who was the son of Jared. *
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 167
beware of 'a fanciful, flowery and heated imagina- tion. ^ But seriously, whatever the sources of these humors and conceits, they are characteristic of the whole tribe of Smith. Joseph's hypertrophy of imagination was inherited: his aunt composed a vivid poem on death and the grave ;^^ his mother could almost see the flutter of demons' wings; his father had a panorama of visions; his grandfather Mack complained of his mind being 'imagining but agitated.' Environment likewise had an influence. Brought up in the area swept by revivals — the * burnt- over district ' as it was called — his imagination was fired by his feelings. Thereby he escaped the cold logic of the schools; he also went beyond the limits of probability. All this had an effect on his charac- ter. Ignorant of the subconscious force of un- checked reverie, he considered his every whimsy to be inspired. How far his imagination fostered his credulity, how far he became conscious that his 'translating' was mainly automatic, whether as a dramatically imagined 'seer and revelator,' he was deceived or deceiving, — these are questions for the moralist to decide, after the results are in. The problem, now, is one of letters rather than of ethics, — to see how the characteristics of the book fit the character of the man.
60* Times and Seasons,* i, 102. ^^ * Biographical Sketches,' p. 29.
i68 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
The four chief marks of the Book of Mormon are a redundant style, fragmentary information, a fanci- ful archaeology, and an unsystematic theology. The redundancy of style fits the description given by a lawyer, who defended the prophet in his Missouri troubles in 1839. He says, 'In conversa- tion he was slow, and used too many words to ex- press his ideas and would not generally go directly to a point/ ^* It was this verbosity that made Joseph magnify his microscopic facts many dia- meters. The inherent paucity of his information accords with the observation of Josiah Quincy, that the prophet ' talked as from a strong mind utterly unenlightened by the teachings of history.'*^ The same thing explains Joseph's lifelong delight in pseudo-archaeology, from his own fireside tales to the citing of Central American discoveries as ' more proofs of the Book of Mormon, as a historical and religious record, written in ancient times by a branch of the house of Israel, who peopled America and from whom the Indians are descended.' ^ Now these very flights of fancy were part and parcel of Smith's strange being. If they are not to be con- nected with the roving habits of his progenitors, they were at least nurtured by the free life of the
«2 p. H. Burnett, 'Recollections of a Pioneer,' 1880, p. 66 63 < Figures of the Past,* p. 399. 64 « Times and Seasons,' i, 69.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 169
forest. The boy who withdrew at will into a past world of his own, was the youth who scoured the country for hidden treasure, and the young man who oscillated across the v/idth of the state ®^ in search of the elusive gold plates.
Finally his bodily movements are matched by his mental restlessness, — the fourth mark of the man. In his logic he skips the middle term ; in his theology he darts from creed to creed; as defender of the faith against Romanism or Infidelity, he is impatient, intolerant. In fine, it may be said that Joseph Smith, in all respects, although in exaggerated form, showed himself the type of Western pioneer, as he was contrasted with the Easterner. Of that type a foreign traveler observed, ' their business is conducted with an almost feverish excitement, . . . their passions are more intense, their relig- ious morality less authoritative, and their convic- tions less firm.'^
To adjust one's ideas of the mental ability of the imaginative, emotional, young American, a com- parison may be made with a similar case in English literature. Going back to the reign of George 111 the origin of the Book of Mormon has an instruct- ive likeness to that of the Rowley myth. Thomas
^5 For Joseph's movements between Lake Erie and the Susque* hanna, see Appendix III, Table II. 66 De Tocqueville, i, 413.
I70 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Chatterton,^^ 'the marvelous boy 'of Bristol, was born in 1752. He was the son of a drunken school- master and a descendant of a line of sextons a century and a half long. Brought up in the shadow of the Church of St. Mary Redcliflfe, a dreamy, secretive lad, delighting in heraldry, blackletter manuscripts and local antiquities, at the age of sixteen he brought forth a series of pseudo-antique poems, which, at first, deceived the very elect. Although taught but little and with straitened means, there rose up before the eye of his fancy the mediaeval walls and towers of his native town. To obtain evidence for his imag- inings, a monkish pseudonym was adopted. The document, which he sent to Horace Walpole, bore the title, ' The Ryse of Peyncteynge in Englande, Wroten by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Master Cany nge.'^ Walpole was interested but not taken in; the dubious authorship of the Ossianic poems was still in his mind. Meanwhile the critical authorities showed up the skilful forgery, but others were gullible; the Bristol historian accepted Chatterton's fiction for fact, and there sprung up a group of clerical admirers who dabbled in the antique.*® As
6'^ Compare Henry S. Beers, * A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century/ 1899, Chapter x; also David Masson * Chatterton/ 190 1.
«8T. H. Ward, 'The English Poets,' 1891, 3, 400.
69 Compare the second edition of the Antiques y 1783, by Dean Milles of Exeter, and of the Society of Antiquaries, in which • the genuineness of their antiquity was considered and defended.'
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 171
to the literary value of the works * wroten by T. Rowleie ' and of the * account written by the hand of Mormon/ comparisons are odious; yet the com- ing forth of both arose under somewhat like condi- tions. In the days of each young pseudologist, the literature of disguise was rife. Chatterton was preceded by Walpole's pseudonymus Castle of OtrantOy by the Reliques called Percy's, by McPher- son's Fingaly and other poems attributed to ancient Scottish bards.
And such, in relative measure were the surround- ings of the translator of the 'Plates of Nephi.' What happened in Britain was happening here. By his Knickerbocker History of New York, Wash- ington Irving was showing to Anglo-Americans of culture how honey could be brought forth out of the dead lion. The Philistines also had their riddles. The puritanic who eschewed novels, were yet devouring romances. In Massachusetts a parch- ment inscribed with Hebrew characters, being dug up on an ' Indian hill ' was accepted as an ' Indian Bible,' ^° although scoffers pronounced it the phylactery of some wandering Jew of a peddlar. In New York state Priest's American Antiquities went through three editions in one year,^^ while rumors of a 'Canada Gold Bible' flew over the
'0 H. II. Bancroft, * Works,' 5, 89 ; compare also P. P. Pratt, p. 1 16. '1 ' Bibliotheca Americana,' 15, 85.
172 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
border." Finally in Ohio the Reverend Solomon Spaulding's romance of ancient America, entitled a ' Manuscript Found/ was creating some stir.
How far did Joseph Smith fasten on this literary driftwood, as it floated on the current of the times ? It is here unnecessary to follow the ebb and flow of the tide of speculation. In spite of a continuous stream of conjectural literature, it is as yet impossible to pick out any special document as an original source of the Book of Mormon. In particular, the commonly accepted Spaulding theory is insoluble from external evidence and disproved by internal evidence." Joseph Smith's * Record of the Indians ' is a product indigenous to the New York 'Wilderness,' and the authentic work of its 'author and proprietor.' Outwardly, it reflects the local color of Palmyra and Manchester, inwardly, its complex of thought is a replica of Smith's muddled brain. This monument of misplaced energy was possible to the impression- able youth constituted and circumstanced as he was. The acts of Nephi are indeed the acts of Joseph : — 'and upon the plates which I made, I did engraven the record of my father, and also of our journeyings in the wilderness, and the prophecies of my father; and also many of my own prophecies have I en- graven upon them.'
72 Schroeder, p. 55. " See Appendix III.
THE AUTHOR'S MENTALITY 173
It is now in order to trace the public execution of the scheme, — from the first inkling of the plates in 1823 to the thrice-repeated prophecy of 1829, that ' a great and marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.'
CHAPTER VI PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR
CHAPTER VI
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR
The name of author and proprietor of the Book of Mormon was inadvertently assumed and quickly discarded. The title of prophet, seer and revelator was a growth/ Joseph's first prophecy, at the age of eighteen, concerned Deacon Jessup and the widow's cow;* his last revelation, called the Appendix, concerned the second advent.' In their variety Smith's prophetic utterances comprised items on the Ancient of days, Boarding-houses, Celestial glory, the Day of vengeance, Emma Smith, Far West City, — and so on through the alphabet. As head of the church. Smith once said, ' We never enquire at the hand of God for special revelation only in case of there being no previous revelation to suit the case.' * The acceptance of these allocu- tions among his followers passes all understanding,
1 * Book of Commandments,* Chapter xxii, April 6th, 1830. — « Thou shalt be called a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle, an elder.
''Biographical Sketches,' p. 91.
•* Doctrine and Covenants,' § 133.
*« Times and Seasons,' 5, 753.
177
178 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
unless their notions and crotchets are taken into account. Among them there was an underlying belief in the predictive and oracular. Thus Daniel Tyler said that his grandfather prophesied that his father would live to see the true church organized; and he himself joined the Latter-day Saints, because it was predicted that he should become a preacher of the gospel.^ Wilford Woodruff revolts at the assertions of his Presbyterian friends that there are to be no more prophecies and revelations. In his perturbation he walks by the sea and receives * the sign of the prophet Jonah : a large fish rises near the shore and looks at him with penetrating eye.' ^ He allies himself to Joseph the wonder-worker because of what old prophet Mason had predicted, years before, about the restoration of primitive gifts.
Joseph succeeded in his vaticinations because the ground was prepared ; his was a prophetic neighbor- hood. Jemima Wilkinson, the Sibyl of Crooked Lake, was not disturbed in her mouthings, since she advertised the region opened up by Phelps and Gorham.^ The Shakers, in Wayne County, were uttering millennial warnings.® More rabid Miller- arians infested the parts around Rochester, although
6* Leaves from my Journal,* pp. i, 44.
6 * Scraps of Biography,* pp. 21, 22.
7 J. M. Parke, * Rochester,' 1884.
8 « Millennial Church, or United Society of Believers,* Albany, 1823.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 179
it was not until October 25th, 1844, that the followers of Miller took a red aurora for the final conflagration, and gathered in their ascension robes to meet the last day.* But the Mormon prophet did not make the mistake of selecting a date for the end of the world. ^^ His eschatology possessed an air of practicality. His millennium was, on the whole, marked by such an indefinite immediateness that there was little to criticize. He gives this confi- dential statement: —
* I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice repeat the following : —
* Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man : therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter.*
I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appear- ing, or whether I should die and thus see His face.'"
Apostle Pratt, who derided the Millerites and their dates, asserted that ' Joseph Smith never was mis-
» Parke, pp. 251-3.
10 William Miller, « Evidence of the Second Coming of Christ about the year 1843/ Troy, 1836.
11 i Doctrine and Covenants,' § 130.
i8o THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
taken in his revelations." Unfortunately ten years before this Smith had made his classic blunder in telling Bishop Whitney to go to New York, Albany and Boston, and 'warn the people of those cities that the hour of their judgment is nigh/^' But in general as a prophet of woe, Joseph's forebodings were well timed ; he had learned when to get on the bear side of the millennial market. Thus, the persecutions of the Latter-day church and the gen- eral financial depression were coincident with this announcement : —
* Hearken, O ye people of my church, the voice of warning shall be unto all people, by the mouths of my disciples, whom I have chosen in these last days.
And they shall go forth and none shall stay them, for I the Lord have commanded them.
Behold, this is mine authority, and the au- thority of my servants, and my Preface unto
"'Times and Seasons,* 5, 655. Smith's followers, at this time, showed less sense than he; thus Martin Harris prophesied: — •Within four years from September, 1832, there will not be one wicked person left in the United States ; that the righteous will be gathered to Zion (Missouri), and that there will be no President over these United States after that time. Second : I do hereby assert and declare that within four years from the date hereof, every sectarian and religious denomination in the United States shall be broken down, and every Christian shall be gathered unto the Mormonites, and the rest of the human race shall perish. If these things do not take place, I will hereby consent to have my hands separated from my body.'
13 < Doctrine and Covenants,'' g 84.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR i8i
the Book of my Commandments, which I have given them to publish unto you, O inhabitants of the earth : —
Wherefore, fear and tremble, O ye people, for what I the Lord have decreed, in them, shall be fulfilled;
And verily, I say unto you, that they who go forth, bearing these tidings unto the inhabitants of the earth, to them is power given, to seal both on earth and in heaven, the unbelieving and rebellious ;
Yea, verily, to seal them up unto the day when the wrath of God shall be poured out upon the wicked, without measure ;
Unto the day when the Lord shall come to recompense unto every man according to his work, and measure to every man according to the measure which he has measured to his fel- low man.
Wherefore the voice of the Lord is unto the ends of the earth, that all that will hear may hear:
Prepare ye, prepare ye for that which is to come, for the Lord is nigh ;
And the anger of the Lord is kindled, and his sword is bathed in heaven, and it shall fall upon the inhabitants of the earth ;
Wherefore I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph.* ^*
^* * Book of Commandments/ Chapter i. For the orthodox view of these coincidences, compare * Joseph the Seer,* p. 191: — *The persecutions of 1838, in Missouri, were clearly set forth in a
1 82 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
The voice of warning to all people was accom- panied with promises of comfort to the Saints. In January, 1831, there came this message : 'Behold the enemy is combined, fear not for the kingdom is yours and I hold forth and deign to give unto you greater riches, even the land of promise ; and that ye might escape the power of the enemy, I gave unto you the commandment, that ye should go to the Ohio/"
The spiritual timeliness of the early oracles is in marked contrast to the unedifying defmiteness of the later covenants and commandments. One ex- ception should be noted. A month before the founding of the Church * a commandment, of God and not of man,' was given to Martin Harris. In this it was said : *Thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon. Pay the printer's debt. Misery thou shalt receive, if thou wilt slight these coun-
prophecy given through Joseph Smith, at Kirtland, Ohio, July 23d, 1837, one year and more before the persecution occurred. See < Doctrine and Covenants,* 105 : 9. It reads : * Verily, verily, I say unto you, darkness covereth the earth, and gross darkness the minds of the people, and all flesh has become corrupt before my face. Behold, vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth — a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation, of weeping, of mourning, of lamentation — and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord. And upon my house [the church] shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord.*
>5 < Book of Commandments,' Chapter 40,
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 183
sels.* '" As time went on the personal equation and the dollar mark became more conspicuous. On April 26th, 1832, a month after being tarred and feathered by a mob, Joseph received the message be- ginning, * the anger of God kindleth against the in- habitants of the earth/ On January 19th, 1841, at Nauvoo, this advice reached the ears of the prophet :
' And novs^ I say unto you, as pertaining to my boarding house w^hich I have commanded you to build for the boarding of strangers, let it be built unto my name, and let my name be named upon it, and let my servant Joseph, and his house have place therein, from generation to generation/ ''^
The Saints have attempted to relieve the bathos of Joseph's revelations,'' by quoting the so-called
16 < Book of Commandments,' Chapter i6.
IT* Doctrine and Covenants,' § 124. Compare the last revela- tion in the * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 45 : — < I willeth not that my servant Frederick should sell his farm, for I the Lord willeth to retain a strong hold in the land of Kirtland.'
18 Compare 'Joseph the Seer,' p. 185 : — < There is an abundance of documentary evidence of the genuineness of the revelation showing that it was in existence — in print — as early as 185 1, nine years before the rebellion. Mr. Beadle in his work against the Mormons states that he copied it out of The Seer, a work published by O. Pratt, in Washington, D. C, in 1853, seven years before the rebellion. And Mr. John Hyde who wrote a work against the Mormons entitled " Mormonism," which was issued by Fetridge & Co., of New York City, in 1857, cites this same revelation on p. 174, and he did it in order to prove that Joseph was a false prophet:
1 84 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
' Prophecy of the Rebellion.* It is indeed a remark- able forecast/^ but its authenticity is dubious. The most specific revelation of this kind written by Joseph, occurred as early as March, 1831, but it is more pertinent to Armageddon than the Civil War:
19 < Revelation and Prophecy on War,* given through * Joseph the Seer,* December 25th, 1832 : — Verily, thus saith the Lord, con- cerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls.
The days will come that war will be poured out upon all na- tions, beginning at that place.
For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations ; and thus war shall be poured out upon all nations.
And it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshaled and disciplined for war:
And it came to pass also, that the remnants who are left of the land will marshal themselves, and shall become exceedingly angry, and shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexation ;
And thus, with the sword, and by bloodshed, the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn ; and with famine, and plague, and earth- quakes, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid light- ning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed, hath made a full end of all nations ;
That the cry of the Saints, and of the blood of the Saints, shall cease to come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, from the earth, to be avenged of their enemies.
Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come ; for behold it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen.*
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 185
— 'ye hear of wars in foreign lands, but behold I say unto you they are nigh even unto your doors, and not many years hence ye shall hear of wars in your own lands/"
To turn to Smith's doings as a seer: here was the first of his dabblings with the occult. How far the 'wonderful power' of 'Peep-stone Joe' was fictitious, how far due to unconscious self-sugges- tion it is hard to decide. The statements of his followers make his actions mystic; the statements of his family suggest the hypnotic; his own de- scription of the Urim and Thummim as ' like unto
20* Book of Commandments,' Chapter 48, copied from an original copy in the Berrian collection. As regards the Prophecy of the Rebellion in both its enlarged and original form, the following dates should be noted. Smith was killed June 27, 1844. In the * History of Joseph Smith,' in the * Times and Sea- sons' of November i, 1844, a reference to President Jackson's proclamation of 1832, against the South Carolina Nullifiers is in- serted between Smith's revelations of December 6, 1832 and De- cember 27, 1832. The alleged revelation of December 25th is significantly omitted. Again, this latter revelation does not occur in the first and only edition of the * Book of Commandments, ' (1833) nor even in the third edition of the * Doctrine and Cove- nants ' (1845). ^^^ same is true of the shorter revelation of April 2, 1843, as given in * Doctrine and Covenants,' § 140, (later editions than 1845) • —
* I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God, that the commence- ment of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina. It may probably arise through the slave question. This a voice de- clared to me, while I was praying earnestly on the subject, De- cember 52th, 1832.'
1 86 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
crystal ' at once suggests that he was an inadvertent crystal gazer. Although his psychoses may be put in terms of present day experiment, his own notions must be traced to his historic setting. His contemporaries were anachronisms; belief in divina- tion,—both through 'second sight' and the 'shew stone ' — was brought over in the Mayflower along with other antique mental furniture." Without har- king back to old-world superstitions," it is a fact that divining rods and seer stones were still used to find springs and locate hidden treasures in the rural districts of America. Especially did money diggers from Cape Cod to Lake Erie have their tales and fables. So Joseph's father was a firm believer in
3> Edward Eggleston, « The Transit of Civilization from England to America in the Seventeenth Century,' New York, 1901, Chapter I. Mental Outfit of the Early Colonists. Also Joseph Jastrow, ' Fact and Fable in Psychology,' Boston, 1900, p. 224.
22 Albert Moll, < Hypnotism,' New York, 1 901, pp. i, 2. <The fact that particular psychical states can be induced in human beings by certain physical processes has long been known among the Oriental peoples, and was utilized by them for religious pur- poses. Kiesewetter attributes the early soothsaying by means of precious stones to hypnosis, which was induced by steadily gazing at the stones. This is also true of divination by looking into vessels and crystals, as the Egyptians have long been in the habit of doing, and as has often been done in Europe : by Cagliostro, for example. These hypnotic phenomena are also found to have existed several thousand years ago among the Persian magi (Fischer), as well as up to the present day among Indian yogis and fakirs, who throw themselves into the hypnotic state by means of fixation of the gaze.'
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 187
witchcraft and other supernatural things, and Joseph himself refers to the divining rod as the rod of nature and informs his friend Cowdery * behold there is no other power save God, that can cause this rod of nature to work in your hands, for it is the work of God/''
The very charges against the Smiths betrayed the credulity of the times. The ' seeing-stone' with which Joseph is alleged to have sought for the Susquehanna silver mine, had previously been used in attempts to trace a lost child.'* As if it were a
" ' Book of Commandments,' Chapter 7.
** E. C. Blackman, * History of Susquehanna County, Pa.,' 1873, p. 477 : — Mr. J. B. Buck narrates the following : — * Joe Smith was here lumbering soon after my marriage, which was in 1818, some years before he took to " peeping," and before diggings were commenced under his direction. These were ideas he gained later. The stone which he afterwards used was then in the possession of Jack Belcher, of Gibson, who obtained it while at Salina, New York, engaged in drawing salt Belcher bought it because it was said to be " a seeing stone." I have often seen it. It was a green stone, with brown, irregular spots on it. It was a little longer than a goose's egg, and about the same thickness. When he brought it home and covered it with a hat. Belcher's little boy was one of the first to look into the hat, and as he did so he said he saw a candle. The second time he looked in he exclaimed, " I've found my hatchet ! " — (it had been lost two years) — and immediately ran for it to the spot shown him through the stone, and it was there. The boy was soon beset by neighbors far and near to reveal to them hidden things, and he succeeded marvelously. Even the wander- ings of a lost child were traced by him — the distracted parents coming to him three times for directions, and in each case finding signs that the child had been in the places he designated, but at
1 88 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
recrudescence of fetish worship, stones of strange shape or peculiar markings were highly prized, as well as those of a mysterious origin. An existing Mormon seer stone, from Missouri, is nothing but an Indian slate gorget. ^^ Three generations ago there seems to have been only an inkling of the truth, that the 'influence' was to be attributed rather to the person seeing than to the object, to the seer rather than to the stone.
Joseph's own neighbors were particularly in the dark; one Willard Chase sent sixty or seventy miles for a certain conjurer; Chase's sister found a green glass through which she could see very many won- derful things.'^ Whether this was the identical stone which Joseph used is conjectural and immaterial," although there is new information on the point.'®
last it was found starved to death. Joe Smith, conceiving the idea of making a fortune through a similar process of " seeing," bought the stone of Belcher and then began his operations in directing where hidden treasures could be found. His first diggings were near Captain Buck's sawmill, at Red Rock ; but, because his fol- lowers broke the rule of silence^ " the enchantment removed the deposits." '
25 Compare Figure 24, p. 650, * Handbook of Reference,' United States National Museum, 1888.
26 < Biographical Sketches,' pp. 106, 109.
27 Martin Harris in an interview, in January, 1 859, said that Joseph's stone was dug from the well of Mason Chase. Tiffany^ s Monthly, May, 1859.
28 « On the request of the court, he [Joseph, junior] exhibited the stone. It was about the size of a small hen's egg, in the shape of *
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 189
How early he stumbled on the discovery of his ' gift ' is more important.'^ His father testified that, when a lad, * Joseph heard of a neighboring girl, who could look into a glass and see anything how- ever hidden from others. He looked into this glass which was placed in a hat to exclude the light. He was greatly surprised to see but one thing, which was a small stone, a great way off. It soon became luminous and dazzled his eyes, and after a short time it became as intense as the midday sun. . . . He often had an opportunity to look in the glass, and with the same result. The luminous stone alone attracted his attention.' ^
By 1825, Joseph's fame as a 'peeper' was wide- spread. Josiah Stoal came from Chenango County to get Joseph's 'assistance in digging for a silver mine, on account of having heard that he possessed
high instepped shoe. It was composed of layers of different colors passing diagonally through it. . . . Joseph Smith, senior, was present, and was sworn as a witness. He confirmed at great length all that his son had said in his examination. . . . He described very many instances of his finding hidden and stolen goods.* From W. D. Purple, manuscript editorial in Norwich, N. Y. Union^ April 28, 1877. Purple took notes at the trial of Joseph Smith, senior, in February, 1826, at South Bainbridge, Pa., before Albert Neeley,
J. p.
» The story that Joseph's « gift ' was * Scotch second sight ' is well found but not true ; his ancestry was English.
30 W. D. Purple. Compare also « Book of Mormon,' p. 328. The stone called Gazelem * a stone which shineth forth in darkness unto light.'
190 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
certain keys, by which he could discern things in- visible to the natural eye/'^^
So far the youthful seer had been using a trans- lucent quartz pebble such as was to be found in the glacial drift of western New York. In September, 1827, he procured his 'interpreters/ These he him- self described as two transparent stones/'* and his mother as three-cornered diamonds, which he kept constantly about his person.'' If one may hazard a guess, these 'curious instruments, called by the ancients the Urim and Thummim,"* were probably a couple of prisms from an old-fashioned chandelier. Whatever the object, the purpose was the same, — to produce a condition suitable for the * seeing of visions.' What this condition really was, Joseph knew as little as the Specularii of old. But that many people hypnotize themselves,'^ without know- ing it, is as true as that Monsieur Jourdain had been speaking prose all his life, without knowing it.
Since the classic experiments of Braid, the Man- chester surgeon, the means of producing hypnosis are too well known to need description: in a likely subject, steady gazing at anything from a teapot to the tip of the nose will induce the primary state of
»i * Biographical Sketches/ p. 92. 55 « Times and Seasons,* 3, 707. *3 * Biographical Sketches,* p. 106. 34 • Joseph Smith the Seer,* p. 19. s» Moll, p. 389.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 191
reverie. Of the scientific procedure Joseph, of course, was absolutely ignorant, yet his method of ' glass- looking,' was, in fact, one of the easiest ways of pro- ducing slight hypnotization, namely that by sensorial excitement. He did not need strong or luminous rays, but only that slight and prolonged excitement, gained by fixing the eyes on an object, brilliant or otherwise, placed near the eyes.^^ Unlike some of his followers Joseph does not seem to have been es- pecially liable to what they denominated the ' open vision.' " His was not the rarer type of person, who
w Alfred Binet and Charles F6r6, * Animal Magnetism,* New York, 1898, p. 93.
'7 'Times and Seasons,' 5, 66i. Two instances of the 'open vision * with attendant hallucinations, somewhat similar to Joseph's visions of the plates are as follows : < Faith Promoting Series,' num- ber 12, p. 79. Amasa Potter, in Picton, Australia, in 1856, said, <At meeting after speaking a few words I became dumb, — when I thought I saw several lines of large letters printed on the walls of the house, and I commenced to read them and spoke about one hour. When the letters faded from my sight, I then stopped speaking. I could not tell all that I had said ; but my companion told me it was an excellent discourse/ .... Littlefield, in his * Reminiscences,* p. 203, gives this account of an experience of July 13, 1848, on the ship < Forest Monarch,* from New York, in a fierce Atlantic storm : * At 12 o'clock A. M. ... I was clinging with both arms clasped tightly around a post. . . . While in this position a panorama of my life passed in review be- fore me. Two or three words, as if shaped in letters of burnished gold or written by flames of fire, were presented. These words were so chosen as to be indicative of some unwise act or sinful deed. They would remain there, undiminished in brightness, un- til I had earnestly and humbly implored forgiveness. . . .
192 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
can call up the hallucinative image, spontaneously and while awake. His acts, as a seer, required time, preparation and some apparatus. An eyewitness thus describes his methods: * At times when Brother Joseph would attempt to translate, he would look into the hat in which the stone was placed, he found he was spiritually blind and could not translate. He told us that his mind dwelt too much on earthly things, and various causes would make him incapable of proceeding with the trans- lation. When in this condition he would go out and pray, and when he became suflFiciently hum- ble before God, he could then proceed with the translation. Now we see how very strict the Lord is ; and how He requires the heart of man to be just right in His sight, before he can receive revelation from Him.'«
These fluctuations in the psychological moment — really due to a restless temperament — were inter- preted as due to the alternate granting and with- drawal of the ' gift.' '^ For this reason, there is little
When I had duly repented, that set of words would pass away and others take their place, until mental restitution was made as before. These manifestations continued to alternate for a time and then passed away.*
38 David Whitmer, * Address,* p. 30.
39 Compare * Book of Commandments,* p. 13. A Revelation, May, 1829, after the loss of the 1 16 pages of manuscript — * you also lost your gift at the same time, nevertheless it has also been re- stored unto you again.*
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 193
doubt that Joseph, at least at the start, considered his ' translations ' to be inspired. For all that, his mystic writings may be resolved into their elements of Bible knowledge, petty information and every-day exper- ience. It is curious and noteworthy to trace the workings of the seer's imagination in the lather of words given by his devotee: ' I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another charac- ter with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.'*°
That the Book of Mormon was an imaginative elaboration of presentative material, is corroborated by this account of its mystic genesis. Joseph's process of translating by means of his Urim and
40 Whitmer, p. 12.
194 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Thummim*^ may be compared with a recent ex- perimental study of visions/^ Although artificially produced they resolved themselves mainly into natural sources, namely, — v^hat had been previously seen, heard, read and thought, besides representa- tions and revivals of the experience of the hyp- notic personality of which the waking conscious- ness has never had knowledge.
All this is applicable to Joseph's first act of 'translating/ To those who care to dig below the threshold of consciousness, the mystic after-image, the recrudescence of the subconscious may be an explanation of the alleged Greek and Hebrew letters in the transcription of the gold plates. One glance at a Bible in the original tongues may have been enough to stamp the visual image on the boy's im- pressionable mind. This objectification of images, which exist unconsciously in the memory, is a fact in dreams and a likely surmise as to the analogous phenomena of semi-hypnosis. Whatever the ex- planation, the fact is this, — ^Joseph the seer was a good visualizer.*'
*^ In * Times and Seasons,* 3, 707, Smith gave this fabulous ac- count : — * With the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called " Urim and Thummim,'* which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of 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.*
42 Brain, 21, 528.
^ Joseph's case is curiously like that of a present day sceptic,
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 195
Smith's method was so far the commonplace method of the trance-medium. The act of fixing the eyes on one particular point, supplemented by a state of quietude through prayer, prepared the way for the influence of self-suggestion. His external acts are one thing, the subtle and self-deceiving nature of his hallucinations another. He knew no more about the subconscious self and the law of association of ideas, than he did of the fact that his 'Reformed Egyptian' resembled the irregular and spasmodic writings of hypnotic subjects. Now that the transcription of the gold plates is a veritable piece of automatic writing, is evident from a com-
who was once an esoteric mystic. It was Alfred Le Baron who claimed he could see * sentences in English characters among a number of ideographs on an Egyptian slab of stone/ * Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research,' 12, 287. — This analogy may be taken for what it is worth. One can prove anything from these modern dabblings in the occult. In the same way, care should be taken in the application of the hypnotic principles of the hysterical school of Charcot. As has been said regarding the choice of hys- terical patients, * Take care, or you will find what you are looking for.* If emphasis is laid on the abnormal side of Joseph Smith's case, his states resemble the not uncommon condition found among hystero-epileptics. As the physiology of the subject is admittedly obscure, in this study, the more normal principles of the suggestion school of Nancy are chiefly utilized. Parsimony demands that the hypnotic aspects of the Mormons should be explained as mental, rather than physical reflexes. Yet, as for Smith himself, the sub- ject is complex and demands compromise ; on the one hand, his self-induced states of hypnosis were synchronous with his youthful ill health ; on the other hand, his suggestive influence over others began soon after his quasi-epileptic seizures ceased.
196 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
parison of the reproduction of the * Caractors ' with modern experimental scrawlings. An attempt of a patient, in a semi-hypnotic state, through planchette or a pencil held loosely in the hands, will show equally mysterious figures and back-handed signa- tures.**
The relation of Joseph's crystal gazing to the com- position of the Book of Mormon, brings more im- portant information. It furnishes an explanation of certain peculiarities in the text. The style of the ancient prophet Mormon is the style of the modern spiritualist. The lack of punctuation may be laid to the fact of dictation, but the slips in grammar and the endless repetition of such phrases as * came to pass,' resemble the painfiil errors and damnable iteration of messages from the unseen world.**
Furthermore, the length and complexity of the Book of Mormon is rendered additionally possible, if one cares to believe the assertion, that hypnotic sug- gestion arouses into activity the dormant psychic power, — brings to the subject's fingers' ends all the knowledge that he has ever had, and, finally, in-
^^ Moll, p. 267.
<* At a spiritualistic seance of a Boston medium, in 1900, I no- ticed a marked difference between the normal and trance states. The set speeches, evidently learned by heart, were Johnsonian in their correctness, but the messages from the departed in their gram- matical lapses and turns of expression betrayed the rustic origin of the seeress.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 197
spires him with an overwhelming confidence in himself.*^
Was it hyperaesthesia or hard work that evolved the Record of the Nephites ? To those who neither hanker after theories of the subliminal self/^ nor be- lieve that the Book of Mormon required any quick- ening of the intellect,*^ the author's crystal gazing may yet have important relations to his writings. At the least, it was a moving cause of the acts of his disciples. Because of their magical guise, his associates believed that they were bound to take down their seer's every utterance; consequently, they gave him abundant help. Emma Smith con- fessed that she wrote at her husband's dictation day after day;*® while Christian Whitmer and
<6 Compare R. O. Mason, < Telepathy and the Subliminal Self,* New York, 1896, p. 78.
^T * Harvard Psychological Studies,' September, 1896. Experi- menters succeeded in reproducing in a waking state of complete normality, the first three essential elements of the second person- ality, viz. : — I. General tendency to movement without conscious motor impulse ; 2. Tendency of an idea in the mind to go over into a movement involuntarily and unconsciously ; 3. Tendency of a sensory current to pass over into a motor reaction subconsciously ; 4. Unconscious exercise of memory and invention.
^ Moll, p. 268. * The automatic hand writes without concentra- tion of thought on the writer's part.*
49 Wyle, * Mormon Portraits,* p. 203. Statement of Emma Hale Smith to her son. * In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat with the stone in it.*
198 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Oliver Cowdery were his scribes for seven solid months.*^
To Joseph's performances as a seer, the usual clairvoyant and telepathic embellishments v^ere added. Martin Harris said that Joseph proposed to bind his ' directors ' on his eyes and run a race with him in the woods.*^ David Whitmer avowed that this was the same stone used by the Jaredites at Babel. He relates that he could see nothing through it, but that Joseph, placing it to his eyes, could read signs one hundred and sixty miles distant, and tell exactly what was transpiring there. He then adds the statement:— 'When I went to Harmony after him, he told me the name of every hotel at which 1 had stopped on the road, read the signs, and de- scribed various scenes without having ever received any information from me/"
The most marvelous occurrence is one that is said to have happened about June, 1829. Joseph's
«o The actual writing of the * Book of Mormon * appears to have taken about seven months. (December, 1827-February, 1828; April 12- June 14, 1828; April 7-June 11, 1829.) Taking the first edition as 588 printed pages, this gives an average of between two and three pages a day.
6» Tiffany's Monthly ^ May, 1859. Compare 'Joseph Smith the Seer,* p. 19. — * With the records was found a curious instrument, called by the ancients the Urim and Thummim. This was in use in ancient times by persons called seers. It was an instrument by the use of which they received revelation of things distant, or of things past or future.*
"'Address,' p. II.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 199
mother recounts that, as he was translating by means of the Urim and Thummim, he received,
* instead of the words of the Book, a command- ment to write a letter to a man by the name of David Whitmer, who lived in Waterloo, requesting him to come immediately with his team, and con- vey himself and Oliver to his own residence, as an evil-designing people were seeking to take away his (Joseph's) life, in order to prevent the work of God from going forth to the world.^
Of these three occurrences comment is almost superfluous. The running blindfolded is not said to have taken place; if it had, it could be compared to the heightened sense-perception of the hypnotic subject, when he walks about a room with bandaged eyes, or in absolute darkness, without striking against anything/* Again Joseph's reading inn- signs, miles away, is no proof of the dubieties of supersensual thought transference.^^ As the added
63 * Biographical Sketches,* p, 135.
fi^Moll, p. 115.
56 On the semi-occult aspects of crystal gazing, compare Frank Podmore, 'Apparitions and Thought Transference,' London, 1900, p. 352. Other instances among the Mormons of * premonitions,'
* veridical visions ' and * sympathetic clairvoyance,' are as follows : — (I.) P. P. Pratt, * Autobiography,' p. 368, — On June 27, 1844, Joseph and Hyrum were killed. I was constrained by the spirit a day or so before to start prematurely for home [Nauvoo] without knowing why or wherefore. As my brother William and I talked, a strange and solemn awe came over me, as if the powers of hell
200 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
details show, the itinerant seer had traveled the same road as his disciple, who took no account of Joseph's naturally retentive memory. Lastly the form of the letter to the Whitmers, and their ful- filling the writer's request implies a previous ac-
were let loose. I was so overwhelmed with sorrow I could hardly speak. This was June 27th, in the afternoon, as near as I can judge at the hour Joseph died.* — {2.) In the Nauvoo Neighbor^ March, 1844, Benjamin Andrews reports a vision at the time the Latter-day Saints were driven from Jackson county, Missouri, — * I was at the capital of the United States. In the archives of state a man, one ot the ancients of the nation, took two or three small boxes and said * These were the archives of state, but they are turned to blood.* I saw the box turned to blood.* — (3.) B. Brown, 'Testi- monies,* p. 12. — * One Sunday morning, while opening the meeting with prayer, the gift of tongues came upon me but I quenched the Spirit. Immediately another broke out in tongues, of which the interpretation was, * the Lord knew we were anxious to learn of the affairs of our brethren in Missouri, and that if we would hum- ble ourselves, He would reveal unto us.* Missouri was some thou- sands of miles from Portland. In a fortnight a letter confirmed the message at or about the time of the massacre at Haun*s Mill.' — (4.) The same event in Indiana in 1838, was announced by a variety of the so-called * simultaneous apparition.* Littlefield, p. 69, quotes the statement of John Hammer : — * We were standing there exactly at the time this bloody butchery was committed and of course were all looking eagerly in the direction of the mill. While in this attitude a crimson colored vapor, like a mist or thin cloud, ascended up from the precise place where we knew the mill to be located. This transparent pillar of blood remained . ... far into the fatal night. At that hour we had not heard a word of what had taken place at the mill, but as quick as my mother and aunt saw this red, blood-like token, they commenced to wring their hands and moan, declaring they knew that their husbands had been murdered.*
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 201
quaintance with that family. In brief, Joseph's failures are in accord with the modern failures in mental telegraphy, through the medium of crys- tals/^ The alleged long-distance messages were simply ' reproduced past experiences without recog- nition.' Other Mormons may furnish telepathic ex- periences, but they are more curious than con- vincing.
Thus far Smith's occult performances meet with psychological negation; this is not the result in their ethical import, if the inference is allowable. It is somewhere in here that the dividing line must be drawn between self-deception and conscious du- plicity. From the silence in his own writings, as to these three episodes, it is evident that the prophet and seer did not believe himself an entire success as clairvoyant and mind reader. And more than that as respects the translating of the plates, there is a sus- picion that he early recognized that there was some- thing the matter. To his progenitors anything preternatural was supernatural; to the prophet the supernatural was now merging into the merely ab- normal, else he would neither have persevered in his methods of obfustication, nor have tried to monopo-
66 'Society for Psychical Research/ 12, 259. Prof. J. H. Plys- lop in < Some Experiments in Crystal Visions,* found ' nothing of an apparently telepathic nature or any other kind of supernormal psychological experience.'
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lize the use of the seer-stone,^' nor finally have given it up altogether. ^^ The various changes in his methods are especially significant. As money digger, he v^as wont to hide his face in a hat; as translator, he sometimes kept behind a curtain,^^ dictating to his scribe on the other side; finally by May, 1 83 1, he had a special * translating room' of his own.^^
There vs^as method in this concealment: it was to keep from the sight of his followers the fixed gaze and the blank expression of the auto-hypnotic. There is here implicated no such mystic paradox as that Joseph was conscious of his unconsciousness ;
*7*Book of Commandments,' Chapter 30: 'Take thy brother Hiram Page between him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me, and that satan deceiveth him : For behold these things have not been appointed unto him. Neither shall anything be appointed to any of this church.' Compare 'Times and Seasons,' 4, 117-119; also • History of the Church,' p. 123.
58Whitmer, p. 32: — 'After the translation of the "Book of Mormon " was finished, early in the spring of 1830, before April 6th, Joseph gave the stone to Oliver Cowdery and told me as well as the rest that he was through with it, and he did not use the stone any more. He said he was through the work that God had given him the gift to perform, except to preach the gospel. He told us that we would all have to depend on the Holy Ghost hereafter to be guided into truth and obtain the will of the Lord. The reve- lations after this came through Joseph as " mouthpiece " ; that is, he would enquire of the Lord, pray and ask concerning a matter, and speak out the revelation.'
69 Whitmer, p. 10.
60 « Times and Seasons,* 6, 784.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 203
if, at the time, the trance-medium does not know what he has spoken, he yet knows that he has spoken. The light hypnosis is not characterized by entire loss of memory. That the prophet, as early as 1 83 1, was cognizant of the abnormality of the ecstatic condition, is borne out by his disrelish for such excesses as those of the Kirtland convulsion- ists, their ' wallowing on the ground, their diabolical acts of enthusiasm.' Exactly when the personal discovery was made is a matter of opinion. It may^v- have been with the failure, in October, 1825, to find the fabulous silver mine of his father-in-law. It was in October, 1825, he relates, that he ' prevailed upon the old gentleman to cease digging after it.' ®^
«* * Pearl of Great Price,' p. 100. Compare Blackman, • History of Susquehanna County, Pa.,' p. 578. (I quote the following affid- avit only because I am acquainted with this locality and have personal knowledge of the reliability of Charles Dimon. It should be noted that Hale's dates differ from Smith's.) 'Statement of Isaac Hale. Affirmed to and subscribed before Chas. Dimon, J. P., March 20, 1834. The good character of Isaac Hale was attested to the following day by Judges Wm. Thomson and D. Dimock : — ' I first became acquainted with Joseph Smith, junior, in November, 1825. He was at that time in the employ of a set of men who were called *« money-diggers," and his occupation was that of seeing, or pretending to see, by means of a stone placed in his hat, and his hat closed over his face. In this way he pretended to dis- cover minerals and hidden treasure. His appearance at this time was that of a careless young man, not very well educated, and very saucy and insolent to his father. Smith and his father, with several other money-diggers, boarded at my house while they were em- ployed in digging for a mine that they supposed had been opened
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Subjective 'glass looking* was found to be no royal road to objective fortune; but disillusionment of self was not the disillusionment of others. About four years after this, Joseph saw fit to acknowledge, in his own peculiar way, that the power of self-suggestion was not confined to him- self. In April, 1829, a revelation came to Oliver Cowdery: 'behold thou hast a gift, if thou wilt inquire, thou shalt know mysteries which are great and marvelous.®^ This ' gift ' of Oliver's was shortly afterwards explained as a ' key of knowledge con- cerning the engravings of old records.* These announcements of mutually shared * gifts ' or * keys ' form one of the dividing lines in Joseph's career. With the discovery that suggestion was a rule that worked both ways, he ceased to be a mere self- centred visionary, and became in truth a revelator to others. Once when his high priests wished to
and worked by the Spaniards many years since. Young Smith gave the money-diggers great encouragement at first, but when they had arrived in digging too near the place where he had stated an immense treasure would be found, he said the enchantment was so powerful that he could not see. They then became discouraged, and soon after dispersed. This took place about the 17th of Novem- ber, 1825. . . .' I told them, then, that I considered the whole of it a delusion, and advised them to abandon it. The manner in which he [Joseph] pretended to read and interpret was the same as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the book of plates was at the same time hid in the woods.*
62 « Book of Commandments,* Chapter 5.
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 205
behold * concourses of angels/ as president of the church, Smith employed the conventional means of inducing the trance vision. There was insistence on faith, fasting and prayer, laying on of hands, fixity of thought, and rigidity of position.^
The origin of Joseph's functions as a revelator is, like all origins, rudimentary and somewhat obscure. It was, however, natural that the first believers in his visualizing powers should be found among his kith and kin. What he imagined he saw, he got them to imagine they saw. As his mother says of him, during the evening conversations, when * he would describe the ancient inhabitants of this con- tinent,— I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any that ever lived upon the face of the earth — all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and giving the most profound atten- tion to a boy, eighteen years of age.'^
But Joseph's success was not confined to a family of constitutional visionaries; his sphere of influence soon enlarged. Because he asserted he had seen a vision, he was persecuted * by the great ones of the most popular sects of the day, and was under the necessity of leaving Manchester and going to Penn- sylvania.'^ Opposition was what he needed; he
«» Compare « Times and Seasons,* 5, 738, the events of March 18. 1833.
^ * Biographical Sketches,* p. 84. «5 * Pearl of Great Price,* p. 102.
2o6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
was advertised by his enemies, until his fame as a beholder of visions was as wide as his early reputa- tion as a * discerner of invisible things/ •• Thus the acts of the prophet and seer paved the way for the acts of the revelator. Of these latter acts the most conspicuous was that of the vision beheld by his scribes. It is embodied in this remarkable docu- ment accompanying all editions of the Book of Mormon : —
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, his brethren, and also of the people of Jared, which 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
*^ * Pearl of Great Price,' p. 102 : — • The excitement, however, still continued, and rumor, with her thousand tongues, was all the time employed in circulating tales about my father's family, and about myself. If I were to relate a thousandth part of them, it would fill up volumes. The persecution, however, became so intolerable that I was under the necessity of leaving Manchester, and going with my wife to Susquehanna County, in the State of Pennsylvania.*
PROPHET, SEER AND REVELATOR 207
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 marvelous 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 honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.
Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Martin Harris.
CHAPTER VII JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST
CHAPTER VII
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST
The Testimony of Three Witnesses is commonly quoted by writers in both camps; the Saints take it as proof of divinity/ the scoffers as proof of duplicity.^ Quotation is one thing, explanation another. If it is used as psychological material, the problem is whether the vision was an individual hallucination, generated normally by the subject, or aroused semi-hypnotically by a second person.
The latter form of statement may serve as a tent- ative hypothesis, but not before the former is ex- amined. According to some authorities, ^ halluc- inations can be induced, in a normal state of consciousness, without hypnosis. As there are suggestions in dreams, so are there suggestions in the waking state. But here, from the start, is manifest the chief phenomenon of hypnosis, —
^ Compare * Joseph the Seer.*
« Compare anti-Mormon works beginning with Howe.
3 Such as Moll, whose attempts to remove hypnotism from the realm of the occult is summed up in the statement, p. 254, that there is * no new psychical law to be found in hypnosis,'
211
212 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
namely that a certain accepted idea leads to a mental delusion. More particularly, it is ante- cedently probable that this was hypnotic hallucina- tion, since there are present the three productive factors: susceptibility to suggestion on the part of the subject, the effect of expectant attention, and previous success, as increasing the principal's in- fluence.
To apply these essentials : all three are found in the case of the first witness, Oliver Cowdery. His suggestibility is evidenced by his excitement over the story of the gold plates, by his belief that it was predetermined that he should be Joseph's scribe, and lastly by his entire absorption in the project. ' Shortly after receiving a sketch of the facts rela- tive to the plates,' says Mother Smith, *he told Mr. Smith that he was highly delighted with what he had heard, that he had been in a deep study upon the subject all day, and that it was impressed upon his mind, that he should yet have the privilege of writing for Joseph. On coming in on the following day, he said, ''The subject upon which we were yesterday conversing seems working in my very bones, and I cannot, for a moment, get it out of my mind; for I have made it a subject of prayer, and firmly believe that it is the will of the Lord that 1 should go." From this time, Oliver was so com- pletely absorbed in the subject of the Record, that
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 213
it seemed impossible for him to think or converse about anything else.'*
Cowdery's suggestibility was not merely self-in- duced, the prophet himself increased that state of mind by a long and subtle series of preliminary suggestions. He was ignorant of the formula, but he knew as a fact the effect of expectant attention. Nothing could be more efficient than the cumulative revelations now received. In April, 1829, there came: —
'A Revelation to Oliver, when employed a scribe to Joseph, — Behold thou hast a gift, and blessed art thou because of thy gift. Remember it is sacred and cometh from above ; and if thou wilt inquire, thou shalt know mysteries which are great and marvelous. . . . Verily, verily I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things ; did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter ? . . . Verily, verily I say unto you that there are records which contain much of my gospel. . . . And now behold I give unto you, and also unto my servant Joseph the keys of this gift, . . . and in the mouth of two or three witnesses, shall every word be es- tablished.'*
4< Biographical Sketches,' pp. 128-9. * * Book of Commandments/ Chapter 5.
214 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
How the master was gaining ascendency over the subject is shown by what follows. Under the mask of divinity, he now seeks to inspire him with a belief in the working of the divining rod, and to direct the very course of his thoughts: —
' Now this is not all, for you have another gift, which is the gift of working with the rod : behold it has told you things : behold there is no other power save God, that can cause this rod of nature to work in your hands, for it is the work of God ; and therefore whatsoever you shall ask me to tell you by that means, that will I grant unto you, that you shall know.* . . . Behold I say unto you, my son, that, because you did not translate according to that which you desired of me, • . . Behold you have not understood, you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought, save it was to ask me ;
But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind ; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you ; there- fore, you shall feel that it is right ; But if it be not right, you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought, that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong ; therefore you cannot write that which is sacred, save it be given you from me.' ^
«* Book of Commandments/ Chapter 7. '* Book of Commandments,' Chapter 8.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 215
In the meanwhile the subject did not realize the degree of his psychic plasticity; this is clear from his own statement. In the first of the Letters of Oliver Cowdery occurs this passage:— 'Near the time of the setting of the sun, Sabbath evening, April 5th, 1829, my natural eyes, for the first time beheld this brother. He then resided in Harmony, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. On Monday, the 6th, I assisted him in arranging some business of a temporal nature, and on Tuesday, the 7th, com- menced to write the Book of Mormon. These were days never to be forgotten — to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awa- kened the utmost gratitude of this bosom. Day after day I continued, uninterruptedly to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or as the Nephites would have said, ''Interpreters,*' the history, or record, called the Booh of Mormon.*
The preparatory manipulation of the first witness was not yet completed. The longest revelation to Oliver opens with the words,—' A great and a mar- velous work is about to come forth unto the children of men.' ® This was the prophet's scriptural formu- lation of the actual principle of expectant attention. In the same way, he had a practical, though not a technical cognizance of the third factor in the pro-
8 * Book of Commandments,* Chapter 5.
2i6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
duction of hypnosis. His previous success, as in- creasing his personal influence, is manifest from the following episode. Of the two accounts, the matter-of-fact assumptions of the seer may be well compared with the rhapsody of his fol- lower:—
' We still continued the work of translation, when, in the ensuing month, (May, 1829), w^e on a certain day went into the woods to pray and inquire of the Lord respect- ing baptism for the remission of sins, as we found men- tioned in the translation of the plates. While we were thus employed, praying and calling upon the Lord, a messenger from heaven descended in a cloud of light, and having laid his hands upon 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 of a?igels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins ; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.'^ He said this Aaronic Priesthood had not the power of laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, but that this should be conferred on us hereafter ; and he commanded us to go and be baptized, and gave us directions that I should baptize Oliver Cowdery, and afterwards that he should baptize me.
Accordingly we went and were baptized — I baptized him first, and afterwards he baptized me — after which I laid my hands upon his head and ordained him to the Aaronic Priesthood^ and afterwards he laid his hands on
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 217
me and ordained me to the same Priesthood — for so we were commanded/ *
* This was not long desired before it was realized. The Lord, who is rich in mercy, and ever willing to answer the consistent prayer of the humble, after we had called upon Him in a fervent manner, aside from the abodes of men, condescended to manifest to us His will. On a sudden, as from the midst of eternity, the voice of the Redeemer spake peace to us, while the vail was parted and the angel of God came down clothed with glory, and delivered the anxiously looked for message, and the keys of the gospel of repentance ! What joy ! What wonder ! What amazement ! While the world was racked and distracted — while the millions were groping as the blind for the wall, and while all men were resting upon uncer- tainty, as a general mass, our eyes beheld — our ears heard. As in the * blaze of day'; yes, more — above the glitter of the May sunbeam, which then shed its brilliancy over the face of nature ! Then his voice, though mild, pierced to the centre, and his words, ' I am thy fellow servant,' dispelled every fear. We listened — we gazed — we admired ! 'Twas the voice of the angel from glory — 'twas a message from the Most High ! and as we heard we rejoiced, while His love enkindled upon our souls, and we were wrapt in the vision of the Almighty 1 Where was room for doubt? Nowhere: uncertainty had fled, doubt had sunk, no more to rise, while fiction and decep- tion had fled forever ! ' ^°
9 * Pearl of Great Price,' pp. 105-6. 10* Pearl of Great Price,' pp. 105-108,
2i8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Up to his dying day, Cowdery believed there was no ' fiction and deception ' either in this manifestation, or in the plate vision." This fact has a twofold significance: the persistance of his belief shows the vividness of the original hallucina- tion, but the conviction of reality points to hypnosis — in which there is * an apparently logical connection between the suggested idea and the hypnotic sub- ject's own thoughts.' ^' The final testimony of the second witness is equally illuminating, both as to the seeming external projection of the sensible image, and the condition of mind in which the subject sees but does not reason. In an interview, September, 1878, David Whitmer said: —
* It was in June, 1829, the latter part of the month, and the eight witnesses saw them, I think, a day or two after we did. Joseph himself showed the plates to the eight witnesses, but the angel showed them to us, the three witnesses. Martin Harris was not with us this (the first) time, but he obtained a view of them after- wards the same day. We not only saw the plates of the Book of Mormon^ but also the brass plates, and the plates of the Book of Ether ^ and the plates containing the records of the wickedness and secret combinations of the world down to the time of their being engraved, and
"Whitmer, 'Address,* p. 8, says: < On March 3, 1850, I was present at the deathbed of Oliver Cowdery, and his last words were, " Brother David, be true to your testimony of the « Book of Mormon.* " *
12 MoU, p. 214.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 219
also many other plates. We were overshadowed by a light, one not like the light of the sun or of a fire, but one more glorious and beautiful. It extended away around us, and in the midst of the light there appeared, as it were, a table, with many plates or records upon it besides the plates of the Book of Mormon; also the sword of Laban, and the directors (that is the ball which Lehi had), and the interpreter. I saw them just as plainly as I see this bed (striking with his hand the bed by which he sat), and I heard the voice of the Lord as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life, declaring that the records of the plates of the Book of Mormon were translated by the gift and power of God.* ^*
Whitmer's entire faith in the reality of the vision of the plates is perpetuated by the inscription on his tomb.'* His grandson supplies further information, and, what is more, suggests hypnotism as a
15 ' Joseph the Seer,' pp. 56-7. Compare Richmond, Missouri, Democrat^ February 2, 1881 : — Just before his death, Whitmer is said to have called the family and his doctor to his bedside and to have exclaimed, < Dr. Buchanan, I want you to say whether or not I am in my right mind, before giving my dying testimony.' The doctor answered, * Yes, you are in your right mind.' Then . . . the old man : * I want to say to you all, the Bible and the record of the Nephites, is true.*
i*«The Record of the Jews and the Record of the Nephites are one. Truth is eternal ' (Schweich, April 6, 1899).
1* George W. Schweich, Richmond, Missouri, wrote September 22d, 1899, * I ^^y^ begged him to unfold the fraud in the case and he had all to gain and nothing to lose to but speak the word if he thought so — but he has described the scene to me many times, of
220 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Of the credulity of the last of the three witnesses an instance has already been given : it was Martin Harris ' a farmer of respectability * who had already lent money to Joseph '' and had taken the transcrip- tion or ' Caractors ' to New York City. In a letter written by him in 1870, he said: — 'No man ever heard me in any way deny either the Book of Mor- mon, or the administration of the angel that showed me the plates, or the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under the ad- ministration of Joseph Smith, junior, the prophet, whom the Lord raised up for that purpose in these later days, that He might show forth His power and glory. The Lord has shown me these things by His Spirit, and by the administration of angels, and confirmed the same with signs following for the space of forty years. I do say that the angel did show me the plates containing the Booh of Mormon, and further that the translation that I carried to Professor Anthon was copied from the plates.* "
The case of Harris presented greater difficulties than that of the other two. His financial dealings with Smith; his loss of the one hundred and sixteen
his vision about noon time in an open pasture — there is only one explanation barring an actual miracle and that is this — If that vision was not real it was hypnotism, it was real to grandfather IN
FACT.*
1* < Pearl of Great Price,' p. 102. " ' Joseph the Seer,' pp. 57-8.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 221
pages of manuscript, and the revelation imply- ing that he was in league with the devil, — made him, for the time being, less susceptible to the revelators' influence. Yet Harris was by nature a good subject; he had always been a firm believer in dreams, visions, and supernatural appearances, such as apparitions and ghosts.'' Five years before his death, an attack of vertigo was interpreted by him as *a snare of the adversary to hinder him from going to Salt Lake City.' '^
With all this in view, it is interesting to watch how Smith approached one whose constitutional susceptibility was biased by a personal grudge. Three months before the vision took place there was * A Revelation given to Joseph and Martin, in Harmony, Pennsylvania, when Martin desired of the Lord to know whether Joseph had, in his pos- session, the record of the Nephites.' ^^ Not long
^8 Clark, * Gleanings,* p. 223.
J^Deseret Evening News, December 13, 1881. Interview of Edward Stevenson with One of the Three Witnesses. — * A very singular incident occurred at this time. While Martin was visit- ing his friends ... his pathway crossed a large pasture, in which he became bewildered, dizzy, faint, and staggering through the blackberry vines, his clothes torn, bloody and faint, he lay down under a tree to die. After a time he revived, called on the Lord, and finally at twelve midnight, found his friend. . . . He related this incident as a snare of the adversary to hinder him from going to Salt Lake City.*
20 < Book of Commandments,' Chapter 4.
222 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
after this occurred the loss of the manuscript, and the consequent rupture between the translator and his first scribe. But with the completion of the translation there came reconciliation and renewed expectancy. ' As soon as the Book of Mormon was translated/ narrates Mrs. Smith, ' we conveyed this intelligence to Martin Harris, for we loved the man, although his weakness had cost us much trouble. Hearing this, he greatly rejoiced, and determined to go straightway to Waterloo to congratulate Joseph upon his success. . . . The next morning, after attending to the usual services, namely, read- ing, singing, and praying, Joseph arose from his knees, and approaching Martin Harris with a solemnity that thrills through my veins to this day, when it occurs to my recollection, said, ** Martin Harris, you have got to humble yourself before your God this day, that you may obtain a forgiveness of your sins. If you do, it is the will of God that you should look upon the plates, in company with Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer.'^'"
But with Martin the ' eye of faith ' had not yet taken the place of the natural vision. As Whitmer says, * Martin Harris was not with us this (first) time, but he obtained a view of them [the plates] afterwards, the same day.'^' It was the going
21 * Biographical Sketches,' p. 138. 22 < Joseph the Seer/ p.56.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 223
aside and praying over the third witness that delayed the return to the house until between three and four in the afternoon. Joseph then gave vent to his joy, saying, ' Father, mother, you do not know how happy I am; the Lord has now caused the plates to be shown to three more besides my- self/ * Upon this,' adds Lucy, * Martin Harris came in: he seemed almost overcome with joy, and testified boldly to what he had both seen and heard. And so did David and Oliver, adding, that no tongue could express the joy of their hearts, and the greatness of the things which they had both seen and heard.' '^
The final details of the transaction are obtained from the account of the chief actor. Joseph says in his History of the Church : —
* Not many days after the above command- ment was given, we four, viz., Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and myself, agreed to retire into the woods, and try to ob- tain, by fervent and humble prayer, the fulfil- ment of the promise given in the revelation — that they should have a view of the plates, etc. We accordingly made choice of a piece of
*3 < Biographical Sketches/ p. 139. For Harris' persistent belief compare Knight, p. 1 1 : — * Martin Harris on his deathbed bore his testimony to the truth and divinity of the * Book of Mormon,' a short time before he departed, and the last word he uttered when he could not speak the sentence, was, •* Book ! Book ! Book ! " '
224 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
woods convenient to Mr. Whitmer*s house, to which we retired, and having knelt down, we began to pray in much faith to Almighty God to bestow upon us a realization of these prom- ises. According to previous arrangements I commenced by vocal prayer to our heavenly Father, and was followed by each of the rest in succession. We did not, however, obtain any answer or manifestation of the divine favor in our behalf. We again observed the same order of prayer, each calling on and praying fervently to God in rotation, but with the same result as before. Upon this, our second failure, Martin Harris proposed that he should withdraw him- self from us, believing, as he expressed himself, that his presence was the cause of our not ob- taining what we wished for; he accordingly withdrew from us, and 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 be- hold, 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, imme- diately afterwards, 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
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 225
God. The translation of them which you have seen is correct and I command you to bear record of what you now see and hear/* I now left David and Oliver, and went in pursuit of Martin Harris, whom I found at a consider- able 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 also might realize the same blessings which we had just re- ceived. We accordingly joined in prayer, and ultimately obtained our desires, for, before we had yet finished, the same vision was open to our view, at least it was again to me, 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 have beheld,'* and jumping up, he shouted *' Hosannah," blessing God, and other- wise rejoiced exceedingly.* ^
Beneath these cryptic accounts, with their legend- ary accretions, it remains to discover the psycho- logy of the Saints; to find to what degree the mani-
24 Compare interview with David "^^^litme^ in Kingston, Mis- souri, Times ^ December 27, 1887 • — [I'he plates] < \\rere shown to us in this way — Joseph, Oliver and I were sitting on a log, when we were overshadowed by a light more glorious than that of the sun. In the midst of this light, but a few feet from us, ap- peared a table, upon which were many golden plates. ... I saw them as plain as I see you now, and distinctly heard the voice of the Lord declaiming that the records of the plates of the " Book of Mormon " were translated by the gift and the power of God.'
226 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
festations are explicable on the grounds of sub- jective hallucination, induced by hypnotic suggest- ion. A closer scrutiny of the evidence will shov^ how nearly it fills the various conditions demanded. But before that is undertaken, various traditions must be cleared away, especially certain occult assump- tions and explanations of a generation ago. It was claimed of Smith that he possessed a ' fascination of glance,* and that he was *a magnet in a large way.'^^ Brigham Young asserted the former, the electro-biologists the latter. The various upholders of these emanation theories ignored the fact that as spiritual head of his church, the prophet had untold influence over the bodies and souls of his devotees. Given then, such an influence, and sensitive sub- jects, and mental suggestion could produce any- thing in the way of illusion. Thus the explanation is subjective, not objective; it was captivation but not fascination ; there was leader and led, and the former succeeded in inducing in the latter all the phantasmagoria of religious ardor. In the Kirtland frenzy and the Nauvoo excitement, the Saints had illusive images ranging from bears and wolves and scalping Indians, to concourses of angels and the New Jerusalem.
Again, the vision of the plates may be related in a larger way with what has gone before. Of the
25 New York Herald^ May 2, 1842.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 227
three classes of hallucinations two have already been explicated. Joseph's father had the ordinary hallucination of dream; his grandfather that which persists into the waking state. The vision of the three witnesses is that form of hallucination which may occur either in the normal state, or be induced in the state of light hypnosis. The former is ex- emplified in day-dreams; it is largely self-induced and implies some capacity for visualizing. The latter may also occur with the eyes open, but it is induced by the positive suggestion of another.
But integrally connected with all this is the ques- tion whether, in the vision of the Records, the three subjects were conscious of an extra-mental impulse. Whitmer was once asked if he was in his usual condition of consciousness while he be- held the plates, and if he was sensible of surround- ing objects. He refused to answer the inquiry.'^ This silence might connote a deep state of hypnosis, in which the subject is not aware that he has been hypnotized. But the loss of memory of the initial impulse is not the same as forgetfulness of the hal- lucination, as such. Amnesia does not occur in the light stages, nor need there be abnormality of mem- ory in its three functions of retention, reproduction, and recognition of its ideas.
If the substantial agreement between the earliest
5s Stenhouse, p. 29.
228 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
and latest testimonies of the witnesses meets the requirements of psychological reproduction, so does the original form of the hallucination. Association of ideas plays its leading part. As the hypnotized soldier will hear the voice of his old commander, or the devout French peasant see his patron Saint, so was it in these manifestations. The ideas and inter- ests which were uppermost in the mind were pro- jected outwards. Harris had received the first 'transcription of the gold plates*; Whitmer had been saturated with notions of ancient engravings ; Cowdery, for weeks at a time, had listened to the sound of a voice translating the record of the Nephites. When that voice was again heard in the grove, when the four sought ' by fervent and hum- ble prayer to have a view of the plates,' there is little wonder that there arose a psychic mirage, complete in every detail. Furthermore, the rotation in praying, the failure of the first two attempts, the repeated workings of the prophet over the doubting Harris, but serve to bring out the additional in- centives to the hypnotic hallucination. Repetition, steady attention, absence of mistrust, self-surrender to the will of the principal, — all the requisites are present, not as formulae but as facts. The varia- tions in method were many, the results were one. In a few days there followed the episode of the
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 229
eight witnesses." In their testimony, they claimed not only to have seen the plates, but to have handled and 'hefted' them. The bucolic phrases, properly interpreted, suggest both visual and tactual sense illusions. But other explanations should be glanced at before the psychological explanation is attempted. To peer into the wilderness of guesses is a waste of time, unless it shows the characteristic tendency to believe things without logical proof. Thus the credulity of the Mormons is evidenced by their irritation at the various surmises of the pro- fane,— from the no-plate theory repudiated by Mother Smith,^^ to the ' yellow-tin-plate-ventriloquist
27 * And Also the Testimony of Eight Witnesses. Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jr., the Author and Proprietor of this work, has shown 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 hath translated, we did handle with our hands : and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and known 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, Jr., Hyrum Smith,
John Whitmer, Samuel H. Smith/
28 In the legal prosecution against Joseph in Lyons, N. Y., one witness 'declared that he once inquired of Joseph Smith
230 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
theory' derided by the reorganized Saints.*^ To finish the matter: there is a choice between two things. The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses is a pure fabrication. It is a document due to the affi- davit habit. Like the slanderous manifestoes against the Smiths, this has the suspicious uni- formity of a patent medicine testimonial.
The other alternative is that the Testimony of the Eight is a record of collective hypnotization. In form it might be either an hallucination or an illusion, — the perception of an object where in reality there is nothing, or the false interpretation of some existing external object. '° The possibility of collective hyp- nosis is shown by the numerous historic instances of contagious psychic epidemics, arising from re- ligious fervor and an overstimulated imagination.'^ Even in modern time these have ranged from the more orderly visionary occurrences at Lourdes, to the Swedish 'preaching disease,* and its attendant hallucinatory mania. Whatever the phase, the eight witnesses formed a close psychic corporation, consisting of two family parties and one outsider.
what he had in that box, and Joseph Smith told him that there was nothing at all in the box, saying that he had made fools of the whole of them, and all he wanted was, to get Martin Harris' money away from him.* — 'Biographical Sketches,* p. 134.
'** Joseph the Seer,* p. 105.
80 For examples compare Moll, p. 106.
8J Compare Bernheim, pp. 13, 14; De Boismont, p. 238.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 231
Although little is known of these Whitmers, and nothing of Page, it is certain that the abnormal re- ligious influences of the times had rendered them more or less susceptible to suggestion. Given Joseph Smith, senior, as a nucleus of credulity, there may easily have happened here what happens under modern experimental methods of hypnosis, — when persons endowed with a vivid power of representation are gathered together, ' by exchang- ing confidences, or by imparting their respective impressions, they reciprocally hallucinate each other/ ^^
Smith's achievements as prophet, seer, and revel- ator have been explained on the basis of auto-hyp- nosis and hypnotic suggestion. The use of such terms is of course proleptic. A difficult problem now arises: What historic connection, if any, was there between the founder of Mormonism and those movements of his day which formed the antecedents of hypnotism?^ Did he borrow from Sweden- borgianism, Animal Magnetism, Spiritualism and other pseudo-scientific cults which swept over the country? To anticipate, — the answer is negative. At the founding of the church, these movements were as yet below the horizon of the prophet,
22 Binet and Fere, p. 222.
33 Compare Joseph Jastrow, * Fact and Fable in Psychology,* Boston, 1900, pp. 171-235.
232 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
while his most mature theories were simple in the extreme. The true explanation must be connected with both ancestry and environment. As his pro- genitors took a prehistoric view of dreams, and his followers held to the savage's animistic conception of evil spirits, so Joseph's mental habit was most primitive. With him hypnosis was of the time- worn sort, the kind which was to be found in the witchcraft at Endor and the priestcraft at Ephesus. Incidentally if any paganism is to be found in Mormonism, it lies in this continuity of heathen thought, on the occult side. As for Smith himself, his case was sporadic, his achievements empirical, and his abnormal performances a resultant of a faith tinged with superstition. To his overwrought imagination, these appeared true apostolic gifts,— trances, speaking with tongues, anointing with holy oil, and healing by prayer. ^*
To bring the latter-day problem to a head: the historic points of attachment may be largely re- solved into questions of place and time. This was an occult locality. Rochester, known as the ' Boston of the West,' was confessedly a 'hotbed of isms.'^^ Canandaigua, about ten miles from Joseph's home, was the early stamping ground of the Fox sisters, '*
'* Compare Parley P. Pratt, * Persecutions,* Chapter v.
35 Parke, « Rochester,* p. 267.
36 Compare * Report of the Mysterious Noises at Hydesville, Canandaigua, April, 1848.*
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 233
and the starting point of spiritualism proper. Along the Erie canal there had already spread an American variety of Mesmerism. The place was likely, but not the time. The spirit rappings did not begin until April, 1848; nor electro-magnetism until the first workings of the electric telegraph in 1844.
But to take up the various alternate explanations in detail. There was the supposition that Joseph Smith, like Swedenborg, was a seer-nature.^^ The suggested connection is not impossible. There was a convention of the American New Church, at Phil- adelphia in 1817.*^ Already a regularly ordained Swedenborgian missionary had traveled to the Western Reserve. ^^ In the early thirties a volume of Swedenborg was in the possession of a Mormon convert. ^ Lastly, in the forties Smith himself, as an expert in sectarianism, was doubtless cognizant of the New Jerusalem Church; his Revelation on
s"' « American Phrenological Journal,* November, 1866, p. 146 : — Joseph like Swedenborg was a seer nature. It is more logical to believe him to have been an earnest religious leader, than to have been a non-believer in his own mission. Men never accom- plish much when they have not unbounded faith in themselves and their call. . . . The fact that the astute mind of Brigham Young and those of many other remarkable and talented men, were fascinated by Joseph Smith is suggestive. . . . There was an infinite aim and purpose about the man, which was certainly very taking.*
38 « Encyclopaedia Brittanica,' article Swedenborgianism.
39 Venable, p. 211.
^ Maria Ward, ' Fifteen Years Among the Mormons/ p. 17.
234 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Celestial Marriage has a formal likeness to parts of the Arcana Coelestia, while his Address to the Church, of September 6, 1842, enumerates these celestial messages: — *A voice of the Lord in the Wilderness of Fayette . . . the voice of Michael on the banks of the Susquehanna, ... the voice of Gabriel and of Raphael and of divers angels.' This reads like the ravings of Sw^eden- borg, but in the Wilderness of Fayette the motley angels of the seer of Stockholm" had not yet made their appearance; Smith's celestial visitants were of the orthodox variety.
The second explanation of Smith's occultism was that he was a Mesmerist. This rests on the author- ity of a female apostate. By her the prophet is said to exclaim, ' I could transform my enemies to life- less, senseless lumps of clay. ... I could de- prive them of their senses, or compel them to do my bidding, even to take their own lives. '*^ The force of this testimony is spoiled by exaggeration and also by an acknowledged difficulty of date, — ' the mystery of it is, how Smith came to possess the knowledge of that magnetic influence, several years before its general circulation throughout the country/ Another untrustworthy female claims to know the exact source of Joseph's 'mysterious
41 Compare Immanuel Kant, * Traiime eines Geistersehers,* 1766.
42 Maria Ward, p. 25.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 235
power.* It was Mrs. Bradish who said, 'Smith obtained his information, and learned all the strokes, and passes, and manipulations from a German peddlar. " The story is ingenious, but this was not true Mesmerism, for Mesmer did not use the peculiar, monotonous, long-continued passes. **
Smith's power of fascination was, in the next place, attributed to a magnetic force, which per- meated and radiated from his whole being.** A prominent statesman was averred to have held this view, after seeing Smith ' electrify ' and cure a par- alyzed arm.*^ The theory is interesting, but it over- explains. Joseph had immense influence long be- fore this country was permeated by a distorted mesmerism. How the latter was imported into America is hard to say. After his downfall, Mes- mer*s theory of animal magnetism was indeed con- tinued, but under another name; Petetins' work on animal electricity was published in 1808, but its historic influence was slight.*^ In France by its own excesses mesmerism had given itself a black eye. In England the efforts of two reputable phy- sicians to introduce magnetism were unavailing.*^
"Ward, p. 417.
*4 Moll, p. 40.
« G. Q. Cannon, * Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet,' p. 323.
<• James A. Garfield, mentioned in * History of the Church,' p. 91.
^"f Jastrow, p. 195.
" Namely Ashburner and Elliotson. Compare Moll, p. 14,
236 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
No regular experimenter seems to have taken hold of the subject until Braid, in 1842, published his Satanic Agency and Mesmerising^ What the charlatans were doing in the meanwhile was but subterranean. Judging from the scanty literary remains,^ the movement must have got into America in the dark; at any rate its academic entry into New York State was late. It is said that Dr. Grimes, then a medical student in Buffalo, learned Mesmer's Parisian methods and applied them in a journey along the Erie canal.^^ The Fox sisters were especially susceptible and next year, in Canandaigua the * Bethlehem of the Dispensation,' there came a message that 'a refor- mation was going on in the spirit world. '^'^ These phenomena in their quasi-scientific form cannot be pushed back of the forties. It was in 1848 that the ' spirit-circles ' began to spread over the land,^^ while Grimes' town hall lectures, on what he called electro-biology, were later than Braid's first work.
49 The work of 1852 borrowed the last part of its title from Grimes. Compare Braid, * Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Magnetism, Hypnotism and Electro-Biology.'
50 In the * Encyclopaedia Brittanica,' 22, 404, it is said that animal magnetism spread over America in 1848; no details are given as to its introduction. Binet and Fere and also Moll make Grimes independent of Braid.
61 For this suggestion I am indebted to Prof. Charles F. Bristol, of New York University.
»2 Parke, p. 267.
"Johnstone's 'Encyclopedia,' article Spiritualism by Robert Dale Owen.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 237
Finally attempts have been made to connect Smith with spirituaHsm of the Yankee variety. The allegations are so curious as to merit quotation. One of the cult says: 'the conclusions to which we have arrived are, that the Book of Mormon is to a very great extent, a spiritual romance, originating in the spiritual world, and that Joseph Smith was the medium, or the principal one, through whom it was given.' ^ A later writer is more eloquent : — 'The spiritual beings who have originated our sys- tem announce a grander spiritual movement, one acting with all the power and the benefit of organ- ization and unity. For this purpose Joseph Smith was raised up, mainly that he might gather an in- spirational people, among whom such a system could in due time be founded. . . . Joseph Smith was raised up to prepare the way for the es- tablishment of a central spiritual power which, when fully developed, shall sweep all that there is valuable in spiritualism within its ample folds, ta- king its highest order of seers, its prophets, its spir- itual healers.' ^^ It is true that Joseph, like the spirit- ualists, had his beliefs in possession and obsession, but they were of the good old ecclesiastical sort, while his revelation of Celestial Marriage in 1844,
" Tiffany s Monthly, May, 1859.
55 E. L. T. Harrison, 'The Church of Zion; or the Question, Is it Spiritualism ? ' 1870.
238 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
antedated by a decade the prosaic free-love doctrine of the degenerate 'Rochester rappers/^
To sum up : even at the time of Smith's death, of- cial spiritualism w^as beyond his ken. Yet there were forerunners of the movement, which may have affected the young man. Thus there was a confessed likeness between the spiritualists and the primitive Quakers, who * also believed in manifesta- tions through outward voices and appearances, through dreams, and through inward spiritual im- pressions.' Such a comparison furnishes the real clue in Joseph's case," not because his family had a chance acquaintance with the Friends,^® but because of the religious primitiveness common to the minor sects. Quakers, Primitive Baptists, Restorationers and Latter-day Saints, all hoped for the return of apostolic gifts. A Mormon elder might speak of being a 'medium of communication and intelli- gence ' ^* but only in the scriptural sense; the prophet himself might receive revelations, but it was as the ' mouth-piece of the Lord.' At first he was far from being an * exponent of the spiritual philosophy of the
66 Compare Margaretta Fox, * The Love Life of Dr. Kane.*
^"^ Compare Eugene Crowell, * The Identity of Primitive Chris- tianity and Modern Spiritualism.'
^^ * Biographical Sketches,* p. i6o. Compare also Parke, p. 267, where it is said that the first message of the Fox sisters was in the Quaker jargon.
" • Times and Seasons/ 5, 684.
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 239
nineteenth century ' ; ^ in fact he was rather cautious in interpreting messages from the other world. To an anxious seeker after the interpretation of a trance communication, he gave but a general answer/^ This was in 1833; ten years later, it is true, there is a ' philosophical ' passage with some resemblance to the teachings of the spiritualists, but the precise style and the nice distinctions point to another source. This crass materialism came from Orson Pratt, the * gauge of philosophy,' father of Mormon metaphysics and author of The Absurdities of Im- materialism.^^ Joseph's presentation is as follows:
60 The sub-title of the Spiritualists' organ, The Banner of Light.
61 F. G. Bishop, 'An Address,* 185 1, p. 25. 'A certain vision which I saw in a state of trance in 1826. It was on a Saturday evening, and on the 7th of May, as I was retired in the forest and engaged in solemn prayer to God, that I suddenly became insensi- ble to anything around me on earth, and yet I was fully alive to the scenes before me. I seemed to stand on air and surrounded with spirits, yet none of these seemed plainly visible. There ap- peared three persons, they fixed their eyes upon me and smiled so that I was in a perfect ecstasy. It seemed as if a power rested upon my head which pervaded my entire person. At the same in- stant this wonderful personage disappeared, and I again returned to consciousness in the body as before, deeply pondering on this extraordinary vision. When I first saw the three persons, I knew they were angels. This vision was pronounced by Joseph the Prophet in 1833, a Holy vision from God, but he said he did not know its meaning. Now I have been instructed this is its signification. The three angels are the three Nephites.'
62 Compare p. 23 : — * That spiritual bodies are capable of con- densation, is evident from the fact of their occupying the small bodies of infants. The spirits of just men, who have departed from
240 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
' In tracing the thing to the foundation, and looking at it philosophically we shall find a very material difference between the body and the spirit : — the body is supposed to be organized matter, and the spirit by many is thought to be immaterial, without substance. With this latter statement we should beg leave to differ — and state that spirit is a substance, that it is material, but that it is more pure, elastic, and refined matter than the body; — that it existed before the body, can exist in the body, and will exist seperate from the body.' ^*
the fleshly tabernacle, have been seen by the inspired writers ; and from their description of them, we should not only judge them to be of the same form^ but likewise of about the same size as man in this life. These departed spirits, then, which are about the same magnitude as men in the flesh, once occupied infant bodies. There are only two methods by which to account for their increase in magnitude ; one is by an additional quantity of spiritual matter, being gradually and continually incorporated in the spiritual body, by which its magnitude is increased in the same way and in the same proportion as the fleshly body is increased. And wie other is by its elasticity or expansive properties by which it increases in size, as the tabernacle of flesh and bones increases, until it attains to its natural magnitude, or until its expansive and cohesive prop- erties balance each other, or are in a state of equilibrium,*
fi3 * Times and Seasons,' 3, 745. Compare E. W. Cox, ' Spiritualism Answered by Science,' New York, 1872, p. 46 : — The theory of the spiritualists : — < Man, they say, is composed of body, mind, and spirit. A blow will extinguish the mind, and the body inhabited by the spirit may continue to live. When the body dies, the spirit which occupied it in life passes into a new existence, in which, as it was here, it is surrounded by conditions adapted to its structure as a being which by earthly senses is deemed immaterial because impalpable to them, but which is really very refined matter. Into this new existence it passes precisely as it left the present life,
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 241
Only occasionally, did the prophet, seer and revelator essay to be a philosopher; at such times he was a mystic rather than a materialist, and his views savored more of the sects than of the schools. For example, the Irvingites, who claimed to be sacred mediums of communication between heaven and earth, once came to express sympathy with the Mormons for their belief in the restoration of primitive gifts.^ Smith scouted their achievements, and linked with them the strange performances of the two Campbells in Scotland.^ This was but two years before the prophet's death; his outlook had broadened, but not his way of looking at psychic phenomena. His very language bewrayed more of the medieval than the modern. As final proof that he had but the remotest connection with the crude ontologies of his generation, two examples may be taken, one his so-called tests of supernatural messengers,^ the other his editorial entitled, 'Try
taking with it the mental, but not the bodily, characteristics it had on earth, so far as these are adapted to the altered conditions of that new existence. The intellect is enlarged to the extent only of the increased power of obtaining intelligence necessarily resulting from exemption from the laws of gravitation and the conditions of time and space that limit the powers of the spirit while it is in the flesh."
«< McClintock and Strong, < Encyclopedia,' article Mormonism.
w « Times and Seasons,' 2, 746.
•6 Cannon, p. 404.
242 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the Spirits/ ^^ The first was meant for his worried devotees. * If an angel,' he says, ' shakes hands and you can feel his hand, all is well ; if he is the spirit of a just man made perfect, he will not move; if he is the devil, as an angel of light, you cannot feel his hand/^^ This was meant for home consumption;
•7 * Times and Seasons,' 3, 744-6.
68 Compare also Smith in Millennial Star, 17, 312 : — * We are to try the spirits and prove them, for it is often the case that men make a mistake in regard to these things. God has so ordained that when He has communicated, no vision is to be taken but what you see by the seeing of the eye, or what you hear by the hearing of the ear. When you see a vision, pray for the interpretation ; if you get not this, shut it up ; there must be certainty in this matter. An open vision will manifest that which is more important. Lying spirits are going forth in the earth. There will be great manifestations of spirits, both false and true. Being born again, comes by the Spirit of God through ordinances. An angel of God never has wings. Some will say that they have seen a spirit ; that he offered them his hand, but they did not touch it. This is a lie. First, it is contrary to the plan of God ; a spirit cannot come but in glory ; an angel has flesh and bones ; we see not their glory. The devil may appear as an angel of light. Ask God to reveal it ; if it be of the devil he will flee from you ; if of God, he will manifest himself or make it manifest. We may come to Jesus and ask Him ; He will know all about it ; if He comes to a little child He will adapt Him, self to the language and capacity of a little child. Every spirit, or vision, or singing, is not of God. The devil is an orator; he is powerful ; he took our Saviour on to a pinnacle of the temple and kept Him in the wilderness for forty days. The gift of discerning of spirits will be given to the Presiding Elder. Pray for him that he may have this gift. Speak not in the gift of tongues without understanding it, or without interpretation. The devil can speak in tongues; the adversary will come with his work; he can tempt all classes ; can speak in English or Dutch. Let no one speak in
JOSEPH THE OCCULTIST 243
the editorial, of April ist, 1842, was directed to the public: —
' Recent events compel me to say something about the spirits. ' One great evil is that men are ignorant of the nature of spirits ; their power, laws, government, intelligence, etc., and im- agine that when there is anything like power, revelation, or vision manifested that it must be of God : — hence the Methodists, Presbyterians, and others frequently possess a spirit that will cause them to lay down, and during its opera- tion animation is frequently entirely suspended ; they consider it to be the power of God, and a glorious manifestation from God ; a manifestation of what? — is there any intelligence communi- cated ? are the curtains of heaven withdrawn, or the purposes of God developed ? — have they seen and conversed with an angel ; or have the glories of futurity burst upon their view ? No ! but their body has been inanimate, the opera- tion of their spirit suspended, and all the in- telligence that can be obtained from them when they arise, is a shout of glory, or hallelujah, or some incoherent expression ; but they have had ''the power.'* The Shaker will whirl around on his heel impelled by a supernatural agency, or spirit, and think that he is governed by the spirit of God ; and the jumper will jump, and enter into all kinds of extravagancies, a Primi-
tongues unless he interpret, except by the consent of the one who is placed to preside ; then he may discern or interpret, or another may.'
244 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
tive Methodist will shout under the influence of that spirit until he will rend the heavens with his cries; while the Quakers, (or Friends) moved as they think by the spirit of God, will sit still and say nothing.*
CHAPTER VIII JOSEPH THE EXORCIST
CHAPTER VIII
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST
Before considering the 'great manifestations of spirits' among the Latter-day Saints, it is desirable to note some of the outward and visible signs of growth, some of the causes of success, and some of the records and documents of the organization.
' We review his career, and behold him from the poor, despised visionary of Manchester, rising in the short space of fifteen years, to the presidency of a church numbering not less than 200,000 souls.' ^ A gentile visitor at Nauvoo, in 1844, thus eulogized the prophet. His statement was welcomed by the Mormons as proof of their divine origin; for all that their spread was truly remarkable. In the Middle West they had their struggle for existence; the Church was persecuted, its founder killed. Then began the wholesale emigration under Brigham Young. Unusual executive ability was displayed in this flight of the Mormon tribe, and astonishing fortitude in crossing the Rockies and the alkali
> « Times and Seasons,* 5, 589. 247
248 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
plains. At last, in the far West there came a chance for unrestricted development. In a secluded valley of Utah the polygamous Saints attached themselves to the soil, and increased w^ith the rapidity of an isolated germ culture. As a bit of historical path- ology, the growth of Mormondom is unique and merits thorough investigation. But since a bio- graphical study deals, perforce, with inward causes and individual origins, it is necessary to return to the infant church, as it was affected by the person- ality of its founder.
Mormonism contained, from the start, the ele- ments of denominational success. In the first place, no other American sect could point to a Bible of its own manufacture. As the Latter-day poet ex- claimed: 'embalmed records, plates of gold, glorious things to us unfold.'^ But the acceptance of the Book was due to more than the archaic embellish- ments of the author. It is the old story of a terri- tory already prepared. The locality, where Joseph brought forth the 'ancient engravings of Nephi,' was the locality where the Cardiff giant hoax was perpetrated. But although first readers of the Book of Mormon were credulous, they had a patriotic streak in their archaeological interests. As Oliver Cowdery said 'a history of the inhabitants who peopled this continent, previous to its being dis- X Times and Seasons,' 2, 421.
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 249
covered to Europeans by Columbus must be inter- esting to every man.'^
Another element of success was that no other native sect had revelations in such profusion and in such business-like form. As compiled in the Book of Commandments these form the rarest of all original Mormon sources,* and, at the same time, the most valued of their in- spired writings. It is the Book of Mormon ' backed up' by this 'other book taken to the Lamanites' that forms the real Mormon Canon. ^ As the prophet queried : ' Take away the Book of Mormon and the Revelations, and where is our religion .^'^ As an-
s Cowdery, p. 28. Compare * Biographical Sketches,' p. 152. Joseph^s young brother Samuel, being * set apart on a mission to sell the books,' asked his customers if they did not wish to pur- chase * a history of the origin of the Indians.*
* Sabin, * Bibliothica Americana,' 12, 384, says this book was never published. There is a copy in the Berrian Collection. The copy here used is the Salt Lake Tribune reprint of 1884.
5 « Times and Seasons,' 6, 762.
6 « Times and Seasons,' 6, 1060. Compare preface to first edi- tion of « Doctrine and Covenants,' 1835 • — * ^^ deem it to be un- necessary to entertain you with a lengthy preface to the following volume, but merely to say that it contains in short the leading items of the religion which we have professed to believe. The first part of the book will be found to contain a series of lectures as delivered before a theological class in this place, and, in conse- quence of their embracing the important doctrine of salvation, we have arranged them into the following work. . . . There may be an aversion in the minds of some against receiving any- thing purporting to be articles of religious faith, in consequence of there being so many creeds now extant ; but if men believe a sys-
250 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
other curiosity of Mormon literature the history of this volume may be briefly sketched. Joseph's youthful prophecies have been preserved only in the narrative of his mother; but the vaticinations of the year 1829 proved so successful, that they were thought v^orth preserving; so on April 6th, 1830, there came this revelation: 'Behold there shall be a record kept among you, and in it thou shalt be a seer, a translator, a prophet.'^ Within a score of v^eeks the prophet created a monopoly of oracular responses, — ' no one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph.*®
The Book of Commandments comprises fifty-five chapters and runs to September, 1831. The council ordered that three thousand copies be printed in the first edition. David Whitmer says that he warned Smith and Rigdon against this, ' for the world would get hold of the books and it would not do.* He adds that, from the time some of the copies slipped through the hands of the unwise brethren, the ill-feel- ing against the Saints increased.* Whether this is true
tern and profess that it was given by inspiration, certainly the more intelligibly they can present it the better. . . . We have, therefore, endeavored to present, though in few words, our belief, and, when we say this, humbly trust the faith and principles of this society as a body.*
^ * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 22.
8 * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 30.
9 * Address,' p. 55.
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 251
or not, on July 20th, 1833, the Mormon printing office in Independence, Missouri, was torn down by the mob, but not before the book was com- pleted.'"
The relation of this supplementary brochure to the Book of Mormon has been compared with that of the Talmud to the Old Testament." The com- parison is too dignified. The Mormon theocratic code, such as it was, is here presented, but there is besides a welter of undefinable utterances. The Gemara added to the Mishna gives no idea of this curious mixture of religion and business.
The Booh of Commandments is, in part, a book of discipline, wherein the ' Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ ' are given at length.'' But the
JO 'Handbook of Reference,' p. 42. The Berrian Sale Cata- logue makes this contradictory statement: — * This book was never published, nor even completed. Only two copies are known. The sheets were destroyed by a Missouri mob, etc. For a lengthy description of this rare book see Chas. L. Woodward's «* Biblio- graphy on Mormonism." *
^^ McClintock and Strong, article 'Mormonism.' 1* Chapter 24. Compare also chapter 20 : — * It shall be the duty of the several churches composing the church of Christ, to send one or more of their teachers to attend the several conferences held by the elders of the church. With a list of the names of the sev- eral members uniting themselves with the church since the last conference, or send by the hand of some priest, so that a regular list of all the names of the whole church may be kept in the book by one of the elders, whoever the other elders shall appoint from time to time.'
252 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
pamphlet offers not only rules of action, but food for thought; in addition to the duties of the Elders or of the Seventies, there are scattered throughout rare bits of scriptural interpretation. An entire alphabet of mystic exegesis is here set forth, from Aaronic Priesthood, Baptism for the Dead, Celes- tial glory and the Devil before Adam, down to Questions and Answers on the Apocalypse. Thus in its confusion of contents the work has a general semblance to Joseph's former monument of mis- placed energy. Its biographical and personal char- acter is also evident from the author's communings with himself. Yet the book is not merely a private journal, it is a sort of public ledger; as the church in- creased, the prophet opens up an account with each new member. There were in particular celestial orders upon converts with cash; thus: 'My servant Martin should be an example to the church in laying his moneys before the bishop of the church, and my servant Edward should leave his merchan- dise and spend all his time in the labors of the church.' ''
The names of the ecclesiastical customers were not given in full in the first instance; it is the change towards particularity that denotes the emended edit- ion of the Book of Commandments. The revamped and enlarged edition is entitled The Doctrine and
^3 * Book of Commandments,* Chapters 49 and 43.
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 253
Covenants,^'' It consists, for the most part, of revel- ations to Joseph Smith, junior, ' for the building up of the Kingdom of God in the last days*; it also contains an account of 'the martyrdom of the prophet,' and lastly the 'Word and will of the Lord given through President Brigham Young, January 14th, 1847/ The Commandments and the Covenants together give an external history of the Church, while the material alterations of the former into the latter betray some of the state secrets. As usual, many hundred emendations have been discovered.'^ One instance is enough to disclose the trend of these changes; their mercantile purpose is to be seen from a single italicized word. A revelation was given in July, 1830, to the prophet's wife. The first edition reads: 'Emma thou art an elect lady and thou needest not fear, for thy husband shalt support thee from the Church;"' the second edition reads : 'thy husband shall support thee in the Church.' "
J4 The edition here employed is that * divided into verses, with references,' by Orson Pratt, senior. Salt Lake City, 1883. The revelations from July, 1828, through September, 1831, are, how- ever, quoted from the * Book of Commandments.'
15 Charles L. Woodward, of New York City, has arranged the two books in the deadly parallel column. Thus the words in italics have been added, in the following revelation to Joseph : * And you have a gift to translate the plates, and this is the first gift that I be- stowed upon youy and I have commanded you that you should pre- tend to no other gift, until my purpose is fulfilled in this ; for I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished.^
^^ * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 26.
" * Doctrine and Covenants,' § 25.
254 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
So much for the significance of the documents. With the Book of Mormon printed and the Book of Commandments started, Mormonism had both canon- ical and prophetical elements of success. The further causes of its spread may be regarded in so far as they are common to both founder and fol- lower. The hardest thing to grasp in the entire propaganda is that curiously narrow attitude of mind which regarded this as the ushering in, not of a mere new denomination, but of a new dispensation. Perhaps the first thing to appeal to the dissatisfied religionist was the prophet's announcement of a ' plain and simple gospel.' ^® As previous analysis has shown, complexity and not simplicity was the mark of Joseph's doctrine. But to minds whose dis- tinctions comprised no differences, this very confu- sion was effective. As a magazine of mixed proof texts the Book of Mormon appealed to all sects. To paraphrase the words of Benjamin Franklin, — the au- thor's heterodoxy was everybody's orthodoxy. So in spite of all the talk about liberality,'® this unsec- tarian society was only another sect in process of formation. Its principles were grand enough, but its beginnings were very small. There were eleven
18 This phrase begins in the < fore part ' of the « Book of Mormon ' and runs throughout Smith's writings.
18 For a general tirade against the sect see * Book of Mormon ' p. 566 : * O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, etc' Compare also * Pearl of Great Price,* p. 102.
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 255
witnesses to the Record, but only six charter mem- bers of the Church. ^^ That * Church of Christ,' as yet without the full title of Latter-day Saints, was organized, according to law, in Fayette, New York, on April 6th, 1830. From that time, says the prophet, the work 'rolled forth with astonishing rapidity. '^^ Of the mental calibre of Joseph's fellow-workers something more must be said, — something to ex- plain the parf^adox of their making puny Mormonism equivalent to a new dispensation. An ethical trav- eler in America remarked that strong interest in re- ligion was popularly held to mean conversion to a
20 * Handbook of Reference,' p. 39 : * Names of members : Joseph Smith, junior, O. Cowdery, Hyrum Smith, Peter Whitmer, Samuel H. Smith and David Whitmer. When the Church was organized, the first public ordinations to the Melchisdek Priesthood took place. Hands were also laid on for the reception of the Holy Ghost, and for the confirmation of members of the Church, and the sacrament was administered for the first time.'
51 * Times and Seasons,' 3, 708. Compare Cowdery, p. 40 : * Many of the elders of Christ's church have since been commissioned and sent forth over this vast Republic, from river to river, and from valley to valley, till the vast sunny plains of Missouri, the frozen regions of Canada, and the eastern Maine, with the summer States of the South, have been saluted with the sound of the voice of those who go forth for the last time to say to Israel, Prepare for the coming of thy King. Wonderful to tell ! Amid the frowns of bigots, the sneers of hypocrites, the scoffs of the foolish, the cal- umny of slanderers, the ridicule of the vain and the popular preju- dice of a people estranged from God, urged on to deeds of villainy by the priests of Baal, the word has been proclaimed with success, and thousands are now enjoying the benign influence of the love of God shed forth by the Comforter upon the pure in heart.'
256 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
particular creed." Such is only a general explana- tion of the particular fallacy of taking a part for the whole. More precise reasons are to be found. The leanness of understanding in the first believers was to be expected from the poor food their wits were fed on. The blame was not wholly theirs but lay upon their spiritual guides. The education of the back- woods clergy did not extend beyond the elements of a common English education.^^ The most influential class of preachers, the Methodists, relying on the ad- vice of Wesley, gloried in a ' saddle bags ' educa- tion.'* It is unjust to disparage the itinerant mission- aries who, for the sake of their religion, forded icy rivers and penetrated dark forests. This was the van of the army, there were also the camp followers, — the sectarian adventurers whom the settled clergy roundly denounced as ' evangelists destitute of clas- sical and theological furniture, of feeble natural abilities, boisterous, vulgar, irreverent, fanatical.''^ These were the men behind the revivalistic ex- cesses, and yet the people came miles to hear them, hanging on their words day after day, forgetting the cares of business and the very wants of the body.^®
22 Martineau, 2, 326.
23 Thompson, p. 186.
24 John Atkinson, < Centennial History of American Methodism,* 1884, P' 143' Compare supplement to Millennial Star, 14, 319.
25Hotchkin, p. 172.
26 De Tocqueville, 2, 161.
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 257
The eagerness of the people to hear something new and strange was matched by the opposition of the older churches. As Joseph's mother said, even be- fore the Book of Mormon was printed, * the different denominations are very much opposed to us.'" All this fostered the rise of new sects ; for the per- secution of the larger bodies aroused the spirit of the smaller.
The pride of the sectary, the search for novelty, and mental impoverishment were some of the natural reasons magnifying the importance of the Mormon cult in the eyes of its votaries. In addition there were abnormal forces; at work as Joseph de- scribed the matter: —
< Some few were called and ordained by the spirit of revelation, and prophesy, and began to preach as the spirit gave them utterance, and though weak, yet were they strengthened by the power of God, and many were brought to repentance, were immersed in the water, and were filled with the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. They saw visions and prophesied, devils were cast out and the sick healed by the laying on of hands.* '®
It is here that Smith added to his previous claims the function of exorcist. His clever opportunism was shown in the natal month of the church. In April, 1830, says the official chronicle, *the devil
2" Biographical Sketches,* p. 146. 28 « Times and Seasons,* 3, 708.
258 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
was cast out of Newel Knight through the adminis- tration of Joseph Smith, junior, in Colesville, Broom County, New York. This was the first miracle which was done in this Church, or by any member of it, and it was not done by men nor by the power of man, but it was done by God, and the power of godliness/^
There now begins a series of performances seem- ingly out of place in nineteenth century America, — the Salem witchcraft of a century and a half before reappears in the western wilds. There was the same belief in demoniac possession, the same class of neurotic and hysterical sufferers, the same cler- ical zeal in making capital out of the preternatural. Fortunately Joseph Smith was not a reincarnation of Cotton Mather. The severest mania took place under another's auspices, and, possibly from motives of jealousy. Smith did what he could to suppress this ' work of the Devil.'
The preconditions of the first * miracle ' were like those of the previous abnormalities. Reaction brought belief. As fast as apostolic * gifts' were denied by the orthodox, the Latter-day Saints affirmed their restoration. Such mental habit was found in the first Mormon demoniac. ' By reading and searching the Bible,' says Newel Knight, M found that there would be a great falling away from
29 * Handbook of Reference,' p. 40,
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 259
the gospel, as preached and established by Jesus ; that in the last days God would set His hand to restore that which was lost/*^ Soon after hearing the first public gospel sermon of this dispensation/^ and while in a state of mental and physical prostra- tion, Knight was attacked by the ' power of Satan ' and underwent ' curious actions while thus af- flicted.'" Smith himself tells how he met the crisis : —
'I went, and found him suffering very much in his mind, and his body acted upon in a very strange manner, his visage and limbs distorted and twisted in every shape and appearance possible to imagine, and finally he was caught up off the floor of the apartment and tossed about most fearfully. His situation was soon made known to the neighbors and relatives, and in a short time as many as eight or nine grown persons had got together to wit- ness the scene. After he had thus suffered for a time, I succeeded in getting hold of him by the hand, when al- most immediately he spoke to me, and with very great earnestness required of me that I should cast the devil out of him, saying that he knew that he was in him, and that he also knew I could cast him out. I replied, ''If you know that I can, it shall be done,** and then almost unconsciously I rebuked the devil and commanded him in the name of Jesus Christ to depart from him, when immediately Newell spoke out and said that he saw the
80 * Journal/ p. 48.
8> « Handbook of Reference,' p. 40.
8« « Journal,* p. 50.
26o THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
devil leave him, and vanish from his sight. This was the first miracle that was done in this church.'
Of the therapeutic aspect of this case more will be said later. As the history of obsession shows, it is the exorcist's mental suggestion, conscious or unconscious, that effects these 'miraculous cures.' As regards the psychic state of the patient, the pres- ence of an hallucinatory image was afterwards ad- mitted by Knight himself: Being 'cross-examined as to the devil cast out, I said to the lawyer " it will be of no use for me to tell you what the devil looked like, for it was a spiritual sight and spiritu- ally discerned, and of course you would not under- stand if I were to tell you of it.'' ' ^
The highly neurotic condition of the young body of believers was manifest in the first conference of the Church, a month later, — 'many prophesied, others had the heavens opened to their view.' In the nature of things the prophet did not lose the advantage of the Saints' 'unspeakable joy.' As Knight recounts, ' to find ourselves engaged in the very same order of things as were observed and practiced by the holy apostles of old, combined to create within fresh zeal and energy in the cause of truth, and also to confirm our faith in Joseph Smith being the instrument in the hands of God, to restore
» * Journal,* p. 60.
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the Priesthood again to man on earth and to set up the Kingdom of God/"
Six months after this came the Kirtland frenzy, when many were 'strangely handled by the spirits.' It must be said that Smith did what he could to suppress the spasmodic attacks. But the people looking on the ecstasy as a ' sign/ the indirect results were of prime importance in the growth of the Church. A backbone was now put into the flabby embryo. One hundred members were added to the struggling Church and, more than all, there was brought on the scene the Reverend Sidney Rigdon, the so-called brains of Mormonism.*^
M« Journal,' pp. 52,53.
35 Compare Appendix III. The following account of Rigdon is compiled from 'Times and Seasons,* i, 135-6; 2,429; 5, 612, ^50-739 ; 6, 899. Compare also this hitherto unpublished holograph letter, from the Berrian Collection : — « Friendship, Alleghany County, New York, May 25, 1873, ^® ^^^ fourscore years old and seriously afflicted with paralysis. . . . The Lord notified us that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were agoing to be destroyed and for us to leave we did so and the Smiths were killed a few days after we started. Since then I have had no con- nection with any of the people who staid and built up to them- selves churches, and chose to themselves leaders such as they chose and then framed their own religion.
The Church of Latter-day Saints had three books that they ac- knowledge as Canonical. The Bible the book of Mormon and the commandments. For the existence of that church there had to be a revelator one who received the word of the Lord. A spokesman one inspired of God to expound all revelation so that the church might all be of one faith. Without these two men the Church of Latter-day saints could not exist. This order ceased
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A brief history of the latter is called for. An ex- Campbellite preacher and founder of a communistic body in Ohio, Rigdon was deemed learned in his- tory and literature, and gifted in his flowery eloquence. He was first received with open arms by Smith, but became later 'a millstone on his back,' and was finally shaken oflf in 1843. If the Mormon accounts are further to be believed, Rigdon was the stormy petrel of the Church ; — where he was, there was trouble. It was a Fourth-of-July oration of his that roused to fury 'the uncircumcised Philistines of Missouri.' As to Rigdon's undue influence over Smith much might be said on both sides.*** On the
to exist, being overcome by the violence of armed men by whom houses were beat down by cannon which the assalents had furnished themselves with.
Thus ended the " Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints " — and it never can move again till the Lord inspires men and women to do it.'
«6 Whitmer, p. 35 : — ' In December, 1830, Sidney Rigdon and Edward Partridge came from Kirtland, Ohio, to Fayette, New York, to see Brother Joseph, and in the latter part of the winter they returned to Kirtland. In February, 1831, Brother Joseph came to Kirtland where Rigdon was. Rigdon was a thorough Bible scholar, a man of fine education, and a powerful orator. He soon worked himself deep into Brother Joseph's affections, and had more influence over him than any other man living. He was Brother Joseph's private counsellor, and his most intimate friend and brother for some time after they met. Brother Joseph rejoiced, believing that the Lord had sent to him this great and mighty man Sidney Rigdon, to help him in the work. Poor Brother Joseph ! He was mistaken about this, and likewise all of the brethren were mistaken ; for we thought at that time just as Brother Joseph did
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one hand, Joseph announced that Sidney was the messenger ' sent to prepare the way ' before him, and not long after he ordained him prophet, seer and revelator. On the other hand, in 1841, Rigdon was ordered by revelation, to stay in Nauvoo; while in 1844, in the trial before the council, Smith openly charged him with ' wallowing in filthiness and corruption/ On expulsion from the Church, Rigdon withdrew to Pittsburg and published an anti-Mormon paper, the Messenger and Advocate of the Church oj Christ.
In comparing the two men, a friend of both said that Rigdon ' did not possess the native intellect of Smith, and lacked his determined will/^^ There is, furthermore, reason for believing that Rigdon was mentally unsound. In old age, he writes that he
about it. But alas ! in a few years we found out different. Sid- ney Rigdon was the cause of almost all the errors which were in- troduced while he was in the church. I believe Rigdon to have been the instigator of the secret organization known as the 'Danites ' which was formed in Far West Missouri in June, 1838. In Kirtland, Ohio, in 183 1, Rigdon would expound the Old Testa- ment 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 that doctrine, and of course a revelation would al- ways come just as they desired it. Rigdon finally persuaded Brother Joseph to believe that the high priests which had such great power in ancient times, should be in the Church of Christ to-day. He had Brother Joseph inquire of the Lord about it, and they received an answer according to their erring desires.* ST Burnett, p. 67.
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was afflicted with paralysis; in boyhood, his brother said that he was injured in the head by falling from a horse; in 1832, long before their ecclesiastical partnership was dissolved, Smith described Rig- don as 'delereous/ On March 25th, the two had been ' severely mobbed ' in Hiram, Ohio. ' The next morning,' narrates the prophet, ' I went to see Elder Rigdon, and found him crazy, and his head highly inflamed, for they had dragged him by his heels, and those too, so high from the earth he could not raise his head from the rough frozen surface which lascerated it exceedingly/ In 1840 Rigdon wrote ' my attendant physician has forbid my using any exertions, either mental or physical, as it will en- danger my life.' Rigdon's erratic tendencies were cast in his teeth by his colleagues. Orson Hyde thus apostrophized him, in 1844: 'Mr. Rigdon, do you not remember how you came into a certain council about the ist of April or latter part of March last, that had been organized by Joseph Smith; and also how you danced and shouted, and threw your feet so high that you came well nigh falling back- wards upon the stove ? Certainly you must re- member this; for you frothed at the mouth like a mad man, and gave glory to God so long and loud that you became entirely hoarse and exhausted.' Whatever judgment may be passed on Rigdon morally, mentally his character was one of extremes
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and, as such, had an abnormal influence on early Mormondom; as Bishop Whitmer put it: 'He was always either in the bottom of the cellar or up in the garret window. At the time his license was taken in Kirtland he was more sanguine than he is now. The people were excited very much at that time.'
From all sides it is clear that Rigdon was the moving spirit in the Kirtland frenzy; but there were also deeper underlying causes at work; before con- sidering these, a description of the trouble is need- ful. Rigdon's colleague. Parley Pratt, another influential Mormon convert, gives this account: — 'As I went forth among the different branches some very strange spiritual operations were mani- fested, which were disgusting rather than edifying. Some persons would seem to swoon away, and make unseemly gestures, and be drawn or dis- figured in their countenances. Others would fall into ecstasies, and would be drawn into contor- tions, cramps, fits, etc. Others would seem to have visions and revelations, which were not edify- ing, which were not congenial to the doctrine and spirit of the gospel. In short, a false and lying spirit seemed to be creeping into the Church.' '^
A general reason for these phenomena was the ubiquitous revival. In New York State the condi-
88 < Autobiography,* p. 65.
266 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
tion of the audience at the protracted meetings is described as a condition of panic.'' In the West about 1800 the movement was more widespread and more severe. 'It was not confined to one denomination/ says the historian, ^even phlegmatic New England Presbyterians of the Reserve were influenced.*' Matters went so far that the convul- sions were popularly classified into the falling, jerking, rolling and dancing varieties. The com- monest state was one of ecstasy, a loss of muscular power and of consciousness of external objects like protracted catalepsy. The most alarming manifes- tation was the 'jerking exercise' in which several hundred of both sexes were seized with involuntary contortions, while their bodies hurried over fallen trunks or pews and benches. No one restrained them, for restraint was thought to be resisting the Spirit of God. The spasms were involuntary, be- cause ' wicked men would be seized while guard- ing against them and cursing every jerk.*" Such were the more remote causes of the later mania, for, in the same place, the same conditions were aroused by the frenzied preaching of Rigdon.
What occurred in 1830 was stranger than the events of a generation before. An account of an eyewitness presents the whole gamut of abnormal
89 According to Prof. W. H. Brewer of Yale University. *o Howe, p. 189. 41 Howe, p. 189.
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psychology:" — •On the conversion of Rigdon, a most successful starting point was thought to have been obtained. Cowdery and his associates then be- gan to develop the peculiarities of the new imposi- tion. Scenes of the most wild, frantic and horrible fanaticism ensued. They pretended that the power of miracles was about to be given to all those who embraced the new faith, and commenced communi- cating the Holy Ghost, by laying their hands upon the heads of the converts, which operation, at first produced an instantaneous prostration of body and mind. Many would fall upon the floor, where they would lie for a long time, apparently lifeless. Thus they continued these enthusiastic exhibitions for several weeks. The fits usually came on, during or after their prayer meetings, which were held nearly every evening. — The young men and women were more particularly subject to this delirium. They would exhibit all the apish actions imaginable, mak- ing the most ridiculous grimaces, creeping upon their hands and feet, rolling upon the frozen
*2 Ezra Booth's Letters to the Rev. Ira Eddy from Nelson, Portage County, Ohio, September, 1831 ; published in the Ohio S^ar, These letters were quoted by E. D. Howe whose book V Mormon- ism Unveiled,* was attacked by Smith in * Times and Seasons,' Volume III. But the letters, although written by a 'Jack- Mormon * have never been impeached, since this account was corroborated by the prophet himself. Compare 'Biographical Sketches,' p. 171, etc.
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ground, go through with all the Indian modes of warfare, such as knocking down, scalping, ripping open and tearing out the bowels. At other times, they would run through the fields, get upon stumps, preach to imaginary congregations, enter the water and perform all the ceremony of baptizing, etc. Many would have fits of speaking all the different Indian dialects, which none could understand. Again, at the dead hour of night, the young men might be seen running over the fields and hills in pursuit, as they said, of the balls of fire, lights, etc., which they saw moving through the atmosphere.'" The rest of the account may be condensed, for the subsequent * spiritual phenomena ' — less violent than these, took place under Smith's own auspices. There was first 'the gift of tongues,' — uncon- scious articulations declared by Joseph to be * the pure Adamic,'** but by an old trapper to be snatches of Indian dialects.*^ There was next the 'gift of
43 Booth said these accounts were from his own observations in the Western Reserve or from testimonies of persons who still adhered to Mormonism. — Letter III.
44 Cannon, p. 17.
45 i ^^Q ;Yiii first notice the gifts of tongues, exercised by some when carried away in the spirit. These persons were apparently lost to all surrounding circumstances, and wrapt up in the contem- plation of things, and in communication with persons not present. They articulated sounds, which but few present professed to un- derstand; and those few declared them to be the Indian language. A merchant, who had formerly been a member of the Methodist society, observed he had formerly traded with the Indians, and he knew it to be their dialect.'
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interpretation/*^ — carried away in the spirit the subject would profess to read the Bible in different languages. There was also the 'gift of prophecy,' — mounted on a stump the ecstatic would fancy themselves haranguing their red brethren, and would imitate the Indian in look and manner. Finally there were alleged acts of clairvoyance, — young men would pretend to read celestial messages on the palms of their hands and the lids of their Bibles.*'
46 Booth's Letters :—
* Being myself present on one of these occasions, a person prof- fered his services as my interpreter, and translated these sounds to me which were unintelligible, into the English language. One individual could read any chapter of the Old or New Testament, in several different languages. This was known to be the case by a person who professed to understand those languages. In the midst of this delirium they would, at times, fancy themselves ad- dressing a congregation of their red brethren ; mounted on a stump, or the fence, or from some elevated situation, would ha- rangue their assembly until they had convinced or converted them. They would then lead them into the water, and baptize them, and pronounce their sins forgiven. In this exercise, some of them actually went into the water; and in the water, performed the ceremony used in baptizing. These actors assumed the visage of the savage, and so nearly imitated him, not only in language, but in gestures and actions, that it seemed the soul and body were completely metamorphosed into the Indian. No doi,ibt was then entertained but that was an extraordinary work of the Lord, designed to prepare these young men for the Indian mission.'
47 Booth's Letters : — * Before these scenes fully commenced, however, Cowdery had departed for the country inhabited by the Indians, with the expectation of converting them to Chris- tianity by means of his new Bible, and miracles which he was to perform among them. These pretensions appeared to have
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Another apostate, eight years an elder among the Mormonites, has given an account of similar doings among the Saints in England.*® He explains ' tongues * as due to ignorance, excitement, and a lack of vocabulary.*^ Physiologically considered, this psychic Volapuk is another case of decentral- ization: the higher brain centres having temporarily lost their sway, there ensues a loss of rational self- taken possession of the minds of the young men in their aspira- tions. Three of them pretended to have received commissions to preach, from the skies, after having jumped into the air as high as they could.*
48 Hawthornthwaite, 'Adventures among the Mormons,* 1857 pp. 88-91. *At a meeting in Manchester an elder shuts his eyes and at the top of his voice exclaims : — * Oh, me, sontra von te, par las a te se, tcr mon te roy ken ; ran passan par du mon te ! Kros krassey pron proy praddey, sin von troo ta ! O me, sontrote krush krammon palassate Mount Zion kron cow che and America pa palassate pau pau pu pe ! Sontro von teli terattate taw ! ' This was interpreted as an exhortation to be humble and obedient; so was another * gift of tongues ' where a strange woman came in and spoke in Welsh.*
4^ Hawthornthwaite says, * Those who speak in tongues are gen- erally the most illiterate among the Saints, such as cannot command words as quick as they would wish, and instead of waiting for a suitable word to come to their memories, they break forth in the first sounds their tongues can articulate, no matter what it is. Thus — some person in the meeting has told an interesting story about Zion, then an excitable brother gets up to bear his " testi- mony,'* the speed of speech increases with the interest of the sub- ject : " Beloved brethren and sisters, I rejoice, and my heart is glad to overflowing, — I hope to go to Zion, and to see you all there, and to — to — O, me sontro von te, sontro von terre, sontro von te. O me palassate te,*' * etc.
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control. In general the psycho-physical state of the Kirtland convulsionists was that to be found in a collection of religious visionaries.^ One young man admitted that he knew not what he did for two or three weeks. The general mental state is typified in the narrator's case: 'When I embraced Mormonism,' says Booth, 'I conscientiously be- lieved it to be of God. The impressions of my mind were deep and powerful, and my feelings were excited to a degree to which I had been a stranger. Like a ghost it haunted me by night and by day, until I was mysteriously hurried, as it were, by a kind of necessity into the vortex of delusion. — At times I was much elated; but generally, things in prospect were the greatest stimulants to action.' To turn to Smith's connection with these matters : if he was the originator of the abnormal perform- ances in New York, he was only the director of events in Ohio. Of the Kirtland branch, he says in his Journal, 'strange notions of false spirits had crept in among them. I soon overcame them with some wisdom.'" Despite this superior attitude, there is abundant evidence of the primitiveness of his own notions; he held nearly the animistic view
50 A writer in the North British Review, 77, 112, in explaining the excesses of the Mormonites, draws analogies from Hecker's « Epidemics of the Middle Ages,* and Wilkinson's, * Revival in its Physical, Psychical and Religious Aspects,* i860.
51 * Times and Seasons,' 3, 68.
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of the savage:^'' to him, as to the Indian medicine man, it was not the soul of the sufferer but the soul of a demon, which entered in and caused the havoc. The elements of such belief, as sustained by pop- ular mythology,^ and reinforced by a literal inter- pretation of Scripture, are present in Mother Smith's account. Speaking of the Kirtland branch of nearly one hundred members she cites,
' The singular power, which manifested itself among them in strange contortions of the visage, and sud- den unnatural exertions of the body. This they sup- posed to be a display of the power of God. Shortly after Joseph arrived, he called the Church together, in order to show them the difference between the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of the Devil. He said, if a man arose in meeting to speak, and was seized with a kind of paroxysm, that drew his face and limbs, in a violent and unnatural manner, which made him appear to be in pain ; and if he gave utterance to strange sounds, which were incomprehensible to his audience, they might rely upon it, that he had the spirit of the devil. But on the contrary, when a man speaks by the Spirit of God, he speaks from the abundance of his heart — his mind is filled with intelligence, and even should he be excited, it does not cause him to do anything ridiculous or un- seemly. He then called upon one of the brethren to speak, who arose and made the attempt, but was imme- diately seized with a kind of spasm, which drew his face,
52 Herbert Spencer, * Principles of Sociology,* i, 238. 63 Compare Eggleston, pp. 16-23, *The evils" angels . . . descended from hobgoblins.*
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arms, and fingers in a most astonishing manner. Hyrum, by Joseph's request, laid hands on the man, whereupon he sunk back in a state of complete exhaustion. Joseph then called upon another man to speak, who stood lean- ing in an open window. This man also attempted to speak, but was thrown forward into the house, prostrate, unable to utter a syllable. He was administered to, and the same effects followed as in the first instance.' ^*
Smith the opportunist again stands forth. Out of the morbid anatomy of his followers he drew hieratic authority to himself. He warns the Saints against being ' seduced by evil spirits, or doctrines of devils';^ and then goes on to inquire: —
' Who can drag into daylight and develop the hid- den mysteries of the false spirits that so frequently are made manifest among the Latter-day Saints ? We answer that no man can do this without the Priesthood, and having a knowledge of the laws by which spirits are governed.'^®
In the meanwhile, through these signs and wonders in Ohio, and through the exodus of Saints from New York" and the surrounding branches, the Church numbered two thousand. The fourth con-
54 < Biographical Sketches/ pp. 17 1-2.
55 « Book of Commandments,' Chapter 49.
56 « Times and Seasons/ 3, 746.
5*^ Compare * Book of Commandments/ Chapter 40, < A Revela- tion to the churches in New York, commanding them to remove to Ohio/
274 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
ference was held at Kirtland and several brethren were called by revelation to the office of High Priest/® There now occurred further manifesta- tions of the prophet's influence. June 4th, 1831, was set apart for * mighty works.' The Saints had been prepared by fasting and prayer, and by the prophecy that they would see the Lord face to face.^^ It is not asserted that the theophany came to pass, but other things did. By long speaking Smith and some others became much excited, hands were then laid on Elder Wright who arose and ' presented a pale countenance, a fierce look, with his arms extended, and his hands cramped back, the whole system agitated, and a very unpleasant object to look upon.'^^ Nevertheless, the success in producing the ecstasy was not uniform. Some of the candidates felt the weight of Joseph's hands thrice before the thing was rightly done; finally the work got beyond his control and, as an eyewit- ness declared, — *then ensued a scene, of which you can form no adequate conception; and which, I would forbear relating, did not the truth require it. The elder moved upon the floor, his legs in-
^8 * Handbook of Reference,* p. 40.
^9 « Times and Seasons/ 5, 720, 'This is the word of the Lord to us ; on condition of our obedience He has promised us great things ; yea, even a visit from the heavens to honor us with His own presence.*
«o Booth, Letter iv.
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dining to a bend; one shoulder elevated above the other, upon which the head seemed disposed to re- cline, his arms partly extended; his hands partly clenched; his mouth partly open, and contracted in the shape of an italic 0/
Without prolonging the agony of quotation it is happily evident that, within two months. Smith had learned how far to go in these matters. On August 3d, at the dedication of the temple, as one of the number relates, ' hundreds of Elders spoke in tongues, but many of them, being young in the Church, and never having witnessed the manifestation of this gift before, felt a little alarmed. This caused the Prophet Joseph Smith to pray the Lord to withhold the spirit.'"
Tracing the inception and development of obsess- ion in the Mormon Church, it may safely be said that, as an exorcist. Smith at last reached the com- mon sense standpoint of repression. It was not so with his followers. From the acts of the Mormon apostles, at home and abroad, a complete popular demonology might be reconstructed. A few ex- amples may be cited to show that, although the prophet had ordained and dispatched his mission- aries,*^ he exercised little control over their doings.
^^ Benjamin Brown, p. 1 1.
S2 Compare * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 54, — « Let them go two by two, my servant Lyman (W.) and my servant John (C.) * — and twenty-six others.
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But it is better worth while to note how all this was preparatory to a wider role, how it all played into the hands of Joseph the faith healer. From the de- lusions of the patients and the misconceptions of the operators, one can get an idea of the material there was to work upon.
To take certain typical cases, in their order: Parley Pratt narrates that in 1836, near Toronto, Canada, he found a woman prostrated by some power and in an agony of distress. She was drawn and twisted in every limb, and, despite repressive measures, would be so drawn out of all shape as to only touch the bed with her heels and head. She often cried out that she could see two devils in human form, who would bruise and pinch her, and she could hear them talk. But as the bystanders could not see them, but only the effects they did not know what to think. * Finally,' says Pratt, 'she runs to me for she said she knew she could be healed if she could but get a sight of the man of God.^
How the Mormon leaders lugged in an enginery of spirits to explain a group of morbid symptoms is further exemplified in Elder Kimball's letter of 1837, on a 'singular circumstance.'" The scene was laid in Lancashire, England; when Kimball
«3 Pratt, pp. 167-8.
84 Elders Journal^ Vol. I, No. X ; compare Millennial Star, 16, 31, and also Kimbairs Journal, p. 20, — 'Brother
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attempted to lay hands on a brother afflicted with evil spirits, he began to 'tremble and reel to and fro, and fell on the floor like a dead man.' Then, as another elder explains, 'the devils were exceeding angry because we attempted to cast them out; they made a powerful attempt upon Elder Kimball and struck him senseless. But we laid our hands on him, he recovered his strength in part, and we could very sensibly hear the evil spirits rage and foam out their shame. Br Kimball was quite weak for a day or two after.'
The medieval point of view, the utter ignorance of natural causes, the reading in of preconceived notions are all to be found in the parallel accounts.^
Russell called on Elder Hyde and me to pray for him, for he was so afflicted with evil spirits that he could not live long until he should obtain relief, we arose and laid hands on him and prayed. While I was thus engaged, I was struck with great force by some invisible power and fell senseless on the floor as if I had been shot, and the first thing I recollected was, that I was sup- ported by Brothers Hyde and Russell, who were beseeching a throne of grace on my behalf. They then laid me on the bed, but my agony was so great that I could not endure, and I was obliged to get out, and fell on my knees and began to pray. I then sat on the bed and could distinctly see the evil spirits, who foamed and gnashed their teeth upon us. We gazed upon them about an hour and a half. ... I perspired exceedingly, my clothes as wet as if I had been taken out of the river. . . . Weakness of body, from shock.'
«* Woodruff, * Journal,* p. 85, gives a third account of the above episode. He says, in 1840: — * I had only just lain down, when it seemed as if a legion of devils made war upon us, to destroy us,
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Moreover the operators were but once on the out- skirts of the truth, — that the mental influence of the bystanders has something to do with the matter. Curiously enough the latter instance happened in the year in which a London physician was utilizing in his practice the suggestive side of mesmerism.^ In 1839, in his mission to England, Elder Woodruff tried to cast a devil from a woman, *but,' he ex- plains, ' the unbelief of the wicked present was so great that we could not cast the devil out of her, and she raged worse than ever; when the room was cleared I succeeded, she was cured and fell asleep.' ^^
It was by virtue of 'faith' that Smith affected some alleviations of non-organic troubles; he had
and we were struggling for our lives in the midst of this warfare of evil spirits until we were nearly choked to death.' — This scene is described a third time, with later embellishments, when Hyde writes to Kimball, May 22d, 1856: — * Every circumstance is fresh in my recollection. After you were overcome by them and had fallen, their awful rush upon me with knives, threats, imprecations and hellish grins convinced me that they were no friends of mine. While you were apparently senseless and lifeless on the floor . . . I stood between you and the devils and fought them and contended against them face to face. . . . The last imp turned and said, " I never said anything against you " — I replied — " Depart " — and the room was clear.'
M Dr. Elliotson ; compare Moll, p. 361.
67 * Journal,' p. 76. Brigham Young, * Journal,' p. 104, alleges the following as results of these * miracles ' : — < We landed in 1840, strangers and penniless. When we left, in less than two years, we had baptized between seven and eight thousand souls.'
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learned by experience the prime value of the sub- ject's attitude of trust. It was much less so with his ministers of healing. In 1844, in Virginia,^ after a Sunday service of baptism and confirmation, six elders had a ' contest with evil spirits/ It was presumably a case of hysterics, which ultimately spread and alternately affected three girls for thirty-
68 « Early Scenes from Church History,' by H. G. B., pp. 13-15 : — « There lay the girl stretched upon a bed apparently lifeless, with- out breath or motion. ... As soon as I opened my mouth, I began to cast a devil out of her, which was farthest from my thoughts before I commenced. I commanded, . . . the evil spirit immediately departed from her, she being restored to her normal condition, seemingly as well as ever. Not ten minutes after, the same evil spirit entered another girl. . . . Elder Hamilton was mouth with myself in casting it out. ... A third young sister was attacked ... in the same way. . . . This third one was no sooner rid of the evil spirit, than it returned and took possession, the second time, of the one last before relieved of its power ; and when it was cast out from this one, it took pos- session of the third one again, and so on alternately, ... for three or four times. But the spirit never returned the second time to the first sister that was attacked that evening. At the end of two or three hours, we separated the two girls, ... as far as we could. . . . There were six of us in attendance. . . . While possessed with this evil spirit, the girls would sometimes lay in a trance, motionless, and apparently without breathing, till we were ready to conclude they were dead, then they would come to and speak and sing in tongues, and talk about Priesthood and the endowments. At other times they would choke up, ceasing to breathe until they were black in the face, and we thought they would surely die. Sometimes they would froth at the mouth and act like they were in a fit. If standing upon their feet when taken, they would fall to the floor and act like they were struggling for life with some unseen power. Read Mark 18 : 14-29.'
28o THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
six hours. The narrator, at first, blundered into suc- cess,— without thinking, he commanded the devil to depart, and the girl was restored to her normal condition. When the hysteria became collective, and the imps seemed to play tag from one poor creature to another, the Mormon elders were as helpless as were the Puritan divines before the Salem witches.
One more example will show the aboriginality of the Latter-day Saints* belief. Elder Hill, while a missionary among the Shoshone and Bannock Indians, found eight or nine of them possessed of the evil one.^^ In attempting to bestow upon them 'baptism for the health,' he found that they had been practicing too much witchcraft and black art.
Without entering upon the psychology of the
•9 'Faith Promoting Series, No. 2,' pp. 91-2, 'Baptism for the Health * : — < There were in this county eight or nine who were possessed of the evil one, or something of that kind. The first of these was a large, strong woman. An Indian is no more afraid of water than a duck is, but when I raised this woman out of the water she wilted and dropped on my arm, as lifeless, to all appear- ance, as if she had been dead a week. — The old chief told me that these eight or nine cases had been practicing their witchcraft and working with their black art so much that he did not expect any- thing else of them. — Some of those that were operated upon in this way were men, and when I would raise them out of the water they would hang upon my arm breathless and as limber as a half filled sack of wheat. . . . The Lamanites are very much like other people : some of them have got faith and will be healed of any sickness, no matter how severe.'
JOSEPH THE EXORCIST 281
Lamanites, or citing more of these 'early scenes in church history/ ^^ one can understand how a regular Mormon demonology came, after a manner, to be
'0 Benjamin Brown, in * Testimonies for the Truth/ in a later strange account of an exorcism, incidentally touches on the signific- ance of mental suggestion. Speaking of the Pomphret Branch where a * sister was possessed,* he says : — * Directly we entered her room, she called out, " Take your shoes from off your feet, this is Holy Ground, the Prophet Elijah is here." I saw the spirit by which she was influenced, so I walked up to her and said, " I am a servant of the Lord, I obey no command of the Devil." She be- came uproarious directly . . . she arose from the bed, on her feet, without apparently bending a joint in her body, stiff as a rod of iron. [After praying.] The evil spirit then came out full of fury, and as he passed by one of the brethren seized him by both arms, and gripped them violently, and passing towards me, some- thing which by the feel appeared like a man's hand, grasped me by both sides of my face, and attempted to pull me sideways to the ground, but the hold appearing to slip I recovered my balance immediately. My face was sore for some days after this. The other brother that was seized was lame for a week afterwards. As soon as this was done, the sister partially recovered, so much so that she obeyed anything I chose to tell her to do, whereas be- fore she was perfectly ungovernable. Still she seemed to be sur- rounded by some evil influence. This puzzled us, for we knew the spirit was cast out, but we learned the cause afterwards. Just then it was revealed to us that if we went to sleep, the Devil would enter one of the brethren. My nephew, Melvin Brown, neglected the warning, and composed himself to sleep in an armchair, while we were still watching with the sister. Directly he did so, the Devil entered into him, and he became black in the face and nearly suffocated. He awoke immediately, and motioned for us to lay hands on him, for he could not speak. We did so and the evil spirit then left him, and he recovered at once.'
•Ji ' Address,' p. 35.
^2 < Journal,' p. 84.
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formulated. Thus Whitmer avowed, * False spirits, which come as an Angel of Light, are abroad in the world,' " and Woodruff announced, — 'after a pow- erful attack of the enemy, — I estimate one hundred evil spirits to every person on earth whose whole mission and labor is to lead men to do evil.'"
CHAPTER IX JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER
CHAPTER IX
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER
Mormon demonology led up to Mormon faith healing. If the Saints cast out devils in the name of the Lord, why could they not cast out diseases ? They tried the experiment as early as 1834. * When the cholera first broke out in the camp/ says Kim- ball, ' John S. Carter was the first who went for- ward to rebuke it, but himself was immediately slain. . . . Even brother Joseph, seeing the suf- ferings of his brethren, stepped forward to rebuke the destroyer, but was immediately seized with the disease himself/* This incident is significant, it shows up Smith in a new light. The prophet of the restoration of gifts,^ was now in the clutches of popular demand; he was a minister of healing, not because he knew any medicine, but because of the expectations of his adherents. However it is not
' < Times and Seasons,* 6, 839. Compare also Brown, p. 45 : — When one elder ate mushrooms, president Richards * rebuked the poison.*
2 Compare * Book of Commandments,* Chapter 26 : * Require not miracles, except casting out devils ; healing the sick ; and against poisonous serpents ; and against deadly poisons.*
385
286 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
entirely fair to make Smith a physician in spite of himself: notwithstanding early failure, through ig- norance and overconfidence, he was not always unsuccessful in the curative art.
Circumstances did not always get the better of him ; within ten years he had learned how to allevi- ate considerable suflfering, in the sphere of non- organic troubles. It was his later limitation to dis- orders of this character which goes far to prove that, somehow or other, he had gained a crude but real knowledge of mental healing. What were the sources of his knowledge ? At first glance they ap- pear to be borrowed. Like other divine healers, male and female after their kind, the head of this Latter-day Church had his body physician. Dr. John C. Bennett was in good standing among the Saints for at least eight years; if he was not a quack, he was of the old school; he, then, may have given to Joseph a smattering of medical lore, but as to technical suggestive therapeutics he was decades behind the times.'
The real origin of Joseph's faith healing is at-
' Bennett signed himself M. D., and a member of the Medical Convention of Illinois ; in 1841 he was said to have been « favor- ably known for upwards of eight years by some of the authorities of the Church.* The Warsaw Signal said he came to Missouri
* followed by evil report.* Bennett himself has something to say against the 'empirical prescriptions of charlatan practitioners.'
* Times and Seasons,* i, 174; 2, 432.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 287
tributable to the usual mixture of heredity and religion. His father contended for 'the ancient order of things/ but, when his children needed 'doctoring/ sent them to his wife; she in turn, as ' Mother in Israel ' threw much physic at the suffer- ing Saints.* And, outside the Smith family, Mor- mon medicine was not one whit ahead of the kitchen-physic of Puritan days;* indeed the ancient doctrine of signatures — the theory of correspond- ences between drug and disease — was actually set forth in mystic fashion.® Finally an editorial in the Times and Seasons, recommended Indian herbs as more natural remedies than physicians' prescrip- tions.^
Again, all these notions appeared in religious guise among Joseph's progenitors. His mother's brother, Jason Mack, was the colonial medical par- son redevivus. About 1776 he was called a Seeker and believed that by prayer and faith the gifts of the gospel, enjoyed by the ancient disciples, might be attained; in a letter to his brother, dated 1835, he wrote: — 'But last, though not least, let me not startle you when I say, that, according to my early
** Biographical Sketches,* pp. 57, 171.
* Compare Eggleston, Chapter the Second, — Concerning Medi- cal Notions at the Period of Settlement.
« Compare Tkg Star in the East^ published in Boston, 1846. '•Times and Seasons,' 5, 736.
288 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
adopted principles of the power of faith, the Lord has, in His exceeding kindness, bestowed upon me the gift of healing by the prayer of faith, and the use of such simple means as seem congenial to the human system. The first of my peculiar success in this way was twelve years since, and from that date I have had little rest. . . . And when the learned infidel has declared with sober face, time and again, that disease had obtained such an ascend- ancy that death could be resisted no longer, that the victim must wither beneath his potent arm, I have seen the almost lifeless clay slowly but surely re- suscitated, and revive, till the pallid monster fled so far that the patient was left in the full bloom of vigorous health/®
Smith's uncle practicing faith healing on his semi- communistic farm in 1823, doubtless led his nephew to have a try at the same thing; but with the latter there was greater promise of results. In the first place, the public was looking for wonders of heal- ing. The adjacent Oneida Community of Perfec- tionists announced, somewhat later, cures by faith;* but already western New York was thoroughly im- pregnated with restorationist views. In fact, the Irvingites sent a deputation to Smith, to express
8 * Biographical Sketches,* pp. 21, 53.
8 Compare Charles Nordhoff, * Communistic Societies of the United States,' New York, 1875.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 289
sympathy because of his assertion of the perpetuity of miracles in the Church.''' Furthermore, Joseph was bound to succeed in his new role, because he possessed a credulous clientage. Among his fol- lowers the examples of divine healing were as numerous as they were dubious. In particular, the Faith Promoting Series, although hardly to be con- sidered a literary source, is nevertheless a perfect mine of the marvelous, and out of these * serpentine windings of human life,' — to use Joseph's phrase, it is possible to extract some pertinent facts.
Behind the apparatus of holy oil, consecrated flannels and the like, there is a dim apprehension of the power of mental suggestion. Thus faith is de- manded of both patient and bystander. *The Lord wants the meek and humble,' says Benjamin Brown, ' many come with their hearts buckled up to the highest point of resistance, bitterly opposed to the truths of the Church, — and then require a miracle.' " Again there is demanded laying on of hands with vocal, or with silent prayer. Expressed technically, this is verbal or unconscious suggestion, which com- bined with the subject's expectation, produces effects varying with the fancy of the individual.^^ While
10 McClintock and Strong, 6, 630. Compare Orson Pratt, • The Necessity of Miracles.*
^^ 'Testimonies,' p. 12.
12 Compare C. Lloyd Tuckey, * Psycho-Therapeutics or Treat- ment by Hypnotism,' New York, 1899, P- 747'
290 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Elder Brown was praying over a man stricken with palsy — ' a warning influence, such as he had never felt before, extended down his palsied side/^ Again Philo Dibble narrates, how when Brother Newell Knight laid his hands on his head, but never spoke,—
*I felt the spirit resting upon me at the crown of my head before his hand touched me, and I knew immediately that I was going to be healed. It seemed to form like a ring under the skin, and fol- lowed down my body. When the ring came to the wound, another ring formed around the first bullet hole, also the second and third. Then a ring formed on each shoulder and on each hip, and fol- lowed down to the ends of my fingers and toes and left me.' ^^
How transitory were these 'cures' is exempli- fied in the very case of the above operator. When Knight was dying, January nth, 1847, his wife told how *the elders came frequently and prayed for him. After each administration he would rally
13 1 Testimonies,' p. 34.
^4 G. Q. Cannon, * My First Mission,' p. 32. Compare Philo Dibble's * Narrative,' p. 84, * I was wounded by the mob with an ounce ball and two buck shot in the stomach and bled internally. Brother Newell Knight laid his right hand on my head, but never spoke.' Compare also Knight, * Journal,' p. 81, *I drew the bed curtain with one hand and laid the other upon his head, praying secretly in his behalf; he told me that as soon as I placed my hand upon his head, the pain and soreness seemed gradually to move as before as a power driving it, until in a few minutes it left his body.'
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 291
and be at ease for a short time and then relapse again into suffering/'' That such divine heal- ing presented the usual dangers was to be ex- pected, when one only considers the delicate and elusive reactions of mental suggestion. So Elder Brown, when standing by a 'possessed sister,' as- serted * I knew the answer she was going to give, for I was possessed by a similar spirit/ How the Mormons, despite their * silent treatment,* slid by the truth of the force of auto-suggestion is shown in their attempts at explanation. Brown himself, raised up from a seeming deathbed by the prophet, asks the sceptical reader: — *Was it the power of the im- agination over the body that cured me, when 1 did not even hear Joseph's voice, or know that any operation on my behalf was going on, until I found myself well ? ' '•
Mormon ignorance of elementary psychic phen- omena naturally got them into trouble. The mis- chief that one man could do is exemplified in the preposterous claims of Brown. Shortly before the time he tried to exorcise the possessed sister, he as- serted, 'I cure a man with a skull crushed by a tree; I cure a woman of cancer, she said the cancer worms felt like a thousand gimlets boring into her brain.' " The deadly tendencies of Mormon faith
" 'Journal,' p. 93. " ' Journal,' pp. 18, 19.
"•Journal,' p. 12.
292 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
healing were recognized by their contemporaries. In Batavia, New York, in 1841, * after healing a deaf and dumb child, the enemies of truth,' says Thomp- son, * are doing their utmost to make people believe that no miracle has been wrought/'® In 1833, the Western Monitor of Fayette, Missouri, asks: * What would be the fate of our lives and property, in the hands of jurors and witnesses, who do not blush to declare, and would not upon occasion hesitate to swear that they have wrought miracles, and have been the subjects of miraculous and supernatural cures?'" In England the missionaries of healing called out a more legal, if not a more determined opposition.^" It was Elder Richards who exclaimed, 'How absurd to have no other resource when ill but a physician.' While on the British mission, he advertised 'Bones set through Faith in Christ,' and Elder Phillips made this additional statement: 'While commanding the bones, they came to- gether, making a noise like the crushing of an old basket.' '^ Along with charlatanry among the priest- hood, there was fatal credulity among the laity.
>8 'Times and Seasons,' 2, 349, 516.
^3 Quoted in * Times and Seasons,* 6, 833, as a * Proclamation of the Mob.'
20 Compare Manchester Examiner and Times^ December 22d, 1856, on the Rochdale Miracle, also the pamphlets : — 'Warning to his Parishioners by a Country Clergyman * ; « Failure of an Ordained Priest,' etc.
81 Millennial Star ^ 12, 143.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 293
Lorenzo Snow, writing from London in 1841, said of Elizabeth Morgan, before her death : ' She con- tinually expressed a wish that no doctor should ad- minister her medicines; and particularly requested that no one should cast any reflection upon her dear husband and children because no doctor had been employed, for she wanted no physician but the Lord: "
The fatuity of the Mormon missionaries is patent in their official organ ; the Millennial Star of Liver- pool cites a case of * cancer in the heart miraculously cured by baptism*; it gives, at the same time, a notice of Elder Hyde's death through the same disease.
Things were different at headquarters in Amer- ica. Smith was a faith healer, but he recog-
23 Millennial Star, 13, 109 ; 16, 63. Pratt adds the following telepathic frill : — ' At the same hour of the night Sister Bates, of this city, had an open vision in which she saw Sister Morgan stand- ing in full view before her, clothed in robes beautiful and white, and around about her head were clouds of glory, surpassing, etc. . . . It was not a dream but an open vision continuing some time. When the vision closed she immediately informed her husband of it.* Time does not seem to have given the Mormons any more sense. Thus, P. B. Lewis, writing about the smallpox in the Sandwich Islands in 1853, said 'scores have been swept away. We have sought to administer to the brethren through the power of our priest- hood, and our administration has almost universally been blessed to those who have taken our counsel. Some who were doing well, have been induced to take medicine, or bathe in cold water, and are now dead.'
294 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
nized his limitations. He had acquired wisdom through hard knocks. In 1832, two years after the exorcism of Newel Knight, — *the first miracle in the church ' — the prophet was poisoned by some- thing he ate and claimed to have been instantly cured through the laying on of hands by Brother Whitney. This was explained, not by the means of relief nature had already taken, but by adminis- tration in the name of the Lord.^' But in 1834, hap- pening to be involved in the cholera epidemic, the prophet was not slow to learn that his powers were circumscribed. Speaking of the attack he said: ' The cholera burst forth among us, even those on guard fell to the earth with their guns in their hands. ... At the commencement I attempted to lay on hands for their recovery, but I quickly learned by painful experience, that when the great Jehovah decrees destruction upon any people, makes known His determination, man must not attempt to stay His hand.' '*
It is high time to approach the philosophy of Joseph's real accomplishments as faith healer. Back of his not unsuccessful practice he had a theory. In a single word, the potent force with him was faith : without it no cures are possible. This is the sub- stance of the seven Lectures ' originally delivered be-
*3 « Times and Seasons,' 5, 626. *^ < Times and Seasons,' 6, 1 106.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 295
fore a Class of the Elders, in the School of the Prophets/ These discourses are vapid yet they have significance, — they contain adumbrations of the really vital principle in mental healing. This doctrine of faith was an approximation to the sub- jective attitude of trust demanded in suggestive therapeutics. Smith defines it at the start, both negatively and positively : — ' without it both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity; . . . as faith is the moving cause of all action in temporal concerns, so is it in spiritual; . . . but faith is not only the principle of action, but of power also, in all intelligent beings, whether in heaven or on earth.* ^ Like previous magic healers, from Para- celsus to Gassner,^^ Joseph's system was largely mystical; with him, healing was counted a sacer- dotal gift. Nevertheless he was wary in regard to his priestly function. When it was asked in 1842 ' what signs do Jo Smith give of his divine mission ? ' the prophet gave this delphic response: — 'The signs which God is pleased to let him give according as His wisdom thinks best.'^^
To turn from theory to practice, and to examine a half dozen faith cures, ranging from total failure
25 Lecture I, verses lo, 12, 13.
26 Bernheim, * Hypnotisme, Suggestion, Psycho-therapie,* Paris, 189 1, pp. 14-20.
27 * Evening and Morning Star,' i, 28.
296 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
to permanent relief, and from a lonesome child to a crowd of adults. In the first case strange reliance was placed on external means; Joseph attempted to * cure by baptism ' Lydia Kimball, age eight, who shortly died of brain fever. ^^ This failure discloses two things : that, at this time. Smith was rashly ig- norant of the incurable, and also that he was far from knowing one of the general principles of sug- gestion, namely that children are less susceptible to mental treatment than are adults. ^^ Similar igno- rance is displayed in the next example, for it is only repeated suggestion and the continuous presence of the operator that can affect the restless mind of a child.^^ Kimball's account is in effect, as follows: When Joseph was in Far West, a child was taken sick, he laid hands on it, and it got better. As soon as Joseph went outside the house, the child was taken sick again. A second time he laid hands on it, and it recovered. ' This transpired several times and Joseph inquired of the Lord what it meant, when he had an open vision and saw the devil in person.' ''
The third episode concerns an adult, but the allev- iation is only temporary. So far the two points of
'8 Littlefield, * Reminiscences.'
59 Compare Moll, p. 5 1 : ' Children up to about eight years of age can only be hypnotized with difficulty.' 80 Compare Tuckey, p. 746. 8> • Journal,' p. 80.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 297
interest are these: that the prophet, with his super- ior authority, had greater success than two elders who had already made the patient 'perfectly whole '; ^^ and that the subject, in his attempt at ex- planation, has no inkling of the fact that suggestion may reach the brain, other than through the sense of hearing. 'While at Commerce,' narrates Brown, 'I was sick of swamp fever for two or three weeks. I was so far gone that I was quite senseless, and all thought I was dying. Joseph Smith laid his hands on me and commanded me to arise and walk in the name of the Lord. The first thing I knew, I found myself walking perfectly well.' ^* The trans- ient character of this cure, and the recurrence of the trouble, agree with the results of suggestive treatment. Suggestion may lower the temperature in fevers,^ but in those of a cyclic character, it merely diminishes the suffering and tones up the system.^*
The next ' cure ' is as ephemeral as it is magical. Like so many of the Saints, living along the Mis-
32 < Testimonies,' p. lo : — * My lake fever is cured by two elders ; whilst their hands were yet upon my head, I felt the disease re- move from my body, commencing at the pit of my stomach, mov- ing gradually upwards towards the hands of the elders, and I was made perfectly whole.'
33 « Journal,' p. 19.
34 R. O. Mason, * Hypnotism and Suggestion,' New York, 1901, p. 180.
35 Bernheim, p. 234.
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souri River, the patient was presumably overcome by fever. It w^as claimed that he vs^as raised from his deathbed, yet he shortly has a relapse and needs further treatment. As Woodruff inoppor- tunely admits, Fordham faints at the sight of the mob, but revives under Joseph's influence. '^ Two accounts are given of the Fordham case and they agree in two important particulars: on the one hand, the edge is taken off the miracle from the fact of the previous use of remedies; on the other hand, Joseph's operations appear to have brought about a condition resembling artificially induced hypnotic sleep. Kimball tells how 'Joseph stepped to the bedside of brother Fordham, who was insensible and considered by the family to be dying. He looked him in the eye for a minute without speak- ing, then took him by the hand and commanded him to arise and walk. Fordham did so, threw off all bandages and poultices, ate a bowl of bread and milk, and followed us into the street.'"
36 * Journal,' p. 65.
37* Journal,' p. 82. Compare Woodruff, p. 62: — * Fordham was dying, his eyes were glazed, he was speechless and unconscious. Joseph asked Fordham if he did not know him. Fordham at first made no reply, but we could all see the effect of the Spirit of God resting upon him ; he then answered a low " Yes." He had the appearance of a man waking from sleep. Then Joseph com- manded in a loud voice, *' I command you to arise and be made whole." Fordham leaped from the bed, the healthy color came to his face, he kicked off the Indian meal poultices on his feet and ate a bowl of bread and milk.*
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 299
The last of the individual cases is that of Mrs. Johnson of Hiram, Ohio. It has a negative interest because the environment was one of psychic hostil- ity. Yet the sceptical narrator himself admits the cure.^ The prophet being asked if he pretended to the performance of miracles, and answering that he had the ability only through God, Mrs. Johnson was suddenly introduced. Joseph was not taken aback, but with calm assurance he looked intently into the woman's eyes, then taking hold of her arm ' palsied by rheumatism,' he commanded her in a solemn voice to be made whole. The bystanders asserted that the patient at once found her arm under con- trol and that it remained thus, until her death fifteen years after. This cure, being well attested, is of course cited by the Mormons as miraculous, while their enemies put forward the usual half-baked ex- planation of animal magnetism. '^
A brief scrutiny of these cases will reveal to what degree they may be put in terms of reputable
38 E. D. Howe, ' Mormonism Unveiled,' p. 104.
89 Compare J. H. Kennedy, * Early Days of Mormonism,' p. 122, who quotes from a sermon preached in Hiram, O., on August 3, 1870, by B. A. Hinsdale, then President of Hiram College : « The company were awe-stricken at the infinite presumption of the man, and the calm assurance with which he spoke. The sudden mental and moral shock — 1 know not how better to explain the well-at- tested fact — electrified the rheumatic arm. Mrs. Johnson at once lifted it up with ease, and on her return home the next day she was able to do her washing without difficulty or pain.*
300 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
psycho-therapeutics. At first it is difficult to decide whether Smith's achievements were due to simple suggestion or hypnotic suggestion, for it is almost impossible to draw a sharp line between the two. ^ Suggestion without hypnosis is probable in the majority of instances, since the states of conscious- ness, ranging from lethargy to light sleep, were in- duced pathologically and not artificially, by the disease and not by the operator. Nevertheless real hypnotic suggestion may be postulated, if one ac- cepts the less occult definition of hypnosis as ' the production of a psychical condition in which the faculty of receiving impressions by suggestion is greatly increased.'*^ This would cover the various cases cited, for in the lightest stages of hypnosis there is no loss of consciousness, while good re- sults are effected even when the patient denies having felt any hypnotic influence. '^^ Again, real hypnosis is implied in the Johnson case, not simply because chronic rheumatism has yielded to hypnotic treatment, but because 'the immense power of hypnotic suggestion is shown by the fact that it succeeds in a large number of cases in spite of mis- trust.'*^ Still further, the above instances may be brought under hypnotism if suggestion is given its
40 Moll, p. 318.
41 Beinheim's definition, quoted in Tuckey, p. 748.
42 Moll, p. 347.
43 Moll, p. 347.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 301
full signification ; the word does not merely stand for an artful hint or insinuation, which increases the patient's receptivity, it also connotes a reinforcing of the subject's power to perform the suggested act.'^ Lastly, Smith's successes lay in the sphere of hypnotic successes, roughly defined as neuroses, for the alterations were psychic rather than organic.*^
But lest wisdom be attributed where wisdom was lacking, there is need of a final word of quali- fication. Smith's gift of healing was got by chance, it was magical in theory and sacerdotal in practice, nearer the middle ages than modern science. The prophet insisted on faith, his follow- ers believed in the priesthood, and both priest and people trusted in the efficacy of prayer. As already seen, faith with Joseph was no longer a mere youthful reaction against infidelity and dry scholasticism, but a positive means to gain an unthinking obedience. Moreover as to prayer, Smith directs his ' quorums of three ' to pray in succession and in successive
44 Compare Tuckey, p. 748 : — * Suggestions have all the force of commands, and the patient will stretch every nerve to obey them. If he is told to move a paralyzed limb, or to speak after months of loss of voice, one can see what intense effort he puts into the attempt to comply. A stammerer making such effort will speak fluently, and a deaf person will distinctly hear a whisper.'
45 Compare Thomas Ribot, * The Diseases of Personality,' 1894, P- 137-
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quorums, — and then to lay on hands.** But this psychic inductive method might easily be spoiled; as Brown said of a moment's inattention on the part of a single elder, — *this broke the chain of our union and strength.'*^
It was through the appeal to the emotional and unthinking side of human nature that the Mormons could employ their primitive machinery. Oftentimes the elders would anoint the patient with oil, although it was admitted that this could not reach the root of the disease.*^ Once Joseph descended to the use of the charm or talisman. Woodruff says that after Fordham was revived, — * then Joseph sends me with his red silk handkerchief to cure two children of a man of the world. I wipe their faces with it, and they are cured.' *^
The prophet used magic; he also sought the aid of mystery. Judging from the local admiration for the architectural abortion of Salt Lake City, the earlier Saints were capable of looking on even the Temple of Zion at Nauvoo as a holy shrine. At any rate, soon after the first log was laid, Smith called for a Recorder of Miracles.*^ Yet uninspiring surroundings were offset by the blind
46 « Fragments of Experience,' p. 43,
<■»' Journal,' p. 18.
48 < Times and Seasons,' 5, 603.
49 'Journal,' p. 65.
**> * Times and Seasons,' 3, 439.
JOSEPH THE FAITH HEALER 303
zeal of the persons concerned. It was not material things but psychic processes that helped the most. Hence Joseph's manner of making the healing sug- gestion, to his disciples at least, was undeniably im- pressive. It was not in the opinion of Pratt alone that the prophet was ' of an expression pecuhar to himself, on which the eye naturally rested with in- terest, and was never weary of beholding.' " It was from the false perspective of emotional excitement that most of his followers looked on the person of their ecclesiastical head with reverence and awe. Indeed, these American sectaries were strangely like those who once sought to be healed of the king's evil; they lived in the nineteenth century, yet the great mass of them believed in the divine right of their ruler. Despite this kindred touch of madness, there were also present among the Mormons the more normal circumstances which favor mental healing, namely : the patient's desire to be cured, his belief in the means, and a sympathetic environment.^^
With the summary statement that the convinced mind works the quickest, it is possible to get at the significance of Smith's wholesale acts of faith heal- ing. In the two accounts of the scenes on the banks
*»i * Autobiography,* p. 47.
52 Tuckey, p. 743.
53 Moll, p. 351, quoting Liebault and Schrenck-Notzing. ^ * Journal,' p. 62. Compare Kimball, p. 82.
304 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
of the Mississippi, the fabulous drops off of itself, as when, for example, it was alleged that the prevalence of chills and fever was due to the devil. There yet remains a slight residue of facts, which needs ex- planation, since it cannot be wholly explained away. The annual affair at Lourdes is a far call from the Nauvoo affair of sixty years ago, yet under both there is a thin stratum of truth. It may be expressed in the formula of recent practitioners: that collective hypnosis is possible among the ignorant classes and that, conversely, when the psychic contagion be- comes stronger, hypnosis is rendered easier.^'
To turn, inconclusion, to the scene of July 22d, 1839 : * It was a very sickly time, ' narrates Woodruff.^ ' Large numbers of the Saints, driven out of Mis- souri, were flocking from Commerce and were living in wagons, tents and on the ground. Many were sick through exposure. Brother Joseph had waited on the sick until he was worn out and nearly sick himself. After praying, he healed all in his house and door yard; then in company with Sidney Rig- don and several of the twelve, he went through among the sick lying on the bank of the river, and he commanded them in a loud voice to come up and be made whole and they were all healed.'
CHAPTER X FINAL ACTIVITIES
CHAPTER X
FINAL ACTIVITIES
Smith's varied activities during the fifteen years of his public life/ give a final notion of the restlessness and instability of his character. It is impossible to gather up these scattered threads in one caption, but there is a common principle which binds together the events of 1830 w^ith those of 1844. The prophet began his career with a revelation on communism, he ended it with what may be termed a revelation on matrimonial collectivism. The latter topic, in the nature of the case, can only be touched upon, but the former is important in showing the hap- hazard mental development of the man. Unlike his occultism, Joseph's socialism may be traced to cert- ain formal movements of his day.* Besides this source there was another mind as intermediary.
* Unless otherwise specified, the references in this chapter are to the ' Times and Seasons.*
2 The following works have been consulted on this topic : R. T. Ely, * French and German Socialism in Modern Times,' New York, 1833; H» ^' James, « Communism in America,' New York, 1879; Meredith Nicholson, «The Hoosiers,' 1900; Charles Nordhoff, •The Communistic Societies of the United States,' New York,
307
3o8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
But to consider the historic setting in its general aspects. Of the six communistic societies of the United States, considered worth treatment by the authorities a generation ago, only half could have influenced young Mormonism. The Icarians settled at Nauvoo, but that was after the Mormon exodus. In New York State the Perfectionists had their Oneida community, but this combination of polygamy and polyandry was not started until 1848. Six years be- fore the German Inspirationists had their Amana community near Buffalo. These settlements may have given hints to Brigham Young the usurper, they were too late to influence Joseph Smith the founder.
Turning to the other communistic societies, it should be incidentally noticed that all but those on the Wabash were celibate in their tendencies. As early as 1828, the United Society of Believers claimed sixteen branches in the land, and four years before the publication of the Book of Mormon, their Groveland Society was started on the Genesee. That these rustic doctrinaires gave hints to young Joseph is an open question. In 1842, he spoke of the Shakers with but half-concealed contempt; at
1875 '> ^' ^- Sargent, * Robert Owen and his Social Philosophy,* London, i860; Albert Shaw, < Icaria, A Chapter in the History of Communism,' New York, 1884; Warner, * Cooperation Among the Mormons,* Johns Hopkins University Studies, 6th series, VII and VIII.
FINAL ACTIVITIES 309
any rate, nine years previous they refused to affiliate with the Latter-day Saints. The remaining semi-socialistic groups were of small size, but of great influence on Mormonism — and that through the medium of Sidney Rigdon. Near Pittsburg, the scene of his earlier activities, the Rappists founded their New Harmony Society, in 1805; they moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana in 18 14, and ten years after, sold out to Robert Dale Owen. Here comes in a most curious link between the father of English socialism and the man who was said to have ' in- vented * Mormonism.^ Rigdon was at one time hand in glove with the redoubtable Alexander Campbell, the same who had attacked Owen as an infidel, and had called his New Harmony Ga^ettey 'the focus of the lights of scepticism.'* That Owen's free and easy ideas on marriage cropped out in the Mormon spiritual wife system is improbable, but his socialistic notions were already common property. In 1824, he made speeches before Con- gress; in 1829, he held an eight day debate with Alexander Campbell in Cincinnati, Ohio, at which 1,200 persons were said to be present. How the doctrines of Fourier worked their crooked way into Rigdon's cracked skull is a side issue: yet here, in the Western Reserve, there was a diluted
3 New York Times, Saturday Review of Books, January li, 1902.
4 Venable, p. 222.
310 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
socialism a decade before the Brook Farm experi- ment. In view of these things, Smith's claim to socialistic originality is absurd; his followers were no more troubled about the theory of the thing than a hive of bees; but the prophet's appropriation of Rigdon's socialistic ideas is as patent as his grafting of Rigdon's Kirtland branch into his own church.
The way the seer and revelator put a religious veneer on these borrowings is highly characteristic. Like the Separatists, who settled at Zoar, Ohio, in 1819, a score of families in Rigdon's locality had al- ready formed themselves into a common stock company. Smith says that since Rigdon's Church at Kirtland 'had all things in common, the idea arose that this was the case with the Church of Jesus Christ.' He adds that the * plan of "Common Stock" which had existed in what was called "the family," . . . was readily abandoned for the more perfect law of the Lord.' Of what this ' law for the government of the Church ' consisted, is ex- plained in a revelation of February, 1831 :
* If thou lovest me, thou shalt serve me and keep all my commandments.
And behold, thou shalt consecrate all thy properties which thou hast to impart unto me with a covenant and a deed which cannot be broken ;
And they shall be laid before the bishop of my church and two of the elders, such as he shall appoint and set apart for that purpose.
And it shall come to pass, that the bishop of my
FINAL ACTIVITIES 311
church, after that he has received the properties of my church, that it cannot be taken from the church, he shall appoint every man a steward over his own property, or that which he has received, inasmuch as is sufficient for himself and family; and the residue shall be kept to ad- minister to him who has not, that every man may receive accordingly as he stands in need ; and the residue shall be kept in my storehouse, to administer to the poor and needy, as shall be appointed by the elders of the church and the bishop; and for the purpose of purchasing lands, and the building up of the New Jerusalem, which is hereafter to be revealed ; that my covenant people be gathered in one, in the day that I shall come to my temple ; and this I do for the salvation of my people. And it shall come to pass, that he that sinneth and re- penteth not, shall be cast out, and shall not receive again that which he has consecrated unto me ; for it shall come to pass, that which I spoke by the mouths of my prophets shall be fulfilled, for I will consecrate the riches of the Gentiles unto my people, which are of the house of Israel.^
The form which the law of the Lord ultimately
took reads like a page from Gulliver's Travels ; it
is worth quoting, if only to show that the fancy of
the Latter-day prophet was as weird as the mad
dean's Kingdom of Laputa : —
'Revelation given April 23d, 1834, to Enoch, (Joseph Smith, jun.,), concerning the order of the church for the benefit of the poor. Let my servant Pelagoram (Sid- ney Rigdon) have appointed unto him the place where he now resides, and the lot of Tahhanes (the tannery) for his stewardship, for his support while he is laboring
5 * Book of Commandments/ Chapter 44. For the financial side of these revelations compare 'Doctrine and Covenants,' §§ 19, 24, 43» 58, 63, 84.
312 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
in my vineyard, even as I will when I shall command him;
And let my servant Mahemson (Martin Harris) devote his moneys for the proclaiming of my words, according as my servant Gazelam (Joseph Smith, jr.) shall direct.
And let my servant Olihah (Oliver Cowdery) have the lot which is set off joining the house, which is to be for the Laneshine-house, (printing office), which is lot number one, and also the lot upon which his father resides.
After you are organized, you shall be called the United Order of the Stake of Zion, the city of Shine- hah. (Kirtland.) And your brethren, after they are organized, shall be called the United Order of the City of Zion/
But the prophet's schemes had a serious financial side. The first tithing, in 1834 is said to have been only a * conditional covenant with the Lord.' This celestial application of the promissory note should be compared w^ith the
* Revelation given at Far West, July 8th, 1838, in an- swer to the question : O Lord, show unto thy servants how much thou requirest of the properties of the people for a tithing ?
Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church of Zion,
For the building of mine house, and for the laying of the foundation of Zion and for the priesthood, and for the debts of the presidency of my church ;
And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people ;
And after that, those who have thus been tithed, shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them for ever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.*
FINAL ACTIVITIES 313
When Smith ridiculed the Millerites for their mill- ennial fears, he had forgotten the early financial panic in his own church. In their haste to escape the wrath to come, many of the Saints sold their eastern possessions at a loss, and hastened to Zion as to the ark of safety, — * for after much tribulation cometh the blessings ' said the prophet. A revela- tion of August, 1 83 1, gives the details of the coming ' feast of fat things ' : —
' And I give unto my servant, Sidney, a commandment, that he shall write a description of the land of Zion, and a statement of the will of God, as it shall be made known by the Spirit, unto him ;
And an epistle and subscription, to be presented unto all the churches to obtain moneys, to be put into the hands of the bishop, to purchase lands for an inheritance for the children of God, of himself or the agent, as seemeth him good or as he shall direct.
For behold, verily I say unto you, the Lord willeth that the disciples, and the children of men should open their hearts, even to purchase this whole region of coun- try, as soon as time will permit.'
The project on which the leaders slipped up was the Kirtland Safety Society Bank. There are oc- casionally to be seen the notes of this institution, signed — 'J. Smith, Jr., Cashier, Sidney Rigdon, President.* Some one has sardonically called atten- tion to the engraving on these bank notes, repre- senting a fleeced sheep. But the fancy does not come up to the fact. In entire conformity to the wild-cat speculations of ante-bellum days, the
314 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
prophet announced that this bank would ' swallow up all other banks/ How it failed for $100,000/ and how Smith took advantage of the bankruptcy laws is not half so illuminating as the way in which the church conference 'moved and seconded that the debts of Kirtland should come up no more.' Joseph's prophetic fmanceering was one of the reasons why the Mormons were at last driven from Ohio. But even the seer and revelator could not fool all the people, all the time. He opened up a subscription to the *Nauvoo House, — a delightful habitation for man, and a resting place for the weary traveller.' But subscriptions came in slowly, for the thrifty Saints were not yet under the paw of Brigham. As Parley Pratt so plaintively remarked, ' a woman comes here and keeps her money sewed up in her stays, instead of entering into business with it.'
These communistic ambitions died hard. Backed up by restorationist expectations, they made an irresistible appeal to Joseph's imagination. Those Utopian schemes, that Josiah Quincy mentioned, had long been fermenting in the prophet's brain, and were now put on paper. If a literary compari- son is allowable. Lord Verulam with his New At- lantiSy or Campanella with his City of the Sun could not hold a candle to Smith with his new Mormon
^ MilUnmal Star^ 19, 343; 20, 108.
FINAL ACTIVITIES 315
Zion, soon to arise on the Western Frontiers. By the revelation of June 25, 1833, a square mile of land was to be obtained and on it were to be built 'a house of the Lord for the presidency of the high and most holy priesthood after the order of Mel- chisedec; the sacred apostolic repository for the use of the bishop; the holy evangelical house, for the high priesthood of the holy order of God; house of the Lord for the elders of Zion ; house of the Lord for the presidency of the high priesthood; house of the Lord for the high priesthood after the order of Aaron; house of the Lord for the teachers in Zion; house of the Lord for the deacons in Zion/ ^
^ Compare Bancroft, p. 96 : — * A plan and specifications for the new city of Zion were sent out from Kirtland. The plot was one mile square, drawn to a scale of 660 feet to one inch. Each square was to contain ten acres, or 660 feet fronts. Lots were to be laid out alternately in the squares ; in one, fronting north or south ; in the next east or west ; each lot extending to the centre line of its square, with a frontage of sixty-six feet and a depth of 330 feet, or half an acre. By this arrangement in one square the houses would stand on one street, and in the square opposite on another street. Through the middle of the plot ran a range of blocks 660 feet by 990 feet set apart for the public buildings, and in these the lots were all laid off north and south, the greatest length of the blocks being from east to west : thus making all the lots equal in size. The whole plot was supposed to be sufficient for the accommodation of from 15,000 to 20,000 people. All stables, barns, etc., were to be built north or south of the plot, none being permitted in the city among the houses. Sufficient adjoining ground on all sides was to be reserved for supplying the city with vegetables, etc. All streets [were to be 132 feet (eight perches)
3i6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
But the work dragged on ; eight years later the prophet, writing from the city of Nauvoo, urged the brethren to come in without delay, for this was the corner-stone of Zion; ' here the Temple must be raised, the University built, and other edifices be erected which are necessary for the great work of the last days/ In the meantime, word was sent to ' the Saints in England who are extremely poor and
wide, and a like width was to be laid off between the temple and its surrounding streets. But one house was to be built on a lot, and that must front on a line twenty-five feet from the street, the space in front to be set out with trees, shrubs, etc., according to the builder's taste. All houses to be of either brick or stone. The house of the Lord for the presidency was to be sixty-one feet by eighty-seven feet, ten feet of the length for a stairway. The in- terior was so arranged as to permit its division into four parts by curtains. At the east and west ends were to be pulpits arranged for the several grades of president and council, bishop and council^ high priests and elders, at the west; and the lesser priesthood, comprising presidency, priests, teachers, and deacons, at the east. Provision was also made to seat visiting officers according to their grades. The pews were fitted with sliding seats, so that the audi- ence could face either pulpit as required. There was to be no gal- lery, but the house was to be divided into two stories of fourteen feet each. A bell of very large size was also ordered. Finally, on each public building must be written Holiness to the Lord. When this plot was settled, another was to be laid out, and so on. " Times and Seasons," vi. 785-7, 800. Zion City — its prototype in Enoch's City. Young's " History of the Seventies," 9-15, No. 10, in " Mormon Pamphlets." It was revealed to Smith that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico covered the site of a prehistoric city, built by and named for Enoch ; and that it was translated because its in- habitants had become so far advanced that further earthly residence was unnecessary. Zion, Smith's ideal city, was finally to reach a like state of perfection.'
FINAL ACTIVITIES 317
not accustomed to the farming business . . . this place has advantages for manufacturing and commercial purposes, which but very few can boast of; and by establishing cotton factories, foun- dries, potteries etc., etc., would be the means of bringing in wealth and raising it to a very important elevation/
At this time, the president of the church com- plained of being overwhelmed with a multiplicity of business. To run over his Journal, and to ex- tract but one event a year, will give an idea of the number of irons he had in the fire. Besides the United Firm and the Safety Bank, he had already started the Literary Firm and the Mercantile Estab- lishment. In 1833, he dedicated the printing office of the Latter-day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, In 1834, he organized the First High Council of the Church of Christ, with himself, Rigdon and Wil- liams as the First Presidency. In 1835, he chose the Twelve Apostles, among whom were Brigham Young, the Lion of the Lord; Parley Pratt, the Archer of Paradise; and Lyman Wight, the Wild Ram of the Mountain. In 1836, Smith organized the several quorums, first the Presidency, then the Twelve, and the Seventy, also the counsellors of Kirtland and Zion. In 1837, he set apart apostles Kimball and Hyde to go to a mission to England, the first foreign mission of the Church. In 1838,
31 8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
during the Missouri troubles, he traveled as far away as Monmouth County, New Jersey, to strengthen the new branches. Returning to Mis- souri, and being confined in Liberty Jail, Clay County, he warned his followers against starting any more secret societies. In 1839, the prophet had his hands full in assisting fifteen thousand perse- cuted saints to escape from Missouri, In 1840, he succeeded in obtaining from the Illinois legislature charters for the City of Nauvoo, the University of Nauvoo, and the Nauvoo Legion.®
Joseph Smith, junior, now gained a title of which he was immensely proud, — he became a lieutenant- general. * Amid loud peals from the artilery,* runs the official account, 'accompanied by his aids-de- camp and conspicuous strangers, he laid the chief corner-stone of the Temple of our God.' Joseph as a military bishop cuts a strange figure. Once when his companions in arms were in dread of the mob, who were disguised as Delaware Indians, 'the prophet came along and said **God and liberty is the watchword. Fear them not, for their hearts are cold as cucumbers.'"*
General Joseph Smith dressed in full uniform standing on the top of a house, brandishing his sword towards heaven, and delivering his last pub-
8 Compare « Revised Laws of the Nauvoo Legion,' 1844.
9 Stevenson, « Reminiscences,* p. 37.
FINAL ACTIVITIES 319
lie speech, — this is Joseph the histrione.^*^ But to the rank and file life was not an opera bouffe. Their very enemies acknowledged their terrible sufferings undergone in Missouri, while in 1841 the Chicago Democrat regrets to learn that Illinois is beginning to persecute the saints in the Bounty Tract." Of the way the prophet became involved in politics, only brief notice can be given. While mayor of Nauvoo, Smith was accused of attempt- ing to found a military church; he replied that the Nauvoo Legion was not got up for sinister or illegal purposes, yet in general orders he invites recruits
>o«The Martyrs,' pp. 59-61.
"'Joseph the Seer,' p. 191 : — 'Professor Turner, sometime of Illinois College, an open and bitter opponent of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, in writing of the conduct of Missouri towards the Mormons, says: "Who began the quarrel? Was it the Mor- mons ? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that they were hunted like wild beasts, from county to county, before they made any desperate resistance ? Did they ever, as a body, refuse obedience to the laws, when called upon to do so, until driven to desperation by repeated threats and assaults from the mob ? Did the State ever make one decent effort to defend them as fellow citizens in their rights, or to redress their wrongs ? Let the conduct of its gover- nors, attorneys, and the fate of their final petitions answer. Have any who plundered and openly massacred the Mormons ever been brought to the punishment due to their crimes ? Let the boasting murderers of begging and helpless infancy answer. Has the State ever remunerated, even those known to be innocent, for the loss of either their property or their arms ? Did either the pulpit or the press throughout the state raise a note of remonstrance or alarm ? Let the clergymen who abetted, and the editors who en- couraged the mob answer." '
320 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
from all his friends and adds in italics, — ' If we de- sire to avoid insult we must be ready to repel it'
It was as a political agitator that the prophet took up a role that indirectly led to his death. Nothing could show better the reach of his schemes than the following document : —
' Duty of the Saints in relation to their persecutors, as set forth by Joseph, the Prophet, while in Liberty Jail, Clay County, Missouri, March, 1839 : — And again, we would suggest for your consideration the propriety of all the saints gathering up a knowledge of all the facts, and sufferings and abuses put upon them by the people of this state ;
And also of all the property and amount of damages which they have sustained, both of character and per- sonal injuries, as well as real property ;
And also the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions, as far as they can get hold of them and find them out ;
And perhaps a committee can be appointed to find out these things, and to take statements, and affidavits, and also to gather up the libelous publications that are afloat,
And all that are in the magazines, and in the encyclo- pedias, and all the libelous histories that are published, and are writing, and by whom, and present the whole concatenation of diabolical rascality, and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practiced upon this people.
That we may not only publish to all the world, but present them to the heads of government in all their dark and hellish hue, as the last effort which is enjoined on us by our Heavenly Father, before we can fully and com- pletely claim that promise which shall call him forth from his hiding place, and also that the whole nation may be left without excuse before he can send forth the power of his mighty arm.'
FINAL ACTIVITIES 321
To sum up Joseph's manifold worldly activities from his community storehouse in Ohio, to his prop- osition to establish a territorial government, within the bounds of the State of Illinois,'^ to do this — is to run upon a paradox: he was jack-of-all trades, yet withal master of his followers. His death was counted a martyrdom; his name was speedily canonized; in his portraits a halo was drawn about his head. How the prophet gained his supremacy, how he met disaffection, how at the last his hold on the faithful became absolute, is a story that needs telling. Smith's relations to his aiders and abettors must here be touched upon. One defender says that Joseph's 'easy good-natured way, allowing every one was honest, drew around him hypocrites, false brethren, apostates; for they having mingled in his greatness, knew where and when to take ad- vantage of his weakness,'
Relying on statements like these, some critics have explained the success of early Mormonism
13 Compare engrossed petition in Berrian collection, in which it is proposed that the Mayor of Nauvoo, [Joseph Smith, junior] shall have the power *to call to his aid a sufficient number of United States forces, in connection with the Nauvoo Legion, to repel the invasion of mobs, keep the public peace, and protect the innocent from the unhallowed ravages of lawless banditti that es- cape justice on the Western Frontier ; and also to preserve the power and dignity of the Union. And be it further ordained that the officers of the United States Army are hereby required to obey the requisitions of this ordinance.*
322 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
as due to Smith's luck in the choice of partners. As Harris had supplied the money, so Pratt sup- plied the eloquence, and Rigdon the brains. The antithesis is too neat to be true. Smith may have been the unwitting tool of the precious pair from Kirtland, yet from the first the author and pro- prietor of the Book of Mormon stood in the fore- ground. Again, to make Rigdon the chief actor, speaking through the mask of the prophet, is a self-contradiction. Thus the revelation of August, 1 83 1, says, in part — 'And now behold I say unto you, I the Lord am not pleased with my servant Sidney Rigdon, he exalted himself in his heart, and received not my counsel, but grieved the Spirit: wherefore his writing is not acceptable unto the Lord.' A little while after this. Smith thus rebuked, in his own name, another of his associates : — 'William E. McLellin, the wisest man, in his own estimation, having more learning than sense, endeavored to write a commandment like unto one of the least of the Lord's, but failed. . . . The elders and all present, that witnessed this vain at- tempt, renewed their faith in the truth of the com- mandments and revelations which the Lord had given to the church through my instrumentality. '
But even before Rigdon and Company had ap- peared in New York State, Smith was asserting his supremacy. In the second conference of the church
FINAL ACTIVITIES 323
held at Fayette, while as yet only First Elder, Joseph succeeded in suppressing competition in occult activities. When Hyrum Page received revelat- ions through his rival 'stone,' the prophet v/as *in great distress of mind and body, and scarcely knew how to meet the exigency/ Newel Knight, who occupied the same room with him, goes on to say that, after considerable investigation and discussion, the prophet induced 'Brother Page, Oliver Cow- dery and the Whitmers to renounce the bogus stone. * '' Soon after this, the same narrator proceeds, there was a division of feeling in the Colesville branch, because Sister Peck contradicted one of Joseph's revelations. The brethren and sisters were thereupon told that ' they must repent of what they had done, renew their covenants and uphold the authorities placed over them.*
But to hurry through the tale: In 1833, Smith was accused of seeking after monarchical power and authority; in pantomimic answer he instituted the ceremony of washing feet, 'girding himself with a towel and washing the feet of the elders.' In 1836, a great apostasy took place in the church at Kirtland, and within three years the Three Wit-
13 « Journal,' pp. 64, 65. Compare * Book of Commandments,' Chapter 30 : — * And again thou shalt take thy brother Hiram be- tween him and thee alone, and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me, and that Satan de- ceiveth him.*
324 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
nesses were cut off. In the excommunication David Whitmer, the anti-polygamist, is com- pared to Balaam's ass, Martin Harris is called a negro with a white skin, while all the ' disenters,' says the prophet * are so far beneath my contempt that to notice any of them would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make.' ^*
In view of the fact that most Mormon converts were of Anglo-Saxon stock, it is almost incon- ceivable that Smith retained any influence over them.'* Yet in the midst of the Missouri troubles,
14 * Elders' Journal,' 1837.
** Yet compare Bancroft, p. 82 : — < The earliest clerk service rendered the prophet Joseph, of which there is any account, was by Martin Harris ; Joseph's wife, Emma, then Oliver Cowdery, who, as is claimed, wrote the greater portion of the original manu- script of the " Book of Mormon," as he translated it from the gold plates by the urim and thummim which he obtained with the plates. In March, 1831, John Whitmer was appointed to keep the church record and history continually, Oliver having been ap- pointed to other labors. Whitmer was assisted, temporarily, on occasions of absence or illness by Warren Parrish. At a meeting of high council at Kirtland, Sept. 14, 1835, ^^ "^^^ decided that " Oliver Cowdery be appointed, and that he act hereafter as re- corder for the church," Whitmer having just been called to be editor of the Messenger and Advocate, At a general conference held in Far West, April 6, 1838, John Corrill and Elias Higbee were appointed historians, and George W. Robinson " general church recorder and clerk for the first presidency." On the death of Elder Robert B. Thompson, which occurred at Nauvoo on the twenty-seventh of August, 1841, in his obituary it is stated: " Nearly two years past he had officiated as scribe to President Joseph Smith and clerk for the church, which important stat-
FINAL ACTIVITIES 325
of which the prophet was no small cause, the ab- negation of the faithful remnant was well-nigh absolute. Governor Boggs, 'knave, butcher and murderer,' as Joseph called him, had just issued his 'exterminating order/ when the folowing episode took place, says Elder Stevenons: — 'In order to show how particular the prophet was regarding the revelations which he received from the Lord, I will relate an incident which occurred in Liberty Jail. While the prophet was receiving a revelation, the late Bishop Alexander McRae was writing as Joseph received it. Upon this occasion Brother McRae suggested a slight change in the wording of the revelation, when Joseph sternly asked: "Do you know who you are writing for?" Brother McRae, who at once discovered his mistake, begged the prophet's pardon for undertaking to cor- rect the word of the Lord.' '^
Smith spoke ex-cathedra; he also made assump- tions as to temporal power. But theocracy was no sinecure in the far West. From the sentimental point of view, the persecutions of the Saints in
ions he filled with that dignity and honor befitting a man of God." During the expulsion from Missouri, and the early settlement of Nauvoo, James MulhoUand, William Clayton, and perhaps others rendered temporary service in this line until the 13th of December, 1 84 1, when Willard Richards was appointed recorder, general clerk, and private secretary to the prophet.* ^8 * Reminiscences,* p. 42.
326 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Missouri mobs deservedly called out sympathetic mass-meetings in the East." As to the political merits of the case, the psychologist is obliged to make a Missouri compromise, — if some of the Borderers were ruffians, some of the Saints were sinners. But as regards the person of the founder of Mormonism, the conflict between church and state must have had far-reaching effects. As some out- sider, who saw the prophet at the time, expressed it, 'Joseph Smith then endured bodily affliction and great mental suffering.' But Joseph's struggles with a cruel world were not confined to one year; they were spread over a dozen. From the time he was tarred and feathered in Ohio by ' a banditti of blacklegs, religious bigots, and cut-throats,' to the time he was ' kidnapped in Missouri through the diabolical rascality of Boggs,' — he was not only pestered with forty-nine civil suits, but was so harried about that once, when moving to a new place, he spoke of being attacked by ' the first regular mob.'
A final ticklish question now comes up. Consid- ering Joseph Smith's abnormal ancestry, his emo-
*7 Knight, p. 83, * One large party of women and children, pro- tected only by six men, wandered into the prairie south, and their tracks could be followed by the blood stains on the ground ; the prairie grass had been burnt, and the sharp stubble lacerated their uncovered feet, cutting and wounding them in a terrible manner; thus they wandered about for several days.*
FINAL ACTIVITIES 327
tional environment, and his lifelong instability, was not his mind, at the last, seriously affected ?
The prophet's utterances within a few months of his death read like the utterances of a madman, yet political aspirations may have turned his head in only a figurative sense. His references to * cata- mount politicians * and the * imbecility of American statesmen' may have been the mere pleasantries of the stump-speaker, yet his acts during these times betoken more than a restless fancy. Again and again he went far out of his way in pursuit of his visionary aims. He called on President Van Buren, with a claim on the public treasury amounting to $i,38i,044.55>^. Having failed to obtain redress from Congress, Smith penned a letter of inquiry to Henry Clay, asking: * What will be your rule of action relative to us as a people, should fortune favor your ascension to the chief magistracy ? ' ^* The reply from Ashland was courteous, but non- committal. Smith thereupon retorted with an abusive letter, called the Whig candidate a black-leg, and — ran for President himself.
The Times and Seasons pushed the Smith-Rigdon ticket, and urged the Saints to vote for ' Joseph Smith, the smartest man in the United States.' On February 7th, 1844, the prophet completed his ad- dress entitled, J/^iews of the Powers and Policy of
" « The Martyrs,' p. 50.
328 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the Government of the United States, reinforcing his arguments with quotations from various docu- ments, authors and languages, — among others the Constitution, Addison, French, Webster, Italian, Adams the elder, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Mon- roe, Hebrew, the Magna Charta, Adams the younger, Jackson, Latin, Chaldean, Dutch and Greek.
Whether Smith was now actually demented is for the alienist to decide. But adding his latest utter- ances to his earliest visionary seizures, it is not too much to say that psychic coordination had dis- appeared, and that heredity had passed down those abnormal tendencies which mark the degenerate.^^ One is not obliged to believe that Joseph's * visions ' were due to epilepsy of a masked variety. Heredity, as understood by the alienist, ignores any definite type of disease, yet it makes much of mental stigmata. Chief among these are marked sen- suality, and exaggerated traits of vanity and self- conceit. In Smith's case there is abundant evi- dence of the former in his polygamous practices, but only the latter need here be instanced. The same visitor at Nauvoo, who had given a not un- favorable opinion of the prophet, speaks of him as a great egotist. * He touched as usual on his pe- culiar doctrines, . . . became much excited, talked incessantly about himself, what he had done
*9 Compare Thomas Ribot, * The Diseases of Personality,' 1894.
FINAL ACTIVITIES 329
and could do more than other mortals, and remarked that he was ' a giant, physically and mentally/ This utterance was reported to have been made about a year before Smith's assassination, which oc- curred June 27th, 1844.
But the prophet's own written words are the final test of his mental condition. The statement of April, 1844, would be incredible, were it not corrob- orated by the statement of November, 1843: —
' I know more than all the world put together.'
*f* 1* 1* •i* nS
' I combat the error of ages ; I meet the violence of mobs ; I cope with illegal proceedings from executive au- thority ; I cut the Gordian knot of powers, and I solve mathematical problems of universities with truth, dia- mond truth, and God is my right-hand man,'
APPENDIX I CONTENTS OF THE BOOK OF MORMON
APPENDIX I
CONTENTS OF THE BOOK OF MORMON
'First Book of Nephi. Language of the record; Nephi's abridgment; Lehi's dream; Lehi departs into the wilderness; Nephi slayeth Laban; Sariah com- plains of Lehi's vision; contents of the brass plates; Ishmael goes with Nephi; Nephi's brethren rebel, and bind him; Lehi's dream of the tree, rod, etc.; Messiah and John prophesied of; olive branches broken off; Nephi's vision of Mary; of the cruci- fixion of Christ; of darkness and earthquake; great abominable church; discovery of the promised land; Bible spoken of; book of Mormon and holy ghost promised; other books come forth; Bible and book of Mormon one; promises to the Gentiles; two churches; the work of the Father to commence; a man in white robes (John); Nephites come to knowledge; rod of iron; the sons of Lehi take wives; director found (ball); Nephi breaks his bow; directors work by faith; Ishmael died; Lehi and Nephi threatened; Nephi commanded to build a ship; Nephi about to be worshipped by his breth-
333
334 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
ren; ship finished and entered; dancing in the ship; Nephi bound; ship driven back; arrived on the promised land; plates of ore made; Zenos, Neum, and Zenock; Isaiah's writing; holy one of Israel.
* Second Book of Nephi. Lehi to his sons; oppo- sition in all things; Adam fell that man might be; Joseph saw our day; a choice seer; writings grow together; prophet promised to the Lamanites; Joseph's prophecy on brass plates; Lehi buried; Nephi's life sought; Nephi separated from Laman; temple built; skin of blackness; priests, etc., con- secrated; make other plates; Isaiah's words by Jacob; angels to a devil; spirits and bodies reunited; baptism; no kings upon this land; Isaiah prophes- ieth; rod of the stem of Jesse; seed of Joseph perisheth not; law of Moses kept; Christ shall shew himself; signs of Christ, birth and death; whisper from the dust; book sealed up; priestcraft for- bidden ; sealed book to be brought forth ; three wit- nesses behold the book; the words (read this, I pray thee); seal up the book again; their priests shall contend; teach with their learning, and deny the holy ghost; rob the poor; a bible, a bible; men judged of the books; white and a delightsome people; work commences among all people; lamb of God baptized; baptism by water and holy ghost.
' Book of Jacob. Nephi anointeth a king; Nephi dies; Nephites and Lamanites; a righteous branch
CONTENTS OF BOOK OF MORMON 335
from Joseph; Lamanites shall scourge you; more than one wife forbidden; trees, waves, and moun- tains obey us; Jews look beyond the mark; tame olive-tree; nethermost part of the vineyard; fruit laid up against the season; another branch; wild fruit had overcome; lord of the vineyard weeps; branches overcome the roots; wild branches plucked off; Sherem, the anti-Christ; a sign, Sherem smit- ten; Enos takes the plates from his father.
' The Book of Enos. Enos, thy sins are forgiven; records threatened by Lamanites; Lamanites eat raw meat.
'The Book of Jarom. Nephites wax strong; Lamanites drink blood; fortify cities; plates de- livered to 0mm.
'The Book of Omni. Plates given to Amaron; plates given to Chemish; Mosiah warned to flee; Zarahemla discovered ; engravings on a stone; Cori- antumr discovered; his parents come from the tower; plates delivered to King Benjamin.
'The words of Mormon. False Christs and prophets.
'Book of Mosiah. Mosiah made king; the plates of brass, sword, and director; King Benjamin teacheth the people; their tent doors toward the temple; coming of Christ foretold; beggars not denied; sons and daughters; Mosiah began to reign; Ammon, etc., bound and imprisoned;
336 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Limhi's proclamation; twenty-four plates of gold; seer and translator.
' Record of Zeniflf. A battle fought; King Laman died; Noah made king; Abinadi the prophet; res- urrection; Alma believed Abinadi; Abinadi cast into prison and scourged with fagots; waters of Mormon; the daughters of the Lamanites stolen by King Noah's priests; records on plates of ore; last tribute of wine; Lamanites' deep sleep; King Limhi baptized; priests and teachers labor; Alma saw an angel; Alma fell (dumb); King Mosiah's sons preach to the Lamanites; translation of records; plates delivered by Limhi; translated by two stones; people back to the Tower; records given to Alma; judges appointed; King Mosiah died; Alma died; Kings of Nephi ended.
'The Book of Alma. Nehor slew Gideon; Amlici made king; Amlici slain in battle; Amlicites painted red; Alma baptized in Sidon; Alma's preaching; Alma ordained elders; commanded to meet often; Alma saw an angel; Amulek saw an angel; lawyers questioning Amulek; coins named; Zeesrom the lawyer; Zeesrom trembles; election spoken of; Melchizedek priesthood; Zeesrom stoned; records burned; prison rent; Zeesrom healed and baptized; Nehor's desolation; Lamanites converted; flocks scattered at Sebus; Ammon smote off arms; Ammon and King Lamoni; King
CONTENTS OF BOOK OF MORMON 337
Lamoni fell; Ammon and the queen; king and queen prostrate; Aaron, etc., delivered; Jerusalem built; preaching in Jerusalem; Lamoni's father con- verted; land desolation and bountiful; anti-Nephi- Lehies; general council; swords buried; 1,005 massacred; Lamanites perish by fire; slavery for- bidden; anti-Nephi-Lehies removed to Jershon, called Ammonites; tremendous battle; anti-Christ, Korihor; Korihor struck dumb; the devil in the form of an angel; Korihor trodden down; Alma's mission to Zoramites; Rameumptom (holy stand); Alma on hillOnidah; Alma on faith; prophecy of Zenos; prophecy of Zenock; Amulek's knowledge of Christ; charity recommended; same spirit possess your body; believers cast out; Alma to Helaman; plates given to Helaman; twenty-four plates; Gazelem, a stone (secret); Liahona, or com- pass; Alma to Shiblon; Alma to Corianton; un- pardonable sin; resurrection; restoration; justice in punishment; if, Adam, took, tree, life; mercy rob justice; Moroni's stratagem; slaughter of Laman- ites; Moroni's speech to Zerahemnah; prophecy of a soldier; Lamanites' covenant of peace; Alma's prophecy 400 years after Christ; dwindle in unbe- lief; Alma's strange departure; Amalickiah leadeth away the people, destroyeth the church; standard of Moroni; Joseph's coat rent; Jacob's prophecy of Joseph's seed; fevers in the land, plants and roots
338 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
for diseases; Amalickiah's plot; the king stabbed; Amalickiah marries the queen, and is acknowledged king; fortifications by Moroni; ditches filled with dead bodies; Amalickiah's oath; Pahoran appointed judge; army against king-men; Amalickiah slain; Ammoron made king; Bountiful fortified; dissen- sions; 2,000 young men; Moroni's epistle to Am- moron; Ammoron's answer; Lamanites made drunk; Moroni's stratagem; Helaman's epistle to Moroni; Helaman's stratagem; mothers taught faith; Lamanites surrendered; city of Antiparah taken; city of Cumeni taken; 200 of the 2,000 fainted; prisoners rebel, slain; Manti taken by stratagem; Moroni to the governor; governor's an- swer; King Pachus slain; cords and ladders prepared; Nephihah taken; Teancum's stratagem, slain; peace established; Moronihah made commander; Hela- man died; sacred things, Shiblon; Moroni died; 5,400 emigrated north; ships built by Hagoth; sacred things committed to Helaman; Shiblon died. 'The Book of Helaman. Pahoran died; Pahoran appointed judge; Kishkumen slays Pahoran; Pacu- meni appointed judge; Zarahemla taken; Pacumeni killed; Coriantumr slain; Lamanites surrendered; Helaman appointed judge; secret signs discovered and Kishkumen stabbed; Gadianton fled; emigra- tion northward; cement houses; many books and records; Helaman died; Nephi made judge; Neph-
CONTENTS OF BOOK OF MORMON 339
ites become wicked; Nephi gave the judgment-seat toCezoram; Nephi and Lehi preached to the La- manites; 8,000 baptized; Alma and Nephi sur- rounded with fire; angels administer; Cezoram and son murdered; Gadianton robbers; Gadianton rob- bers destroyed; Nephi's prophecy; Gadianton rob- bers are judges; chief judge slain; Seantum de- tected; keys of the kingdom; Nephi taken away by the spirit; famine in the land; Gadianton band de- stroyed; famine removed; Samuel's prophecy; tools lost; two days and a night, light; sign of the crucifixion; Samuel stoned, etc.; angels appeared.
* Third Book of Nephi. Lachoneus chief judge; Nephi receives the records ; Nephi's strange depart- ure; no darkness at night; Lamanites become white; Giddianhi to Lachoneus; Gidgiddoni chief judge; Giddianhi slain; Zemnarihah hanged; rob- bers surrendered; Mormon abridges the records; church begins to be broken up; government of the land destroyed; chief judge murdered: divided into tribes; Nephi raises the dead; sign of the crucifix- ion; cities destroyed, earthquakes, darkness, etc.; law of Moses fulfilled; Christ appears to Nephites; print of the nails; Nephi and others called; baptism commanded; doctrine of Christ; Christ the end of the law; other sheep spoken of; blessed are the Gentiles; Gentile wickedness on the land of Joseph; Isaiah's words fulfilled; Jesus heals the sick; Christ
340 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
blesses children; little ones encircled with fire; Christ administers the sacrament; Christ teaches his disciples; names of the twelve; the twelve teach the multitude; baptism, holy ghost, and fire; dis- ciples made white; faith great; Christ breaks bread again; miracle, bread and wine; Gentiles destroyed (Isaiah); Zion established; from Gentiles, to your seed; sign. Father's work commenced; he shall be marred; Gentiles destroyed (Isaiah); New Jeru- salem built; work commence among all the tribes; Isaiah's words; saints did arise; Malachi's proph- ecy; faith tried by the Booh of Mormon; chil- dren's tongues loosed; the dead raised; baptism and holy ghost; all things common; Christ appears again; Moses, church; three Nephites tarry; the twelve caught up; change upon their bodies.
* Book of Nephi, son of Nephi. Disciples raise the dead; Zarahemla rebuilt; other disciples are ordained in their stead; Nephi dies; Amos keeps the records in his stead; Amos dies, and his son Amos keeps the records; prisons rent by the three; secret combinations; Ammaron hides the records.
' Book of Mormon. Three disciples taken away; Mormon forbidden to preach; Mormon appointed leader; Samuel's prophecy fulfilled; Mormon makes a record; lands divided; the twelve shall judge; desolation taken; women and children sacrificed; Mormon takes the records hidden in Shim; Mor-
CONTENTS OF BOOK OF MORMON 341
mon repents of his oath and takes command; com- ing forth of records; records hid in Cumorah; 230,000 Nephites slain; shall not get gain by the plates; these things shall come forth out of the earth; the state of the world; miracles cease, unbe- lief; disciples go into all the world and preach; language of the book.
' Book of Ether. Twenty-four plates found ; Jared cries unto the Lord; Jared goes down to the valley of Nimrod; Deseret, honey-bee; barges built; decree of God, choice land; free from bond- age; four years in tents at Moriancumer; Lord talks three hours ; barges like a dish; eight vessels, sixteen stones; Lord touches the stones; finger of the Lord seen; Jared's brother sees the Lord; two stones given; stones sealed up; goes aboard of vessels; furious wind blows; 344 days* passage; Orihah anointed king; King Shule taken captive; Shule's sons slay Noah; Jared carries his father away captive; the daughters of Jared dance; Jared anointed king by the hand of wickedness; Jared murdered and Akish reigns in his stead; names of animals; poisonous serpents; Riplakish's cruel reign; Morianton anointed king; poisonous serp- ents destroyed; many wicked kings; Moroni on faith; miracles by faith; Moroni sees Jesus; New Jerusalem spoken of; Ether cast out; records fin- ished in the cavity of a rock; secret combinations;
342 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
war in all the land ; King Gilead murdered by his high priest; the high priest murdered by Lib; Lib slain by Coriantumr; dead bodies cover the land and none to bury them; 2,000,000 men slain; hill Ramah; cries rend the air; sleep on their swords; Coriantumr slays Shiz; Shiz falls to the earth; records hidden by Ether.
* Book of Moroni. Christ's words to the twelve; manner of ordination; order of sacrament; order of baptism; faith, hope and charity; baptism of little children; women fed on their husbands' flesh; daughters murdered and eaten; sufferings of women and children; cannot recommend them to God; Moroni to the Lamanites; 420 years since the sign; records sealed up (Moroni); gifts of the spirits; God's word shall hiss forth/
APPENDIX II EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS
APPENDIX II
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS^
The diagnosis of an apparent epilepsy in Smith's visionary seizures is difficult for three reasons: — first, the descriptions come from incompetent ob- servers; second, the paroxysms present great divers- ity of form; third, there is an absence of definite pathological stigmata. There are no photographs extant from v^hich cranial malformations might be observed; yet all the portraits of Smith show an inferior cranial angle, and an overdeveloped cereb- ellum.
But the prognosis is assured from the antecedents of the patient. The case is not idiopathic; there are known causes furnishing an almost complete etiology. Foremost is heredity. Joseph's maternal
J References, * Archiv fiir Psychiatric,' 8, 200 seq ; Charcot, Bouchard et Brissaud, * Traite de Medecine,' Paris, 1894, — Dutil 'Epilepsia'; Hughlings- Jackson, in Brain 11, 179, ff. ; Kraft- Ebing, * Lehrbuch de Psychiatric,' Stuttgart, 1897 — * ^^^ Epilep- tesche Irre in ' ; E. D. Starbuck, « The Psychology of Religion,' New York, 1899 ; H. von Zicmscn, * Cyclopaedia of the Practice of Medicine,' New York, 1877, Volume XIV, — Prof. H, Northnagel, « Epilepsy.'
345
346 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
grandfather had 'fits.' The hallucinations of Solo- mon Mack at the age of seventy-six, have been already traced to temporary causes, such as rheu- matism. Of Solomon's many ailments and acci- dents, three have especial bearing on the problem. Some time before 1757, at about the age of twenty- two, he writes, ' I had a terrible fever sore on my leg, which had well-nigh proved fatal to my life." This is to be noticed only because Joseph had a similar trouble, at a somewhat earlier age. Again Solomon relates that while visiting his son, who was cutting trees, * A tree fell on me and crushed me almost all to pieces, beat the breath out of my body, my son took me up for dead, I however soon recovered, but have not to this day recovered the use of my limbs, which was thirty-four years ago. . . . I lay sixty days on my back and never moved or turned to one side or the other, the skin was worn off my backbone one end to the other.*' This story is corroborated by the account of an eyewitness at Royalton, Vermont, who por- trayed Solomon Mack as * an infirm old man, who used to ride around on horseback, on a side-sad- dle/*
These two episodes are perhaps immaterial, but the third is not. Solomon again says, * Soon
"Narrative/ p. 5. 3 « Narrative,^ p. 10.
^ Historical Magazine f November, 1870.
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 347
after this I was wounded by a limb falling from a tree upon my head, which again nearly deprived me of life. I afterwards was taken with a fit/* The date of this affliction is extremely significant. It happened about a year before the birth of Lucy Mack, Solomon's last child and the mother of the prophet.^ This fit, attributable to traumatic lesion, is thus described by the patient himself: — ' I afterwards was taken with a fit, when traveling, with an axe under my arm, on Winchester hills, the face of the land was covered with ice. I was senseless from one, until five p. m. When I came to myself I had my axe still under my arm. I was all covered with blood and much cut and bruised. When I came to my senses I could not tell where I had been nor where I was going . . • was under the doc- tor's care all the winter.'^ Alcoholism, as a pro- vocative of epilepsy, cannot be causally connected with these seizures. Solomon had been an army sutler for twenty-seven years,® but his acknowl- edged drunkenness came only after the Tunbridge episode. As a sailor on the Atlantic, he confesses to a chronic intoxication and adds, 'the devil had got hold on me and I served him well.'^
»* Narrative,' p. I2.
«The date of the * Narrative' is not later than 1810; Lucy was born in 1776.
"Narrative,* p. 12. 8 « Narrative,' Errata, 8 * Narrative,' p. 15.
348 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Of the other branch of this first generation much less is known. Joseph's paternal grandfather, Asael Smith, nicknamed * crook-necked ' Smith, at the age of eighty-six, is spoken of as 'just recover- ing from a severe fit' and of ' weak mind/^® There is nothing more to be made of this than mental fail- ure due to senility.
Returning to the more significant maternal line, Joseph's grandmother Lydia Gates Mack, at the age of forty-seven, had *a severe fit of sickness. She was so low that she, as well as her friends, entirely despaired of her recovery.' ^^ She was however alive in 1815, aged eighty. Proceeding to the sec- ond generation, of Joseph's father, only two slight illnesses are recorded," one of them was, curiously enough, at the time of Joseph's first real seizure. But to leave the ascendants, it is noticeable that the collaterals on the male side were uniformly healthy. Of Joseph's uncles, Jason, Daniel and Solomon (2d) nothing is said; Stephen is described as robust, and as being ill but four days before his death. It is different with the female side. Of Lydia, no patho- logical details are given, but Lovisa, despite her ' miraculous recovery ' died of consumption within
10 « Biographical Sketches,* pp. 154, 155. " * Biographical Sketches,* p. 36.
*2 The alleged intoxication of Joseph, senior, was charged by his enemies only after the removal to New York State.
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 349
two years, and Lovina succumbed to the same dis- ease after lingering three years/'
As to the mother of the prophet, her hallucina- tions have already been described; the coincident sickness is like that of her sisters. At the age of twenty-six, after the birth of Alvin and Hyrum, Lucy 'took a heavy cold, which caused a severe cough. ... A hectic fever set in, which threat- ened to prove fatal, ^nd the physician pronounced my case to be confirmed consumption.' Of the course of recovery there is no information, but, in middle life, judging from her ability for hard work, Lucy appears to have been in good health. But immediately before the birth of Joseph, in 1805, his mother was in indigence, if not positive want.^* It was, however, not until 181 1, that Joseph, senior's mind * became much excited upon the subject of religion ' ; his seven visions then followed at the rate of one a year. His death, at seventy, was said to be due to the ' eruption of a blood vessel.' '^
J3 « Biographical Sketches,* Chapter 3.
^4 * Biographical Sketches,* p. 56. In Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, she says, * my husband rented a farm of my father, which he cultivated in the summer, teaching school in the winter. In this way my husband continued laboring for a few years, during which time our circumstance gradually improved, until we found ourselves quite comfortable again. In the meantime we had a son whom we called Joseph.*
^5* Times and Seasons,* 5, 173.
350 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Before further examination of Joseph's neuro- pathic antecedents, and in order to complete the tale of the generations, a word may be said concern- ing his progeny. From sources which cannot here be divulged, comes the significant fact that * fits ' have reappeared, not in the fourth,^^ but in the fifth generation. The atavism in the prophet's case is clear: he stands midway in the series. As to the causes productive of the epileptic tendency, hered- ity has its acknowledged primacy. If one so pleases, heredity may here be taken in its broader sense of mere 'nervousness' in the ancestors. In many cases, it is asserted, the parents need not be directly responsible, for a neuropathic tendency in the family generally suffices. But this case is more pronounced; the grandsire's first *fit' took place about the age of forty-one, the first * vision ' of the grandson about fourteen. This fulfils the condition that, * if epilepsy is hereditary the descendants are attacked at an earlier age than the ascendants.'
Besides an inherited nervous diathesis, diseases furnished foredisposing causes. More is made of Joseph's individual vicissitudes than of all his nine brothers and sisters put together." In 1811 all
»8 Joseph Smith, junior's first child, by Emma Hale, died shortly after birth. Compare 'Biographical Sketches,* p. Ii8. That perjured apostate * Dr.* Bennett, eight years the prophet's body physician, claims that it was a monster.
*7 Of these the following are noticed ; Alvin, the first child, at
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 351
the children had ' typhus ' [typhoid ?] in Lebanon, N. H. Within a month of recovery, at the age of six, Joseph developed a 'fever sore,' first on the breast, then on the leg; the latter sore being similar to that of his grandfather Mack's. A portion of the * bone of the leg ' was removed by surgeons, without the use of anaesthetics. At the age of ten, Joseph was still lame; in the forties he escaped reg- ular military duty by pleading lameness as a disa- bility.
If a nervous diathesis, an infectious fever, and an ulceration, may be considered likely predisposing causes, the exciting causes of the seizures are equally marked. Nervous instability, consequent on protracted religious excitement, at the time of puberty, has been elsewhere treated,^® but the imme- diate exciting cause of the boy's first seizure may be laid to fright. ' At the age of fourteen ... a gun was fired across his pathway ... he sprang to the door much frightened.' ^^
twenty-five was < murdered * by a doctor, through an overdose of calomel ; Sophronia recovers of typhus, on the ninetieth day * through prayer * ; Samuel died at thirty-two from * fever due to overexertion in escaping a mob ' ; Ephraim lived but eleven days after his birth ; Don Carlos died at twenty-five of consumption. « Biographical Sketches,* Chapter xx, etc.
>8 Above Chapter II. The * protracted meetings * in Western New York revivals took from eight to thirty days, often from sun- rise to 9 P. M. Hotchkin, p. 165.
19 1 Biographical Sketches,* p. 73.
352 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Now the first vision may be explained as a migraine, but the recurrence of this psychic aura, in a more or less stereotyped form, along with other- wise inexplicable injuries and contusions, is to be laid to a real epilepsy. Here alcoholism was first in the list of provocative causes. Joseph's confession as to the ' weakness of youth, foolish errors, divers temptations and gratifications of appetites offensive in the sight of God,' — is to be coupled with the con- fessions of his adherents that he sometimes drank too much liquor. The frequency of his intoxication cannot be determined; along with Joseph, senior, he was charged by his enemies with public drunken- ness; the Mormons themselves acknowledge at least two of the counts. There is no truth whatever in the statement that both parents drank; the neuro- pathic condition of the mother was transmitted. That alcoholism did but little to debilitate Joseph is proved by his general good health after thirty. It was, how- ever, a provocative agent of his second attack at eighteen, for only the slightest stimulation was neces- sary to bring about a repetition of the first attack.
The two earliest seizures may be now examined in conjunction. As already suggested, the theophanic portion of the visions may be largely explained as an ophthalmic migraine. Whether this is to be as- sociated with a partial sensorial epilepsy, is deter- minable, in one case, by what precedes, in the
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 353
other by what follows. Collecting the terms there are the following expressions: *a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me/ In the second vision the details are fuller and more exact: 'On a sudden, a light like that of day, only of a far purer and more glorious appearance and brightness burst into the room; in- deed the first sight was as though the house was filled with a consuming fire. ... I saw the light in the room begin to gather immediately around the person of him who had been speaking to me, and it continued to do so, until the room was again left dark, except just around him, when instantly I saw, as it were, a conduit open right up into heaven, and he ascended up till he entirely disappeared, and the room was left as it had been before this heavenly light had made its appearance.' This mani- festation was repeated twice that night, once on the following day, and also throughout the series. As usual the apparent objective manifestations were actually subjective symptoms. Their similarity is due to the fact that in ophthalmic migraine periodical attacks tend to be similar in the same patient. The visual disturbance is ushered in by a dimness or blindness, then a scintillating scotoma occupies the outer portions of the visual field. Patients expe- riencing this symptom for the first time cannot give
354 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
an exact account of it, more than that it is a dazzling comparable to that observed in looking at the sun. But with repetition there comes a more accurate en- visagement, as in the second vision of Joseph. * The luminous ball of fire enlarges; its centre becomes obscure; gradually it passes beyond the limits of the visual field above and below, and the patient sees only a portion of it, in the form of a broken lumi- nous line, which continues to vibrate until it has en- tirely disappeared. Then follows a phase of ex- haustion and sometimes somnolence.'
These sequelae appear in the second vision, but to turn to the prodromata of the first. Joseph says that in this time of great excitement his mind was in a state of 'great uneasiness,' his feelings 'deep and pungent,* and he 'kept himself aloof.' These are the remote premonitory symptoms of an attack, when the patient labors under a singular oppression two or three days beforehand and is irritable, sad and secretive. The real seizure does not follow, unless there are immediate premonitory symptoms. These are not lacking in Joseph's case ; the ' thick darkness ' may be explained as a migrainous scotoma, but fuller explanation is needed of Joseph's additional statements: *I was seized upon by some power as to bind my tongue; I was ready to sink into despair, until I found myself delivered from the enemy; I saw two personages, whose brightness and glory
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 355
defy all description, one of whom spake unto me/ Taken in order and with proper terminology these phenomena appear to constitute the real epileptic aura. After the gradually increasing melancholic depression, the patient manifests: first, a sudden terror; second, violent palpitations of the heart, ac- companied by a difficulty in breathing and a con- striction of the larynx; third, along with these symptoms are complex visual and auditory halluci- nations of corporeal figures, such as of fantastic per- sonages who carry on a conversation or deliver a message. More marked, psychic, sensitive and sens- ory prodromata are manifest in the second vision. Whether this first psychic paroxysm was followed by a real seizure, is undeterminable. It is not, at any rate, the classic major attack. There is loss of consciousness — ' when I came to myself — but noth- ing from which general convulsions can be inferred. Nevertheless the sensorial migraine is an equivalent for convulsive paroxysms. Again, in the major at- tacks, there is often lacking the initial cry, tongue biting, and evacuations. The character of Joseph's seizures, whether they are the mild type, the transi- tional form, or merely epileptoid, is to be gathered only from the whole series, for in individual cases, manifold diversities are found, even in the features of the full epileptic attack. Turning to the second seizure, it represents the
3S6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
more essential features of mental and motor dis- turbance,— a verbal deafness and feebleness of the limbs, followed by exhaustion and somnolence. The vision proper took place the night before the real seizure. As there was no apparent loss of con- sciousness, it may be considered merely as the im- mediate premonition. Moreover, this vision, like the first, v^as preceded by anxiety and disquietude — *I often felt condemned for my weakness and imperfections.' As an immediate prodroma, it is marked by more exact details. The parallel account gives these extra data. The celestial messenger's ap- pearance was like *fire,' and 'produced a shock which affected the whole body.' These may be explained as the sensory aura of red color (rothen flammenschein) and the sensitive aura of numbness (engourdissement).
It is now in order to examine alternative expla- nations. Joseph's second vision is not to be ex- plained as a vertigo, in which either the patient feels himself turning, or external objects seem to move to one side. This night vision resembles a particular variety of epilepsy denominated * intel- lectual aura.' It begins with color projections, fol- lowed by 'seeing faces'; the auditory sensation- warnings being, in turn, succeeded by ' hearing voices ' (Hughlings-Jackson). There is not always loss of consciousness but a state of semi-conscious-
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 357
ness with reminiscent dreams. (Compare: — 'I lay musing on the singularity of the scene, when I dis- covered the same heavenly messenger again/) The manifestation occurred thrice that night. Such hyperideation was a precursory sign of the real sei- zure which occurred on the following day. The lad's mother says, 'Joseph stopped quite suddenly; seemed to be in a very deep study.' Being hurried by his brother he * went to work again and after laboring a short time, he stopped just as he had done before. This being quite unusual and strange, his father discovered that Joseph was very pale.'
Thus far the case appears to be one of those at- tenuated epileptic attacks, designated vacuity, which is limited to a loss of consciousness with temporary pallor, but the patient does not fall or utter a cry. ' Immovable, with his eyes fixed, and a strange air, he remains as if unconscious, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, in a sort of ecstasy. Per- haps he executes certain automatic movements. It all lasts only several seconds. The patient shortly returns to himself, takes up the conversation at the point where he had left off or returns to his work* (Dutil). Joseph's version of this episode is as fol- lows: Arising * shortly after' the night vision, he found his ' strength so exhausted ' as rendered him 'entirely unable' to work; his father told him to go home, but in attempting to cross the fence his
358 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
I
'strength entirely failed'; he 'fell helpless on the ground, and for a time was quite unconscious of anything.* The previous night's hallucination of the messenger and the message is then repeated. This reproduction of the seizure under the apple- tree was followed by restlessness and exhaustion. Joseph says, * I left the field and went to the place where the messenger had told me the plates were deposited.' His mother adds, 'The ensuing even- ing Joseph made known what passed between him and the angel while he was at the place where the plates were deposited. Sitting up late that evening, together with overexertion of mind had much fa- tigued Joseph.' Thus the after effects of the attack of September 24th, 1823, took the usual form of nervous exhaustion, a veritable nervous discharge leaving behind a state of collapse corresponding to the intensity of this discharge. In fact these are the prominent sequelae of all the fully recorded visions. After the fifth, he was ' much exhausted and very tired'; after the sixth, 'he returned to the house, weeping for grief and disappointment;' after the seventh, he was 'altogether speechless from fright and the fatigue of running,' and 'threw himself upon the bed.' j
In the same manner the state of coma in the series is uniform in occurrence, though varying in degree. In the first, it was expressed by the words — ' when
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 359
I came to myself; in the second, — M was quite un- conscious of anything'; in the third, he 'was over- come by the powers of darkness and when he re- covered, the angel was gone'; in the sixth, *he did not get home till the night was far spent'; in the seventh, * he dislocated his thumb, which, however, he did not notice until he came within sight of the house.'
Loss of consciousness, as a chief criterion of epilepsy, has been here emphasized. Yet the classic convulsive symptoms are by no means lacking, hence it is largely from their effects and after marks that they are to be inferred. There must, however, be taken into account the lack of clinical data, for, with the exception of the episode in the field which 'attracted the attention of his father,' the seizures took place away from observ- ers. Now if the fact that the most elaborate of the hallucinations was nocturnal excites suspicion of epilepsy, the fact that most of the attacks were am- bulatory attacks, away from home, furnishes cumu- lative evidence of true epileptic convulsions.
To anticipate the answer to an important question : Were any of these true major attacks ? The second main seizure and the immediate falling 'helpless to the ground ' bespeak a spasmodic innervation of the limbs. Furthermore the dislocation of the boy's thumb in the last attack points to that common
36o THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
epileptic symptom of the thumb being forcibly flexed into the hand. If there were any instances of grand mal, the tonic and clonic spasms cannot be distinguished. The former, as sometimes oc- curs, are here wanting, unless such be the disloc- ation of the thumb. But the more rapid and violent convulsions, with consequent wounds and excoria- tions of the skin, are to be gathered from collateral information. The form of the hallucination varies, but these accounts agree as to the after affects. One reads, *When Joseph got the plates, on his way home, he was met by what appeared to be a man, who struck him with a club on his side, which was all black and blue.'^^ The other states, 'As he returned and was getting over the fence, one of the devils struck him a blow on his side, where a black and blue spot remained three or four days.'^^ These ecchymoses are symptomatic of rather severe convulsions. The variety in the terms of explanation — * devils struck, angels chastised, assassins assaulted' him — as in the case of his grandfather, shows the inability of the patient to explain his self-inflicted injuries. Again in the grand mal the prodromata are lacking in half the cases, as here, but unconsciousness outlasts the
20 Tiffany* s Monthly, May, 1859. Interview with Martin Harris.
21 Historical Magazine, May, 1 870, p. 305. Fayette Lapham in an interview with Joseph Smith, senior, in 1830.
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 361
spasm. Joseph on the other hand appears to have been conscious of a series of 'shocks* over the v^hole body. In the third seizure, according to his mother, 'he was hurled back on the ground with great violence'; again, according to a reported statement of his father, 'he felt something strike him on the breast, which was repeated a third time, always with increased force, the last such as to lay him on his back.'
The evidence in Joseph's case is now in. It re- mains, if possible, to locate it among the various forms of epilepsy: — i. grand mal ; 2. petit mat; 3. transitional; 4. irregular; 5. epileptoid and epi- leptiform (Northnagel). The classic form of the epileptic attack is not immutable, yet it would be pressing the argument from silence, to identify the omissions in the text, with the occasional omissions in the grand attack. There is the lack, not only of those symptoms already mentioned, but also of the cry, which is more often absent than present; and in particular of consciousness, which is rarely com- pletely retained. Joseph's case is not in the first category, grand maty for 'the major convulsive at- tack, with loss of consciousness, presents this con- stant characteristic, — that it leaves no trace in the memory of the patient.' This amnesia varies in duration. ' Many patients remember the remote premonitory phenomena and even the sensations of
362 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the aura. Some retain the memory of the first con- vulsive movements* (Fere). At the same time, it should be allov^ed that the epileptic attack does not always occur in the same manner; in the same pa- tient it may vary infinitely in aspect, intensity and duration; moreover incomplete attacks may alter- nate with grand attacks. For all that, there is no single experience of Joseph's which completely ful- fils the classic formula: — premonitory symptoms remote and immediate, with both mental and motor disturbances; the attack proper, with its two pe- riods of tonic and clonic convulsions; the after- stage of gradual return to consciousness, with ab- normally deep sleep ; and the sequete — of wounds, bruises, excoriations.
If Joseph's case is not grand mal, it is also not petit mat. He had in the first half of the series premonitions, and in the last half spasms. Again, to anticipate, the depth of his exhaustion and of his unnerved and bruised state militate against the pen- ultimate class, — the so-called irregular forms, in which the epileptic delirium is mild; and in greater degree against the last class, — the epileptoid and epileptiform seizures. These are slight and incom- plete and do not comprise violent acts of ambulatory automatism in which the patient senselessly wounds himself. Possibly Joseph's last recorded seizure, with the long flight from home, may be one of
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 363
those irregular forms, in which convulsions are re- placed by running.
On the whole, out of the five given varieties, the third, from its inclusive character, best describes Joseph's case. Of course different forms of attack occur jointly, and, like the undefined visions of 1825 and 1826, mental disturbances may arise in place of the whole attack. But if any exactness of defini- tion is required, Northnagel's transitional form of epilepsy fairly includes the variant forms of Joseph's seizures. In general, in the transition- forms, there is loss of consciousness with local spasms. Unlike the rarer /)^/// wa/ this may occur without any visible outward spasms. The above mentioned variety in Joseph's terms of explanation — he was 'struck, chastised, assaulted' — is in accord with the transitional type of spasmodic phenomena, for the locality, intensity and nature of these are subject to the greatest variation. As to further permutations, it happens but seldom that tonic and clonic spasms appear together, or in succession, as in the major attacks; as a rule there is in this form only one or the other kind. Thus it may happen that certain fingers are rigidly bent or stretched — as Joseph's dislocation of thumb in the last seizure, — or a slight tremor runs over the whole body — as Joseph's 'a shock that affected the whole body.' This latter detail, for fear of mutiplying the number
364 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
of real seizures, has been already considered a mere premonitory symptom. Further discussion of the transitional attack proper is unnecessary, for, as has been said, ' it is quite unprofitable to undertake to enumerate here all the possible multifarious varieties of the picture; the reality surpasses any descrip- tion/
As to the immediate consequences of the epilep- tic attack, besides the nervous collapse already indicated, there is to be incidentally noted the slight aphasia after the longest ambulatory seizure — * Joseph made no answ^er/ The more marked psychic after effects have been described in the text.
In connection w^ith the psychiatric criteria, such as the hallucination of persecution, Joseph's inter- paroxysmal condition should be studied. The only pertinent statement is, that, previous to the seizure of January, 1827, w^hich took place within a week or so of his marriage, Joseph was ' in good health and fine spirits.' Now this is not opposed to the general constitutional relations, ' as the constitution may be perfectly normal, so in the case of certain epileptics may all pathological appearances on the part of the nervous system be absent; /. ^., many epileptics appear to be ailing only at the time of the paroxysms, exhibiting in the intervals the ap- pearance of thoroughly and completely healthy per-
EPILEPSY AND THE VISIONS 365
sons* (Northnagel). As to the remoter conse- quences again but one definite fact is obtainable. About six months after the last recorded seizure, Joseph was ' nearly worn out, of gloomy appearance, constitution evidently not strong, and he would fall asleep as he was walking along/" Joseph's mother attributes this exhaustion to his grief over the loss of his first child, and anxiety as to the stolen portion of the Booh of Mormon.''^ Did this bring on other attacks ? Within two months the ' angel visited Joseph ' ; this was soon after followed by a ' revelation.' Again on September 22^ 1828, just a year after the last fully recorded vision, he received a message that * the servants of Satan have sought to destroy you.' Whether these visitations are to be identified with epileptic seizures is immaterial;^* the point here is that, as regards mental manifesta- tions, ' it is undoubtedly possible for an absolutely healthy state of mind to coexist with epilepsy.' Historical tradition tells of numerous highly gifted
22' Biographical Sketches/ pp. 119-20.
23 « Biographical Sketches,' p. 118. In July, 1828, Joseph had a « revelation concerning certain manuscripts taken from the posses- sions of Martin Harris ' (** Book of Commandments," chapter 3) but this * revelation ' was < soon after the angel visited him.' * Bio- graphical Sketches,' p. 125.
2-i » Book of Commandments,' Chapter 4, following. Further revelations followed on February, March and April, 1829, but the series beginning then concerns business affairs and are not theophanic visions.
366 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
men who suffer from epilepsy, and whose deeds do not allow the recognition of any mental deteriora- tion.
Finally, as to Joseph's relief from these seizures : there seems to have been a spontaneous cure in his twenty-third year. This recovery was facili- tated positively by the infrequency of his attacks, negatively by the fact that the seizures were of the non-vertiginous variety. Whether these youthful experiences seriously affected his mind is to be determined only from a view of his whole public life, from the time he was tarred and feathered by a mob to his last days of colossal egotism. The prophet's mental soundness is a question for the alienist to decide. Nevertheless parsimony demands a cautious judgment, for in decided reaction against the opinion formerly main- tained, it has been proved by statistics, that aliena- tion occurs only if the epileptic seizures follow in unusually rapid succession.
APPENDIX III
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY OF THE 'BOOK OF MORMON'
APPENDIX III
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY OF THE 'BOOK OF MORMON ' '
The ordinary anti-Mormon theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon was first formally presented by Howe in 1834. It was, in brief, that a romance of prehistoric America, written in Ohio in 1812 by a Congregational minister, was the * source, root and inspiration ' by which Smith and his associate, Sidney Rigdon, wrote the Book of Mormon. The title of Howe's book is explanatory: ' Mormonism Unveiled,' or, a faithful account of that singular imposition and delusion, from its rise to the present time. With sketches of the characters of the propagators, and a full detail of the manner in
1 References : — K. H. Bancroft, * History of Utah,' 1890; < Hand- book of Reference,' 1884; E. D. Howe, * Mormonism Unveiled,' 1834; J. H. Kennedy, 'Early Days of Mormonism,' 1888; * The Manuscript Found ' . . . From a Verbatim Copy of the Original . . . including correspondence,' 1885; R. Patterson, » Who Wrote the Book of Mormon ? ' 1882 ; A. T. Schroeder, * The Origin of the Book of Mormon,' 1901 ; * Times and Seasons,' 4, i79fF.; B. Winchester, « The Origin of the Spaulding Story,' 1840.
369
370 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
which the famous Golden Bible was brought before the world. To which are added, inquiries into the probability that the historical part of the said Bible was written by one Solomon Spaulding, more than twenty years ago, and by him intended to have been published as a romance.'
According to the account of his widow/ Solomon Spaulding was born in Connecticut in 1761, and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1785. Becom- ing a Congregational minister, in 1809 he removed to New Salem, now Conneaut, Ohio. Being of a lively imagination and with a great fondness for history, he became interested in the numerous mounds and forts of Ohio, supposed to be the works of an extinct race. To beguile his invalidism he took three years in writing a historical sketch of this long lost race. Their extreme antiquity led him to write in the most ancient style, his sole ob- ject being to amuse himself and his neighbors. The book claimed to have been written by one of the lost nation, and to have been recovered from the earth. It assumed the title of the 'Manuscript Found.' Its date was 181 2, about the time of Hull's surrender of Detroit. In that year Mr. Spaulding removed to Pittsburg and offered the manuscript to the printer Patterson, in whose office it was copied by an employee, Sidney Rigdon. At length the
9 Boston Recorder f May, 1839.
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 371
manuscript was returned to its author. ... In 1834, at New Salem, Ohio, a Mormon preacher read copious extracts from the Book of Mormon. The historical part was recognized by the older inhabi- tants as the identical work of Mr. Spaulding. . . . ' Thus an historical romance, with the addition of a few pious expressions and extracts from the sacred scripture, has been construed into a new Bible.'
Of the ultimate fate of this manuscript, nothing is said by Spaulding's widow, but Howe claimed to have found, among Spaulding's literary remains, — * a single manuscript book, containing about one quire of paper. It was a romance purporting to have been translated' from the Latin, found in twenty- four rolls of parchment in a cave, on the banks of Conneaut Creek, but written in modern style, and giving a fabulous account of a ship being driven upon the American coast, while proceeding from Rome to Britain, a short time previous to the Christian era; this country being then inhabited by Indians. This old manuscript has been shown to several of the foregoing witnesses, who recognize it as Spaulding's, he having told them that he had altered his first plan of writing by going further back with dates, and writing in the old scripture style in order that it might appear more ancient. They say that it bears no resemblance to the ' Manuscript Found.'
372 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
It should here be noted that, as early as 1834, there appear to enter into the problem two dis- tinct Spaulding manuscripts, — one primary, which may be called the ' Latin version ' (L), the other subsequent and secondary, the ' Hebraic version ' (H). These, and possibly other manuscripts, are also referred to in the testimonies of the ' older inhabitants,' which Howe cites, and which will be scrutinized later. Howe's book, with its double form of the Spaulding theory, was of course criti- cised in the Mormon Church organ/ It was an- swered at length, in 1840, by B. Winchester's, ' The origin of the Spaulding story concerning the ' Manuscript Found '; with a short biography of Dr. P. Hulbert, the originator of the same; and some testimony adduced, showing it to be a sheer fabrication so far as its connection with the * Book of Mormon ' is concerned.'
The hypothesis of the agency of Hulbert (or Hurlburt) rests chiefly on the testimony of one Jackson, who, having read both the Book of Mor- mon and Spaulding's manuscript, said that there was no agreement between them, for * Mr. Spauld- ing's manuscript was a very small work, in the form of a novel, saying not one word about the children of Israel, but professed to give an account of a race of people who originated from the
3' Times and Seasons/ 3, 906.
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 373
Romans, which Mr. Spaulding said he had trans- lated from a Latin parchment that he had found.' *
For almost fifty years the treatises of Howe and Winchester contained the most valuable first-hand information. Other works, on both sides, simply rehashed the old arguments. A possible exception is the pamphlet, in 1882, of Robert Patterson, son of the Pittsburg printer. In attempting to prove that Rigdon was the connecting link between Spaulding and Smith, he acknowledged that he could find only five witnesses who could testify to Rigdon's residence in Pittsburg before 1816, and that none of these could speak from personal knowledge of Rigdon's possible employment in Patterson's printing office. Patterson yet asserts 'that Rigdon as early as 1823 had possession of Spaulding's manuscript. How he obtained it is un- important; that during his career as a minister of the Disciples' Church in Ohio, he devoted an ab- sorbed attention to it; that he was aware of the forthcoming Book of Mormon and its contents long before its appearance; that the said contents were largely Spaulding's romance, and partly such modi- fications as Rigdon had introduced, and that during the preparation of the Booh of Mormon, Rigdon had repeated and long interviews with Smith, thus
< Compare Scribner^s Magazine ^ October, 1881, p. 946.
374 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
easily supplying him with fresh instalments of the pretended revelation/
In 1885 came an apparent settlement of the ques- tion, by the discovery of the alleged original of Spaulding's ' Manuscript Found ' in Honolulu. De- spite its acceptance by Latter-day Saints and their critics alike it appears a dubious production for a graduate of Dartmouth. It does not seem to have occurred to either side that this may be like McPherson's Ossianic poems — after-thoughts made to order; that the 'Conneaut' story which purports to have been translated from parchment in ' Roman Letters in the Latin Language' may be only another example of the literature of disguise; that w^ith Hov^e*s classic description of this Latin version (L) before them, the Mormon missionaries in the Sandwich Islands — such as W. F. Cluff and G. Q. Cannon — may have forged this document to fit the case, and to divert attention from the complexity of the problem. However that may be, the character- istics of both form and matter may be learned from a few excerpts and also from the correspondence relative to its discovery: — ^
' Near the west bank of the Coneaught River there are the remains of an ancient fort. As I was walking and
• Words and sentences underlined were stricken out in the manu- script. Places marked thus . . . the copy was illegible.
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 375
forming various conjectures respecting the character sit- uation & numbers of those people who far exceeded the preesent Indians in works of art and inginuety, I hapned to tread on a flat stone. This was at a small distance from the fort, & it lay on the top of a great small mound of Earth exactly horizontal. The face of it had a singular appearance. I discovered a number of characters, which appeared to me to be letters, but so much effaced by the ravages of time, that I could not read the inscription.
CHAPT. I.
AN EPITOME OF THE AUTHOR* S LIFE & OF HIS ARIVAL IN
AMERICA.
As it is possible that in some future age this part of the Earth will be inhabited by Europians & a history of its present inhabitants would be a valuable acquisition I proceed to write one & deposit it in a box secured . . . . so that the ravages of time will have no ef- fect upon it that you may know the author I will give a succint account of his life and of the cause of his arrival which I have extracted from a manuscript which will be deposited with this history.
My name was is Fabius The family name I sustain is Fabius, being decended from the illustrious general of that name. I was born at Rome
Not far behind appeared Ramack, the King of Gen- eseo. With Furious & resolute, he had made the utmost expidition to collect his forces. Nor did he delay a moment when his men were collected & prepared to
376 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
move. At the head of ten Thousand bold & robust wariors, he appeared at the place of general rendezvoz, within one day after the King of Cataraugus had arrived. He bosted of the rapidity of his movements & tho he commanded the smallest division of the grand army, yet he anticipated distinguished laurels of glory, not less than what would be obtained by their first commanders.
When these kings with their forces had all arived at Tolanga, the Emperor Rambock ordered them to parade on a great plain. They obeyed & and were formed in solid coilums. The Emperor then attended by his son Moonrod, his Counsellors & the high Priest presented himself before them. His garments glittered with orna- ments, & a bunch of long feathers of various colours were placed on the front of his cap. His sword he held in his right hand & being tall & straight in his per- son, & having a countenance grave & bold, when he walked his appearance was majestic. He was the com- mander in chief & such was the high esteem & rever- ence, with which the whole army viewed him, that none were considered so worthy of that station. Taking a stand in front of the army he brandished his sword. All fixed their eyes upon him & gave profound attention. He thus made an address.
Brave warriors. It is with the greatest satisfaction & joy, that I now behold you assembled to revenge one of the most flagitious Crimes of which man was ever guilty.'
Ex-President J. H. Fairchild, of Oberlin College, in the library of which this document now rests, has compared the manuscript with the Book of Mormon and sees no reason to doubt this is the long
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 377
lost story and yet can detect no resemblance be- tween the two in general and in detail except that each professes to set forth the history of lost tribes/ A letter of the finder, dated Honolulu, March 28th, 1885, to Mr. Joseph Smith, president of the Reor- ganized Church of L. D. S., gives further details: —
' The Spaulding Manuscript in my possession came into my hands in this wise. In 1839-40 my partner and my- self bought of E. D. Howe the Painesville Telegraphy published at Painesville, Ohio. The transfer of the printing department, types, press, &c., v/as accompanied with a large collection of books, manuscripts, &c., this manuscript of Spaulding among the rest. So, you see, it has been in my possession over forty years. But I never examined it, or knew the character of it, until some six or eight months since. The wrapper was marked, ^Manuscript Story — Conneaut Creek.' The wonder is, that in some of my movements, I did not des- troy or bum it with a large amount of rubbish that had accumulated from time to time.
It happened that Preset Fairchild was here on a visit, at the time I discovered the contents of it, and it was ex- amined by him and others with much curiosity. Since Pres't Fairchild published the fact of its existence in my possession, I have had applications for it from half a dozen sources, each applicant seeming to think that he or she was entitled to it. Mr. Howe says when he was get- ting up a book to expose Mormonism as a fraud at an early day, when the Mormons had their headquarters at Kirtland, he obtained it from some source, and it was in-
6 « Bibliotheca Sacra,' January, 1885, p. 173 fif.
378 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
advertently transferred with the other effects of the print- ing office. A. B. Deming, of Painesville, who is also getting up some kind of a book I believe on Mormon- ism, wants me to send it to him.
This Manuscript does not purport to be ' a story of the Indians formerly occupying this continent; ' but is a history of the wars between the Indians of Ohio and Kentucky, and their progress in civilization, &c. It is certain that this Manuscript is not the origin of the Mor- mon Bible, whatever some other manuscript may have been. The only similarity between them, is, in the man- ner in which each purports to have been found — one in a cave on Conneaut Creek — the other in a hill in Ontario County, New York. There is no identity of names, of persons, or places ; and there is no similarity of style be- tween them. As I told Mr. Deming, I should as soon think the Book of Revelations was written by the author of Don Quixotte, as that the writer of this Manuscript was the author of the Book of Mormon. Deming says Spaulding made three copies of 'Manuscript Found,' one of which Sidney Rigdon stole from a printing office in Pittsburg. You can probably tell better than I can, what ground there is for such an allegation. In a post- script Mr. Rice says he found the following endorsement on the Manuscript :
' The writings of Solomon Spaulding proved by Aron Wright, Oliver Smith, John N. Miller and others. The testimonies of the above gentlemen are now in my pos- session.
(Signed) D. P. Hurlbut."
Rice's subsequent conclusion that his find was 'the only writing of Spaulding,' is contradicted by
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 379
the testimony of the 'living witnesses' of 1833, quoted by Howe. The afifidavits of the three en- dorsers of the Honolulu document are as follows: Aaron Wright said Spaulding possessed beside 'many other manuscripts, a history of the lost tribes of Israel . . . their journey from Jerusa- lem to America, as it is given in the Booh of Mor- mon, excepting the religious matter/ Oliver Smith said Spaulding 'was writing an historical novel founded upon the first settlers of this country, . • . their journey from Jerusalem till their ar- rival in America. No religious matter was intro- duced.' John N. Miller said, 'In 181 1 Spaulding had two or three books or pamphlets on differ- ent subjects . . . one called the "Manuscript Found,'' — a history of the settlement of America . . . from Jerusalem. I have recently examined the Book of Mormon, and find in it the writings of Solomon Spaulding, from beginning to end, but mixed up with scripture and other religious matter, which I did not meet with in the "Manuscript Found." Many of the passages in the Mormon book are verbatim from Spaulding, and others in part.' These three witnesses identify the Booh of Mormon with the Hebrew version (H). Of the other witnesses only one would seem to refer to (L). He said ' I have lately read the Booh of Mor- mon, and believe it to be the same as Spaulding
380 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
wrote, except the religious part/ Now Howe's witnesses later contradict themselves. When the Latin version (L) was subsequently shown to * sev- eral of the foregoing witnesses' they said that it * bears no resemblance to the ''Manuscript Found" in the old scripture style.' In other words the 'original autographs' of Spaulding were at least two, which of these, if either furnished matter to Smith for the Booh 0} Mormon, it is now impossi- ble to discover.
In like manner it appears impossible to show how, when or through whom. Smith obtained a Spaulding document which became the ' source, root and inspiration' of the Book of Mormon. The general formula for the anti-Mormon theory is that through Patterson, Rigdon obtained a copy of a Spaulding document, and transmitted the contents to Smith, before the publication of the Booh of Mormon. As the question of date is all im- portant, the statements of the parties concerned should first be given and a chronological table com- piled therefrom. Howe having had recourse to the firm of Patterson & Lambdin, Pittsburg, ' Mr. Pat- terson said he had no recollection of any such manuscript being brought there for publication. . . . Now, as Spaulding's book can nowhere be found, or anything heard of it being carried to this establishment, there is the strongest presump-
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 381
tion that it remained there in seclusion, till about the year 1823, or 1824, at which time Sidney Rigdon located himself in that city. [In] about three years ' he left there, and came into Geauga County, Ohio . . . and commenced preaching some new points of doctrine, which were afterwards found to be in- culcated in the Mormon Bible. He resided in this vicinity (as a minister of the Disciples' Church) about four years previous to the appearance of the book, during which time he made several long visits to Pittsburg, and perhaps to the Susque- hanna, where Smith was then digging for money, or pretending to be translating plates. . . . About the time Rigdon left Pittsburg, the Smith family began to tell about finding a book that would con- tain a history of the first inhabitants of America, and that two years elapsed before they finally got possession of it.'
Robert Patterson, the son of the Pittsburg printer says: — *The theory hitherto most widely published . . . has been that Rigdon was a printer in Pat- terson's printing office when the Spaulding manu- script was brought there in 1812-14, and that he either copied or purloined it. Having it thus in his possession, the use made of it was an afterthought suggested by circumstances many years later. More recently another theory has been advanced, that Rigdon obtained possession of the Spaulding manu-
382 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
script during his pastorate of the First Baptist Church or soon thereafter, 1 822-4, ... the friends of Rigdon, in response to the first charge, deny that he ever resided in Pittsburg previous to 1822, or that he ever was a printer, and in general answ^er to both charges affirm that he never at any time had access to Spaulding's manuscript.'
In the Boston Journal, May 27, 1839, Rigdon says : ' There was no man by the name of Patterson during my residence at Pittsburg who had a print- ing office; what might have been before I lived there, I know not. Mr. Robert Patterson, I was told, had owned a printing office before I lived in that city. . . . This Mr. Patterson, who was a Presbyterian preacher, I had a very slight acquaint- ance with during my residence in Pittsburg. He was then acting under an agency in the book and stationery business, and was the owner of no prop- erty of any kind, printing office or anything else, during the time I resided in the city.'
The date of Rigdon's Pittsburg residence, is not given specifically here or elsewhere in his writings,'
'^Compare holograph letter, Berrian collection. There is also no Pittsburg Directory for 1823-24, but compare the seventy-fifth anniversary of the First Baptist church, now the Fourth Baptist church, Pittsburg, 1812-87: —
* Sydney Rigdon was born in Allegheny County, Pa., and was reared on a farm about twelve miles from the city of Pittsburg. He learned the printer's trade. When quite a young man he was
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 383
According to one who knew him late in life, as an ex-Mormon, Rigdon was extremely reticent as to his early movements/ Joseph Smith in his Auto- biography, inserted a life of Rigdon and prefaced it with the following remarks:^
' As there has been a great rumor, and many false statements have been given to the world respecting Elder Rigdon's connection with the Church of Jesus Christ, it is necessary that a correct account of the same be given, so that the public mind may be dis- abused on the subject. I shall therefore proceed to give a brief history of his life down, from authentic
baptized into the fellowship of the Peter's Creek Baptist church by Elder David Phillips. He afterwards moved to Warren, Ohio, " from which," says Rev. S. Williams, in his pamphlet, " Mormon- ism Exposed," " he came to this city, and connected himself with the first regular Baptist church, then in its infancy, on the 28th day of January, 1822. He took the pastoral charge of the church, but before the close of one short year he began to advance senti- ments not in accordance with divine truth." He held to «< baptismal regeneration." . . . For this, " and many other abominable errors, he was condemned by a council of ministers and messengers from neighboring churches, which convened in Pittsburg on the nth of October, 1823." . . . "By this decision he was excluded from the Baptist denomination." He died at Friendship, a village in Allegheny County, N. Y., July 14th, 1876.'
8 « Times and Seasons,* 4, 172 ff. April, 1843, ^^ ^^^ ^^ V^^- ^v* ' Compare manuscript editorial by Dill, Aug. 5, 1876. The writer merely adds confusion to the chronology. He says that the Spaulding manuscript was within the reach of Rigdon between 181 1 and 1819, and of Smith between 1819-1826. He adds that Rigdon preached at Mentor, Lake County, Ohio, 1827-1829; and at Palmyra, New York, 1830.
384 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
sources, as also an account of his connection with the Church of Christ/
Joseph Smith, in 1843, also said of Rigdon that he was pastor of the First Baptist church in Pittsburg from Feb., 1822, to August, 1824. In 1826 he went to Bainbridge, Ohio, preaching there and at Mantua his own and Alexander Campbell's doctrines of re- pentance and baptism for the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost. In 1827 he went to Mentor, thirty miles from Bainbridge, and near Lake Erie. The doctrines he there advanced were new, especially the Biblical prophecies concerning the Literal Restoration of Israel. The eight months he was there he baptized many. In the Fall of 1830, Parley Pratt, Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whit- mer baptized and ordained Rigdon as a Mormon Elder. Previous to this Pratt had been a preacher in the same church with Rigdon in Amherst, Lorain County, Ohio, and had been sent to New York State where he met Joseph Smith, junior. Rigdon's pre- vailing characteristic was his entire freedom from any sectarian bias. After a fortnight's reading of the Booh of Mormon he was converted. In De- cember, 1830, came the first revelation to Joseph and Sidney at Fayette, New York, saying that Sidney had prepared the way, and in the same month, the second, saying that ' it is not expedient that ye should translate any more, until ye shall go to the
m
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 385
Ohio.' In January, 1831, Joseph went with Sidney to the branch of the church in Kirtland, Ohio.
TABLE I.
CHRONOLOGY OF RIGDON*S MOVEMENTS IN RELATION TO THE BOOK OF MORMON.
Anti-Morinon. Mormon,
Came to Pittsburg 1812-14 (P)io
Came to Pittsburg or 1823-24 (H)
Baptist pastor in Pittsburg. . 1822-24 (P) 1822-24
Preaches * Campbellism ' in
Bainbridge, Ohio .... 1826-27 (H) 1826
Makes long visits to Pitts- burg and perhaps the Sus- quehanna 1826-30 (H)
Preaches Restoration of the
Jews, &c., at Mentor, Ohio, [About]
until September, 1827
Visits Warren, Ohio.^^ . . March, 1 828
Debates with A. Campbell at Austintown, Ohio ....
Baptized by Mormons Parley
Pratt, &c., Kirtland, Ohio. . October, 1830
Visits Smith at Fayette, New
York December, 1830
Returns with Smith to Kirt- land, Ohio January, 1 831
TABLE II.
CHRONOLOGY OF SMITH'S MOVEMENTS IN RELATION TO THE BOOK OF M0RM0N.12
Learns of « certain plates * in Manchester, New
York September, 1823
Obtains the plates at Manchester, New York . . September, 1827
»o P=Patterson ; H— Howe.
" Kennedy, p. 66.
^2 Compare * Times and Seasons,* * Handbook of Reference,' * Book of Commandments,' * Biographical Sketches,' < Pearl of Great Price.'
386 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Translates at Harmony, Pennsylvania, December, 1827, June, 1829, April 1 2- June 14, 1828.
Translation recommenced at Harmony, Penn- sylvania April 7, 1829
Three Revelations about * a marvelous work February, April about to come forth, and May
Translation continued at Fayette, New York . . June, 1829
Book of Mormon copyrighted in Northern Dis- trict of New York June II, 1829
Book 0/ Mormon -pnntQd at Palmyra, New York July, 1830
First Revelation to Joseph and Sidney, in Fay- ette, New York, * Thou wast sent forth to prepare the way.* December, 1830
Second Revelation * It is not expedient that ye
should translate any more * December, 1830
By comparing the above tables, it is seen that the Mormon sources do not account for Rigdon's move- ments from about September, 1827, to October, 1830, during which time Howe supposes the visits were made to Smith at Harmony, Pennsylvania. Another supposition is that if Rigdon had no direct connection himself, it may have been through this Ohio assoc- iate Pratt. According to Smith's account, ' Elder Parley Pratt had been a preacher in the same church with Elder Rigdon, and resided in the town of Am- herst, Lorain County, in that state, and had been sent into the State of New York, on a mission, where he had become acquainted with the circumstances of the coming forth of the Book of MormoUy and was introduced to Joseph Smith, junior, and others of the Church of Latter-day Saints. After listening to the testimonies of the ''witnesses," and reading the
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 387
*'Book," he became convinced . . . and was baptized.'
Now the witnesses ' viewed * the plates some time in June, 1829, while the Book of Mormon was copy- righted the nth instant. From the approximation of dates, it is difficult to see how Pratt could have had time to be the go-between. Thus, judging from the time of Pratt's mission, the period of Rigdon's direct collusion is likewise narrowed. If he had per- sonal intercourse with Smith, it must have been be- tween September, 1827, and June, 1829, but these are the dates, respectively, of the obtaining of the plates and the copyright of the book. In other words the period of manufacture of the Book of Mormon coincides with the period in which Rigdon's move- ments are unaccounted for.
The gap in the Mormon sources is significant and much has been made of it by the opposition. For example, it was 'afterwards discovered that Rigdon's occasional business calls from Kirtland and Mentor tallied with the visits of the mys- terious stranger at the Smith residence.' To uphold this double assumption, no dates are given except that, in March, 1828, Rigdon was at Warren, Ohio, and this was over two hundred miles from Smith's itinerary. In fine, Rigdon is a doubtful connect- ing link; the presumption of collusion is only nega- tive; the argument from silence is strong, but the
388 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
case falls, if an alibi can be proved for Rigdon,— if he was not at Harmony, Pennsylvania, or Fayette, New York, during the six actual months of trans- lating. Smith is justly entitled to the authorship of the Booh of Mormon.
The external evidence leaves the battle drawn; it is not so with the internal evidence. Judging from the characteristics of the book, the proof of authen- ticity is decisive. In form it has no resemblance to the Honolulu manuscript; in matter it needs neither Rigdon's personality nor Spaulding's romances to account for itself. Take the four marks of the book, and compare them with what is known of Rigdon. In old age his style was redundant,'^ while in 1821 Alexander Campbell called him * the great orator of the Mahoning Association,'* and, as a minister of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, he was described as fluent in utterance and copious in language.''
If Rigdon's style, at this time, was better, so with his twelve years of seniority over Smith, his knowl- edge was wider.'' In particular, in the Western Re-
*3 Rigdon's holograph letter (Berrian collection).
^^ Millennial Harbinger^ 1848, p. 523.
^5 A. S. Hay den, * Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve,' 1876, p. 191.
^6 Compare Overland Monthly ^ December, 1890. Charlotte Hav- en's letter, March 5th and 6th, 1843 • * Sidney Rigdon, the most learned man among the Latter-day Saints. . . . He has an
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 389
serve, he was counted learned in the history of the world. Moreover as to archaeology, he seems to have taken no interest in Americana; the only point of resemblance is in his unsystematic theology. His frequent sectarian changes were unique even for that day. In 1819, he was an old school Baptist; in 1821, he came under the influence of Alexander Campbell the 'new light'; with him he ultimately differed on communistic ideas, which he had mean- while absorbed, from a leader of the Disciple church in Ohio. The so-called Campbellite baptism for the remission of sins does not occur in the Book of Mormon, while the insistence on faith '' is partly plagiarized from Scripture, partly due to Smith's dabbling with the occult. Smith's creed of 1844''
intelligent countenance, a courteous manner, and speaks grammat- ically. He talks very pleasantly about his travels in this country and Europe, but is very reticent about his religion. I have heard it stated that he was Smith's chief aid in getting up the " Book of Mormon " and creed. He is so far above Smith in intellect, educ- ation, and secretiveness, that there is scarcely a doubt that he is at the head in compiling it. I looked over his library — it was a very good student's collection,— Hebrew, Greek, and Latin lexicons and readers, stray volumes of Shakespeare, Scott, Irving's works, and a number of other valuable books.
. . . [" The Book of Mormon "] we find no creed in it, no article on which to found a religion. It might have been written by a much less intelligent man than Sidney Rigdon.'
"*Book of Mormon,' pp. 246, 329, 332, 333, 597-9, 614; com- pare also the * Seven Lectures on Faith,' in * Doctrine and Cove- nants.'
18 « Times and Seasons,' 3, 709.
390 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
promulgates these among his five ordinances: faith; repentance; baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. Again, in 1832, Alexander Camp- bell sharply attacked the Book of Mormon and its contents/' The alleged Discipleism inherent in Mor- monism is still denied by the more orthodox apolo- gists. ''
1^ * Delusions ; an Analysis of the " Book of Mormon," with an Examination of its Internal and External Evidences, and a Refuta- tion of its Pretense to Divine Authority,* Boston, 1832.
20 J. F. McDowell, * Discipleism, or the Claims of Alexander Campbell to a Restored Primitive Christianity Examined,* 1901, p. 12:
* We have therefore weighed this church in the balance of God*s word and found it wanting, rendering the following count of in- dictments against it :
1. They have no apostles.
2. They have no prophets.
3. No seventies.
4. No priests.
5. No bishops.
6. No teachers.
7. The signs or gifts of Mark 16 : 17, 18, do not follow them.
8. They do not lay on hands, after baptism, for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
9. They do not call the elders for the sick, as directed in James
5 • H, 15-
10. They do not teach the resurrection of the dead as taught in the Bible.
11. They do not teach the Bible doctrine of eternal judgment.
12. They claim to teach baptism for remission of sins, but con- tradict themselves by taking people into their fellowship from other churches who have not been so baptized, without rebaptism.
13. They do not lay on hands for the blessing of little children.
14. They teach that the church existed for the first time on the day of Pentecost.
15. They believe and teach that the gospel was never taught, in fact, until the day of Pentecost.
16. They do not teach the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
We will now let the reader decide how far Mr. Campbell and
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 391
But the question of the injection of these doc- trines into the Book of Mormon, through the agency of Rigdon, is again a question of date. The Declaration of the two Campbells against ' the divided and disturbed condition of the religious community/ came out in 1809,'' but before Rigdon came over from Ohio, Campbell's teachings v^ere spread broadcast over the country," andDiscipleism had spread northeast into New York.^^ Already in the days of Joseph's money digging there existed these Disciples of Christ near Ithaca, through which ran the State road from Binghampton to the Susque- hanna. Yet there are three special doctrines which Rigdon is said to have taught among the Disciples in Ohio, and then put into the Book of Mormon.
his successors have been successful in restoring primitive, original Christianity. The Bible does teach the probability and possibility of a restoration of the gospel and kingdom of God in the latter days, as foreshadowed in Matthew 24: 14; Malachi 3: 1-3; Reve- lation 14 : 6, 7 ; and that after the restoration had occurred some would depart from the faith, as note i Timothy 4:1. The words " the faith," evidently have reference to the entire gospel scheme, as implied by Paul in Ephesians 4 : 5.'
21 Rupp, p. 209. * The Disciples of Christ,' * Analysis of the Great Salvation,' * the sole principle is faith and the prime means baptism by immersion.'
22 Venable, p. 220. Between 1823 and 1830, A. Campbell issued 46,000 * volumes ' of his works. Bethany, Ohio, near Wheeling, was made a post-office on account of the extensive mail he received and dispatched.
23 It was at Enfield, that these Christ-ians, a variety of < New Lights,' flourished. Also, Lorenzo Young speaks of a Campbellite revival in Schuyler County.
392 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
The first of these, Communism, is not mentioned in the text, while new revelations and miracles and gifts of the Spirit are not unusual recrudescences due to a literal interpretation of scripture."
Without penetrating further into the wilderness of minor sects,""' it is the historic background of western New York, in the third decade, more than any ' mysterious stranger ' from the West, that acts for the Book of Mormon and its doctrinal contents. The proof of authenticity is cumulative: especially do the minor movements, reflected in the narrative, show that the book is in accordance with its sup- posed historical position, as to time, place and cir- cumstances. Thus the Morgan excitement by fixing the lower limit of date as 1826, excludes the Spauld- ing theory in its crudest form of entire incorporation. Even if any Spaulding manuscript were used as a mere basis and slight framework, it would not in-
24 Private Bible reading brought out these ideas. Compare 'Biographical Sketches,' p. 21. Joseph's uncle, Jason Mack, as a Seeker, believed * that by prayer and faith, the gifts of the gospel, which were enjoyed by the ancient disciples, might be attained.' Also compare P. Pratt, 'Autobiography,' p. 31, who said of Rig- don's preaching, * here was the ancient gospel in due form ; his views were mine, — baptism for the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost.' Finally compare A. Campbell, 1824, < We neither advocate Calvinism, Arminianism, Socinianism, Arianism, Trini- tarianism, Unitarianism, Deism, nor Sectarianism, but New Testa- mentism.'
25 Compare * Book of Mormon,' 56, 124, 235, 327, 369, 370, 379, 468-470, 503, 566.
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 393
validate the essential integrity of the work. Al- though this purported series of plates ^^ cannot be called the product of one mind 'as an organic whole/" yet the integrity of the Book of Mormon is not thereby impaired; the discrete parts are bound
26 Viz. : I. of Laban; 2. of Lehi; 3. do. abridged by Nephi; 4. do. containing * more history part * ; 5. do. * more ministry part*; 6. do. * mine own prophecies'; 7. of Zarahemla; 8. of Mormon abridging 5 ; 9. from Jacob to King Benjamin ; 10. of Zeniff; 1 1, of Ether; 12. of Alma and his afflictions; 13. of Jared; 14. Copies of * Scriptures ' ; 15. Records of emigrants to North; 16. Epistles of twelve prophets at various times.
ST The alleged Cowdery interpolations seem impossible when compared with this Johnsonese passage of his, describing the scene of Joseph's money digging. < Letters,' p. 38 : — « Some forty miles south, or down the river, in the town of Harmony, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, is said to be a cave or subterraneous recess, whether entirely formed by art or not I am uninformed, neither does this matter ; but such is said to be the case, — where a com- pany of Spaniards, a long time since, when the country was unin- habited by white settlers, excavated from the bowels of the earth ore, and coined a large quantity of money ; after which they se- cured the cavity and evacuated, leaving a part still in the cave, purposing to return at some distant period. A long time elapsed and this account came from one of the individuals who was first engaged in this mining business. The country was pointed out and the spot minutely described. This, I believe, is the substance, so far as my memory serves, though I shall not pledge my veracity for the correctness of the account as I have given. Enough, how- ever, was credited of the Spaniard's story to excite the belief of many that there was a fine sum of the precious metal lying coined in this subterraneous vault, among whom was our employer; and accordingly our brother was required to spend a few months with some others in excavating the earth, in pursuit of this treasure.'
394 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
together, as it were, by a single cord. It is the line of life, the thread of autobiography, that discloses the real origin of the book. The various experi- ences of the various American prophets, could almost be said to form a ' Biographical Sketch of Joseph Smith the Prophet and his Progenitors, for many Generations.' If the discovery of the gold plates was suggested by the paternal dream of the Magic Box, and the beginning of the Book of Mor- mon incorporates the dream of the Fruit Tree, so the cord of Joseph junior's experience runs unbroken from I Nephi to Moroni. Without the aid of the commentator to explain the prophecies of the ' com- ing laborer in the vineyard' as Joseph Smith, one can read between the lines the meanings of the frequent visions, of the stones for interpreting, of the visits of the angels which strike the beholder * dumb, weak and helpless.^^
To sum up: These marks of the book are not the marks of the man Rigdon. Negatively,— there is but slight coincidence in career with that of the visionary, crystal-gazing youth, and there is as little resemblance in temperament; positively, — the simi- larity of style is exact between the ' Account written by the hand of Mormon ' and Joseph's synchronous
28 * Book of Mormon,' 144, 228, 346, 225, 349. For other bio- graphical hints compare 15, 20, 21, 34, 38, 44, 45, 114, 1 15, 180, 181, 291, 292, 324, 559, 570, 576, 581, 574, 598, 603, 613.
THE SPAULDING-RIGDON THEORY 395
writings contained in the Book of Commandments ; finally on the title page of the first edition of the Booh of Mormon is that inadvertent admission of authorship.
APPENDIX IV POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM
APPENDIX IV
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM
The aim of this appendix is fourfold: — to show that Joseph Smith was, to some degree, implicated in polygamous practices ; to trace the effects on his public career; to present his crass metaphysical theory of polygamy, finally to show that some of his illicit purposes were effected through hypnotic influence.
It has been claimed that the doctrine of * spiritual wifery ' was introduced by the older men and not by Smith. There were three chief scapegoats. In June, 1833, Dr. P. Hurlbut, before a conference of high-priests at Kirtland, * was accused of unchris- tian conduct with the women.' In 1843 the * spirit- ual wife system ' was fathered upon Dr. Bennett, and affidavits were issued against his statement that Smith allowed adultery. Lastly in September, 1844, Rigdon was made to bear the brunt of odium. In his trial at Nauvoo, the following allegations were made: — that he talked of exposing the secrets and iniquity of the Saints; that he came here with a
spirit as corrupt as hell and charged the Twelve
399
400 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
with being adulterers; that he himself had been wallowing in filth and corruption for four or five years past; that Brother Joseph shook him off at the conference a year ago; that Sister Emma had a good many feelings against Elder Rigdon; that Brigham Young finally said that enough was brought forward at the conference, but that Brother Hyrum plead so hard that it was kept back.
Now for the other side of the case, and the counter charges against the prophet. If the evi- dence against Rigdon is ex parte, the evidence against Smith is circumstantial. The prophet's testimony as to his opponent's actions was declared unprintable, yet, at the same time, Smith urged that there should be kept a record of ' spiritual ' marriages. But to go back and trace the beginnings of the mat- ter: in the early days of Mormonism there appear to have been certain underground practices which were first scorned but finally embraced. In Janu- ary, 1833, Smith tells Brother Gilbert that Mow in- sinuations God hates, but He rejoices in an honest heart and knows better who is guilty than he does.' The next month the prophet said he received reve- lations * to unfold the mysteries of the Kingdom ' and also that ' my handmaid, Vienne Jaques, should receive money to bear her expenses, and go up into the land of Zion.' On the verge of the unprintable testimony of the Rigdon trial there is an incidental
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 401
reference to this 'handmaid/ as 'that French- woman.' In July, 1833, Smith wrote to the brethren in Zion to * guard against evils which may arise from accounts given of women.' On December loth, Gilbert again wrote a letter which the prophet declared contained Mow, dark and blind insinua- tions ' ; for this the brother was threatened with excommunication. As regards the first point there is no proof positive of Smith's early implication in polygamy, but the suspicion of participation in illicit private practices is strengthened by the vicissi- tudes of his later public career.
'The pages of General Smith's history,' says an editorial in the Times and Seasons, 'though his enemies never ceased to persecute him and hunt for offenses against him, are as unsullied as virgin snow.' But the passages already cited are from Smith's History; if they do not allow of loose con- struction, it is possible to turn to the words and writings of other Saints. The Mormons themselves have furnished an answer to what William Smith called ' the unaccountable problem ' why Mormons are 'numbered with Indians, Hottentots, Arabs, Turks, Wolverines and horned cattle.' In October, 1843, an adherent of Brigham Young said, 'It is true that our city is open for all who wish to come, but we wish to have the privilege of enjoying our religion and "peculiarities" unmolested.' 'Those
402 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
who tell lies about " mysteries *' to injure the Saints,' it was added later, ' forget the Mormon creed ''Mind your own business/* * In April, 1844, Hyrum Smith proclaimed that ' Every Elder that goes from Nauvoo to preach the gospel, if he preach anything else, we will silence him through the public prints/ A month after this, Elder Dykes, preaching in Pitts- burg, said, ' the audience had never heard a Saint before; they had many and awful conjectures about the truth.' At a church conference in Michigan, ten days later, 'the elders were strictly charged to keep within the limits of the first principles and let the mysteries alone/ One week afterwards, in Illinois, the first number of the Nauvoo Expositor was pub- lished. It contained affidavits from several women alleging illicit invitation from high church digni- taries. The official repudiation runs, 'Its columns teemed with vituperative abuse of Joseph and his friends. That it was the fixed purpose of its man- agers to continue that defamatory course, was evi- dent from the matter contained in its columns and in their private admissions. They aimed to attack the characters of many respectable citizens of both sexes. The tone of the sheet was vulgar, scurril- ous, and untruthful. The people felt themselves outraged.'
In the meanwhile the Times and Seasons saw fit to publish an 'extract from a letter from
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 403
the vicinity of Nauvoo,' which says, 'The excite- ment on both sides of the river against the Mor- mons is increasing very fast. The conduct of Joseph Smith and the other leaders, is such that no community of white men can tolerate/ On June 1 8th, General Smith, Mayor of Nauvoo, declared the city under martial law^, and ordered the city mar- shal to see that ' no persons pass in or out of the city without due orders.' Nine days after this, the prophet was shot down by state militia in Carthage jail, having first emptied two barrels of his six- shooter into the crowd of his assailants. To touch on the political issues of this 'martyrdom' is to summarize the evidence for the second count: that it was not merely territorial aspirations, tampering with slaves and other alleged charges that checked Smith's public career, but also the neglect to sup- press the more or less subterranean practice of polygamy.
In the third place, to turn to the theory of the thing, and to seek to determine Smith's share in the metaphysics of Mormonism, — if one may so term their crude materialism. The early documents should first be looked at. Orson Pratt as commen- tator of the Book of Mormon deduces an inherent doctrine of polygamy from the large size of the Nephite families. This is practically inconsistent with the anti-polygamy passage, previously quoted,
404 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
1
but not theoretically inconsistent with the later Mormon canonical writings. Revelation being con- tinuous is retroactive. In this way the monoga- mous Book of Commandments is modified and superseded by the polygamous book of Doctrine and Covenants, In the former the seventh com- mandment is emphasized, but the successive edi- tions of the latter gradually approach the full fledged Revelation on the Plurality of Wives.
As early as October, 1831, a revelation was ad- dressed through the seer to William E. McLellin: ' Commit not adultery, a temptation with which thou hast been troubled.' By 1835, the trouble in the camp of Zion called out this public disavowal: * In- asmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy : we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. It is not right to persuade a woman to be baptized contrary to the will of her husband, neither is it lawful to influence her to leave her husband.* *
In 1839, Parley Pratt issued his Persecutions of the Latter-day Saints; in chapter ten of this pamphlet the author insisted that there was no polygamy among the Mormons. One year later Orson Pratt published his Treatise on the Regeneration and
> * Doctrine and Covenants/ first edition, § lOI,
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 405
Eternal Duration of Matter. This contained, in germ, those teachings on the ' Preexistence of Man ' and ' Celestial Marriage ' which now form part of the Creed of the Utah Saints. In 1841, in answer to numerous questioners Joseph Smith issued his Articles of Faith,^ the last of which runs :
2 < We believe in God the Eternal Father, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression.
We believe that, through the atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.
We believe that these ordinances are : First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ; Second, Repentance ; Third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins ; Fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by laying on of hands, by those who are in authority, to preach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.
We believe in the same organization that existed in the primi- tive Church, viz. : Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers, Evangel- ists, etc.
We believe in the gifts of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, etc.
We believe the Bible to be the Word of God, as far as it is translated correctly ; we also believe the * Book of Mormon ' to be the Word of God.
We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now re- veal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and im- portant things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
We believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the restora- tion of the Ten Tribes ; that Zion will be built upon this con- tinent ; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth, and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisaic glory.
We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according
4o6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
'We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevo- lent, virtuous/
Thus far polygamy was esoteric; it was not till after Smithes death that the doctrine was publicly avowed in such brochures as Orson Spencer's Patriarchal Order, or Plurality of Wives. In the meantime the prophet had written for the elect his notorious Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, including Plurality of IVives.^ His son Joseph Smith 3d, founder of the ' Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,' has at- tempted to disprove the authenticity of this revelation of July 1 2th, 1843/ It is true that the 1845 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants does not contain this revelation, while the last volume of the Times and Seasons of 1846, contains the prophefs History only through August nth, 1834. The external evidence
to the dictates of our conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law.
We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men ; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul, We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
Joseph Smith.'
8 See end of this Appendix.
* Compare < Reply to Orson Pratt,' also * One Wife or Many ? ' and * Was Joseph Smith a Polygamist ? *
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 407
may be negative, but the internal is not. The publication was posthumous, but the sentiments were anything but post-mortem. The passages commanding Emma Smith to be virtuous, while her husband may do as he pleases, are borne out by the extracts already quoted and especially by Mrs. Kimball's testimony, as given below.
But to present briefly the Mormon theory whereby these practices are justified, and then to determine Smith's share in them. * Celestial ' mar- riage, according to the orthodox Saints, opens the way for all women who wish to marry to fill the measure of their creation. ... It shows how the innumerable creations of God [/. e,, this world and other planets] may be peopled with intel- ligences. . . . Woman without man and man without woman cannot be saved. The larger the progeny a man has, the greater will be the fulness of his eternal glory. . . . God was once a man, but He has so advanced in intelligence and power that He may now be called, comparatively speaking, perfect, infinite etc., but He has still the form and figure of a man. This anthopomorphism was thus presented by Orson Pratt in his Ab- surdities of Immaterialism as early as 1849: — 'The resemblance between man and God has reference, as we have already observed, to the shape or figure; other qualities may or may not resemble each
4o8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
other. Man has legs, so has God, as is evident from His appearance to Abraham. Man walks with his legs, so does God sometimes, as is evi- dent from His going with Abraham towards Sodom. God cannot only walk, but He can move up or down through the air without using His legs as in the process of walking. (See Gen. 17:22; also 11:5; also 35: 13. — *'A man wrestled with Jacob until the breaking of day ; " after which, Jacob says—*' I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." — Gen. ^2\ 24-30. That this per- son had legs is evident from his wrestling with Jacob. His image and likeness was so much like man's, that Jacob at first supposed him to be a man. — (See 24th verse.) God, though in the figure of a man, has many powers that man has not got. He can go upwards through the air. He can waft Himself from world to world by His own self-moving powers. These are powers not pos- sessed by man only through faith, as in the in- stances of Enoch and Elijah. Therefore, though in the figure or a man, He has powers far superior to man. . . . The Godhead may be further illustrated by a council, consisting of three men — all possessing equal wisdom, knowledge, and truth, together with equal qualifications in every other respect. Each person would be a separate distinct person or sub- stance from the other two, and yet the three would
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 409
form but one council. Each alone possesses, by supposition, the same wisdom and truth that the three united or the one council possesses.'^
Two months before his death the prophet taught practically the same doctrines as Pratt. The fol- lowing are extracts from his conference speech of April, 1844: —
'First, God Himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret. . . . The first Hebrew word in the Bible reads, Uhe head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods in the Grand Council. . . . The word create means to organize. . . . Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos. . . . Intelligence exists upon a self- existent principle, there is no creation about it. All the spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement . . . have a privilege to advance like Himself. . . . These things were given me by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. ... I can enter into the mysteries ; I can enter largely into the eternal worlds.'
If Smith may be said to have had any metaphys- ical theory of polygamy, it may be found in these distorted borrowings; but, at the least, these preach-
5 Compare « Handbook of Reference/ The Religion of the Latter-day Saints ; P. P. Pratt, * Key to the Science of Theology ' ; Orson Spencer, * Patriarchal Order, or Plurality of Wives ' ; The Seer, pp. 30, 38, 103.
4IO THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
ments had corresponding practices, as is shown by certain social bye-products of the system.
The materialism of the Latter-day Saints has been compared to fourth century Gnosticism/ and attempts have actually been made to connect Mormon mysteries with Eleusinian mysteries/ The connection is absurdly impossible, yet there appears to have been a dash of ethnic occultism in the practices of the Saints. To get at this, one is forced to notice the subterranean, to explore the cloaca maxima of Mormon literature, — the various ' exposures ' of renegades and apostates. The de- scriptions of 'endowment' rites as reported by Hyde, Van Dusen and other 'Jack-Mormons' are in themselves untrustworthy; they nevertheless present this common feature — a resemblance to certain scenes which took place in France two gen- erations before. The alleged doings in the Nauvoo temple are like the real doings around Mesmer's baquets magnettques, practice which, in their hys- teric excesses, called forth the secret report of the royal commissioners on the dangers of magnetism in respect to morality.^
There is here indeed, an analogy as to abnormal psychoses, but in addition to the general inference
« McClintock and Strong, article « Mormonism.'
•» T. W. P. Taylder, * The Mormon's Own Book,' Chapter 4.
8 Binet and F6r6, p. 18.
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 411
there are more specific statements. The arch- apostate Maria Ward, author of Female Life Among the Mormons, asserts that she was mesmerized into marrying, some time after Parley Pratt had taught Mr. Ward the secrets of magnetism. Finally an anonymous pamphlet entitled Anna Little, the Mesmeric Seeress of Nauvoo, tells how this clair- voyant wonder had so completely mastered the science of animal magnetism that Joseph Smith knew the value of such an auxiliary and kept her in the sanctuary of the Communicant Sisters. All these statements are disallowed by the Saints and are, in truth, of secondary evidential value; they yet resemble one another in containing the everlast- ing charge brought against dabblers in the occult, from the Neoplatonists to the Spiritualists, — the charge that over-indulgence in abnormal psychic practices tends to looseness in moral standards.
There remains evidence of primary value that the Mormons, in some instances, exercised over their adherents undue influence of a quasi-hypnotic character. The legal side of the case may serve as a standpoint, for the courts early took cognizance of the matter. In 1844 a Tennessee lawyer declared that the Mormon methods were unlawful; in 1848, in Ohio, there was recorded a ' Law Case, exhibiting the most extraordinary developments peculiar to modern times, arising from an implicit obedience to
412 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
the dictates of Mesmeric clairvoyance as related by a Mormon prophet/ ®
Turning to Joseph Smith and his apparent hyp- notic influence over people, his early suggestive successes must be kept in mind before taking up the case of Mrs. Kimball. But the three w^itnesses to the Book of Mormon, and Newel Knight the demoniac, and those * cured by faith * v^ere not the only subjects. Like the present day Kentucky ex- horter, who calls out the revivalistic 'jerks,' the prophet seems to have been the means of inducing a real collective hypnosis. 'His eloquence,' says Parley Pratt, ' was not polished and studied, not smoothed and softened by education. I have even known him to retain a congregation of willing and anxious listeners for many hours together while they were laughing one moment and weeping the next.' ^®
But finally besides influencing crowds by his speech and his presence. Smith appears to have learned that mental suggestion may be efficacious not only at the instant, but some time after. ^^ How
9 Compare Sabin, < Bibliotheca Americana,' Volume ix, No. 39,340. This pamphlet was published at Cincinnati, where the city ordinances early prohibited public mesmeric exhibitions, and where there was some complaint of the difficulty of keeping female servants out of the clutches of the Mormons.
^0 < Journal,' p. 47.
" Of deferred suggestion, Moll says, p. 157, < any suggestion that takes effect in hypnosis, will also take place post-hypnotically.'
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 413
far the chief of the Saints utilized the principle of suggestibility, immediate or deferred, in the sub- jugation of neurotic women is indeterminable. The allegations of ruined and perjured apostates are as little to be believed as, for example, the statement of the interested Brigham Young that Emily and Eliza Patridge were 'sealed' to the prophet, Emma Smith being present and giving her * full and free consent for them to be the wives of Joseph.'" If such things were done, they were done on the sly. In September, 1843, a sister of a Mormon convert, who had noticed that Elder Adams had brought an extra wife from England, wrote home that she could not believe that Joseph would ever sanction the doctrine of patriarchal plurality.^^ Yet four months before this, a practical sanction had been given. Littlefield asserts, on the best author- ity, that beside the two women already mentioned Maria and Sarah Laurence were declared to have been ' sealed' to the prophet.^* But of all the cases, that of Mrs. Lucy Walter Kimball is the most au- thentic, and bears internally as mark of genuine- ness— the moral struggle of the subject. In its criminal aspects, ^^ it is fit to rank with the case of
12 « Life,' p. 23.
13 * Reminiscences,' p. 52.
14 Overland Monthly, December, 1890.
15 Compare George Trumbull Ladd, < The Legal Aspects of Hypnotism,' 1902, p. 22 : — ' That the person who deliberately sets
414 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Gabrielle Bompard or V affaire Chambige.^^ It is here offered as a matter of post-hypnotic sugges- tion, with deferred hallucination: —
'In 1845 I married President Heber C. Kimball. . • . May I St, 1843, I consented to become the prophet's wife. In 1842 President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said: *' I have a message for you. 1 have been commanded of God to take another wife and you are the woman.*' My astonishment knew no bounds. . . . The prophet discerned my sorrow. He saw how un- happy I was . , , and said: " Although I can- not, under existing circumstances, acknowledge you as my wife, the time is near when we will go beyond the Rocky Mountains and then you will be acknowledged and honored as my wife. ... I will give you until to-morrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you." This aroused every drop of Scotch in my veins. I felt at this moment that I was called to place myself upon the altar a living sacrifice — perhaps to brook the world in disgrace and
about subjugating another by repeated hypnotizing in order to make that other his unwilling tool for the commission of crime, is himself a criminal of the worst and most dangerous order, and deserves, if detected and convicted, the severest punishment which the law allows, I do not need to argue.* >« Compare Bernheim, chapter viii.
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 415
incur the displeasure and contempt of my youthful companions. . . . This was too much, for as yet no shadow had crossed my path. ... I said: ** Although you are a prophet of God you could not induce me to take a step of so great im- portance, unless I knew that God approved my course. 1 would rather die. I have tried to pray, but received no comfort, no light." ... He walked across the room, returned . . . and said: . . . '* You shall have a manifestation of the will of God concerning you; a testimony that you can never deny. I will tell you what it shall be. It shall be that joy and peace that you never knew." Oh, how earnestly 1 prayed for these words to be fulfilled. It was near dawn after another sleepless night when my room was lighted up by a heavenly influence. To me it was, in comparison, like the brilliant sun bursting through the darkest cloud. The words of the prophet were indeed fulfilled. My soul was filled with a calm, sweet peace that '*I never knew." Supreme happiness took possession of me, and I received a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truth of plural marriage.'
* Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Cove- nanty including Plurality of Wives, Given through Josephy the Seer, in NauvoOy Hancock County ^ Illinois^ July I2thf 1843.
4i6 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand, to know wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines :
Behold ! and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as touching this matter :
Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you ; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same ;
For behold ! I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant ; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant, and be permitted to enter into my glory ;
For all who will have a blessing at my hands, shall abide the law which was appointed for that blessing, and the conditions thereof, as were instituted from before the foundation of the world :
And as pertaining to the new and everlasting cove- nant, it was instituted for the fulness of my glory ; and he that receiveth a fulness thereof, must and shall abide the law, or he shall be damned, saith the Lord God.
And verily I say unto you, that the conditions of this law are these: — All covenants, contracts, bonds, obliga- tions, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associa- tions, or expectations, that are not made, and entered into, and sealed, by the Holy Spirit of promise, of him who is anointed, both as well for time and for all eternity, and that too most holy, by revelation and commandment through the medium of mine anointed, whom I have ap- pointed on the earth to hold this power, (and I have ap-
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 417
pointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time, on whom this power and the keys of this Priesthood are conferred) are of no efficacy, virtue, or force, in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end, have an end when men are dead.
Behold ! mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.
Will I accept of an offering, saith the Lord, that is not made in my name !
Or, will I receive at your hands that which I have not appointed !
And will I appoint unto you, saith the Lord, except it be by law, even as I and my Father ordained unto you, before the world was !
I am the Lord thy God, and give unto you this com- mandment, that no one shall come to the Father but by me, or by my word, which is my law, saith the Lord ;
And everything that is in the world, whether it be or- dained of men, by thrones, or principalities, or powers, or things of name, whatsoever they may be, that are not by me, or by my word, saith the Lord, shall be thrown down, and shall not remain after men are dead, neither in nor after the resurrection, saith the Lord your God ;
For whatsoever things remain, are by me ; and what- soever things are not by me, shall be shaken and des- troyed.
Therefore, if a man marry him a wife in the world, and he marry her not by me, nor by my word ; and he covenant with her so long as he is in the world, and she with him, their covenant and marriage are not of force when they are dead, and when they are out of the world ;
4i8 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
therefore, they are not bound by any law when they are out of the world ;
Therefore, when they are out of the world, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants, to minister for those who are worthy of a far more, and an exceeding and eternal weight of glory ;
For these angels did not abide my law, therefore they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition to all eternity, and from henceforth are not Gods, but are angels of God, for ever and ever.
And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife, and make a covenant with her for time and for all eternity, if that covenant is not by me, or by my word, which is my law, and is not sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, through him whom I have anointed and ap- pointed unto this power — then it is not valid, neither of force when they are out of the world ; because they are not joined by me, saith the Lord, neither by my word; when they are out of the world, it cannot be received there, because the angels and the Gods are appointed there, by whom they cannot pass ; they cannot, therefore, inherit my glory, for my house is a house of order, saith the Lord God.
And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power, and the keys of this Priesthood, and it shall be said unto them, ye shall come forth in the first resurrection ; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection ; and shall inherit
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 419
thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, domin- ions, all heights and depths — then it shall be written in the Lamb's Book of Life, that he shall commit no mur- der whereby to shed innocent blood, and if ye abide in my covenant, and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant had put upon them, in time, and through all eternity, and shall be of full force when they are out of the world ; and they shall pass by the angels, and the Gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.
Then shall they be Gods, because they have no end ; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue ; then shall they be above all, be- cause all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be Gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.
Verily, verily I say unto you, except ye abide my law, ye cannot attain this glory ;
For straight is the gate, and narrow the way that leadeth unto the exaltation and continuation of the lives, and few there be that find it, because ye receive me not in the world, neither do ye know me.
But if ye receive me in the world, then shall ye know me, and shall receive your exaltation, that where I am, ye shall be also.
This is eternal lives, to know the only wise and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent. I am he. Receive ye, therefore, my law.
Broad is the gate, and wide the way that leadeth to the deaths, and many there are that go in thereat ; be-
420 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
cause they receive me not, neither do they abide in my law.
Verily, verily I say unto you if a man marry a wife ac- cording to my word, and they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, according to mine appointment, and he or she shall commit any sin or transgression of the new and everlasting covenant whatever, and all manner of blasphemies, and if they commit no murder, wherein they shed innocent blood — yet they shall come forth in the first resurrection, and enter into their exaltation ; but they shall be destroyed in the flesh, and shall be delivered unto the buffetings of Satan unto the day of redemption, saith the Lord God.
The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which shall not be forgiven in the world, nor out of the world, is in that ye commit murder, wherein ye shed innocent blood, and assent unto my death, after ye have received my new and everlasting covenant, saith the Lord God ; and he that abideth not this law, can in no wise enter into my glory, but shall be damned, saith the Lord.
I am the Lord thy God, and will give unto thee the law of my Holy Priesthood, as was ordained by me, and my Father, before the world was.
Abraham received all things, whatsoever he received, by revelation, and commandment, by my word, saith the Lord, and hath entered into his exaltation, and sitteth upon his throne.
Abraham received promises concerning his seed, and of the fruit of his loins — from whose loins ye are, namely, my servant Joseph — which were to continue as long as they were in the world ; and as touching Abraham and his seed, out of the world they should continue ; both in the world and out of the world should they continue as
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 421
innumerable as the stars; or, if ye were to count the sand upon the seashore, ye could not number them.
This promise is yours, also, because ye are of Abra- ham, and the promise was made unto Abraham ; and by this law are the continuation of the works of my Father, wherein he glorifieth Himself.
Go ye, therefore, and do the works of Abraham ; enter ye into my law, and ye shall be saved.
But if ye enter not into my law ye cannot receive the promise of my Father, which he made unto Abraham.
God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it ? Because this was the law, and from Hagar sprang many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things, the promises.
Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily, I say unto you. Nay; for I, the Lord, com- manded it.
Abraham was commanded to offer his son Isaac; nevertheless, it was written, thou shalt not kill. Abra- ham, however, did not refuse, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness.
Abraham received concubines, and they bear him children, and it was accounted unto him for righteous- ness, because they were given unto him, and he abode in my law, as Isaac also, and Jacob did none other things than that which they were commanded, and because they did none other things than that which they were com- manded, they have entered into their exaltation, accord- ing to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels, but are Gods.
David also received many wives and concubines, as also Solomon and Moses my servants ; as also many
^^22 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time ; and in nothing did they sin, save in those things which they received not of me.
David's wives and concubines were given unto him, of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power ; and in none of these things did he sin against me, save in the case of Uriah and his wife; and, therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation, and received his portion ; and he shall not inherit them out of the world; for I gave them unto another, saith the Lord.
I am the Lord thy God, and I gave unto thee, my servant Joseph, an appointment, and restore all things ; ask what ye will, and it shall be given unto you accord- ing to my word :
And as ye have asked concerning adultery — verily, verily I say unto you, if a man receiveth a wife in the new and everlasting covenant, and if she be with another man, and I have not appointed unto her by the holy anointing, she hath committed adultery, and shall be destroyed.
If she be not in the new and everlasting covenant, and she be with another man, she has committed adultery;
And if her husband be with another woman, and he was under a vow, he hath broken his vow, and hath committed adultery.
And if she hath not committed adultery, but is inno- cent, and hath not broken her vow, and she knoweth it, and I reveal it unto you, my servant Joseph, then shall you have power, by the power of my Holy Priesthood, to take her, and give her unto him that hath not committed adultery, but hath been faithful ; for he shall be a ruler over many ;
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 423
For I have conferred upon you the keys and power of the Priesthood, wherein I restore all things, and make known unto you all things in due time.
And verily, verily I say unto you, that whatsoever you seal on earth, shall be sealed in heaven ; and whatsoever you bind on earth, in my name, and by my word, saith the Lord, and it shall be eternally bound in the heavens ; and whosesoever sins you remit on earth shall be remitted eternally in the heavens ; and whosesoever sins you retain on earth, shall be retained in heaven.
And again, verily I say, whomsoever you bless, I will bless, and whomsoever you curse, I will curse, saith the Lord ; for I, the Lord, am thy God.
And again, verily I say unto you, my servant Joseph, that whatsoever you give on earth, and to whomsoever you give any one on earth, by my word, and according to my law, it shall be visited with blessings, and not cursings, and with my power, saith the Lord, and shall be without condemnation on earth, and in heaven ;
For I am the Lord thy God, and will be with thee even unto the end of the world, and through all eternity ; for verily, I seal upon you your exaltation, and prepare a throne for you in the kingdom of my Father, with Abraham your father.
Behold, I have seen your sacrifices and will forgive all your sins; I have seen your sacrifices, in obedience to that which I have told you ; go, therefore, and I make a way for your escape, as I accepted the offering of Abra- ham, of his son Isaac.
Verily, I say unto you, a commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself, and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her ; for I did
424 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
it, saith the Lord, to prove you all, as I did Abraham ; and that I might require an offering at your hand, by covenant and sacrifice ;
And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and those who are not pure, and have said they were pure, shall be des- troyed, saith the Lord God.
For I am the Lord thy God, and ye shall obey my voice ; and I give unto my servant Joseph, that he shall be made a ruler over many things, for he hath been faith- ful over a few things, and from henceforth I will strengthen him.
And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment, she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord ; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her, if she abide not in my law ;
But if she will not abide this commandment, then shall my servant Joseph do all things for her, even as he hath said ; and I will bless him and multiply him, and give unto him an hundredfold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of eternal lives in the eternal worlds.
And again, verily I say, let mine handmaid forgive My servant Joseph his trespasses ; and then shall she be for- given her trespasses, wherein she has trespassed against me ; and I, the Lord thy God, will bless her, and multi- ply her, and make her heart to rejoice.
And again, I say, let not my servant Joseph put his property out of his hands, lest an enemy come and de-
POLYGAMY AND HYPNOTISM 425
stroy him ; for Satan seeketh to destroy ; for I am the Lord thy God, and he is my servant ; and behold I and lo, I am with him, as I was with Abraham, thy father, even unto his exaltation and glory.
Now, as touching the law of the Priesthood, there are many things pertaining thereunto.
Verily, if a man be called of my Father, as was Aaron, by mine own voice, and by the voice of Him that sent me : and I have endowed him with the keys of the power of this Priesthood, if he do anything in my name, and according to my law, and by my word, he will not com- mit sin, and I will justify him.
Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph ; for I will justify him ; for he shall do the sacrifice which I re- quire at his hands, for his transgressions, saith the Lord your God.
And again, as pertaining to the law of the Priesthood : If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse an- other, and the first give her consent ; and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified ; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else ;
And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him, therefore is he justified.
But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man ; she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed ; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world ; and
426 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men ; for herein is the work of my Fa- ther continued, that He may be glorified.
And again, verily, verily I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my Priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe, and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God, for I will destroy her ; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.
Therefore, it shall be lawful in me, if she receive not this law, for him to receive all things, whatsoever I, the Lord his God, will give unto him, because she did not administer unto him according to my word; and she then becomes the transgressor ; and he is exempt from the law of Sarah, who administered unto Abraham ac- cording to the law, when I commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife.
And now, as pertaining to this law, verily, verily I say unto you, I will reveal more unto you, hereafter ; there- fore, let this suffice for the present. Behold, I am Alpha and Omega. Amen.*
V
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following 200 odd works have been con- sulted for this study. They comprise selections from a card catalogue of about 1200 titles, which I have compiled from recent church catalogues at home and abroad, and also from such bibliographies as are given by Bancroft, Berrian, Bertrand, Burton, Callahan, Stenhouse and Woodward.
The notable public collections of Mormoniana in America are four in number: — The Church Ar- chives at Salt Lake City; Government publications at Washington; the Berrian Collection, New York Public Library, rich in first editions and rare publica- tions of the early Church; the Collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin at Madison; which has been of late augmented by the loan of the private collection of Mr. A. T. Schroeder, late of
Salt Lake City, embracing 448 books, 43 bound
429
430 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
volumes of newspaper files, 2}2 bound volumes of periodicals, and 550 pamphlets.
ACTS of the Elders, commonly called the Book of Abraham Boston, 1848.
ADAMS (G. J.)— A Few Plain Facts, pp. 16. Bedford, 1841.
ADAMS (G. Q.) — Lecture on Baptism for the Dead. pp. 12. New York, 1844.
ADAMS COUNTY, Illinois. History of its Cities, Towns, etc. pp. 971. Chicago, 1879.
ADDRESS, AN, to the Sons and Daughters of Zion. pp. 48. Kirtland, O., 185 1.
ADVOCATE. The Saints' Advocate. Piano, 111., 1879-1886.
AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Circular, Boston, May, 1878.
ANDREE (Karl.)— -Geographische Wanderungen. Die Mor- monen und ihr Land. Dresden, 1859.
ANDERSON, (Edward H.)~History of the Church. Salt Lake City, 1 90 1.
ARCHiEOLOGICAL COMMITTEE REPORT. Evidences in support of the Book of Mormon. Lamoni, la., 1901.
ARTHUR (William) — The Antiquarian, and General Review. Lansingburgh, N. Y., 1847.
AUSTIN (Emily M.)— Mormonism; or Life Among the Mor- mons. Madison, Wis., 1882.
BACHELER (O.)— Mormonism Exposed, pp. 48. New York, 1838.
y BANCROFT (Hubert Howe.)— History of Utah. A. d. 1540- ^ 1887. pp. 808 {Bibliography^ pp. xxi-xlviii). San Fran-
cisco, 1890.
Literary Industries. New York, 1891.
BARCLAY. Mormonism Exposed, 1884.
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432 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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434 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 435
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436 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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438 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 439
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440 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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The Book of Mormon : An Account written by the Hand of
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Translated by Joseph Smith, Junior. 3d ed., revised.
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1st. Europ. Ed. (from the 2d American Ed.), pp. 643.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 441
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4th Europ. ed. pp. xix. 438. i map. Liverpool, 1854.
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442 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 443
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m
444 THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM
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