a pola 0 o, He LEER, i ae Vie abe 3 * z ¢ seob \ 6 ES ins ee Sey = x eS uy Sts? aie ey itn ae Spatusiti dase aH Bhai Rea * ns tf _ waar 5c sepa eds pe = = eos -. a ‘, % ae a tS Rematetrea res ESA, mbes ure a . ie Dh <- my Nig wT Pit CRUDE ABOUT MORMONISM JAMES H. SNOWDEN BY JAMES H. SNOWDEN THE BASAL BELIEFS OF CHRISTIANITY THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM CAN WE BELIEVE IN IMMORTALITY ? THE COMING OF THE LORD IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER ? THE PERSONALITY OF GOD A WONDERFUL NIGHT: A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION A WONDERFUL MORNING: THE EASTER MESSAGE SCENES AND SAYINGS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION A SUMMER ACROSS THE SEA THE TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE THE MEANING OF EDUCATION THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY THE CITY OF TWELVE GATES: A STUDY IN CATHOLICITY JESUS AS JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES THE MAKING AND MEANING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS, SIX ANNUAL VOLS. yee id - v Aan “a A; ee At of ao © ae LE mA ae 5 TABERNACLE SQUARE AND TEMPLE ABOUT MORMONISM...._/ BY JAMES H. SNOWDEN NEW ei YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY @D THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Sy ake PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE Mormonism is closing the first century of its ex- istence, as Joseph Smith its founder claimed to have obtained the “gold plates’ of his Bible in September, 1827, and his Book of Mormon was published and his church was organized in 1830. It has had a varied and dramatic career, running through the adventures of its early days, its hardships in the Middle West ending in the tragedy of Smith’s as- sassination at Nauvoo, IIl., in 1847, its flight through incredible sufferings to the Rocky Mountains, and its growth from six members of unpromising antece- dents and prospects to its present organization of half a million members and an efficient hierarchy. Mormonism and Christian Science are the two original religions America has contributed to the world and they are strikingly alike at many points. No other religion has been so hotly opposed and hated by its opponents as Mormonism and it must be admitted that it has not always received fair treatment and has often been maligned. It has been denounced as the greatest menace to our common Christianity and to our American government. What is the truth about it? Its approaching cen- tennial makes this an opportune time to ask this Vv vi PREFACE question anew and tell the truth on the subject. What are the facts about “Joe” Smith and his “gold plates” and his “revelations”? Who was respon- sible for his murder by a mob ? Was Brigham Young “a great American” or even “the greatest American” as many Mormons affirm, and what is the truth about his “empire”? Have the Mormons really abandoned the practice of polygamy and has the ‘‘menace” of Mormonism been abated? What will be the future of this religion and may it be modified and purified into a recognized branch of our common Christianity? These and many related questions are discussed in this book in the light of history as it is recorded in the large literature of the subject and of the latest developments of this faith. The effort of the author has been to examine all the relevant facts and judge them impartially and tell the truth about them. While he cannot suppose that he has wholly escaped the influence of his own principles and unintended predilections, yet he has honestly endeavored to see and say all things in the light of reality. No other judgment ought to be made or will stand. President Heber J. Grant, of the Mormon church, in answering a request from the author for a con- tribution to this volume stating the present position of his church, courteously declined on the ground that he would not care to write anything to appear in a book concerning whose contents he knew noth- ing, and then he added: “I note that you are going PREFACE vii to try to be fair in what you write regarding the truth about Mormonism. I certainly will be happy to congratulate you if you succeed in being fair, as, in case you are fair, it will be like an oasis in the desert, as about ninety-nine out of every hundred who write anything about Mormonism do so in a biased and unfair manner.” I can hardly hope that this volume will meet President Grant’s ideal of fair ' treatment at every point, but I have sincerely tried to be fair according to my own light and conscience and have kept in view the aim: Nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. James H. SNOWDEN. Dae staid ae SN RR ei bi ae yi Se yctee Ua OR ND eae om. ‘anh, He iy ‘ THE LITERATURE OF MORMONISM AND LIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED The most complete body of literature on Mor- monism is the “Berrian” collection in the New York Public Library, which runs to about 500 titles and contains books, pamphlets, newspapers and other material that afford the student a large command of the subject. The next largest collection of Mor- mon literature is found in the National Library of Congress at Washington, and it contains about 250 titles. The author is indebted to the librarians of both the New York Public and the National Library of Congress for special facilities and favors and for the loan of some rare and valuable material. In the following list of books consulted by the author in the writing of this volume the more important ones, besides the writings of the various members of the Smith family, are those by E. D. Howe, W. A. Linn, J. F. Gibbs, T. B. H. Stenhouse, E. W. Tullidge, C. A. Shook, I. W. Riley, F. P. Spalding, and Frank J. Cannon. Gibbs, Stenhouse and Can- non were expelled or withdrew from the Utah branch and Shook from the Reorganized branch of Mormonism. Linn’s Story of Mormonism is a de- tailed and thoroughly documented history up to 1x x LITERATURE OF MORMONISM 1901 by a non-Mormon but impartial scientific his- torian, but it is too large and elaborate a book for popular readers and much has happened and some new light, especially on the origin of the Book of Mormon, has been discovered since it appeared. Adams, John Quincy, The Birth of Mormonism. 1916. Beadle, J. H. (with O. J. Hollister), Polygamy, or, The Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism. 1902. Bennett, John C., The History of the Saints, or an Exposé of Joe Smith and Mormonism. 1842. Bonsall, Miss Marian, The Tragedy of the Mormon Woman. 1908. Burton, Richard F., City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California. 1881. Cannon, Frank J. (with H. J. O’Higgins), Under the Prophet in Utah. IgI1I. Cannon, Frank J. (with G. L. Knapp), Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire. 1913. Carvalho, S. N., Incidents of Travel in the Far West. 1857. Chamberlin, Ralph V., Life and Philosophy of W. H. Chamberlin. 1925. Combs, George R., Some Latter-Day Religions. 1899. Dibble, R. F., “Brigham Young” in Strenuous Americans. 1923. Dougall, Lily, The Mormon Prophet. 1808. LITERATURE OF MORMONISM xi Erickson, Ephraim Edward, The Psychological and Ethical Aspects of Mormon Group Life. 1922. Evans, John H., One Hundred Years of Mormon- ism. 1908. Ferris, B. G., Utah Under the Mormons. 1854. Fohlin, E. V., Salt Lake Past and Present. 1908. Gibbs, J. F., Lights and Shadows of Mormonism. 1909. Goodwin, S. H., Mormonism and Masonry, A Utah Point of View. 1925. Guernsey, Alice M., Under Our Flag. 10903. Gunnison, J. W., The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints. 1856. Howe, E. D., Mormonism Unveiled. 1834. Hyde, John, Mormonism, Its Leaders and Designs. 1857. Kelley, Wiliam H., Presidency and Priesthood. 1895. Kennedy, James H., Early Days of Mormonism. 1888. Kinney, Bruce, Mormonism, the Islam of America. IQI2. Death irtih T., The Mormons and Their Bible. IQOI. Lee, John Doyle, The Mormon Menace, Being the Confession of John Doyle Lee, Danite and Off- cial Assassin of the Mormon Church. 1905. Linn, William A., The Story of the Mormons. 1901. Mayhew, Henry, Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints. 1851. xii LITERATURE OF MORMONISM McClintok, James H., Mormon Settlement in Arizona. 1921. Meyer, Eduard, Ursprung und Geschichte der Mor- monen mit Exkursen tiber Anfange des Islams und des Christentum. 1912. Patterson, Robert, Who Wrote the Book of Mor- mon? 1882. Pratt, Parley P., A Voice of Warning, an Introduc- tion to the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 1881. Rae, W. F., Westward by Rail. 1874. Riley, Isaac W., The Founder of Mormonism. 1908. Roberts, Brigham H., Defense of the Faith of the Saints. 1907. The Gospel: an Exposition of First Principles. 1918. The Mormon Doc- trine of Deity. 1908. Outlines of Ecclesias- tical History. 1902. New Witnesses for God, 4 IOnrT. Shook, Charles A., The True Origin of the Book of Mormon, 1912; Cumorah Revisited, the True Origin of Mormon Polygamy. Shroeder, Albert F., Origin of the Book of Mormon. IQOI. Siebel, George, Mormon Problem. 1899. Smith, Joseph, The Book of Mormon, 1908; The Book of Doctrine and of Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1880; The Pearl of Great Price, a Selection from the Revelations, Translations and Narra- LITERATURE OF MORMONISM xii tives of Joseph Smith, First Prophet, Seer and Revelator. 1913. Smith, Joseph (eldest son of the Prophet and Presi- dent of the Reorganized Church, with Apostle Heman C. Smith), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 4 vols. 1897-1900. Smith, Joseph F. (Apostle and Official Church His- torian), Essentials of Church History. Smith, Lucy (mother of the Prophet), Biographi- cal Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations. 1858 Smith, Mrs. M. E. V., Fifteen Years Among the Mormons. 1858. Spalding, Franklin P., Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Trans- lator. 1912. Stansbury, Howard, Expedition to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake with an Authentic Account of the Mormon Settlement. 1855. Stenhouse, Thomas B., The Rocky Mountain Saints. Belts 7 3, Talmadge, James E., Articles of Faith, a Series of Lectures on the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat- ter-Day Saints. 1899. Traum, Samuel W., Mormonism Against Itself. IQIO. Tullidge, Edward W., History of Salt Lake City. 1886. U. S. Senate, Great Debates in American History, IQI3. xiv LITERATURE OF MORMONISM U. S. Senate, Proceedings Against Reed Smoot. 1900. Webb, Robert C., The Case Against Mormonism, a Candid Examination of an Interesting but Much Misunderstood Subject in History, Life and Thought. 1816. Williams, Samuel, Mormonism Exposed. Willing, Mrs. Jenme F., On American Soil, or Mor- monism the Mohammedanism of the West. 1900. Wilson, Lycurgus A., Outlines of Mormon Philos- ophy. 1905. Wood, Ezra M., Schools for Spirits. 1903. Young, Ann Eliza, Life in Mormon Bondage. 1908. The Dictionary of Religion and Ethics. The Encyclopedia Britannica. Bulletin of the New York Public Library, March, 1909, with Catalogue of the Berrian collection of books on Mormonism. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 1. The Religious Nature of Man . Human Credulity . Self-Deception Self-Interest . Local Social and Religious eon tions II JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY, BOY- HOOD AND YOUTH . ‘ ‘ WA wD Ty PASICOSLLY A Wi Gk 2. Birth and Hositvcd 3. A Money-Digger and Beeston Expert . 4. General Glee ter of ged Smith Family . Pe ama eh hee ‘Ut THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN . 1. The Visions ; 2. Discovery of the etnies Plates : 3. Translating the Plates ot . The Printing and the Editions af the Book Ht, The Witnesses to fe Plates : Joseph Smith as an Lai) Translator . 7. Who Wrote the Boots of Motinod? xV nen 79 Xvi CHAPTER CONTENTS IV THE BOOK OF MORMON: CON- TENTS OF THE (BCR iia ae i 2. Kf 4. Names in the Book . General Contents and Sources of the Book Marks of Teendene in the Bose Origin of the Ideas of the Book . V THE FOUNDING AND ORGANIZA- TION OF THE MORMON CHURCH I. 2. The Founding of the Church The Organization of the Church . VI THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH ; 1. The Mormon Doctrine of God . The Mormon Doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit . i The Mormon Doctrine of ea ; The Mormon Doctrine of Sin The Mormon Doctrine of Atonement and Blood Atonement . Church Organization . The Priesthood Ordinances Miracles ; The Bible and Raunce Resslainee . Liberty of Worship . Relation to Civil Government . Morality and Virtue . Polygamy and Marriage . PAGE 94 95 97 103 107 116 116 118 125 127 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 136 137 138 138 139 CHAPTER Vil Vill IX XI XII CONTENTS SETTLEMENT IN OHIO , 1. The Church at Kirtland . 2. Business Ventures and Failures . 3. Immoralities, Dissensions and Flight 4. Entrance of Brigham Young, Mas- ter Mind of Mormonism . REMOVAL TO MISSOURI . I. In Jackson County 2. Further Troubles in and eration from Missouri . SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 1. A Mormon Town Rises on the River 2. Smith Enters National Politics . 3. The Tragedy at Nauvoo . 4. Character of Joseph Smith . 5. Last Days at. Nauvoo. BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYG- BMS a vy 1. Early Riancn Teachie 2. Later Official Teaching . THE REORGANIZED CHURCH OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS ’ 1. Early Divisions Among the Mor- mons 2. The Doctrines aid Growin of he Reorganized Church maa THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS 1. Across the Plains of Iowa . i 2. From Iowa to the Great Salt Lake . 3. The Disastrous Hand-Cart Here tion . xvii PAGE 143 143 146 I51 155 158 159 161 167 168 172 174 177 182 186 186 18g 195 195 197 199 td 201 203 xviii CHAPTER XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII CONTENTS MORMON MISSIONS 1. Early Mormon Missions . 2. Mormon Missions Abroad . 3. Later Mormon Missions . THE) CUDY BY veTH EGR AG csr i LAKE : Roly ane 1. The Valley and the habe. : 2. The Founding and het of the City rae ene : 3. “Salt -Lake® City Today } EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH I. Political Organization 2. First Clash with the Federal Corea ment : ; , 2 4 3. The Mormon War MORMONISM AND MURDER . I. The Doctrine of Blood Atonement . 2. The Practice of the Doctrine . 3. The Mountain Meadows Massacre . 4. Explanation of this Doctrine and Spirit MORMONISM DURING THE CIVIL WAR , 1. Mormon gis seat es Utes 2. Federal Action BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM ., I. Gentile Irruption ‘ant Bigsiniees Monopoly : PAGE 209 209 213 217 221 221 223 227 232 232 234 236 24+ 244 246 250 259 262 263 265 269 269 CONTENTS xix CHAPTER PAGE 2. Revolt Lifts Its Head SHER 273 3. The Prophet at the Height of FNS OW er sary aaiee 278 4. The Wives of the Peebater mf eM) Al Mabe} 0. Rovio weattvor tne brophetur: «ray sn 20d MOC THE SURRENDER. OF POLYGAMY: 205 1. The Mormon System of Polygamy . 296 2. The Course of the Legislation Against Polygamy. . . AuusOr 3. The Mormon Manifesto of fone tite Ae Was the Manifesto Keptr 94,30 3m Ree cunrWiGhT) FOR STATEHOOD: oi 7 310 Ty pari iWreams of Feminine 7) vai.) palo POM EDSICO FALCHOOULS Veen e Cie a an ae ara aS Av LA eatin Upset gh teh At uiceeraeat Ae MORMONTISM TODAY oi. is 232 1. Mormonism Growing and Aggressive 333 2. Has the Mormon Practice of Polyg- amy Ceased? . 342 3. The Testimony of Raden Prot! estant Ministers . . 344 4. Concluding Ponda SO VMGIA sec ich A. Mormonism is an errant form of Gerson Oa Sine 355 B. The ‘menace’ of Monnonien IS, abated (sores. 356 C. Mormonism has inner therks and self-limitations . . 358 D. How to meet and deal with it 359 URE ies 2 a has TE Ata ins th GS RD ULM aL fa] cent wit iret i y uly Ye Af AA , \ alan hate eh ah 1H! is OW Rit re a Se ida me id 4 Lye wht Me nn it Pein This } ih, BL ie Hx + py vd ee 4h) ah ‘ne ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Tabernacle Square and Temple. . . . Frontispiece POSE (Oo APOSTGT|A cep ed Bgl tone Ea Ma lr A AL Ageing ila 0 pe Tg aba yy Ga) bit cet eas A ee Pa Panes A MDE er (ies Hot RR ADOTTIAC ION sy uta (el isc al gid oy alah Mine RUlUPSiN ena oD Monument to Brigham Young and the Pioneers, ROC OMICS IE Cay a tc nahh eye) SUM E Raatina ah Magen aS YOR SR ae ‘i We Av EN , ‘aan i 4 = 4 ay ee ihe Ms header iy % Cte ! a Lad ge \ AMT Ai ; J THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM CHAPTER [| THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM ELIGION is one of the most universal and im- portant facts in our human world. Man is constitutionally and inescapably religious. Car- lyle says that a man’s religion is the deepest thing in him, and even Herbert Spencer declares that “religion expresses some eternal fact’ and “concerns each and all of us more than any other matter what- ever.” Any religion, then, is worthy of our interest and study and may have valuable lessons to teach us. Mormonism is a new religion which America has produced and contributed to the world. Springing from our American soil and common Christianity it has yet sent out its lines to all the earth and aspires to world dominion. It proclaims itself a new and fuller and final revelation of Christianity which is to supersede all existing religions. Such a notable am- bitious and aggressive religious movement must have some ground for its being, and however often it has been examined it recurrently challenges our 25 26 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM attention and thorough investigation, that we may discover the secret of its success, find out and utilize any truth it may contain, intelligently and efficiently oppose any errors it embodies and any evils it is causing, and learn any lessons it may teach. The writer proposes to examine this religious product of our own soil in its origin and history and practical working in as fair and impartial spirit as possible, and while he cannot hope wholly to es- cape from the influence of his own convictions and unconscious preferences, yet he will endeavor to treat it from an objective and dispassionate point of view. There are always some grains of truth in the largest heap of error, and it is this truth that gives error its power to sprout and spread and multiply; and it should be our endeavor to seize this grain of truth and see that it is properly planted and cul- tivated in our own field. There must be important truth in Mormonism, and we should strive to do justice to the followers of Joseph Smith. Every founder of a system of religion is a child of his age, and every form of human belief and practice grows out of its environment. We shall therefore first look at the roots of Mormonism. I. THE RELIGIOUS NATURE OF MAN Deeper than all religions is religion. The univer- sal religious nature of man is the soil out of which all religions, pagan and Christian, spring. This re- THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 27 ligious nature is rooted in the intuitions and instincts and emotions, and in the reason and will and con- science of man and pervades his whole being. It acts with the universality and spontaneity and force of an instinct to turn man to his Maker as the flower turns to the sun and the needle to the pole. Man is not religious because he reasons and wills to be so, but because he cannot help it. He is constitu- tionally and inescapably religious and prays to or yearns for God almost as instinctively as he breathes. Even when he thinks he is denying re- ligion he is trying to feed his spiritual nature with some kind of religious bread, though it be a husk or a stone. The absurdest creed and falsest faith and vilest rite and most hideous idol afford some sort of religious satisfaction. God has set eternity in the heart of man, and therefore eternity comes out of it and feels after the Father of spirits if haply it may find him. Mormonism is a religion and springs out of this universal soil. It has a creed and Bible and church and promises salvation for sin and eternal life. It is not to be denied or doubted that it supplies its adherents with some measure of spiritual satisfac- tion. People do not build temples and carry on wor- ship for nothing. All sincere worshipers derive some benefit from their faith, however deep may be its error and dark its practice. The falsest faith bears witness to the reality of religion and catches some 28 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM gleams of that Light “which lighteth every man, coming into the world.” This is the deepest root of Mormonism, and it grows out of the field of the religious nature of man; but in this field there grow not only good grain but also grain of inferior quality and also weeds. 2. HUMAN CREDULITY. The human mind has an enormous capacity for belief. On the slightest evidence and against all the grounds of reason and right it can seize upon a be- lief and hug it to its heart and cherish it as an in- dubitable truth and kindle it into a passion and fierce fanaticism. Hence all the world is a dust of sys- tems and of creeds, and no creed is so grotesque and no practice is so revolting that some religionist will not profess and follow it. Money, medicine and religion are three fields in which credulity flourishes prolifically and runs riot. Show people a quick scheme to get rich, or a sure panacea for disease, or a smooth and plausible nov- elty in religion and many of them will lose all sense ot reason and reality and swallow the bait unques- tioningly and become enthusiasts and fanatics in its behalf. False religious prophets are usually men or women of unbounded credulity and gullibility, and having deluded themselves they play upon the cre- dulity of others and hypnotize them by the hundreds THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 29 and thousands. Credulity is contagious. It mul- tiplies like the germs of disease and may infect whole communities and spread over states and con- tinents. The founders of Mormonism were among the most gullible people of the nineteenth century. They could profess to believe the most absurd things that run squarely against all our tested knowledge and contradict our very senses. Joseph Smith’s family were notorious for their superstition, and he was capable of believing anything. These victims of their own credulity were masters in playing upon the credulity of their followers, and the fact that there are so many people that are capable of being caught with religious novelties was and is one of the reasons and roots of their success. 3. SELF-DECEPTION Let us not think, however, that these prophets were pure impostors. The human mind has great ability and skill in deceiving itself. It can make the worse appear the better reason and get itself to believe anything it wants to believe. “The will to believe” can set things in such a light and so select and intensify certain motives to the exclusion of others that it can turn the blackest falsehood into the semblance of truth. The mind sees all things through the medium of its own inherited instincts and emotional temperament and of its preconcep- 80 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM tions and beliefs and desires, and these may beget and color convictions and passions that are contrary to all human knowledge and sanity and yet that may never be disturbed with doubt. The human mind often has unconscious causes of its beliefs that are deeper than all its conscious reasons. Joseph Smith was a strange compound of contra- dictory elements, and the keenest psychoanalysis would fail to draw any clear line between sincere self-deception and conscious duplicity in his motives and methods. He gives evidence of imposture in some of his moments and means, but he was also a believer in his message and mission. 4. SELF-INTEREST Self-interest is one of the most pervasive and powerful of human motives and enters deeply even into religion. It may spring from three chief roots, and we believe they were all present in the origin of Mormonism. ‘These are money, power and sen- sual gratification. The mercenary motive has ever lurked around religion, and some religions are deeply marked by it. Joseph Smith was a prophet who had a keen scent for profit. He soon developed into an autocrat and despot with an inordinate ambition and greed for power, and ruled his church and fol- lowers with an iron hand. Mormonism is deeply stained with sensuality. The spirit and the flesh lie close together in human nature, and it is only a step THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 31 and a slip from one into the other. Sensuality has ever been one of the most subtle temptations and greatest dangers of religion and has often degraded its light into darkness. Joseph Smith by his own confession was in his youth loose in his morals, and he introduced and practiced a doctrine in his religion and church that has excited the indignation of the Christian world. 5. LOCAL SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS The roots of Mormonism so far mentioned are general human capacities and motives, and a more specific cause of its origin is to be found in the local social and religious conditions out of which it arose. The first half of the nineteenth century was a fer- menting time in New England and the states lying immediately to the west, when social and religious conditions were in a transition stage. The older extreme orthodoxy had encountered violent reac- tion in which one extreme begot another, and all manner of erratic movements and creeds emerged out of the chaos, free thinking, scepticism, mesmer- ism, spiritualism, occultism, faith healing, and many other strange cults and ephemeral fads flourished, some of them having a very brief day. The Smith family lived in these conditions in Ver- mont and must have absorbed some of their influ- ences into their sensitive and highly receptive na- tures. In 1814, in Joseph’s tenth year, the family 32 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM removed to Palmyra in Northern New York. The region was then the “West” and was largely unre- claimed from the wilderness, and primitive social conditions prevailed and life was a burden and battle of toil. Only a few log huts stood where now stands the splendid city of Rochester. The Indians in their feathers and paint still loitered around the villages and infested the neighboring forests, and their ominous presence was an ever-impending dan- ger and anxiety. Indian history and lore, tradi- tions and tragedies filled the cabins of the settlers with marvelous tales of adventures and escapes and exciting news of terrible happenings and whispered fears of imminent attack as they sat around their blazing log fires in the stillness and dread of the night. Joseph Smith absorbed these stories and they furnished him the Indian lore that forms so large a portion of his book. Northern New York was also in a state of reli- gious unrest and upheaval at this time. Presbyte- rianism and Methodism were the prevailing Prot- estant denominations, but in spite of Calvinistic orthodoxy and Methodist revivalistic exhortation and fervency there was much scepticism abroad. Tom Paine’s Age of Reason was copiously circu- lated, and there were those who were interested in seeing that a cheap edition of the book, printed in France, was given freely away. This religious un- rest was intensified by the fierce denominational ri- valries and internal strifes, the Methodist body alone THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 33 undergoing four divisions between 1814 and 1830. The Presbyterians were also having their internal troubles, and rumors and charges of heresy were in the air. In 1834 the Presbytery of Geneva was charged with “sixteen gross errors in doctrine,” and in 1837 the General Assembly adjudged that the four Synods of Genesee, Geneva, Utica and Western Reserve were “out of connection with the Presbyte- rian Church,” thus dividing this body into the Old and the New School branches. The abduction of William Morgan, the Mason, in 1826, resulting in the formation of the Anti- Masonic Party, created immense excitement, not only in Western New York where it occurred, but throughout the country. Later, spiritualism arose in connection with the performances of the Fox sisters near Rochester, and the wave of mesmerism and other occult doctrines and practices that rolled over New England reached the remote regions of New York. | Joseph Smith, highly excitable and impressionable and absorbent, was immersed in this atmosphere from his tenth to his twenty-sixth year, and these were the formative years of his life when he gath- ered his materials and shaped his ideas and dreamed his dreams and produced his book. All these fer- menting movements and exciting events left their impress on his receptive mind and imagination and marvelously tenacious memory and entered into the 34 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM contents of his revelations and his Bible, as will ap- pear in the due course of this study. It was out of this soil and of these roots of the religious nature of man, human credulity, self-de- ception, self-interest, and local social and religious conditions that Mormonism grew. CHAPTER II JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH ORMONISM, like most historical religions, had its origin in a founder and his book. Joseph Smith is the name of the man that bears this responsibility in the case of this religion. We shall first sketch the family history and the early years of the founder of this faith, and then proceed to examine his book. I. ANCESTRY, The Smith family, from which “Joe” Smith, as he was familiarly known, sprang, was of Scotch de- scent and mixed Presbyterian and Methodist proclivities, and we first meet with them in Vermont. In this state at Turnbridge, on January 24, 1796, Joseph Smith, Senior, and Lucy Mack were joined in wedlock, and of this union there were born nine children, of whom the fourth became the Mormon prophet. The father of Lucy Mack was Solomon Mack, of whom considerable is known, as he was a celebrated character among his neighbors in his day and was 35 36 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM long remembered as a feeble queer old man who rode around the country selling his autobiography. This Narrative of the Life of Solomon Mack, as the title of the rare little book reads, consists of forty-eight pages of ill-spelt English and gives an account of his experiences as a farm boy, a soldier in Indian campaigns and in the Revolutionary War, of his varied occupations as teamster, sutler, privateer, of his conversion at the age of seventy-six, when he “saw a bright light in a dark night’? and when, as he wrote, “I thought the Lord called and I had but a moment to live.” These visions and voices indi- cate a psychopathic susceptibility to abnormal ex- periences which was the hereditary fountain from which descended the same ill-balanced nervous na- ture that marked the epileptic grandson who became noted as the prophet of Mormonism. Lucy Smith, the daughter of Solomon Mack and the mother of Joe, inherited this psychopathic na- ture in an intensified degree. She was of vigorous and forceful personality and determined will, but she received little schooling and was semi-illiterate, and she was given to dreams and visions and was extremely credulous and superstitious. She believed in demons, as her husband believed in witchcraft, and she was given to fortune telling as a gainful occupation. She wrote Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, though it is suspected with assistance, a book which “teems with dreams, visions and mi- raculous cures. These were, in truth, ‘events of in- JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 37 finite importance,’ to one who was not wont to dis- tinguish between subjective illusions and objective realities.’* She also heard a supernatural voice and had a miraculous recovery. Though both a ‘Presbyterian and a Methodist minister made special efforts to convert her, she had a strong aversion to denominations and refused to join any church, de- claring that “there was not on earth the religion she sought”; yet she had a Presbyterian minister bap- tize her. Her eldest brother belonged to the ‘“‘Seek- ers,’ who held that miracles were necessary to faith, and one of her sisters was also miraculously cured. The mother of the prophet thus had psychic experi- ences that were hereditary antecedents and predis- positions culminating in her son’s dreams and doings. Joseph Smith, Senior, was a man of many trades even for a New England Yankee. By turns he was farmer, storekeeper, dealer in ginseng, well-digger, hunter for Captain Kidd’s treasure, and even a counterfeiter, as “he became implicated with one Jack Downing in counterfeiting money, but turned state’s evidence and escaped the penalty.” He kept roving around in several New England states until 1815, when he removed with his family to Palmyra, N. Y., where he displayed a sign, “Cake and Beer Shop,” selling “gingerbread, pies, boiled eggs, root beer, and other like notions,” and “‘he and his sons *Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, p. 20. ® Historical Magazine, 1870. 38 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM did odd jobs, gardening, harvesting, and well-dig- ging, when they could get them.” Joseph Smith, Senior, also had “visions.” They began in 1811 and continued until they had filled up the sacred number of seven, and among them were two that entered into the origin and make-up of Mormonism; 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.” The father of the prophet was associated with the son in the development of his religion, the son founding for him the office of “Patriarch” in ac- cordance with one of his “revelations.” This ancestry discloses strains of psychic abnor- mality, susceptibility to and belief in dreams and visions and supernatural revelations and miracles, illiteracy and credulity, and religious excitability, eccentricity and superstition that go far to explain the erratic psychopathic and religious nature of the founder of Mormonism. When we see the parents, so sensitive to and absorbent of all the peculiar isms | of their fermenting time, we are not surprised at the son. 2. BIRTH AND BOYHOOD Joseph Smith was one of those children born in utmost obscurity and poverty who yet have been des- tined to attain to worldwide fame, in some instances JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH = 39 of an honorable and in other instances of a discredit- able nature. One of the strangest of these cases was that of the boy born in Vermont and brought up in primitive conditions in Western New York who be- came the founder of a new religion that has since carried his name to the ends of the earth. Joseph Smith, Junior, was born at Sharon, Vermont, on De- cember 23, 1805. He received less than a year of schooling in his boyhood, and we learn little of his life during the peripatetic wanderings of his father through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachu- setts until the removal to Palmyra, N. Y., in 1815, when Joe was ten years of age. After living three and a half years at Palmyra the Smiths moved two miles to the south near the vil- lage of Manchester where they squatted on a piece of unoccupied land and put up a log house consist- ing of two rooms and an attic. Here they carried on their various occupations of selling cordwood, brooms, vegetables, maple sugar and cakes, and the boys hunted and fished and loafed around the vil- lage store. The father and several of the sons could not read, and of Joseph, Junior, Orson Pratt, a Mormon biographer of the prophet, wrote: “He could read without much difficulty, and write an im- perfect hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of arithmetic. These were his highest and only attainments, while the rest of those branches so universally taught in the com- mon schools throughout the United States were en- 40 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM tirely unknown to him.” *? We also are told that his favorite books were the Life of Stephen Bur- roughs, “a scoundrel dressed in the garb of the church,” and the autobiography of the pirate Kidd. He afterward admitted that the pirate’s story made a deep impression on him and that he was fascinated by the lines that are found in it: My name is Robert Kidd, As I sailed, as I sailed; And most wickedly I did, God’s laws I did forbid, As I sailed, as I sailed.* This admission is in keeping with another con- fession which he made, declaring that in his youth he “frequently fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth and the corruption of human nature, which, I am sorry to say, led me into diverse temptations, to the gratification of many appetites offensive in the sight of God.” * These “diverse temptations” were especially drunkenness and immorality. One who knew him intimately in his boyhood writes of him: He was lounging, idle (not to say vicious ), and possesed of less than ordinary intelligence. He used to come into the village of Palmyra with little jags of wood from his backwoods home; sometimes patronizing a village grocery too freely; sometimes finding an odd job to do about the ®* Remarkable Visions, quoted by Linn, Story, p. 12. “Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism, p. 13. ° Pearl of Great Price, p. 88. JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 41 store of Seymour Scoville, and once a week he would stroll into the office of the old Palmyra Register for his father’s paper. How impious in us young dare-devils to once in a while blacken the face of the then meddling, inquisitive lounger with the old-fashioned balls, when he used to put himself in the way of the old-fashioned Rammage press. ... But Joseph had little ambition, and some very laudable aspirations. ‘The mother’s intellect oc- casionally shone out in him, especially when he used to help us solve some portentous questions of moral or political ethics.® Another intimate personal acquaintance of Smith when he was about thirteen years of age testifies that he was “‘a dull-eyed, flaxen-haired, prevaricat- ing boy, noted only for his indolent and vagabondish character, and his habits of exaggeration and un- truthfulness,” whom his father boasted of as the “genus of the family.” And “it has been again and again quoted that even Brigham Young declared that ‘The Prophet was a man of mean birth; that he was wild, intemperate, even dishonest and tricky in his youth.’ ” 7 When a storm of revivalism swept over Western New York in his boyhood, his susceptible nature was caught and stirred by the excitement, he listened in- tently to the religious controversy that attended it and he was swept on a wave into the Methodist church on probation. He now took to reading the Bible and to expounding Scripture. *Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism, pp. 13-14. "Tbid., pp. 14, 16. 42 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM His mind was retentive ; he was possessed of a rude elo- quence of speech, and had that rare power of expression that to the stranger or the simple would seem the outward form of a sincere belief within. The more mysterious and complex the chapter of Scripture to which he gave attention, the more open and bold his explanation and application when surrounded by auditors who did not surpass him in knowledge.® However, this conversion had “‘no depth of earth” and presently withered away, he severed his slight connection with the church, and was soon heard denouncing sectarianism and declaring that all churches were built on a false foundation. 3. A MONEY-DIGGER AND PEEK-STONE EXPERT Joseph Smith, Senior, was a well-digger who lo- cated water by means of a divining rod or forked hazel switch, and Joe even when a lad professed the same skill. Presently he became acquainted with the magic art, then much in vogue, of “seeing” things by means of a “peek-stone.” Almost any stone, especially if it had some peculiarity in its ap- pearance, would serve for this purpose, and the common mode of using it was to place it in a hat and then thrust the face into the hat so as to shut out the light, and when the seer thus looked at the mystic stone all sorts of secrets, it was claimed, would be revealed and visions would be seen. Stories of hid- den treasures, concealed by Indians or robbers or * Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism, pp. 15-17. JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 43 pirates in caves and pits, weré rife in those days, and the business of hunting them and locating them by magic means was a favorite occupation. Joe Smith became an expert at this business. “Long before the idea of a golden Bible entered their (the Smiths’) minds, in their excursions for money-digging, . . . Joe used to be usually their guide, putting into a hat a peculiar stone he had, through which he looked to decide where they should begin to dig.” °® He obtained his “peek-stone” in the following manner: Willard Chase, of Man- chester, employed Joe and his brother to assist him in digging a well. “After digging about twenty feet,” he says, “we discovered a singularly appear- ing stone which excited my curiosity. I brought it to the top of the well, and as we were examining it, Joseph put it into his hat and then his face into the top of the hat. . . . After obtaining the stone he began to publish abroad what wonders he could discover by looking into it.” *° Mormon writers are reluctant to admit that their prophet was a money-digger, but the fact is ad- mitted by the prophet himself in his autobiography, as published in the Millennial Star, as follows: In the month of October, 1825, I hired with an old gentleman by the name of Josiah Stoal, who lived in Chenango County, State of New York. He had heard something of a silver mine having been opened by the *Rey. John A. Clark in Gleanings by the Way (1842), quoted by Linn, Story, p. 20. * Tbid., p. 20. 44, THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Spaniards at Harmony, Susquehanna County, State of Pennsylvania, and had, previous to my being with him, been digging in order, if possible, to discover the mine. After I went to live with him he took me, among the rest of his hands, to dig for the silver mine, at which I con- tinued to work for nearly a month, without success in our undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentle- man to cease digging for it. Hence arose the very preva- lent story of my having been a money-digger. His mother also in her Biographical Sketches of him says that “Stoal came for Joseph on account of having heard that he possessed certain keys by which he could discern things invisible to the natural eye.” J. B. Buck gives a circumstantial account of a stone owned by one Jack Belcher and says: “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.” ** It was part of the art of finding hidden riches by the “peek-stone” to require a black sheep to be sacri- fied to overcome the evil spirit that guarded the treasure. On one occasion a neighbor of the Smiths furnished the sheep, but the sacrifice was in vain. The Smiths, however, made off with the carcass and ate the sheep. “This, I believe,” said the con- tributor of the sheep, “is the only time they ever made money-digging a profitable business.” The evidence is abundant and conclusive that dur- ™ For these and other testimonies on this point, see Linn, Story, pp. 15-22, and Hyde, Mormonism, 263-265. JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 465 ing the seven or eight years preceding his alleged discovery of the Gold Plates Joe Smith used “‘peek- stones” and was known as a professional money- digger. It was while on one of his money-digging trips to Harmony (now Oakland), Susquehanna County, Pa., that Joseph Smith met, eloped with and, on January 18, 1827, married Emma, the daughter of Isaac Hale, “a distinguished hunter, a zealous mem- ber of the Methodist church, and a man of excellent moral character and of undoubted integrity.” Joe took his wife to his home near Palmyra, N. Y., and in the following August hired a neighbor named Peter Ingersol to go with him to Pennsylvania to get his wife’s household goods. Of this trip Inger- sol said, in an affidavit made in 1833: When we arrived at Mr. Hale’s in Harmony, Pa., from which place he had taken his wife, a scene presented itself truly affecting. His father-in-law addressed Joseph in a flood of tears: “You have stolen my daughter and mar- ried her. I had much rather have followed her to her grave. You spend your time in digging for money— pretend to see in a stone, and thus try to deceive people.” Joseph wept and acknowledged that he could not see in a stone now nor never could, and that his former preten- sions in that respect were false. He then promised to give up his old habits of digging for money and looking into stones.?? Mr. Hale issued a signed statement, under date of March 20, 1834, in which he gives an account of his meeting with young Smith, of his money- * Howe, Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 234-235. 46 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM digging, marriage with his daughter, promise to go to work for a living, and of his “silly fabrication of falsehood and wickedness” in connection with the Book of Mormon, to which we shall refer later.** 4. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SMITH FAMILY The character of the Smith family in general and of Joe in particular is set forth in a number of statements and affidavits made by those who per- sonally knew them. The first one here presented was made by Daniel Hendrix, who was an assistant in setting type and reading the proof of the Mormon Bible in Palmyra, N. Y., and is as follows: Every one knew him as Joe Smith. Joe was the most ragged, lazy fellow in the place, and that is saying a good deal. . . . He was a good talker, and would have made a fine stump speaker if he had had the training. He was known among the young men I associated with as a romancer of the first water. I never knew so igno- rant a man as Joe was to have such a fertile imagination. He never could tell a common occurrence in his daily life without embellishing the story with his imagination; yet I remember that he was grieved one day when old Parson Reed told Joe that he was going to hell for his lying habits.*4 Eleven of “the most prominent and respectable citizens of Manchester,” under date of November 3, 1833, affixed their names to this emphatic declaration: * This statement will be found in Kennedy, Early Days, pp. 38-41. “Linn, Story, p. 13. JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 47 We, the undersigned, being personally acquainted with the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., with whom the Gold Bible, so-called, originated, state: That they were not only a lazy, indolent set of men, but also intemperate, and their word was not to be depended upon; and that we are truly glad to dispense with their society. On December 4, 1833, sixty-two residents of Palmyra signed the following declaration: We, the undersigned, have been acquainted with the Smith family for a number of years, while they resided near this place, and we have no hesitation in saying that we consider them destitute of that moral character which ought to entitle them to the confidence of any community. They were particularly famous for visionary projects; spent much of their time in digging for money which they pretended was hid in the earth, and to this day large exca- vations may be seen in the earth, not far from their residence, where they used to spend their time in digging for hidden treasures. Joseph Smith, Sr., and his son Joseph were, in particular, considered entirely destitute of moral character, and addicted to vicious habits. The following affidavit was made by Parley Chase: Manchester, New York, December 2, 1833. I was ac- quainted with the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., both before and since they became Mormons, and feel free to state that not one of the male members of the Smith family were entitled to any credit whatsoever. They were lazy, intemperate, and worthless men, very much addicted to lying. In this they frequently boasted their skill. Digging for money was their principal employment. In regard to their Gold Bible speculation, they scarcely ever told two stories alike. The Mormon Bible is said to be 48 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM a revelation from God, through Joseph Smith, Jr., his Prophet, and this same Joseph Smith, Jr., to my knowl- edge, bore the reputation among his neighbors of being ailiar,*” One of the most reliable and interesting of the early books on Mormonism is Gleanings by the Way, by Rev. John A. Clark, D.D., who at one time lived in Western New York and wrote as follows (p. 340) : One thing, however, is distinctly to be noted in the his- tory of this imposture. There are no Mormons in Manches- ter or Palmyra, the place where this Book of Mormon was pretended to be found. You might as well go down into the crater of Vesuvius and attempt to build an ice-house amid its molten and boiling lava, as to convince any in- habitant in either of these towns, that Joe Smith’s pre- tensions are not the most gross and egregious falsehood. It was indeed a wise stroke of policy, for those who got up this imposture, and who calculated to make their for- tune by it, to emigrate to a place where they were wholly unknown. Finally we give in part the testimony of Mrs. Horace Eaton, who was a resident of Palmyra for thirty-two years and had this to say of the Smiths, mother and son: As far as Mormonism was connected with its reputed founder, Joseph Smith, always called “Joe Smith,” it had its origin in the brain and heart of an ignorant, deceitful mother. Joe Smith’s mother moved in the lowest walks of life, but she had a kind of mental power, which her * These last three and other statements were obtained by E. D. Howe and published in his Mormonism Unveiled in 1834. JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 49 son shared. With them both the imagination was the commanding faculty. It was vain, but vivid. To it was subsidized reason, conscience, truth. Both mother and son were noted for a habit of extravagant assertion. They would look a listener full in the eye, and, without confu- sion or blanching, would fluently improvise startling statements and exciting stories, the warp and woof of which were alike sheer falsehood. ... The mother of the high priest of Mormonism was superstitious to the last degree. The very air she breathed was inhabited by “familiar spirits that peeped and wizards that muttered.” She turned many a penny by tracing in the lines of the open palm the fortunes of the inquirer. All ominous signs were heeded. No work was commenced on Friday. The moon over the left shoulder portended calamity; the breaking of a mirror, death. Even in the Old Green Mountain State, before the family emigrated to the Gene- see country (the then West), Mrs. Smith’s mind was made up that one of her sons should be a prophet. The weak father agreed with her that Joseph was the “genus” of their nine children. So it was established that Joseph should be the prophet. To such an extent did the mother impress this idea upon the boy, that all the instincts of childhood were restrained. He rarely smiled or laughed. “His thoughts and looks were always downward bent.” He never indulged in the demonstrations of fun, since! they would not be in keeping with the profound dignity of his allotted vocation. His mother inspired and aided him in every scheme of duplicity and cunning. All ac- quainted with the facts agree in saying that the evil spirit of Mormonism dwelt first in Joe Smith’s mother.?® Such were the family stock, hereditary constitu- tion, inherited beliefs, social and religious environ- ment, and personal moral character and practices of the founder of Mormonism. #* Shook, True Origin of Morgon Polygamy, pp. 19-20. CHAPTER III THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN HE stage is now set for ringing up the curtain on one of the boldest projects in the history of religion. This was nothing less than producing outright a new religion with its initial outfit of prophet and Bible, the ‘““Mormonism” which its | founder declared “would some day rule the world.” The ill-balanced, imaginative peek-stone user and money-digger, dreamer and deceiver who originated the idea probably did not conceive it all at once. It started as a germ in his fertile mind and grew apace as the prospect opened out before him and lured him on. I. THE VISIONS We have already seen that Joseph Smith, Jr., at the age of fifteen experienced a degree of conver- sion amidst the excitement of a Methodist revival. This was the occasion of the first “vision” which he experienced and which prepared the way for the second one in which was made to him, according to his own statement, the “revelation” as to the Golden 50 THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 51 Plates. The first one was occasioned by the “war of words and tumult of opinions” in connection with the Methodist revival when much denominational controversy was going on and he said to himself, “Who of all these parties are right? Or, are they all wrong together ?”’ On a bright spring morning (we are simply fol- lowing his own story), he went out into the woods to settle this question. As he prayed “immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me,” and “thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.” “Just at this mo- ment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head,” when “I saw two personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in their air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said (pointing to the other), ‘This is my Beloved Son, hear Him.’” He then in- quired ‘which of all the sects was right,” and was told that “they were all wrong”’ and that he “must join none of them.” ” The narrative of this “vision” is followed with Smith’s reflections upon the fact that “an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age,” should have been vouchsafed such a vision, which he compares to that of Paul and with an account of the * His own account of these and other “visions” is found in “Ex- tracts from the History of Joseph Smith,” which is included in his Pearl of Great Price, pp. 81-101. * Pearl of Great Price, pp. 84-85. 52 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM persecutions that it brought upon him. He also confesses that during the three years that elapsed between the first and the second vision that “I was left to all kinds of temptations, and mingling with all kinds of society, I frequently fell into many foolish errors, 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 grati- fication of many appetites offensive in the sight of God.” It is impossible to determine just what experiences Smith had in these alleged visions. His veracity has already been so seriously shaken and shattered that we cannot trust his narrative, especially as his History of Himself was written in 1838, eighteen years after the first vision, during which intetval he had plenty of both time and reasons for letting his imagination elaborate and embellish if not invent his story. Professor I. W. Riley, who examines Smith’s account with a psychologist’s technical knowledge, thinks he had some kind of epileptoid fits, but that the degree cannot be determined.? 2. DISCOVERY OF THE GOLDEN PLATES Smith’s second “vision” came in 1823, three years after the first one. This one occurred at night as he was in bed and in prayer, when he discovered a *The Founder of Mormonism, Appendix II, “Epilepsy and the Visions.” THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 53 light and “immediately a personage appeared at my bedside,” and then the following revelation was made: He called me by name and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni. That God had a work for me to do, and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues; or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people. He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from which they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Saviour to the ancient inhabitants. Also, that there were two stones in silver bows (and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, con- stituted what is called the Urim and Thummim) deposited with the plates, and the possession and use of these stones was what constituted Seers in ancient or former times, and that God had prepared them for the purpose of trans- lating the book. . . . Again, he told me that when I got those plates of which he had spoken (for the time that they should be obtained was not yet fulfilled) I should not show them to any person, neither the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim, only to those to whom I should be commanded to show them; if I did, I should be de- stroyed. 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 deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly, that I knew the place again when I visited it. . . . By this time, so deep were the impres- sions 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 messenger at my bedside, and heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same things as before, and added a caution to me, telling me 54 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM that Satan would try to tempt me (in consequence of the indigent circumstances of my father’s family) to get the plates for the purpose of getting rich. This he forbid me, saying that I must have no other object in view in getting the plates but to glorify God, and must not be influenced by any other motive but that of building his kingdom, otherwise I could not get them.‘ Smith in his narrative goes on to tell that he arose the next morning after this vision so ex- hausted that he was unable to do his work and that his father, noticing his weakness, told him to go home; that on the way home in attempting to cross a fence he fell helpless to the ground and for a time was quite unconscious; that he then heard a voice and saw the same messenger and was commanded to go back to his father and tell him of the vision; and that on doing this his father told him that it was of God and to go and do as the messenger had com- manded. ‘The narrative then proceeds: I left the field and went to the place where the messenger had told me the plates were deposited, and owing to the distinctness of the vision which I had concerning it, I knew the place the instant that I arrived there. Conven- ient to the village of Manchester, Ontario County, New York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of consider- able size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box; this stone was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side, and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all round was *Pearl of Great Price, pp. 89-02. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 55 covered with earth. Having removed the earth and ob- tained a lever which I got fixed under the edge of the stone, and with a little exertion raised it up, I looked in, and there indeed did I behold the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones to- gether in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them. I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger, and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived, neither would arrive until four years from that time, and that he would there meet me, and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates. Smith tells us that he visited the place each year according to the direction of the messenger until the event happened: At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the Breastplate. On the 22d day of September, 1827, having gone, as usual, at the end of another year, to the place where they were de- posited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up to me with this charge, that I should be responsible for them; that if I should Jet them go carelessly or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off; but that if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them, until he, the messenger, should call for them, they should be pro- tected. I soon found out the reason why I had received such strict charges to keep them safe, and why it was that the messenger had said, that when I had done what was re- quired at my hand, he would call for them; for no sooner was it known that I had them, than the most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me; every stratagem that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose; 56 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM the persecution became more bitter and severe than be- fore, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get them from me if possible; but, by the wisdom of God, they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished by them what was required at my hand; when, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I de- livered them up to him, and he has them in his charge until this day, being the 2d day of May, 1838.° This story on the face of it is incredible and bears the marks of an invention, especially when read in the light of the reputation of its author as “very much addicted to lying” and as “a romancer of the first water.” However, we need not rest the case on the reputation of the author, for the story itself is all shot to pieces by contradictory evidence. Joe’s father told his story of the finding of the gold plates which was very different from Joe’s own story. The father said that the son, after his vision, got a horse and wagon with a chest and pillow-case and proceeded with his wife to the place indicated, that as he approached the place devils began to screech and scream, that he secured the uppermost article out of the box and put it in the pillow-case, but when he attempted to secure remaining articles, consisting of a gold hilt and chain and a gold ball, an old man dressed in bloody clothes appeared and said the time had not come to exhibit them, that the devils fol- lowed him and knocked him down, leaving “a black and blue spot” which “‘remained three or four days,” “but Joseph persevered and brought the article ° Pearl of Great Price, pp. 95-060. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 57 safely home.” “I weighed it, and it weighed thirty pounds.” ® Mother Smith also tells a similar story to the effect that Joseph went with his wife for the plates and makes this addition to the tale: “As he was taking them, the unhappy thought darted through his mind that probably there was something else in the box besides the plates, which would be of pecuniary advantage to him. . . . Joseph was over- come by the power of darkness, and forgot the in- junction that was laid upon him.” * We have already referred to the trip Joe made to Pennsylvania for his wife’s household goods when he took Peter Ingersol with him. Ingersol made an affidavit in 1833,-in which he said: One day he came and greeted me with joyful counte- nance. Upon asking the cause of his unusual happiness, he replied in the following language: “As I was passing yesterday across the woods, after a heavy shower of rain, I found in a hollow some beautiful white sand that had been washed up by the water. I took off my frock and tied up several quarts of it, and then went home. On en- tering the house I found the family at the table eating dinner. They were all anxious to know the contents of my frock. At that moment I happened to think about a history found in Canada, called the Golden Bible; so I very gravely told them it was the Golden Bible. To my surprise they were credulous enough to believe what I said. Accordingly I told them I had received a command- ment to let no one see it, for, says I, no man can see it with the natural eye and live. However, I offered to take out *Joseph Smith, Sr., told his story to Fayette Lapham, Esq., who records it in an article in the Historical Magazine for May, 1870. Ibid. 58 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM the book and show it to them, but they refused to see it and left the room. Now,” said Joe, “I have got the d—d fools fixed and will carry out the fun.” Notwith- standing he told me he had no such book and believed there never was such a book, he told me he actually went to Willard Chase, to get him to make a chest in which he might deposit the Golden Bible. But as Chase would not do it, he made the box himself of clapboards, and put it into a pollow case, and allowed people only to lift it and feel of it through the case.® To Willard Chase, who had employed Joe in dig- ging the well in which the “peek-stone’”’ was found, he gave the following account of finding the plates: On the 22d of September he arose early in the morn- ing and took a one-horse wagon of some one that had stayed overnight at their house, without leave or license, and together with his wife, repaired to the hill which contained the book. He left his wife in the wagon by the road, and went alone to the hill, a distance of thirty or forty rods from the road. He said he then took the book out of the ground and hid it in a tree-top, and returned home. He then went to the town of Macedon to work. (Ten days later he went back and found the book safe.) On his return home he said he was attacked by two men in the woods, and knocked them both down and made his escape. Arrived safe and secured his treasure. A few days afterward he told one of my neighbors that he had not got any such book, and never had, but that he told the story to deceive the d d fool (meaning me), to get him to make the chest.® Joe also told his brother-in-law, Alva Hale, that “this ‘peeking’ was all d d nonsense,”’ and Joe’s *This affidavit is given by Howe in Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 235-36. * Kennedy, Early Days, pp. 32-33. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 59 father-in-law, Isaac Hale, in his statement declared that ‘the whole Book of Mormon (so-called) is a silly fabrication of falsehood and wickedness, got up for speculation, and with a design to dupe the credulous and unwary, and in order that its fabri- cators might live upon the spoils of those who swal- lowed the deception.” *° Abigail Harris, a relative of Martin Harris, of whom we shall hear presently, made an affirmation at Palmyra on November 28, 1833, in which she said she was at Martin Harris’s in 1828 when Jo- seph Smith, Sr., and his wife were present and there was talk about the Gold-Bible business, and “the old lady said that after the book was translated the plates were to be publicly exhibited at twenty- five cents admission,” and “she calculated it would bring in annually an enormous sum of money.” She then wanted to borrow five dollars of the visitor for Joseph, ‘to which I replied he might look in his stone, and save his time and money.” Joseph Capron, a neighbor of good character, also throws light on this money-making scheme as follows: At length Joseph pretended to find the gold plates. This scheme, he believed, would relieve the family from all pecuniary embarrassment. His father told me that when the book was published they would be enabled, from the profits of the work, to carry into successful operation the money-digging business. He gave me no intimation, at that time, that the book was to be of a religious character. . . . * Ibid., p. 41. 60 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM He declared it to be a speculation, and, said he, ““When it is completed my family will be placed on a level above the generality of mankind!” “This testimony,” adds J. H. Kennedy, who re- cords Capron’s statement, “strengthens the belief that the later developments of Smith’s ‘speculations’ were undreamed of in the beginning.” * Pomeroy Tucker, who was acquainted with the Smiths and read a good deal of the proof of the original edition of the book, relates that two inti- mate friends of Smith, William T. Hussey and Azel Vandruver, on being refused a sight of the plates by Joe on the ground that they could not see them and live, declared their readiness to run the risk. Tucker continues the story: They were permitted to go to the chest with its owner, and see where the thing was, and observe its shape and size, concealed under a thick piece of canvas. Smith, with his accustomed solemnity of demeanor, positively persist- ing in his refusal to uncover it, Hussey became impetuous, and (suiting his action to his word) ejaculated, “Egad, I'll see the critter, live or die,” and stripping off the can- vas, a large tile brick was exhibited. But Smith’s fertile imagination was equal to the emergency. He claimed that his friends had been sold by a trick of his.?* At a trial in court brought by the wife of Martin Harris to protect her husband’s property from Smith, one witness testified that Joe told him that * Kennedy, Early Days, p. 46. “Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism, p. 31, quoted by Linn, Story, pp. 26-27. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 61 “the box which he had contained nothing but sand,” another witness swore that Joe told him that “it was nothing but a box of lead,” and a third witness declared that Joe told him that “there was nothing at all in the box.” Daniel Hendrix, one of the proof-readers of the book, also said: “I distinctly remember his sitting on some boxes in the store and telling a knot of men, who did not believe a word they heard, all about his vision and his find. But Joe went into such minute and careful details about the size, weight, and beauty of the carvings on the golden tablets, that I confess he made some of the smartest men in Palmyra rub their eyes in wonder.” ** We reserve for later consideration the testimony of the official witnesses to the plates. But the evi- dence already adduced conclusively proves that the story of the finding of the golden plates is untrue and was wholly invented. It is not only wildly im- probable and utterly incredible on its face, but it was told by the Smiths in general and by Joe in particu- lar in various contradictory versions, and it is abso- lutely riddled and destroyed by the testimony of a number of trustworthy acquaintances of Joe to whom he confessed that by his story he had “fixed” “the fools,” and that ‘“‘there never was such a book.” Isaac Hale, the honest father-in-law of this “ro- mancer of the first water,” who had inside and in- timate knowledge of his crooked ways, told the sim- * Linn, Story, p. 27. 62 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM ple truth when he declared, ‘“The whole Book of Mormon is a silly fabrication of falsehood and wick- edness, got up for speculation.” 3. TRANSLATING THE PLATES Smith, having’ conceived the idea of making money out of a book, now set about carrying it out, and to do this he had to make a pretence of trans- lating the alleged plates and to get money to pay for printing the book. He found a financial pro- moter in the person of Martin Harris, a farmer of the neighborhood, whom he induced to believe in the supernatural discovery. Harris placed a mortgage on his farm to finance the enterprise, hav- ing been fooled into believing that there were “mil- lions in it,” although he was stoutly opposed in this move by his wife, who brought suit to prevent the transaction and finally separated from him on ac- count of his being seduced, as she believed, into the swindle. To escape persecution, as he alleged, in New York, taking Harris and his wife Emma with him, Smith went to Harmony, Pa., to begin the work of trans- lation. “Immediately after my arrival,” he says, “I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived at my THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 63 wife’s father’s house in the month of December (1827) and the February following.” Smith pretended that the plates were written in strange characters which he said were mostly “re- formed Egyptian” and his manner of translating was to sit behind a curtain and read off the trans- lation of the characters by means of the “peek- stone,” or, as he sometimes said, by the “Urim and Thummim” which he found with the plates. Isaac Hale, in his statement from which we have already quoted, gives his account of how the busi- ness was carried on, as follows: About this time Martin Harris made his appearance upon the stage, and Smith began to interpret the charac- ters, or hieroglyphics, which he said were engraven upon the plates, while Harris wrote down the interpretation. It was said that Harris wrote down 116 pages and lost’ them. We interrupt Hale’s statement at this point to say that after 116 pages had been translated, Harris insisted on being allowed to take them to New York State to show them to his friends and that Smith, after much protestation and solemnly binding Har- ris to return them, permitted him to do so. But Harris’s wife made way with them, one tradition saying that she burnt them. For fear that if he were to reproduce these pages a discrepancy from his first translation would be discovered and used against him, Smith received a convenient “revela- tion” not to retranslate these plates, and so ended 64 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM this episode. We resume the statement of Hale, Smith’s father-in-law: Soon after this happened, Martin Harris informed me that he must have a greater witness, and said that he had talked with Joseph about it. Joseph informed him that he could not, or durst not, show him the plates, but that he (Joseph) would go into the woods where the book of plates was, and that after he came back Harris should follow his track in the snow, and find the book and ex- amine it for himself. Harris informed me that he fol- lowed Smith’s directions, and could not find the plates and was still dissatisfied. The next day after this happened I went to the house where Joseph Smith, Jr., lived, and where he and Harris were engaged in their translation of the book. Each of them had a written piece of paper which they were comparing, and some of the words were, “my servant seeketh a greater witness, but no greater wit- ness shall be given him.” ... I inquired whose words they were, and was informed by Joseph or Emma (I rather think it was the former), that they were the words of Jesus Christ. I told them that I considered the whole of it a delusion, and advised them to abandon it. The manner in which he 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.** { Harris continued to pester Smith for some surer witness as to the reality and genuineness of the plates and at last persuaded Smith to furnish him with a facsimile copy of some of the characters and let him take them to Professor Charles Anthon, a noted Greek scholar in New York City. The scrap * Kennedy, Early Days, pp. 40-41. JOSEPH SMITH, JR. ie 7 / \ A rs : ae at z —_— = ; : or . po Ose es riya ep © re ae J | , rs 7 we 7 ’ » ' iJ , - 9 7 = — ~ ant 4) oD i ‘ ’ f a0 ey, on ‘au Py re \ : > oy is eas - oe Pl af &.. ¢“s > e - : —- “ ° - s~ .— a é " TA he Nope ~ re a ie ae | ted on - | »® a i : ig . e : i n ck. ei, bd 7 a Soe A) aio 4 t ¥ ew / iat ‘ es ¢ a ae | ne A aq ats Te ‘ Pe ' “ p F » es | » \- é y i. é r & a He { 7 7 Z 4 ~~) é an ry = - 6 , A Sek Mot : + 7 loo 4 aaa + De ‘a ’ ; 7 1) ' e. > F y n 7 iP) Py . 1 ; +s ; 7 : a + “rt a". : ¢ a , 3 q § ¢ : a , a oe ; a ae a ts ‘ ea te i’ ‘ a or ny ~ q z is : | ‘ . { ‘ + - - 7 « . ’ * - a tC P =< i : 7 S :. 7 = LN J ’ ‘ fi 9 ioc j ,§ ‘ +) g 6 aa * "*. j Vv Pv e = . ee » aa : role + "© ren > - o> +t egy ta [oe . » « rim. ’ - J = *' « a 7-2 | @ 4 * Files ois Er 1 . of = . ; rr a ra > © e © * By < cr ey »"< . i ‘ ~~ ; A ial ‘ f ea fr < ii, 7 5 1 if : ° Ky, . ' ¢ I @ 5 he i a —« R ; =_= E « 4 , ‘ rent es dk) i ; 4: + i 2 iA < “a, s ' 7 ~ > Lae : aid we oe f Wi ; ' 3 ; = . a” 7 *, a) , , < ~ 2 bp P - cee J] ‘ « a _ a > : va aa * S Ser i i ae ; % ae oe >)! ’ é 4% 7 ‘vv _ J i ' ; % ¢ i : 2 a ? j -“y - ~ ’ a i ‘ Ss - - a? ie r CPt " , J : ‘ e a a ae 7 Ls ’ i > , > 1 - ; * i THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 65 of paper with Smith’s alleged ‘““Caractors” on it were shown to Professor Anthon and there are two ac- counts of what he said. Smith’s account is that he said “that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic,” and that he gave Harris 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.” Un- fortunately, however, according to Smith, when the professor learned from Harris how the place of the plates had been revealed by an angel, “he took it (his certificate) and tore it to pieces, saying that there was no such thing as ministering angels.” Professor Anthon himself in a letter to E. D. Howe, author of Mormonism Unveiled, under date of February 17, 1834, declared that “the whole story about my pronouncing the Mormon inscription to be ‘reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics’ is perfectly false,”’ and proceeded to tell how he had been visited by “a plain, apparently simple-minded farmer” with a paper which “was in fact a singular scrawl,” and how he had warned him of the ‘“‘roguery” that had been practiced upon him.”® *Facsimiles of this “scrawl” containing Smith’s “Caractors” are given by Riley and Linn. In 1843 announcement was made of the discovery in a mound near Kinderhook, IIl., of six plates “completely covered with characters that none as yet have been able to read,” and this find was exploited by the Mormons as supporting Smith’s discovery. But in 1879 one of the three men that perpetrated the hoax made an affidavit that the find was “a humbug,” and the “Kin- derhook Plates” went into a museum of curiosities along with the “Cardiff Giant.” 66 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Harris’s own account of how the translating was done was as follows: By aid of the seer stone (no mention of the magic spectacles) sentences would appear and were read by the prophet and written by Martin, and, when finished, he would say ‘“‘written’”; and if correctly written, that sen- tence would disappear, and another appear in its place; but if not written correctly, it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely in the language then used.*® Harris’s misfortune in losing the first 116 pages caused much trouble. When Smith heard of the loss he was thrown into as great consternation as was Carlyle when he learned that a servant girl had burnt the manuscript of the first volume of his French Revolution. Smith cried out, “O my God, all is lost,” Harris lost his job and, according to Mother Smith, “a dense fog spread itself over his fields and blighted his wheat.” ** The work of translating was suspended for ten months, and a preface was published in the first edition of the book in which Smith explained that some person or persons had stolen these pages and he was “com- manded of the Lord that I should not translate them over again, for Satan had put it into their hearts to tempt the Lord their God, by altering the words.” The translation was suspended in July, 1828, and resumed on April 15, 1829. Smith’s wife Emma *Linn, Story, p a Biographical Sor of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, p. 145. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 67 acted as scribe for a short time, and then Oliver Cowdery appears upon the scene and henceforth plays an important part in this story. He was a blacksmith, who gave up his trade to teach school in the district in which the Smiths lived, and boarded with them. Cowdery was caught in the coils of the superstitious Smiths, and became Joe’s scribe, first in Pennsylvania, and then at the home of Peter Whitmer at Fayette, Seneca County, N. Y., where the work was carried on until the work was ready for the printer in June, 1829. 4. THE PRINTING AND THE EDITIONS OF THE BOOK Much trouble was experienced in finding a pub- _lisher for the strange book. FE. B. Grandin, pub- lisher of the Wayne Sentinel at Palmyra, was asked by Harris to give an estimate on 3,000 copies, but answered that he did not want the job and tried to persuade Harris, who, now that his money was needed, had been restored to grace with the Smiths, not to invest his money in the scheme, assuring him that it was fraudulent. Application was next made to Thurlow Weed, publisher of the Anti-Masonic Inquirer at Rochester, N. Y., who said: “After reading a few chapters, it seemed such a jumble of unintelligent absurdities that we refused the work, advising Harris not to mortgage his farm and beg- gar his family.”” A definite bid was finally obtained from a Rochester publisher, and then Smith and his 68 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM associates went to Grandin and said to him that as the book would be published anyway it would be better for him to do the work. He agreed to print 5,000 copies for $3,000, and Harris gave a mortgage on his farm as security. It was then that Harris’s wife brought a charge against Smith on the ground of securing money from her husband on fraudulent representation, and Harris denied at the hearing that he had ever contributed a dollar to Smith at the latter’s persuasion. His wife, how- ever, secured a separation from Harris, with a divi- sion of the property.*® We have interesting light upon the book as it was passing through the printing office. Daniel Hen- drix says: I helped to read proof on many pages of the book, and at odd times set some type. ... The penmanship of the copy furnished was good, but the grammar, spelling and punctuation were done by John H. Gilbert, who was chief compositor in the office. I have heard him swear many a time at the syntax and orthography of Cowdery, and declare that he would not set another line of the type. There were no paragraphs, no punctuation and no capitals. All that was done in the printing office, and what a time there used to be in straightening sentences out. During the printing of the book I remember that Joe Smith kept in the background.}® As the work of typesetting progressed the printer demanded partial payments, and when Harris was * Linn, Story, p. 47. * Quoted by Linn, who gives similar testimony from Albert Chan- dler, who was an apprentice in the same printing office at the time. Story, pp. 48-49. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 69 slow in furnishing the money Smith produced a special “revelation,” which declared, “I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon.’ ‘This brought Harris’s share of the farm into the market, and the money was paid. The book appeared in 1830 and was sold at first at $1.25 a volume. This price for the whole edition would yield, it was calculated, a profit of over three thou- sand dollars, but paper profits are not always realized, and as the book fell flat on the market the price went down until Smith, Sr., offered seven vol- umes in payment of a debt of $5.63, and the creditor was glad to get even that much. It was soon discovered that the book was full of errors. Smith’s ignorance cropped out on almost every page. David Whitmer in an interview in his later years declared: ‘So illiterate was Joseph at that time that he didn’t know that Jerusalem was a walled city, and he was utterly unable to pronounce many of the names that the magic power of the Urim and Thummim revealed.” The book passed into a fluid condition and assumed a different form with every edition. In 1842 an edition appeared bearing on its title page the announcement, “Care- fully revised by the translator,” and such corrections have continued and accumulated so that ‘a compari- son of the latest Salt Lake edition with the first has shown more than three thousand changes.” 70 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM 5. THE WITNESSES TO THE PLATES When the Book of Mormon appeared it bore on its title page, as it contains to this day, the following 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 the Lamanites, their brethren, and also the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, 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 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 to 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. This testimony may look impressive, until we scrutinize it more closely and look through it and THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 71 behind it. It is not an affidavit and is not dated. It reads just like one of Smith’s “revelations” and is only another version of the “Revelation given through Joseph, the Seer, to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, in Fayette, Seneca County, New York, June, 1829, given previous to their viewing the plates containing the Book of Mor- mon.’ *° It plainly came from the same hand; Smith wrote this “Testimony” himself. This ‘“Reve- lation” tells these three “witnesses” that “after you have obtained faith, and have seen them with your eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of God,” and then “ye shall testify that you have seen them”: the jury has been coached and told just what they shall say before they hear the case; Joe put the very words into the mouths of these witnesses and copartners in the swindle a year before they signed the “testimony.” And why was it necessary to have “faith” in order to see plates with their eyes? And if they saw them, why was it necessary to testify to them “by the power of God’? Smith’s own account of how these men saw the plates when he took them out into the woods and the plates were supernaturally manifested to them ”* is another wild and utterly improbable story of this “romancer of the first water.” Besides, all these witnesses, Cowdery, Whitmer and Harris, as well as Smith himself, have been proved by abundant ™” Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 17. “Linn, Story, pp. 79-80, ‘quoted from Millennial Star, Vol, XIV. 72 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM testimony to be a set of swindlers and liars, out to make money. The Mormons themselves offer this proof. Out in Missouri two of these precious wit- nesses, Cowdery and Whitmer, were warned to leave in a paper signed by eighty Mormons, in which they were charged with being thieves. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Lyman E. Johnson united with a gang of counterfeiters, thieves, liars and blacklegs of the deepest dye, to deceive, cheat and defraud the Saints out of their property, by every art and stratagem which wickedness could invent; using the influence of the vilest persecutions to bring vexatious lawsuits, villainous prosecutions, and even stealing not excepted.?” After thus destroying the character of these men, an attempt was made to save some shred of the value of their testimony by adding, with brazen ef- frontery, the following claim: We wish to remind you that Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were among the principal of those who were the means of gathering us to this place by their testimony which they gave concerning the plates of the Book of Mormon that they were shown to them by an angel; which testimony we believe now as much as before you had so scandalously disgraced us! As for Harris, he confessed, when pressed by a lawyer in Palmyra as to whether he had seen the plates with his natural eyes: ‘“Why, I did not see them as I do that pencil case, yet I saw them with ™Linn, Story, p. 81. * THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 73 the eye of faith. I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me—though at the time they were covered over witha cloth.” And Smith himself blackened the character of Harris in one of his own publications, the Elders’ Journal, July, 1837, by ap- plying to him the following elegant language: There are negroes who have white skins as well as black ones, granny Parish, and others who acted as lackeys, such as Martin Harris. But they are so far beneath my contempt, that to notice any of them would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make. And now, to cap the climax, every one of these three witnesses became an apostate to the Mormon faith and church. Cowdery, after he was driven _ out by the Mormons, went to Tiffin, Ohio, where he practiced law, renounced his Mormon views, joined the Methodist church and became superintendent of the Sunday school. Afterwards, however, he returned to the Mormons and asked to be rebaptized into the church as a member. Whitmer continued to affirm his belief in the Mormon Bible, but he re- nounced the Mormon church after its adoption of polygamy and started a church of his own, which he called “The Church of Christ.” Harris, after he was driven out from the Mormons, first joined the Shakers and then went to England as a mis- sionary of a sect of Mormons that split off from the main body; while there he was branded by the Millennial Star, the official organ of the Mormon 74 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM church, as that “wicked man” who is referred to on “the 178th page of the Book of Doctrine and Cove- nants.’ He, also, returned to the Mormon church and was rebaptized. By this time Joe’s Bible business is plainly in a very bad way. It is thoroughly discredited. He has discredited his own witnesses, and his own wit- nesses have discredited themselves. They tell con- tradictory stories about the plates, and the Mormons themselves brand them as swindlers and liars. To crown all, the three witnesses all became apostates and renegades from the faith which they helped to foist upon the world; and it matters not that they re- turned and were rebaptized into it; their trust- worthiness has been destroyed. The same fly-leaf that bears “The Testimony of the Three Witnesses” also carries this: “And also the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses.” This is a briefer statement reaffirming the first testimony and containing this additional item that “we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety, that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken.” But what was it that they “hefted’? Very likely Joe showed them a box or something, but possibly it was “‘covered over with a cloth,” as Martin Harris said it was when he saw the plates ‘“‘with the eye of faith,” or it may have contained some of that “beautiful white sand” which Joe told the family he had found and with which he said he had “got the fools fixed,” or that brick—not a ‘gold brick” THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 75 but just “a large tile brick” —which the two young men saw when they jerked the cover off ‘‘the critter.” And who are the ‘eight witnesses” to this second “testimony” that is brought forth to bolster up the first? Four of them are Whitmers, of the same family with David who signed the first testimony, three of them are Smiths, Joseph Smith, Sr., and Hyrum and Samuel, father and brothers of Joe, and all the Smiths are tarred with the same stick, “particularly famous for visionary projects” and “destitute of that moral character which ought to entitle them to the confidence of the community” ; and the other member of this group of witnesses was Hiram Page, a root doctor and son-in-law of Peter Whitmer, who used a “‘peek-stone” to receive “revelations” of his own, a rivalry which the Prophet Joe could not tolerate and therefore he branded Page as one deceived by the devil: “Tell him that those things which he hath written from the stone are not of me, and that Satan deceiveth rma t And so the second group of “witnesses” goes into .the same class of “liars” along with the first and only adds another burden which the unfortunate “plates” must carry. Did all or any of these ‘“‘witnesses” really see any- thing? There is no positive answer to this question, for Joe may have showed them something; but very likely he did not and did not need to show them any- * Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 28. 76 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM thing, for all the Smiths and nearly all if not all of these witnesses knew that the whole business was a money-making scheme and fake. And did Joe have any ‘plates’? There is no probability that he had; he may have had some “white sand” or a “‘tile brick” in a box, but he had no plates “curiously en- graved” in “reformed Egyptian” or any other kind of “Egyptian,” “Hebrew,” “Greek,” “Mexican,” or any other language. The “singular scrawl” on the piece of paper which Joe gave to Martin Harris to take to Professor Anthon contained “all kinds of crooked characters” which Joe or some one else may have copied in part from “a book containing various alphabets,” as the professor said, but they were meaningless and simply the production of “these wretched fanatics,” to use again the professor’s lan- guage. The plates are an invention and deception, the witnesses are untrustworthy and not to be be- lieved, and the “Golden Bible’ is a myth and a fraud. 6. JOSEPH SMITH AS AN “EGYPTIAN” TRANSLATOR There is one crucial instance which occurred sev- eral years later, in which the trustworthiness of Joseph Smith in his “claim to be an inspired trans- lator” has been subjected to a decisive test and he has been proved to be a brazen pretender. In 1833 one Michael H. Chandler, a traveling showman, ap- peared in Kirtland, Ohio, with some Egyptian mum- THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 77 mies and other curiosities. Smith was interested, as his “gold plates” were alleged to be written in “reformed Egyptian,’ and when he was shown some rolls of papyri he at once announced, ‘““We have found that one of these rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph.” The showman found in Smith a ready purchaser of the papyri, and he proceeded to translate the “Book of Abraham,” entitling it ‘““A translation of some an- cient records, that have fallen into our hands, from the catacombs of Egypt; the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” This was published in 1842 in Times and Seasons and later was incorporated in the Pearl of Great Price,** where it remains to this day as one of the inspired books of Mormonism. ‘The translation, extending to twenty-three pages, is a meaningless confusion of words and ideas and should have deceived no one of ordinary intelligence. The Egyptian hieroglyphics had not been fully deciphered in 1833 and Smith was safe from detec- tion in his imposture at that time. This unlocking of the Egyptian language was accomplished later and then pitiless exposure and doom swiftly fell upon Smith. In 1861 Smith’s translation was shown to Theodule Deveria, a scholar connected “The Pearl of Great Price, A Selection from the Revelations, Translations, and Narrations of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: The Deseret News, 1913. 78 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM with the Museum of the Louvre in Paris, and was declared by him “‘to be entirely incorrect.” The complete exposure of the fraud, however, was effected in 1912 by the Rt. Rev. F. S. Spalding, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Utah. He sub- mitted the “Book of Abraham’ to eight distin- guished scholars learned in Egyptian lore and published their answers, a few brief extracts from which are here given.?> Dr. A. H. Sayce, Oxford, England: “It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud. ... The hieroglyphics have been transformed into unintelligible lines. Hardly one of them has been copied correctly.” Smith published with his “translation” crude re- productions of the drawings and hieroglyphics of the papyri. James H. Breasted, University of Chi- cago: “Joseph Smith’s interpretation of them as part of a unique revelation through Abraham very clearly demonstrates that he was totally un- acquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization.’ W. M. Flin- ders Petrie, London University : “None but the igno- rant could possibly be imposed on by such ludicrous blunders.” Dr. John Peters, University of Penn- sylvania: “The text of this chapter, as also the in- terpretation of the plates, displays an amusing ig- “Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator. An Inquiry Conducted by Rt. Rev. F. S. Spalding, D.D., with the Kind Assistance of Capable Scholars. Salt Lake City, Arrow Press, 1912. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 79 norance.” Dr. Edward Meyer, University of Berlin: “The Egyptian papyrus, which Smith de- clared to be the ‘Book of Abraham,’ and ‘translated’ or explained in his fantastical way, and of which three specimens are published in the Pearl of Great Price, are parts of the well- known ‘Book of the Dead.’” Dr. Friedrich von Bissing, University of Munich: “I hope this will suffice to show that Joseph Smith certainly never got a divine revelation in the meaning of the ancient Egyptian script, and that he never deciphered hieroglyphic texts at all.” Professor Orson Pratt, a Mormon authority, de- clared of the Book of Mormon that “if false, it is one of the most cunning, wicked, bold, deep-laid impositions ever palmed upon the world, calculated to deceive and ruin millions who would sincerely receive it as the word of God.” *° In the light of the above exposure, which has never been refuted or denied by Mormons, and in the light of the fact that they still publish the “Book of Abraham” as part of their Prophet’s writings, Orson Pratt’s char- acterization of the Book of Mormon is correct. 7. WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF MORMON? Did Joseph Smith, whom even his father called “Glliterate,” write this book unaided? Much con- troversy has raged around this question. Some *Quoted from Pratt’s Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mor- mon by Spalding, p. Io. 80 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM competent students of the book, such as Professor I. W. Riley,?” do not think it is beyond the capacity of Smith to produce. He undoubtedly had consid- erable mental ability, especially an absorbent mind, retentive memory and fertile imagination, and the contents of the book are made up of the general ideas that were floating around in his day. This point will come up in the next chapter. Nevertheless, it is surprising that this man should have produced this book without some assistance, _and at this point arises the Spaulding-Rigdon theory of its origin. The facts in the case are very com- plicated, and we must condense the story into brief space.”® Solomon Spaulding was born in Connecticut in 1701, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1785, entered the Congregational ministry and after sev- eral years relinquished it and engaged in mercantile business in Cherry Valley, N. Y., and in 1809 re- moved to Conneaut, Ohio, where he was a partner in building an iron forge, a venture which proved un- successful. While residing in Conneaut he became interested in the Indian mounds in the vicinity and " The Founder of Mormonism, pp. 369-305. *E. D. Howe in his Mormonism Unveiled (1834) first investi- gated this question and collected the testimony of many witnesses establishing the practical identity of the story of the Book of Mor- mon with Spaulding’s romance. Robert Patterson in his Who Wrote the Book of Mormon? (1882) strengthened the case by connecting Rigdon with the Spaulding manuscript in Pittsburgh; and Charles A. Shook in his True Origin of the Book of Mormon (1914) still further strengthened the case by connecting Rigdon with Smith before 1830. ' THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 81 wrote a romance purporting to give an account of early Indian history, calling the story the “Manu- script Found,” as it had been unearthed, according to the fiction he invented, in one of the Indian mounds. He was in the habit of reading this manu- script to his neighbors until it became a well-known story, “familiar as household words.” In 1812 he removed to Pittsburgh to see if he could get his book published. Failing in this he moved in 1814 to Amity, Washington County, Pa., where he died in 1816 and was buried in the village graveyard. The - author has visited his grave and seen the broken fragments of his tombstone.”® When the Book of Mormon appeared in 1830, many people at once recognized it as being largely the same as Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found.” Mr. Howe *° in 1833 collected the testimonies of eight witnesses on this point, to which Mr. Patterson adds the testimonies of nine more. We can here transcribe only two or three of these testimonies. John Spaulding, a brother of Solomon, who vis- ited the latter at Conneaut just before his removal, stated: He then told me he had been writing a book, which he intended to have printed, the avails of which he thought would enable him to pay all his debts. The book was *In August, 1906, the fragments were replaced by a granite mon- ument which was paid for by popular local subscription. It bears the original inscription: “In Memory of Solomon Spaulding Who Departed This Life October 20, A. D. 1816. Aged 55 Years,” and also a stanza of a hymn. *° Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 278-287. 82 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM entitled the “Manuscript Found,” of which he read to me many passages. It was an historical romance of the first settlers of America, endeavoring to show that the Ameri- can Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost tribes. It gave a detailed account of their journey from Jerusaleni, by land and sea, until they arrived in America, under the command of Nephi and Lehi. They after- ward had quarrels and contentions, and separated into two distinct nations, one of which he denominated Ne- phites and the other Lamanites. Cruel and bloody wars ensued, in which great multitudes were slain. They buried their dead in large heaps, which caused the mounds so common in this country. ... I have recently read the Book of Mormon, and, to my great surprise, I find nearly the same historical matter, names, etc., as they were in my brother’s writings. I well remember that he wrote in the old style, and commenced about every sen- tence with “And it came to pass,” or, “Now it came to pass,” the same as in the Book of Mormon, and according to the best of my recollection and belief, it is the same as — my brother Solomon wrote, with the exception of the religious matter. Henry Lake, the partner of Spaulding in building the forge, testified: He very frequently read to me from a manuscript which he was writing, which he entitled the ‘Manuscript Found,” and which he represented as being found in this town. I spent many hours in hearing him read said writ- ings, and became well acquainted with their contents... . One time when he was reading to me a tragic account of Laban I pointed out to him what I considered an in- consistency, which he promised to correct; but by refer- ring to the Book of Mormon I find, to my surprise, that it stands there just as he read it to me then. . . . Since that I have more fully examined the said Golden Bible, and have no hesitation in saying that the historical part of THE. GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 83 it is principally if not wholly taken from the “Manuscript Found.” I well recollect telling Mr. Spaulding that the so frequent use of the words, ‘And it came to pass,” “Now it came to pass,” rendered it ridiculous. Similar testimony is given by Mrs. Martha Spaul- ding, wife of John Spaulding, Mrs. Matilda Spaul- ding Davison, widow of Solomon Spaulding who was married to Mr. Davison in 1820, Mrs. S. M. McKinstry, daughter of Solomon Spaulding, and by John N. Miller, Aaron Wright, Oliver Smith, Na- hum Howard, neighbors of Solomon Spaulding, and a number of others, all of whom were familiar with the “Manuscript Found” and declared that in its story of the American Indians as the descendants of the Jews who left Jerusalem and landed in Amer- ica and in its style it corresponds very closely with the historical narrative found in the Book of Mor- mon. Accumulative testimony makes it practically certain that the writer of the Book of Mormon had some kind of access to the “Manuscript Found.” The problem is to connect the two writings, and Sidney Rigdon is proved to be the link between them. He was born in the village of Library, Allegheny County, Pa., in 1793, had a country school educa- tion, became a Baptist preacher in 1819, became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh in January, 1822, and was excluded from the Baptist denomination for doctrinal errors in 1823; later he removed to the Western Reserve, Ohio, and became connected with the followers of Alexander Camp- 84 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM bell or Disciples, and was converted to Mormonism in 1830. The theory at this point is that Spaulding left either his manuscript or a copy of it in the Pitts- burgh printing office of Robert Patterson, father of the author of Who Wrote the Book of Mormon? that Sidney Rigdon by some means obtained this copy and subsequently visited Joseph Smith in Pal- myra and assisted him in producing the Book of Mormon, incorporating into it Spaulding’s story of Indian history. The evidence for this is cumulative and reaches practical certainty. Let it be recorded, however, at once that Rigdon himself, in a letter addressed to the Boston Journal, dated at Commerce, afterwards known as Nauvoo, Ill., where he was a leader among the Mormons, under date of May 27, 1839, made the following positive denial: It is only necessary to say, in relation to the whole story about Spaulding’s writings being in the hands of Mr. Patterson, who was in Pittsburgh, and who is said to have kept a printing-office, and my saying that I was con- cerned in said office, etc., is the most base of lies, without even a shadow of truth. ... If I were to say that I ever heard of the Rev. Spaulding and his hopeful wife I should be a liar like unto themselves. Nevertheless Robert Patterson, in his book, pro- duces half a dozen or more witnesses who were able to connect Rigdon with the Spaulding manuscript. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 85 One of these was Joseph Miller, who lived at Amity and was a ruling elder in the Cumberland Presby- terian Church and was intimate with Rev. Solomon Spaulding when he lived in the same village. Mr. Miller testified as follows: My recollection is that Mr. Spaulding had left a tran- script of the manuscript with Mr. Patterson, of Pitts- burgh, Pa., for publication; that its publication was de- layed until Mr. Spaulding could write a preface, and in the meantime the manuscript was spirited away, and could not be found. Mr. Spaulding told me that Sidney Rigdon had taken it, or that he was suspicioned for it. Recollect distinctly that Rigdon’s name was used in connection with it. Rev. Cephas Dodd, M.D., who was the Presby- terian minister in Amity at the time Mr. Spaulding lived there, and was his physician, also testified that it was his positive belief that Rigdon was an agent in transforming Spaulding’s manuscript into the Book of Mormon. After the death of Spaulding he purchased a copy of the Book of Mormon and in- scribed on one of the fly-leaves the following: This work, I am convinced by facts related to me by my deceased patient, Solomon Spaulding, has been made from writings of Spaulding, probably by Sidney Rigdon, who was suspicioned by Spaulding with pur- loining his manuscript from the publishing house to which he had taken it; and I am prepared to testify that Spaulding told me that his work was entitled, “The Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon; or Unearthed Records of the Nephites.” From his description of its 86 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM contents, I fully believe that this Book of Mormon is mainly and wickedly copied from it. Cephas Dodd.*? June 6, 1831. Rev. John Winter, M.D., was an early minister of the Baptist church in Western Pennsylvania and was teaching a school in Pittsburgh at the time Sidney Rigdon was pastor of the First Baptist Church in that city. He testified that on one occa- sion when he was in Rigdon’s study the latter took from his desk a large manuscript and said in sub- stance: “A Presbyterian minister, Spaulding, whose health had failed, brought this to the printer to see if it would pay to publish it. It is a romance of the Bible.” Mrs. Mary Winter Irvine, a daughter of Rev. Dr. Winter, of Sharon, Pa., where she was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of that place when the present writer was pastor of it and knew her intimately, wrote under the date of April 5, 1881, as follows: I have frequently heard my father speak of Rigdon having Spaulding’s manuscript, and that he had gotten it from the printers to read it as a curiosity; as such he showed it to father; and that at that time Rigdon had no intention of making the use of it that he afterwards did; for father always said Rigdon helped Smith in his scheme by revising and making the Mormon Bible out of Rev. Mr. Spaulding’s manuscript. * Shook, True Origin of the Book of Mormon, p. 120. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 87 The Rev. A. J. Bonsall, D.D., who is now (1925) the pastor of the Sandusky Street Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, and a step-son of Dr. Winter, author- izes the present writer to make the following state- ment: I have repeatedly heard my stepfather, Rev. Dr. John Winter, say that Sidney Rigdon had shown him the Spaulding manuscript romance, which purported to be the history of the American Indians, which manuscript Rigdon had received from the printers. Sufficient evidence has been adduced to connect Rigdon with the Spaulding manuscript in Pitts- burgh. Can Rigdon now be connected with Joseph Smith in the making of the Book of Mormon at Palmyra? The threads of connection at this point are also definite and strong. In the fall of 1830, after the appearance of the Book of Mormon, Rigdon was living at Mentor, Ohio, where he was engaged in farming. In No- vember of that year, four Mormon missionaries stopped at Mentor on their way to the West. “We called upon Elder S. Rigdon,” says Parley P. Pratt, one of the missionaries, “and then for the first time his eyes beheld the Book of Mormon. I, myself, had the happiness to present it to him in person. He was much surprised, and it was with much persuasion and argument that he was prevailed on to read it, and after he had read it, he had a great struggle of mind, before he fully believed and embraced it.” 88 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Forthwith he called together a congregation of his friends and professed the new religion and was bap- tized by Cowdery the next morning. Much is made by Mormon writers of this alleged conversion of Rigdon after the appearance of the Book of Mor- mon to prove that he could have had no connection with the making of that book; and they also contend that it can be shown by the records of his preaching engagements and weddings and funerals that his continuous presence in Ohio is proved, so that he could not have visited Smith at Palmyra in New York. Strong as this evidence looks, it is completely over- thrown by facts in the case. In the first place, there is conclusive testimony that Rigdon foretold the coming of just such a book at least three years be- fore the appearance of the Book of Mormon. Rev. Adamson Bentley, Rigdon’s brother-in-law, in a let- ter dated January 22, 1841, wrote: ‘I know that Sid- ney Rigdon told me that there was a book coming out (the manuscript of which had been engraved on gold plates) as much as two years before the Mor- mon book made its appearance in this country or had been heard of by me.” Darwin Atwater, an elder of the Disciples’ Church, in describing Rig- don’s preaching wrote: “Sidney Rigdon preached for us, and notwithstanding his extravagantly wild freaks, he was held in high repute by many... . That he knew before of the coming of the Book of Mormon is to me certain, from what he said during THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 89 the first of his visits at my father’s some years be- fore. He gave a wonderful description of the mounds and other antiquities found in some parts of America, and said that they must have been made by the Aborigines. He said there was to be a book published containing an account of those things.” Dr. S. Rosa, a leading physician of Ohio, also testi- fies that Rigdon told him before the appearance of the Book of Mormon that “it was time for a new religion to spring up,” and that “it would not be long before something would make its appearance.” *” There is even a hint in the Doctrine and Covenants (“Behold, thou wast sent forth even as John, to prepare the way before me,” Sec. 35) that Rigdon had some connection with Mormonism earlier than his professed conversion. In the next place, several neighbors of the Smiths in Palmyra testify that they had personal knowledge of visits of Rigdon with Smith before 1830. Mrs. Horace Eaton, for thirty-two years a resident of Palmyra, heard from the lips of acquaintances of the Smiths of the presence of a “mysterious stranger” with Joe Smith in the summer of 1827, who “was Sidney Rigdon, a back-sliding clergyman, at this time a Campbellite preacher in Mentor, Ohio.” Pomeroy Tucker, one of the proof-readers of Smith’s book, says that ‘“‘the reappearance of this ™ These testimonies are given in detail by Shook, True Origin, pp. I2I-125. 90 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM mysterious stranger at Smith’s at this juncture was again the subject of inquiry and conjecture by ob- servers,’ and that Rigdon’s “occasional visits to Smith’s had been observed by the inhabitants as those of the mysterious stranger.”’ Abel D. Chase, a neighbor of the Smiths, testified: “I was well ac- quainted with the Smith family. . . . During some of my visits at the Smiths, I saw a stranger there who they said was Mr. Rigdon. He was at Smith’s several times, and it was in the year 1827 when I first saw him there, as near as I can recollect.” Lorenzo Saunders, another “intimate acquaintance of the Smiths,” “saw Sidney Rigdon in the spring of 1827,” and again “in the fall of 1827,” and still again “in the summer of 1828.” °° Finally, the famous Mormon water-tight alibi for Rigdon, showing that he could not have been with Smith prior to 1830, is thoroughly riddled by Shook in a neat and masterly manner. He has tabulated all the records produced by Mormons showing the dates and engagements of Rigdon in Ohio and then pointed out that there are nine wide gaps of over a month each and that “three of these gaps occur in the year 1827, two in 1828, one in 1829 and three in 1830.” “By the facts that I have just given,” he concludes, “I believe that it is positively proved that Sidney Rigdon was in Palmyra, New York, at least four times before he openly became a Mormon: in * For full details see Shook, True Origin, pp. 129-132. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 91 March, 1827; in September, 1827; in June, 1828, and in the winter of 1830.” *4 : There are other complications in this story, but they do not touch the main point. One of these is the fact that a manuscript was found in 1897 in the Sandwich Islands where it had been taken by L. L. Rice, the successor of E. D. Howe, to whom Mr. Howe sold his printing establishment at Painesville, Ohio. Mr. Howe had obtained the manuscript sev- eral years before from the widow of Solomon Spaul- ding. This manuscript, which was hailed by Mor- mons as disproving the Spaulding theory, is now in the Library of Oberlin College and is a genuine manuscript of Mr. Spaulding’s, but it is not the “Manuscript Found” and its discovery only shows that he wrote more than one story. Mr. Howe de- scribes this manuscript *° and never supposed it was the basis of the Book of Mormon.*® The essential facts have now been stated and they are sufficient to make it practically certain that the Rev. Solomon Spaulding’s manuscript of an Indian romance fell into the hands of Sidney Rigdon and by him was utilized in company with Joseph Smith in concocting the Bible of Mormonism. It stands proved that the Book of Mormon and Science and Health,** the two “Bibles” produced in America in * True Origin, pp. 136-151. * Mormonism Unveiled, p. 288. * For the facts of this case see Linn, Story, pp. 56-58. ** See the author’s The Truth About Christian Science, Chapter V. 92 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM the nineteenth century, were conceived in plagia- rism and brought forth in falsity. Mr. Linn sums up this complicated case in the following judicious conclusion: In a historical inquiry of this kind, it is more important to establish the fact that a certain thing was done than to prove just how or when it was done. The entire narra- tive of the steps leading up to the announcement of a new Bible, including Smith’s first introduction to the use of a “peek-stone” and his original employment of it, the changes made in the original version of the announcement to him of buried plates, and the final production of a book, partly historical and partly theological, shows that there was behind Smith some directing mind, and the only one of his associates in the first few years of the church’s history who could have done the work required was Sid- ney Rigdon.*® How little did Solomon Spaulding dream of the unhappy fate that would befall his innocent romance and of the unholy use to which it would be perverted and of the strange altar at which it would be made to serve! This is surely one of the bitterest ironies of history. The author was vividly impressed by this thought as he stood by his lonely grave. “The unconscious prophet of a new Islam,” says Mr. Pat- terson in concluding his book, “‘in all his imaginings * Story, p. 67. This proof was strengthened after the publication of Linn’s Haale by Shook who, as we have seen, discovered additional Rick connecting Rigdon with Smith. True Origin, pp. 136-151. R. Werner, in his recent book Brigham Young (1825), gives an pein and unsatisfactory account of the Spauldifig theory (pp. 57-60) and says, “It was based on the testimony of neighbors and relatives of Solomon Spaulding given more than twenty years after the events of which they were said to be witnesses.” In the light of facts given above it is seen that this statement is incorrect. THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 93 he did not dream that his hand was outlining the Koran, of a dark delusion, that the fables which be- guiled his restless hours would be accepted by hun- dreds of thousands of his fellowmen as the oracles of God, and that in inglorious yet heroic martyr- dom some of them would even seal with their blood their faith in the inspiration of his phantasies. . . . Struggling to escape the burden of his debts, he little imagined how vast the burden he was unwittingly to lay upon his country.” CHAPTER LV THE BOOK OF MORMON: CONTENTS OF THE BOOK NY book speaks for itself. It is open to be read and known of all men and is its own best witness for or most damaging witness against itself. Higher criticism is the process by which we test a book as to its form and contents, consistency with itself and with its historical environment, truth and trustworthiness. It is hard for a book to conceal its real authorship and age, genuineness and authen- ticity; and if it is spurious in its alleged authorship and is a literary fraud, its sin is sure to find it out. If we were to read in a book that purported to have been written in the year 1400 A. D., that in that year a daring adventurer flew in an airship from England to America, we would know that the claim of the book as to the age of its authorship was false, for at that time there was no airship and the con- tinent of America was not known. The application of this principle plays havoc with the claims of many a book. This process of criticism has been applied to the Book of Mormon with destructive effect. The first writer to do this was the ex-Mormon John Hyde in his Mormonism (1857), and his two chap- 94 THE BOOK OF MORMON 95 ters, IX-X, on the “Internal Evidences” and the “External Evidences” of the book are a masterly piece of critical work. Hyde is followed by Sten- house, another ex-Mormon, in his Rocky Mountain Saints (1873), Chapter XLVIII, who goes over the same ground with the same results. I. NAMES IN THE BOOK The book contains over five hundred names, such as Lehi, Nephi, Maroni and Mormon, and we in- quire as to their origin. They are in a way modeled after the general type of Biblical names, but they are also different. Who invented them? Solomon Spaulding. We have already seen that the prac- tical identity in their historical matter of Spaul- ding’s “Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon”’ and Smith’s Book of Mormon has been established by many witnesses. This identity specially applies to the names in the two writings. John Spaulding, the brother of Solomon, in his statement says: “I find nearly the same names, etc.” Joe Smith ap- propriated Solomon Spaulding’s names out of his Indian romance. We have Smith’s own account, in the Times and Seasons, of the origin and meaning of the word “Mormon,” which is as follows: Before I give a definition of the word, let me say that the Bible, in its widest sense, means good; for the Saviour says, according to the Gospel of St. John, “I am the Good 96 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM 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; the Latin, bonus; the Greek, kalos; the Hebrew, tob; the Egyptian, mo. Hence, with the addition of more, or the contraction mor, we have the word Mormon, which literally means more good. The word “mormon” as given in the Century Dictionary is from the Greek popywr, meaning “bugbear,” and in zoology is the name of several animals, including a baboon. In the Book of Mor- mon it occurs in the Book of Mosiah XVIII, 4, and is the name of the place where Alma baptized those whom he led to repentance, and it next occurs in 3 Nephi V, 20, where we read: “I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi.” The “Words of Mormon,” which is one of the divisions of the Book of Mormon, begins: “And now, I Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making, into the hands of my son Moroni, behold, I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites.”* It is said that when the Mormons learned that the Greek word Mormon means a “bugbear,” they began to look on the name *It is a highly significant fact and an important link in the evidence connecting Smith’s book with Spaulding’s manuscript that the word Mormon as the name of a place and the word Nephites as the name of a people occur in the very title of Spaulding’s production, which is “Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon; or Unearthed Rec- ords of the Nephites.” THE BOOK OF MORMON 97 as a term of reproach and ridicule and have ever since objected to it, calling themselves “Saints.” 2. GENERAL CONTENTS AND SOURCES OF THE BOOK The title-page of the first edition of this book reads: ““The Book of Mormon: an Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.” Then followed a general statement as to the origin and contents of the book. “By Joseph Smith, Junior, Author and Proprietor.” For this latter statement the present editions substi- tute “Translated by Joseph Smith, Jun.” The Mormon claim for this book, as set forth in the Divine Authenticity, a book by Orson Pratt, an early Apostle and defender of the faith, is that “the witnesses of the Book of Mormon are not only equal in number, but superior in certainty to those which this generation have of Christ’s resurrection,” and that “this generation have more than one thousand times the amount of evidence to demonstrate and forever establish the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon, than they have in favor of the Bible.” ? He further says that “the nature of the message in the Book of Mormon is such that, if true, none can be saved who reject it, and, if false, none can be saved who receive it.” The truth and value of this claim, on which we already have had some light, will further appear as we proceed. *Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 525. 98 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM We have read considerable portions of this book and found it hopelessly confusing and repetitious and dull and full of absurdities. We transcribe a few verses, for the book is divided into chapters and verses like the Bible, from 1 Nephi, Chapter VIII: 1. And it came to pass that we had gathered together all manner of seeds of every kind, both of grain of every kind, and also seeds of fruit of every kind. 2. And it came to pass that while my father tarried in the wilderness, he spake unto us, saying, Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen a vision. 3. And behold, because of the thing which I have seen, I have reason to rejoice in the Lord, because of Nephi and also of Sam; for I have reason to suppose that they, and also many of their seed, will be saved. 4. And behold, Laman and Lemuel, I fear exceedingly because of you; for behold, methought I saw in my dream, a dark and dreary wilderness. 5. And it came to pass that I saw a man, and he was dressed in a white robe; and he came and stood before me. 6. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, and bade me follow him. The volume of 623 pages (edition of 1918) is divided into fifteen books, which are named as fol- lows: “First Book of Nephi, His Reign and Min- istry,” seven chapters; “Second Book of Nephi,” fifteen chapters; “Book of Jacob, the Brother of Nephi,” five chapters; “Book of Enos,” one chapter ; “Words of Mormon,’ one chapter; “Book of Omni,” one chapter; “Book of Mosiah,” thirteen chapters; “Book of Alma, a Son of Alma,” thirty THE BOOK OF MORMON 99 chapters; “Book of Helaman,” five chapters; “Third Book of Nephi, One of the Disciples of Jesus Christ,’ one chapter; “Book of Mormon,” four chapters; “Book of Esther,” six chapters; ‘Book of Moroni,” ten chapters. The following is Joseph Smith’s own summary of the contents of the book, as published in the Times and Seasons of March 1, 1842: The history of America is unfolded from its first settle- ment by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the 5th Century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been in- habited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem about 600 years before Christ. They were principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the in- habitance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle toward the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country. There were three emigrations out of Asia: the first of the family of Jared from the Tower of Babel, whose descendants were wholly destroyed more than 600 years B. C. The second of the family of Lehi from Jerusalem about 600 B. C., the righteous part of whose descendants were destroyed in a great bat- tle 400 A. D., the wicked part of these descendants being now the American Indians; and third, the 100 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM “people of Zarahelma,” the Jews, who came from Jerusalem about eleven years after Lehi, and whose descendants were destroyed by the wars or mingled among those of Lehi. The history of the wanderings and wars of these families was engraved by their prophet on plates of brass and gold and “ore,” and religiously preserved until they came into the hands of Mormon, one of the descendants of Lehi. He made an abridgment of the history in 384 A.D., and, after burying the original plates, together with certain other curiosities, in a hill, gave the abridgment to his son Moroni, who added to it an abridgment of the history of the people of Jared and then boxed both up and buried them in the hill “Cumorah” in New York State in 400 A. D. There, according to the Mormon story, on September 22, 1827, they were given by an angel to Joseph Smith, who “translated them by the gift and power of God.” The first 116 pages of the translation, as we have seen, were lost, and the trans- lation of the rest of the plates constitutes the present Book of Mormon. Hyde, however, enumerates twenty-four other plates and articles which, accord- ing to the book itself, were also buried at Cumorah and are yet awaiting to be exhumed.? We have already given the reasons for believing that the historical framework and matter of the book are principally taken from Spaulding’s “Manu- * Mormonism, pp. 213-14. THE BOOK OF MORMON 101 script Found.” To this Indian “romance” has been added a large amount of Scriptural and other re- ligious matter. About one-eighteenth of the book is taken from the Bible, no credit being given for this in the earliest editions, but in the present edi- tion proper credit is given. The following chapters are taken bodily: Isaiah 2 to 14, 18, 19, 21, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54; Matt. 5, 6, 7; 1 Cor. 13. Besides these chapters, Hyde counted, from page 2 to page 428, 298 direct quotations from the New Testament, some of them paragraphs and others sentences. In addition to these literal quotations there are numer- ous and extensive adaptations: a long imitation of the chapter in Hebrews on faith, new variations of the woes against the Pharisees, and “twenty-six pages of the supposititious sayings and doings of the Lord in his Advent in America.” Finally there are numerous transformations of Scriptural matter; “for example, the parable of the dying olive tree is grafted on the metaphor of the wild olive tree and the whole, with its ramifications, spreads over nine pages.” All this Biblical matter, including many chapters of literal quotations from the Authorized _ Version, is represented to have been translated from the “reformed Egyptian” on the plates. Much of the original matter contained in the book can be traced to the religious controversies of the day and some of it is more or less autobiographical. The following passage with which the Book of Mormon opens is an instance: 102 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father ; 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. The name of this prophet is given as Nephi, but the acts are the acts of Joseph. The dream of Lehi, recorded on pages 15-16, when compared with the dream of Joseph Smith, Sr., as recorded in Mrs. Smith’s Biographical Sketches, pages 58-59, is seen to be closely parallel. Much of the knowledge relating to the American Indians was such as was familiar to Joe in his boy- hood, to whom Indians were a common sight. In his mother’s biographical book we read this passage: During our evening conversations, Joseph would oc- casionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabi- tants of this country, their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their build- ings, 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 life with them. Fenimore Cooper, living in an adjoining county, idealized the Indians, but to Joe they “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. .. . THE BOOK OF MORMON 103 They dwelt in tents; 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 their slain. . . . They carried the bow, the cimiter and the axe, they smote off the scalp of their enemies; they took many prisoners and tortured them.” The theory that the American Indians are de- scendants of the Hebrews and in particular of “the lost Ten Tribes of Israel,’ who crossed the Pacific to America, has long been prevalent and there is a considerable literature on the subject. A book on the subject by Elias Boudinot entitled A Star in the West, or an Attempt to Discover the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, appeared in 1816, and some such book may have fallen into the hands of Smith. This was the theory of Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found.” Our conclusion at this point is that the general © contents of the book were drawn from Spaulding’s “Manuscript,” the Bible, and the Indian lore and pre- vailing ideas of the time. A further examination of these ideas will be made in the next section. 3. MARKS OF INVENTION IN THE BOOK We now come to a closer critical examination of the book to test its claim to be a supernatural “‘rev- elation” to Joseph Smith, Jr. The story of the book is full of impossibilities from beginning to end. The claim that the plates contained “the learning of the 104 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Jews and the language of the Egyptians” is absurd, for the Jews knew nothing of the Egyptian lan- guage. Hyde calculates that plates of brass and gold and “ore” that would have held the Book of Mormon “would have formed an immense volume of great weight,” perhaps several hundred pounds, yet Joe, in one of his accounts, declares that after finding it he ran all the way home with it. The first emigration under Jared crossed the Pa- cific in eight “barges” which “were small and they were light upon the water,” and “‘the length thereof was the length of a tree”! Yet these small boats, something like Indian dugouts, were tossed about on the Pacific “three hundred and forty and four days,” and carried not only the emigrants but their “herds and flock” and “all kinds of animals after their kind,” including even “the fish of the waters,” with not only “food for all,” but also “fresh water for the same length of time.” When, guided by a mysterious compass, they landed “in the promised land,” somewhere on the Western Coast of Central or South America, they found there horses and asses, cows and oxen, swine and elephants, though not one of these animals then existed on this continent. They also found “cure- loms and cumons,” but these creatures cannot be disputed as they are Smith’s own creations. The descendants of Jared multiplied and became a great people, but grew in wickedness so that wars sprang up among them and depopulated the country. THE BOOK OF MORMON 105 In one of these battles two million men were slain. Strange things happened in these battles. For in- stance we read: And it came to pass that when all had fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with loss of blood. And it came to pass when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came to pass that, after he smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised upon his hands and fell; and after he had struggled for breath, he died. Another singular occurrence was the following: And when Moroni had said these words, he went forth among the people, waving the rent of his garment in the air, that all might see the writing which he had wrote upon the rent, and crying with a loud voice. The book swarms with anachronisms, one of the things a fraudulent author can hardly escape and one of the surest proofs of invention and deception. We read of the “Gospel” and of “churches” six hundred years before Christ, and a hundred years before Christ “‘all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them gladly the name of Christ or Christians, as they were called, because of their be- lief in Christ who should come.” After his death Christ appeared to these people in America and was transfigured before them and delivered discourses much like the Sermon on the Mount. He appeared before a multitude of 2,500 persons and commanded them, “Arise and come forth unto me that ye may 106 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM thrust your hands into my side,’ and the whole multitude ‘‘did thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet; and this they did, going forth one by one, until they had all gone forth.” Allowing one-quar- ter of a minute for each person, this action would have taken over ten hours. One of the astounding anachronisms in the book is the fact that all the Scripture quotations, which it is claimed were translated from the Egyptian lan- guage on the plates, are in the English of the Au- thorized Version, mistakes and all! For instance, in incorporating 1 Cor. 13:5, in the ‘““Book of Mo- roni,” the phrase “is not easily provoked,” reads as in the Authorized Version, but the word “easily” is not found in the Greek and is dropped in the Re- vised Version. Joe’s “Urim and Thummim,” however, did not detect the absence of this word and he put it in. There are hundreds of such instances. By the same token of anachronism Shakespeare is proved to be a plagiarist, for his famous phrase “from whence no traveler can return” was used in 2 Nephi 1, 14, twenty-two hundred years before the bard of Stratford was born. Passages from the New Testament are quoted hundreds of years before it was written, and the Copernican theory of the solar system is proved fifteen hundred years before Copernicus (“for sure it is the earth that moveth, and not the sun.” Helaman 12:15). Hundreds of these anachronisms betray the fraudulent author- THE BOOK OF MORMON 107 ship of the book. A multitude of modern words, such as “baptize,” “‘barges,” ‘Bible,’ sprinkle its pages. Ungrammatical sentences and the illiterate use of words abound.* As the book had its origin in Spaulding’s ““Manu- script Found” as worked over by Rigdon and pos- sibly further worked over or at least copied by Smith, we cannot tell how many of these anachro- nisms and other errors go back to Rigdon and to Spaulding, but we may well attribute the illiteracy to Smith, for, according to David Whitmer, a Mormon authority, he “was illiterate and but little versed in biblical lore, and was ofttimes compelled to spell the words out, not knowing the correct pro- nunciation.”’ © 4. ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF THE BOOK The general idea of the Book of Mormon, that it is a final revelation completing that of the New Testament as the New Testament completes the Old, has appeared from time to time. The following famous instance affords a remarkable precedent and parallel to the revelation and plates of Joseph Smith: About the close of the twelfth century appeared among the mendicant friars that ominous work, which, under the title of “The Everlasting Gospel,” struck terror into the Latin hierarchy. It was affirmed that an angel had *Rev. M. T. Lamb has collected many of these in his The Mor- mons and Their Bible, pp. 44-51. *Ibid., p. 50. 108 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM brought it from heaven, engraven on copper plates, and had given it to a priest named Cyril, who delivered it to the Abbot Joachim. The abbot had been dead about fifty years, when there was put forth, A. D. 1250, a true exposition of the tendency of the book, under the form of an introduction, by John of Parma, the general of the Franciscans, as was universally suspected or alleged.® Belief in this “Everlasting Gospel” as the final Gospel superseding all previous revelations, per- sisted even down to the Reformation, though “the burning of thousands of these ‘Fratricelli’ by the In- quisition was altogether inadequate to suppress them.” Sidney Rigdon, who was a scholar of considerable attainments and was afterward Professor of Church History in Nauvoo Uni- versity, must have known this story, for it was well known to students of church history and was published in Mosheim’s Ecclesias- tical History, Ancient and Modern, which was a widely circulated book and an abridged edition of which was published in Philadelphia in 1812. His- tory has strange ways of repeating itself and thus the very idea of the Book of Mormon may have been derived from medieval history. The Mormons claim that their book contains the true history of the first settlement of this continent and of the origin of the American Indians and that it gave an account of the building of the ancient cities whose ruins are now found in Mexico and Central and South America before these ruins were *Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 382. THE BOOK OF MORMON 109 known to modern historians and archeologists. This claim has been utterly disproved in all its parts. Shook gives the names of more than thirty volumes in English on American history and archeology con- taining an account of these ruins, that were pub- lished before 1830, many of them books in popular circulation. Spaulding and Rigdon must have known some of these books.’ It has been further shown that the general ideas as to the early settlement of this continent found in the Book of Mormon were such as were preva- lent before 1830. Shook has shown this in an ex- haustive examination of the subject, and his con- clusions are summarized by him as follows: 1. According to the Book of Mormon the arts, habits, customs, language and religion of ancient America were brought from the Old World. This opinion was held by the great majority of Americanists at the beginning of the last century, one deriving American culture from China, another from Atlantis, another from Polynesia, and another from Palestine. 2. The book claims that the first inhabitants of this continent came direct from the Tower of Babel. A be- lief that was shared in by such early writers as Ulloa, Villagutierre, Torquemada, L’Estrange, Thompson and others. 3. The book declares that the American Indians are descendants of the children of Israel. Of earlier writers who held this view may be mentioned Thorowgood, Penn, Ben Ezra, Beatty, Edwards, Stiles, Smith, Boudinot, Adair, Mayhew and Eliot. In 1873 Foster declared that this theory was “profoundly entertained a century ago.” *Cumorah Revisited, pp. 131-134. 110 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM 4. The book tells us further that the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi were inhabited in ancient times by highly civilized peoples, distinct from the American Indians. This theory was not new in 1830, having been advanced about the beginning of the century by Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, and was held at that time by the greater number of American archeologists. 5. After the defeat of the Nephites at Hill Cumorah we are told that their remnant fled into the “south coun- tries.’ Heckewelder, as we have seen, gave to the world in 1819 a Delaware tradition according to which the Tallegwi, the Ohio mound builders, after their defeat by the combined forces of the Lenape and Hurons, also fled southward. 6. The book further declares that two distinct, civi- lized peoples, the Jaredites and the Nephites, dwelt, in ancient times, in Central America and Mexico. Long before 1830 the ethnical distinction between the Mayas and Nahuas had been observed. 7. The Jaredites, it is claimed, were all exterminated, with the exception of two individuals. The theory of “extinct,” “vanished,” and “lost” races was held long be- fore it entered into the minds of Spaulding, Rigdon and Smith. 8. The belief that the Christian religion had been preached in America, as made in the Book of Mormon, was first advocated by many of the Spanish priests of Mexico, who saw in the Aztec god, Quentzalcoatl, the Apostle Thomas, who, they thought, preached in America during the first century of our era. Qg. Smith’s claim that he found the plates in Hill Cumorah may have been suggested by the Stockbridge Indian tradition, obtained by Dr. West and published in Boudinot’s Star in the West, in 1816, according to which “their fathers were once in possession of a ‘Sacred Book’ which was handed down from generation to genera- tion and at last hid in the earth.” THE BOOK OF MORMON 111 Nearly all of these points have been disproved by modern archeology, and over against them Shook places the following conclusions of present Ameri- canists, which are supported by numerous authori- tative quotations and “have been fully established in the preceding pages’’: 1. That the American race is, and has been, one from the close of the Glacial Period to the present, and that the American Indians are not descendants of the children of Israel. 2. That the civilization of the ancient races was in- digenous and was not derived from either Egypt or Palestine, the analogies brought forward to prove such a derivation being mere coincidences. 3. That none of the ancient peoples had attained to the stage of culture attributed to the peoples of the Book of Mormon, being ignorant of the arts of smelting and working iron and the use of alphabetic characters. 4. That the theory of extinct races—that is, extinct in the sense in which Mormons use the term, is a pure fallacy, the ancient Mound Builders, Cliff Dwellers, Cen- tral Americans, Mexicans and Peruvians being the direct ancestors, in both blood and culture, of those races found here by the whites. 5. That the ancient races were neither Jews nor Chris- tians, but pagans and worshipers of the elements and phenomena of nature, mountains, rocks, trees, beasts, birds and men. 6. That the ancient empires were very small as com- pared with the continent and did not comprehend parts of both Americas. And 7. That the trend of migration in the Northern Conti- nent was from the north to the south, instead of the opposite direction. Written across the claim of the historical credibility of the Book of Mormon, in letters so bold that every intel- 112 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM ligent, honest eye may read them, is the word “TEKEL,” “thou art weighed in the balances and art found want- nee), The theological ideas in the Book of Mormon are also easily traced to their sources in the religious creeds and controversies of the day. In the early decades of the nineteenth century Western New York, along with New England, of which it was an extension, was a hotbed of religious sects and rival- ries, when Calvinism and Arminianism and Univer- salism were at odds and many strange isms were running rife. Alexander Campbell appeared at this time in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio and injected his controversial views into the arena, Sidney Rigdon, after his exclusion from the Baptist Church, becoming one of his followers. All of these ideas and conflicts are reflected in the pages of the Book of Mormon. The orthodoxy of Presbyterian- ism, with which the Smiths were affiliated, was under suspicion at this time. In 1837, as we have noted, the four synods of Genesee, Geneva, Utica and Western Reserve were judged “out of connec- tion with the Presbyterian Church,” and ‘‘a few trickles of rationalism were bound to seep into Joseph’s skull.” Professor I. W. Riley has traced the theological ideas in the Book of Mormon, placing in parallel columns passages from it and from the Westmin- ister Confession of Faith, and his conclusion is: ®*Cumorah Revisited, pp. 134-136, 565-566. THE BOOK OF MORMON 113 Strange as it may seem, the earliest (Indian) tribes were Old School Presbyterians. If the speech of Nephi, to his brethren, be compared with the Westminster Stand- ards, a close parallelism will be disclosed. In all this the author’s borrowings were the easiest possible. Even if the rest of the family did not remain good Presby- terians, the Westminster Confession was to be had in other ways; it appeared, for instance, in the frequent re- prints of the New England Primer, so that as children thumbed its quaint pages, they sucked in Calvanism. But if the young prophet had once learned what “man’s chief end” was, he did not continue to believe that “In Adam’s fall we sinned all’’; early in his book he began to drift towards Universalism, saying that “the way is prepared from the fall of man,” and that “salvation is free to all.” This marked transition in habits of thought is to be gath- ered from the elements of the reaction. The Book of Mormon is said to present orthodox Trinitarianism; the reverse is the truth: it is a hodge-podge of heterodoxy. How the author came by the variant doctrines is a per- tinent question, for it shows his absolute dependence on his own times.® Professor Whitsitt, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., in his article on “Mormonism” in The Concise Dictionary of Re- ligious Knowledge (New York, 1891), analyzes the Book of Mormon with the following result: In its theological positions and coloring the Book of Mormon is a volume of Disciple theology (this does not include the later polygamous doctrine and other gross Mormon errors). This conclusion is capable of demon- stration beyond any reasonable question. Let notice also be taken of the fact that the Book of Mormon bears traces of two several redactions. It contains, in the first °The Founder of Mormonism, pp. 132-134. 114 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM redaction, that type of doctrine which the Disciples held prior to November 18, 1827, when they had not yet for- mally embraced what is commonly considered to be the tenet of baptismal remission. It also contains the type of doctrine which the Disciples have been defending since November 18, 1827, under the name of the ancient Gospel, of which the tenet of so-called baptismal remission is a leading feature. All authorities agree that Mr. Smith obtained possession of the work on September 22, 1827, a period of nearly two months before the Disciples con- cluded to embrace this tenet. The editor felt that the Book of Mormon would be sadly incomplete if this notion were not included. Accordingly, he found means to com- municate with Mr. Smith, and, regaining possession of certain portions of the manuscript, to insert the new item. ... Rigdon was the only Disciple minister who vigorously and continuously demanded that his brethren should adopt the additional points that have been in- cluded. Alexander Campbell, the founder of the Disciples, to the tenets of which Sidney Rigdon became a con- vert, as early as 1832 wrote a pamphlet entitled “Delusions: an Analysis of the Book of Mormon.” in which he says: He (the author) decides all the great controversies (discussed in New York in the last ten years), infant bap- tism, the Trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fast- ing, penance, church government, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may bap- tize, and even the questions of Freemasonry and the rights of man. Such are the contents of this book that claims to be a new supernaturally originated and inspired THE BOOK OF MORMON 115 Bible and the final revelation and completion of Christianity. We have seen that its alleged origin is absurd, that it swarms with impossibilities and anachronisms and errors, and that it was fabricated out of Solomon Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon” as worked over by Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith, Jr. The result is a hodge- podge of confusion and nonsense. As the ‘“‘Apoc- ryphal Gospels” in their silliness and absurdity stand in such glaring contrast with the historic sobriety and reality of the genuine Gospels as affords further proof of the truth and divine origin of the New Testament, so do these modern new “Bibles” by their irrationality in contrast with the sanity and beauty and sublimity of the true Bible confirm our faith in it as the Word of God. CHAPTER V THE FOUNDING AND ORGANIZATION OF THE MORMON CHURCH DEAS cannot live without a body and cannot travel without hands and feet. Spirit cannot go naked through the world but must incorporate itself in flesh, and religion everywhere, however purely spiritual it may be, soon secretes an organization. Joseph Smith and his few associates now had the idea of founding a religion and the next step was to organize a church. I. THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH Before the Golden Bible was completed, accord- ing to Smith a messenger from heaven, who turned out to be John the Baptist, appeared to Smith and Cowdery in May, 18209, ‘‘and having laid his hands upon us, he ordained us, saying: Upon you, my fel- low servants, in the name of the Messiah, I confer the priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering angels, and of the Gospel of repent- ance, and of baptism by immersion for the remis- sion of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again 116 THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 117 an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” * The messenger further informed them that “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 commands us to go and be baptized, and gave us directions that I should baptize Cowdery, and that afterwards he should baptize me.” This they did forthwith, and no sooner had Smith baptized Cowdery than the Holy Ghost fell upon him and Cowdery “stood up and prophesied many things which should shortly come to pass,” which things, however, Smith dis- creetly failed to record. This ordination is held by Mormon authorities to exceed that of the Pope and bishops of Rome because it came direct from heaven and not through a human succession. Smith and Cowdery began preaching their new religion and converts began to accept it. Smith’s brother Samuel was the first convert, Cowdery bap- tizing him, Hyrum Smith was the second, and pres- ently there were little groups of converts in nearby villages which were formed into churches. Almost every new convert was the subject of a special reve- lation to Smith, who was now receiving many such communications which may be found recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants. On April 6, 1830, “the church of Christ in these last days” was “regularly organized and established agreeable to the laws of our country, by the will and * Pearl of Great Price, p. 98. 118 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM commandments of God.” ? This meeting was held in the house of Peter Whitmer at Fayette, N. Y., Smith and Cowdery laying their hands on the con- verts and then administering the communion. Six members were present at this meeting, but the whole number of members at this time is given as being about seventy. The church at first had no distinctive name, it being designated by Smith as “My Church,” and on the title-page of the first edition of the Book of Commandments it was called the “Church of Christ.”” The name “Mormons” was never accept- able to the early followers of Smith, and the present official title, “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,’ was adopted by a church council on May 4, 1834. Such was the humble start of this church that was destined to grow into an organization with hun- dreds of thousands of members and to throw its tentacles across the continent and into lands beyond the seas. 2. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH The church that was founded in the house of Peter Whitmer with six members had for its officers Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery as its first and second elders. But church polity grows by a pro- cess of evolution as need arises for further division ? Doctrine and Covenants, p. 121. THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 119 and distribution of powers. The Mormon Church rapidly developed its organization and in time be- came a highly complex and efficient system of government and propaganda. Smith himself outlined the system in a series of revelations, assigned to different dates, that are found in sections 18, 20, 102 and 107 of the Doctrine and Covenants. There can be little doubt that Rig- don furnished Smith the scheme, for David Whit- mer in his “Address to Believers in the Book of Mormon” says: Rigdon would expound the Old Testament Scriptures of the Bible and Book of Mormon, in his way, to Joseph, concerning the priesthood, high priests, etc., and would persuade Brother Joseph to inquire of the Lord about this doctrine and about that doctrine, and of course a revela- tion would always come just as they desired it. This Mormon authority manifests no surprise that the ‘revelation would always come just as they desired it.” A “revelation” in June, 1829 (Sec. 18), directed the appointment of twelve disciples or apostles, and in June, 1830 (Sec. 21), Smith received the follow- ing “revelation” designating his own office in the church: ‘Behold there shall be a record kept among you, and in it thou shalt be called a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of the church through the will of God the Father, and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, being in- spired of the Holy Ghost to lay the foundation 120 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM thereof, and to build it up unto the most holy faith.” Clothed with this authority, Smith arrogated to him- self the sole right to receive “revelations,” and he could produce such a revelation at any moment to meet any emergency, and by this means he put one up and another down and ruled his organization with the most arbitrary and despotic power. Ina series of “revelations” he designated various mem- bers of his family as well as others to offices, but the “revelation” of April, 1829, contains the gen- eral outline of his system, which is based on the polity of the priesthood in the Old Testament. Without following in detail the steps by which the polity of the Mormon Church was developed, it will be in order at this point to give an outline of its organization as it stands today. It is a hier- archy with authority concentrated at the top and descending to the bottom. At the head of the hierarchy is the president, who is the supreme authority as the successor of Joseph Smith, the “seer, translator, prophet.” He alone can receive “revelations,” his arbitrary word is supreme and final and he is “the reigning sultan of the church.” With the president are associated two councilors, and the three together constitute the “first presi- dency,’ who are supposed to be the successors of Peter, James and John and to typify the trinity. The word “quorum” is a general name for various groups of officers within the organization of the THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 121 church. The president and his two councilors con- stitute the “quorum of the first presidency.” Next in order but standing aside from the direct line of power is the “patriarch,’ who has the power of pronouncing “blessings,” usually for a considera- tion. This office, which was instituted by Joseph Smith, Jr., and assigned to his father and next to his brother Hyrum, is in effect hereditary in the Smith family and ‘“‘seems to have been created to provide a title for one of that race.” He may have “visions” but not “revelations” and has no real power but “deports himself as ecclesiastical supernumeraries have done since the days of Amen Ra.”’ * Next after the “first presidency” in authority is the ‘quorum of the twelve apostles,” the president being one of these ex officio with authority equal to that of the other eleven. They ordain all other officers, elders, priests, teachers and deacons, lead all religious meetings and administer the rites of baptism and the communion. They are a traveling high council and succeed to the supreme authority in case the president dies or is disabled. The “high council” proper consists of twelve high priests and is the supreme court of the church for the trial of important cases and to hear appeals from subordi- nate high councils. Below the “quorum of the twelve” are the “‘sev- enties’ quorums.” These bodies are composed of *Frank J. Cannon in his Brigham Young and His Mormon Em- pire, from which this account of the organization of the Mormon church is in part taken. 122 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM elders divided into groups of seventy, of which there are now about one hundred and fifty. Each “sev- enty” has seven presidents, and every seven of the seventies has a president, and all of these presidents constitute a quorum. These presidents are virtually subordinate apostles and they are the missionaries and propagandists of the church. Next come the “high priests,” whose duty it is to officiate in all the offices of the church in the absence of the higher officials. The priests, teachers and deacons constitute “the Aaronic priesthood.” The “priesthood of Melchisedec”’ is made up of the presi- dent, two councilors, patriarch, apostles, presidents of the seventies, elders and high priests. In the Aaronic priesthood, which is subordinate to the priesthood of Melchisedec and is occupied mainly with temporal affairs, the highest office is that of the presiding bishop who superintends the collection of the tithes. The church is divided into “stakes of Zion,” or territorial divisions, of which there are now ninety- four, nine of these being outside of the United States. Each stake is divided into wards, and each ward into districts, each of which has its own meet- ing house, Sunday school, day school, teachers, and debating and literary societies. Each stake also has its first presidency consisting of a president and two councilors, and each ward has its bishop. The church organization is thus a closely-knit hier- archy with a myriad of officers descending in rank THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 123 from the autocratic president down to the teachers in the day school. “Every capable man in Mormon ranks is given something to do—and kept busy in doing it.” The system is a machine which in elabo- rate organization and ruthless authority and high efficiency has probably not been surpassed in the history of religion. How are all these officers chosen? There is a “General Conference” of the church at which the chief officers are elected, and while the polity at the top has the appearance of popular government, yet the reality is thorough-going autocracy. On this point we quote from Frank J. Cannon as follows: _ All this large and intricate organization was in Brig- ham’s hands. He filled vacancies in the quorum. He named the presidents of seventies. He created bishops. He promoted, deposed, shifted, supported, or left strug- gling whomsoever he would—and in this irresponsible despotism he has been followed unto this day. Never since the Mormon Church was founded has the congre- gation of the people nominated a ruler of the church, nor even a member of the hierarchy. The congregation is always asked to “sustain’—and always does so. And the manner of that “sustaining” is a pitiful absurdity. At the general conference of the church, one of the hier- archy announces: “It is moved and seconded that we sustain (giving the name) as prophet, seer, and revelator to all the world.” And so on, through the list. “All who are in favor of this motion signify it by raising the right hand.” A wave of hands comes from the vast assemblage. But no “motion” has been made. Neither nomination nor opposition is permitted. The decree of God has been uttered. The people are allowed to ratify but not to refuse God’s irrevocable choice. 124 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Symonds remarks that the Jesuits seem to have dis- covered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without intellectual emancipation. One might say with yet more truth that the Mormon church had learned the precise point to which the appearance of popular government can be carried without the reality.* *Mormon Empire, pp. 210-211. CHAPTER VI THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH HERE is no single official statement or creed of Mormon doctrine, and the teaching of the Mormon Church must be collected from its various acknowledged standards. These consist of the Bible, Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doc- trine and Covenants, Compendium of Mormon Doc- trine, Mormon Doctrine, Mediation and Atonement, Key to Theology, Catechism, Journal of Discourses, together with the “revelations” of the president of the church and the teachings of Mormon instruc- tors from the time of Joseph Smith to the present day. In 1842, Joseph Wentworth, editor of the Chi- cago Democrat, applied to Smith for a statement of his doctrine and received from him thirteen “Ar- ticles of Faith,” which are now printed in the Pearl of Great Price. These articles were given out at a time when the Mormons were in disrepute and in trouble in Missouri and were intended to allay popu- lar prejudice and indignation and to give the im- pression that the Mormons were simple Christian believers holding to the faith of “the primitive church.” These articles are as follows: 125 126 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM THE ARTICEERS OF (MAT TES Of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. 2. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. 3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. 4. We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel 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. 5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands, by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof. 6. We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, viz., apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc. 7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revela- tion, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, etc. 8. 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. 9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the King- dom of God. 10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion will be built upon this continent; that Christ will reign person- ally upon the earth; and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory. THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 127 11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. 12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sus- taining law. 13. 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 in 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 praise- worthy, we seek after these things. There is very little distinctive Mormon teaching in these articles and they are of small value in in- forming us as to what this teaching really is. The present chapter will set forth the chief Mormon doc- trines as taught in the standards and by the authori- ties of the Mormon Church.* I. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF GOD Our belief concerning God is the most funda- mental and pervasive of all our beliefs, consciously *In this presentation of Mormon teaching we wish to acknowledge indebtedness to a booklet entitled Mormon Doctrine, by Rev. John D. Nutting, D.D., and published by the Utah Gospel Mission, Cleve- land, Ohio, 1905. It follows the thirteen articles, but under each one gives quotations, with references, from Mormon authorities which show the true Mormon teaching on the subject. It is a val- uable summary which gives every indication of having been care- fully and honestly made. In this chapter the following abbreviations will be used: Book of Mormon, B. of M.; Pearl of Great Price, P. G. P.; Doctrine and Covenants, D. and C.; Compendium of Mormon Doctrine, Comp.; Mormon Doctrine, Mor. Doc.; Mediation and Atonement, M. and A.; Key to Theology, K.; Catechism, Cat.; Journal of Discourses, ‘Bae i: 128 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM or unconsciously shaping our thoughts of the uni- verse and of life and character and destiny. The first Article of Smith’s creed is: ‘“We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ, and in ‘the Holy Ghost.” This is a quite orthodox state- ment, but the incontestable fact is that it is only a mask to conceal the most materialistic and repulsive views of God. The Mormon doctrine of God embraces the fol- lowing points: (a) There are many gods: “Are there more Gods than one? Yes, many” (Cat., 13). (b) These gods are polygamous or “sealed” human beings grown divine: “God himself was once as we now are, and is an exalted Man” (Joseph Smith, J. of D., VI: 4); “And you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, the same as all Gods have done before you” (Jbid.); “Then shall they [that have been “sealed” in marriage] be Gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them” (D. and C., 467). (c) Adam the God of this world: ‘““He [Adam] is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do” (Brig- ham Young, J. of D., 1:50). (d) These Gods have fleshly bodies: “There is no other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones” (Smith, Comp., 287). (e) They are polygamous: “When our Father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him” (Young, J. of D., 1:50). (f) They have children forever: “Each God, through THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 129 his wife, or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters: ... for each father and mother will be in a condition to multiply for ever gacvever, (lhe Seer,.1237:). When the mask is thus torn off the Mormon “God, the Eternal Father,’ we see a hideous dis- closure of fleshly polygamous gods reveling in sexual propagation through all eternity. Such a God or gods are the proper father of such a system of faith and practice, and such a system is the proper and necessary offspring of such sensual and polygamous gods. 2. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT The Mormon doctrine of Christ is in keeping with the Mormon doctrine of God. (a) Christ is a fleshly being along with the Father: “Jesus Christ and his Father are two persons, in the same sense as John and Peter are two persons. Each of them has an organized, individual tabernacle, embodied in ma- terial form, and composed of material substance, in the likeness of man, and possessing every organ, limb and physical part that man possesses” (K., 39- 40). (b) He is the son of the Adam-God: “The Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family” (Young, J. of D., 1:50). (c) He was a polygamist: 130 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM “We say it was Jesus Christ who was married [at Cana to the Marys and Martha] whereby he could see his seed before he was crucified” (Apostle Orson Hyde, Sermon 3). The Holy Spirit is also viewed as a refined ma- terial substance, to be classed with “electricity, gal- vanism, magnetism, animal magnetism,” etc. “The purest, most refined and subtle of all these sub- stances, and the one least understood, or even recog- nized, by the less informed among mankind, is that substance called the Holy Spirit” (K., 44). “Each of these Gods ... is subject to the laws which govern, of necessity, even the most refined order of physical existence” (K., 42). ‘There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes” (Joseph Smith, Comp., 259). 3. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF MAN The following are the chief points in the Mormon doctrine of man: (a) Men and Gods are one species: “Gods, angels and men are all of one species, one race, one great family, widely diffused among the planetary systems, as colonies, kingdoms, nations, etc.” (K., 39). (b) Men were born in the spirit- world and came to this world for bodies: ‘This individual, spiritual body, was begotten by the Heavenly Father, in his own likeness and image and by the laws of procreation. . . . This has been THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 131 called the ‘first estate.’ . . . The spirits which kept their first estate were permitted to descend below, and to obtain tabernacles of flesh in the rudimental existence in which we find them in our present world, and which we call a second estate” (K., 53- 54). (c) Man’s mission is to propagate: “You are here . . . to raise families and properly educate them” (President Snow). (d) Polygamists and other “sealed’’ Mormons become gods: “Through the essence and power of the Godhead, which is in him, ... he is capable of rising from the contracted limits of manhood to the dignity of a God, . . . and is capable of eternal exaltation, eternal lives [in the propagation of children] and eternal progress” (President Taylor). 4. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF SIN The pantheistic pluralism of Mormonism logically leads to fatalism in its doctrine of sin: ““Adam found himself in a position that compelled him to disobey one of the requirements of God” (J. E. Talmage). “Was it necessary that Adam should partake of the forbidden fruit? A. Yes, unless he had done so he would not have known good and evil here, neither could he have had moral posterity. . . . Did Adam and Eve lament or rejoice because they had trans- gressed the commandment? A. They rejoiced and praised God” (Cat.). 132 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM 5. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT AND OF BLOOD ATONEMENT “The word atonement signifies deliverance, through the offering of a ransom, from the penalty of a broken law. As effected by Jesus Christ, it signifies the deliverance, through his death and re- surrection, of the earth and everything pertaining to it, from the power which death has obtained over them through the transgression of Adam” (Comp., 8). The doctrine of atonement in time was perverted into the horrible Mormon doctrine and practice of “blood atonement.” This was the doctrine of human sacrifice and was based on the theory that some grave sins can be atoned for only by the shedding of the blood of the sinner himself. This dreadful obsession, while earlier hinted at, was first openly promulgated in Salt Lake City by Jedediah M. Grant, of the first presidency, who was sometimes called ‘““Brigham’s sledge hammer.” ? At a notable meeting in 1856 he declared: “I say there are men and women that I would advise to go to the Presi- dent immediately, and ask him to appoint a com- mittee to attend to their case; and then let the place be selected, and let that committee shed their blood. We have those amongst us that are full of all man- ner of abominations; those who need to have their 7On the doctrine of blood atonement see Journal of Discourses, IV : 219-220; Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 292-308; Hyde, Mormonism, 179-180; Linn, Story, pp. 444-447, 454-457. THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 133 blood shed, for water will not do; their sins are too deep for that.” In the next year Brigham Young in a sermon, which may be read in the Journal of Discourses, Vol. IV, declared: All mankind love themselves: and let those principles be known by an individual, and he would be glad to have his blood shed. This would be loving ourselves even unto eternal exaltation. Will you love your brothers or sisters likewise when they have a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? That is what Jesus meant. . . . I could refer you to plenty of in- stances where men have been righteously slain in order to atone for their sins. ... The wickedness and ig- norance of the nations forbid this principle being in full force, but the time will come when the law of God will be in full force. This is loving our neighbor as ourselves ; if he needs help, help him; if he wants salvation and it is necessary to spill his blood on earth in order that he may be saved, spill it. We shall hear later of the practice of this terrible fanaticism. 6. CHURCH ORGANIZATION Article 6 of Smith’s Thirteen Articles reads: “We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc.” We have seen however, how this primitive organization has been developed in the Mormon Church into an enormous tyrannical hierarchy. All the Christian churches, according to Mormon doctrine, are spurious and are under the wrath and curse of God. Joseph 134 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM Smith in his account of his first ‘“‘vision’’ declares: “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong . . . all their creeds were an abomination in his sight.” The ministry of the Christian church is “‘a spurious priesthood, desti- tute of divine authority, divine inspiration and di- vine power, .. . set up by ambitious and design- ing man, . .. base counterfeit of true and heavenly coin’ (Mor. Doc., p. 21). “Any person who shall be so wicked as to receive a holy ordinance of the gospel from the ministers of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless he re- pents of the unholy and impious act’ (The Seer, Vols. I and II, p. 255). 7. THE PRIESTHOOD Article 5 reads: “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.” This authority of the Mormon priesthood is applied and exercised in the most absolute and arbitrary way over all thoughts and actions: “Their priest- hood gives them the right to advise and instruct the Saints, and their jurisdiction extends over all things spiritual and temporal” (Sermon by Dr. Gowans, Logan Journal, May 26, 1898). ‘When aman says you may direct me _ spiritually but not tem- porally, he lies in the presence of God” THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 135 (Deseret News, April 25, 1895). ‘Whatever I might have obtained in the shape of learning by searching and study respecting the arts and sciences of men, whatever principles I may have imbibed during my scientific researches, yet, if the prophet of God should tell me that a certain theory or prin- ciple which I might have learned was not true, I do not care what my ideas might have been, I should consider it my duty at the suggestion of my file leader to abandon that principle or theory” (Wil- ford Woodruff, J. of D., V: 83). 8. ORDINANCES We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are :—First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; Second, Repentance; Third, Baptism by immersion for remission of sins; Fourth, Laying on of Hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost.” Baptism is extended to baptism for the dead by which living substitutes may be baptized for dead friends or for any dead. ‘The living may be baptized for the dead... . The living relatives stand in the name and place of the departed and receive the ordinances to be placed to the credit of the dead. (Mor. Doc. 38, 40). This doctrine was a very taking one with the uneducated Mormon converts who crowded into Nauvoo, and the church officers saw in it a means to hasten the work on the Temple. At first families would meet on the bank of the Mississippi River, and some one, of the order of the Melchisedec Priesthood, would baptize them whole- sale for all their dead relatives whose names they could remember, each sex for relatives of the same.® *Linn, Story, p. 119. 136 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM It is said that the Mormons have performed this rite for Abraham Lincoln and many other noted men. Q. MIRACLES “We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, etc.” “QO. What are the peculiar manifes- tations of the Holy Ghost? A. Amongst others, vi- sions, dreams, prophecies, speaking divers tongues, interpretation of tongues, discernment of spirits and angels; knowledge, wisdom, extraordinary faith, healings and miraculous powers. ... These . manifestations of the Spirit always follow faith in and obedience to the Gospel” (Cat., pp. 43, 44). Asanexample of such “prophecy” we may take the following uttered in 1838 by Parley P. Pratt and printed in his pamphlet Mormonism Unveiled: “I will state as a prophecy, that there will not be an unbelieving Gentile upon this continent 50 years hence; and if they are not greatly scourged, and in a great measure overthrown, within five or ten years from this date, then the Book of Mormon will have proved itself false.” I0. THE BIBLE AND MORMON REVELATIONS “We consider the Bible, Book of Mormon, Book of Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 137 and sayings of Joseph, the Seer, our guides in faith and doctrine’ (Com., Preface). “Thou fool, that shall say, A Bible, a Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible . . . ye need not sup- pose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written” (B: of M., 2 Nephi, 29:6-10). ‘Wilford Woodruff is a prophet, and I know that he has a great many prophets around him, and he can make Scriptures as good as those in the Bible” (Apostle J. W. Taylor, Conference, Salt Lake, April 5, 1897). ‘Compared with the living oracles these books are nothing to me” (Wilford Woodruff). II. LIBERTY OF WORSHIP “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where or what they may.” Over against this statement stands not only much bloody Mormon history but also this equally authoritative statement of Brigham Young: “I say, rather than apostates should flourish here, I will unsheath my bowie knife, and conquer or die. Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put to the line... . I want you to hear, bishops, what I am about to tell you: Kick these men out of your wards” (J. of D., 1:83). 138 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM IZ. RELATION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law.” Another fair statement against which cries out many a bloody page of Mormon rebellion and many inspired declarations such as the following: The priesthood holds “the power and right to give laws and commandments to individuals, churches, rulers, nations and the world; to appoint, ordain and establish constitutions and kingdoms; to appoint kings, presidents, governors, or judges’’ (Key, p. 70). The priesthood “is the legitimate rule of God, whether in the heavens or on the earth, and it is the only legitimate power that has a right to rule on the earth; and when the will of God is done on the earth as it is in heaven, no other power will be or rule’ (Apostle John Taylor). 13. MORALITY AND VIRTUE The professed “Articles of Faith” end with the following: “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.” It need not be denied or THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 139 doubted that there is a fair degree of morality and virtue among Mormon people, especially in these latter days when they are more exposed and sub- ject to public opinion and civil law, but on this point we shall let their own highest authority speak: “T have many a time, in this stand, dared the world to produce as mean devils as we can. We can beat them at anything. We have the greatest and smoothest liars in the world, the cunningest and most adroit thieves, and any other shade of char- acter that youcan mention. Wecan pick out elders in Israel right here who can beat the world at gam- bling; who can handle the cards; can cut and shuffle them with the smartest rogue on God’s footstool. I can produce elders here who can shave their smart- est shavers, and take their money from them. We can beat the world at any game. [Why?] We can beat them because we have men here that live in the light of the Lord; that have the holy priest- hood, and hold the keys of the kingdom of God” (Brigham Young, Deseret News, VI, 291; J. of D., IV: 77). This point in Mormon history and prac- tice will frequently recur later in this study. I4. POLYGAMY AND MARRIAGE The most distinctive doctrine and practice of Mormonism is not mentioned in these “Articles of Faith,” but it is abundantly written in its standards. The Book of Mormon itself repeatedly forbids plu- 140 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM rality of wives. In the “Book of Jacob,” 2:24-27, it is recorded: ‘Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. . . . Where- fore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord; for there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none. For I, the Lord God, delighteth in the chastity of women.” But later, on July 12, 1843, Smith received a long “‘Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, including Plurality of Wives,” which still stands as Section 132 in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. “And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood: if a man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, . . . 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 he is justi- fied” (p. 473). “If plural marriage be unlawful, then is the whole plan of salvation, through the house of Israel, a failure, and the entire fabric of Christianity without foundation” (Comp., p. 125). “Those who denounce patriarchal marriage will have to stay without and never walk the golden streets” (Bible and Polygamy, p. 158). It is an essential part of the Mormon doctrine that marriage is for eternity and will be attended with “eternal increase’ (Comp., p. 120), and salvation for women — is made to depend on their being ‘“‘sealed” in mar- riage to eternity. THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 141 The matter of polygamy will frequently enter into our further account of Mormonism, and we conclude this brief summary of Mormon doctrine with the following statement of its system in the article on “Mormons” in the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclo- pedia Britannica: A system of polytheism has been grafted on an earlier form of the creed, according to which there are grades among the gods; the place of supreme ruler of all being taken by the primeval Adam of Genesis, who is the deity highest in spiritual rank, while Christ, Mahomet, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young also partake of divinity. The business of these deities is the propagation of souls to people bodies begotten_on earth, and the sexual relation permeates the creed. The saints on leaving this world are deified, and their glory is in proportion to the number of their wives and children; hence the necessity and justification of polygamy (although its practice is not now authorized by the Church), andthe practice of having many wives sealed to one saint. Marriage, if accom- panied by the ecclesiastical ceremony of “sealing,” is for eternity, and is a necessary pre-requisite of heavenly bliss. A man may be sealed to any number of women, but no woman may be sealed to more than one man. Both mar- riage and sealing by proxy are permitted to assure salva- tion to women who die unsealed. This system of spiritual wives or celestial marriage is based on the idea that a woman cannot be saved except through her husband. Polygamous marriage is supposed to make possible the procreation of enough bodies for thousands of spirits which have long awaited incarnation. Especially in their earlier years the Mormons believed in faith healing, and Joseph Smith bade them “trust in God, and live by faith and not by medicine or poison.” Their distinguishing points of faith are: religiously, a belief in a continual divine 142 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM revelation through the inspired medium of the prophet at the head of the Church; morally, polygamy, though this is condemned in the Book of Mormon, as has been noticed above; and, socially, a complete hierarchical organization. They believe in the Bible as supplemented by the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine, and revelation through the president of the Church; in the gift of prophecy, miracles and casting out devils; in the imminent approach of the end of the world; in their own identity with the apoca- lyptic saints who shall reign with Christ in a temporal kingdom, either in Missouri (at Independence) or in Utah; in the resurrection of the body; in absolute liberty of private judgment in religious matters; and in the salva- tion of man only if he believes in Christ’s atonement, re- pents, is baptized by immersion by a Christ-appointed apostle and receives the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost by duly authorized apostles. CuHapTter VII SETTLEMENT IN OHIO MITH and his followers, having organized their church at Fayette, New York, on April 6, 1830, began the work of preaching their faith, but soon encountered checks in public prejudice and opposi- tion. It outraged the moral and religious sense of the community that people of the ill reputation of the Smiths should be proclaiming a new religion and baptizing converts. A dam that had been thrown across a stream to provide a place for baptisms was destroyed in the night. Joe Smith himself was ar- rested on a charge that he had obtained a horse and yoke of oxen by means of an alleged ‘‘revelation”’ and also that he had behaved improperly towards the daughters of one of his followers, but at the trial he was acquitted. These conditions and events led Smith and his followers to seek a more congenial environment, and westward the star of Mormonism took its way. I. THE CHURCH AT KIRTLAND The evidence shows, as we have already seen, that Smith had several years before this time formed a 143 144 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM secret arrangement with Sidney Rigdon, who was pastor of a Disciples church at Kirtland, in north- eastern Ohio, and this fact turned the course of events to this village in the Western Reserve. In October, 1830, four elders, Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Ziba Peterson, were sent as missionaries ostensibly to preach to the ‘Lamanites” or Indians and reached Kirtland, where they tarried for a time and then passed on westward to Missouri, where we shall follow them later in this story. At Kirtland Cowdery and his associates found Rigdon and entered into negotiations with him. At first Rigdon made some show of hesitation at re- ceiving the new Bible, but he knew more about it than appeared on the surface. Presently he pro- fessed conversion and was baptized. He then ap- peared before his church in his pulpit and “in a two hours’ discourse of fervid eloquence, eloquent to those hearers, he expostulated, instructed, explained, and converted them ;—he wept tears of sorrow and joy over them, fell into swoons several times, and related visions of heaven to them. They became real fanatics.’ * The conversion of Rigdon, who was a powerful revivalistic preacher and influential leader, made a profound impression and drew many of his people after him. The settlers of the Western Reserve, who had emigrated from New England bringing with them *J. W. Gunnison, The Mormons, p. Io. SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 145 its mental and emotional characteristics, were easily excited and swayed in their religious beliefs, and fanatical contagion ran with incredible swiftness through the community. Revivalism was rampant, and the physical and psychical phenomena of “jerks” and other strange doings at times swept over the neighborhood like wildfire. The new religion with its “revelations” and miraculous healings and won- derful stories of “gold plates” and a new Bible caught the credulity of the people and they accepted it with unreasoning alacrity and avidity. In several weeks after the Mormon emissaries arrived in Kirt- land they had baptized 127 converts, and by the next spring the number had increased to 1,000. The missionary propaganda of the church was formally inaugurated by Smith in a “revelation” (Sec. 42) given at Kirtland on February 9, 1831, in which the elders, except Smith and Rigdon, were commanded to “go forth for a little season.” ‘And ye shall go forth in the power of my Spirit, preach- ing my gospel, two by two, in my name, lifting up your voices as with the voice of a trump, . . . and from this place ye shall go forth into the regions westward; and inasmuch as ye shall find them that will receive you, ye shall build up my church in every region.” This was the beginning of the sys- tem of propaganda which has been extended over the world and is today being prosecuted with such persistent and earnest zeal. These first missionaries went, not only westward, 146 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM but also northward into Canada and back eastward into New England and met with astonishing success. Joe Smith did not have to labor and wait under dis- couragement for years before seeing any substantial results, but his sails caught the wind as soon as his ship was loose from the shore. Powerful oppo- nents at once arose against the new cult and fa- naticism, for it was immediately seen to be not only absurd but a social and moral menace. Alexander Campbell blew a mighty blast from his trumpet in a pamphlet exposing it, which pamphlet was re- printed and scattered through New England, yet the new religion found a ready reception, and “in three years after Smith and Rigdon met in Palmyra, Mor- mon congregations had been established in nearly all the Northern and Middle states and in some of the Southern, with baptisms of from 30 to 130 ina place.” ? 2. BUSINESS VENTURES AND FAILURES Kirtland was at first viewed as a temporary stop- ping place in the westward march of Mormonism, for Smith and Rigdon had their eyes on Missouri as the location of their “New Jerusalem,” and early visited that state, but they met with discouraging opposition and decided to make a permanent stake of Zion in Ohio. They then began to launch out *Turner’s Mormonism in All Ages, p. 38, quoted by Linn, Story, p. 132. SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 147 on various business schemes that soon involved them and their church in disaster. Several farms were purchased and the town of Kirtland was laid out on paper in a plan that pro- vided for 32 streets crossing at right angles and cutting out 225 blocks of 20 lots each. Lots were sold and speculation set in and ran high. Ground was set apart for a temple and its construction began, the corner-stone being laid on July 23, 1833, and the dedication taking place on March 27, 1836. The building, which is still in use, is 60 by 80 feet in size, and two stories high, the spire rising to a height of 123 feet. True religious devotion was shown in its building, the men giving one day a week to the work without pay, often living on corn meal, and the women knitting and weaving garments for the workmen. It cost $40,000, and involved the church in a debt of upward of $20,000. The long prayer received by Smith in a “revelation” and offered at the dedication of this temple is recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, pages 395-404, and contains many threats of vengeance against the ene- mies of the new faith, calling upon the Lord to “make bare thine arm,” and “that the cause of thy people may not fail before thee, may thine anger be kindled, and thine indignation fall upon them, that they may be wasted away, both root and branch, from under heaven.” Smith and Rigdon had made a new translation of the Scriptures at Kirtland, being the Authorized Version with some changes 148 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM and additions of their own, and their study of tlie Old Testament had obviously inspired them with the temper and methods of the imprecatory Psalms. It would appear that all the members held their property subject to the disposition of the church, or of Smith, who could at any time receive a “revela- tion” commanding any member to hand over his pos- _ sessions. As originally published the Book of Com- mandments declared “Thou shalt consecrate all thy properties, that which thou hast, unto me, with a covenant and deed which cannot be broken.” It is confusing, however, to find these “revelations,” which Smith professed to receive by direct commu- nication from God, undergoing many changes in different editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, so that this book for many years was in a fluid state and presents various conflicting and sometimes contradictory commands. The provision on this point now is (Sec. 42: 32): ‘Every man shall be made accountable unto me, a steward over his own property, or that which he received by consecration, inasmuch as is sufficient for himself and family.” As debts were piling up, Smith would get what he could by this provision, though evidently he did not dare go too far with it. On July 8, 1838, after he fled to Missouri, he re- ceived a “revelation” ordering William Marks, Newel K. Whitney, Oliver Granger, “‘and others,” to “‘settle up their business speedily, . . . repent of all their sins,” and “Let the properties of Kirtland SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 149 be turned out for debts, saith the Lord.” Under the same date he received another “revelation” re- quiring “‘all their surplus property to be put in 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.” Yet Smith was not able by this enforced expropria- tion of property to clear his organization of debt and save it from bankruptcy. Various business enterprises were launched at Kirtland. A general store was opened, described as “a poorly furnished country store where commerce looks starvation in the face.” The store lost money because the members would demand goods on trust and then would not pay for them. “Joseph was a first rate fellow with them all the time,” explained Brigham Young, “provided he would never ask them to pay him.”