and development of Mormonism. It is a phenomenon too important to be
passed over, and it has a closer connection with the moral and
intellectual tendencies of the time than most of us suspect. The general
direction of Protestant theology has always been towards rationalism and
materialism. Founded upon the denial of everything that man cannot
perceive by his unaided natural powers, it leads irresistibly to the
rejection of divine interposition in worldly affairs and of all manner
of heavenly revelation. But the human mind can no more rest without
belief in the supernatural than the human body can rest upon air.
Superstition is consequently the offspring of infidelity. The extremes
of negation produce a reaction of credulity; the worship of Baal
alternates with the worship of God; we see Protestantism swaying
perpetually to and fro between a cold philosophical scepticism and the
wildest extravagances of fanaticism and imposture. A time of general
negation and intellectual pride is followed by an epidemic of rhapsodies
and convulsions. Prophets arise; spirits are seen in clouds of light;
conventicles resound with the ravings of frenzied sinners and the
shouting of excited saints; Swedenborg makes excursions in the body into
heaven and into hell; the Shakers place Mother Ann on the throne of the
Almighty; the Peculiar People look for the direct interference of God in
the pettiest affairs of life, and demand a miracle every hour of the
day. Mormonism was the product of such a season of spiritual riot. Fifty
years ago animal magnetism and clairvoyance were at their height. The
pride which refused to worship God stooped to amuse itself with ghosts
and witches. The soul, emancipated from religion, became the slave of
magic; and superstition, rejecting the revelations of a loving Creator,
was almost ripe for the instructions of dancing tables and flying
tambourines. Mesmer had excited the learned world with his mystic tubs;
throngs of prophetic somnambulists had prepared the way for the oracles
of Andrew Jackson Davis. In England there was even a more chaotic
disturbance of minds than here. Multitudes on the one hand, disbelieving
in a personal deity altogether, took refuge in pure scepticism.
Multitudes on the other looked for the advent of the Lord in power and
glory, to establish on earth in visible form the kingdom foretold by the
inspired writers. The study of the prophecies became an absorbing
passion of sectaries and enthusiasts. They muddled their brains with
much reading of Isaias and the Apocalypse. They made it their mission to
explain dark sayings; and having placed their own interpretation upon
the divine predictions, they watched the sky for signs of their
immediate fulfilment, and found in contemporary events a thousand
confirmations of their crazy fancies, a thousand portents of the speedy
coming of the Lord. There was no conceivable theological vagary for
which they did not seek authority among the prophets. There was a
wide-spread revival of the ancient belief in a terrestrial millennium,
with a faith that it was close at hand. Edward Irving was setting
England and Scotland aflame with fiery announcements of the Second
Advent; fashionable society left its bed at five o’clock in the morning
to hear him preach, for three hours at a stretch, on the impending
accomplishment of what had been foretold; and although it was not until
a few years later that William Miller organized in this country the
first regular congregations of those who expected the speedy end of the
world, and who sat in white robes listening for the judgment trump,
there is no doubt that the general religious ferment which preceded this
particular hallucination was felt simultaneously on both sides of the
ocean, and presented on both sides the same essential characteristics.
Naturally this exciting period was also a season of powerful Methodistic
revivals. These sensational experiences belong, like spiritualism and
the other delusions which we have mentioned, to what has been called
“inspirational” as distinguished from rationalistic Protestantism, and
they are apt to run their course together. Between 1825 and 1830 the
revival movement was carried to great lengths, and its excesses seem to
have been most marked in Central and Western New York just at the time
when Mormonism arose there. We speak of the revivals as Methodistic only
by way of defining their character; they were by no means restricted to
the Methodist denomination. The most famous revival preacher of the day
was the Rev. Charles G. Finney, a Presbyterian; and any one who is
curious about the spiritual uproar which he carried through the State
with him is referred to the chapter on “Fanaticism in Revivals” in the
_Personal Reminiscences_ of Dr. Gardiner Spring, of the Brick
(Presbyterian) Church in New York City.[43]
It was in such a time, equally favorable to delusions and impostures,
that Joseph Smith, the inventor of Mormonism, made his appearance. The
accounts of his early life are not satisfactory. His origin was obscure.
His neighbors were ignorant. Little is on record except his
_Autobiography_ and a sketch by his mother, neither of which productions
is entitled to much credit. It is evident, however, that he was caught
up by the religious excitement which raged all around him. We are
assured that on at least two special occasions during his boyhood he was
“powerfully awakened” by Methodist revivalists. His writings abound with
revival phraseology; his pretended revelations are full of the
cant-terms of the camp-meeting; his code of doctrines bears traces of
the denominational controversies which were most active in Western New
York when he emerged upon the stage of history. In 1827 he was an
illiterate and idle rustic of twenty-two years, living at Palmyra, in
Wayne County, New York. His parents were shiftless and visionary people,
who got drunk, and used the divining-rod, and dug for hidden treasures,
and, according to their neighbors, stole sheep. Joseph was no better
than the rest of the family. By natural disposition he was a dreamer and
an adventurer. According to his own account, he began to see miraculous
appearances in the air and to hear the voices of spiritual messengers as
early as his fifteenth year. It was in one of his seasons of
“awakening,” when, perplexed by the contradictions of rival sects, he
went into a grove and asked the Lord which he should follow, in the firm
persuasion that his question would be answered by some physical
manifestation. We give the Mormon account of the result of his
experiment:
“At first he was severely tempted by the powers of darkness,
which endeavored to overcome him; but he continued to seek for
deliverance, until darkness gave way from his mind. He at length
saw a very bright and glorious light in the heavens above, which
at first seemed to be at a considerable distance. He continued
praying, while the light appeared to be gradually descending
towards him; and as it drew nearer it increased in brightness
and magnitude, so that by the time that it reached the tops of
the trees the whole wilderness for some distance around was
illuminated in the most glorious and brilliant manner. He
expected to have seen the leaves and boughs of the trees
consumed as soon as the light came in contact with them; but
perceiving that it did not produce that effect, he was
encouraged with the hopes of being able to endure its presence.
It continued descending slowly, until it rested upon the earth
and he was enveloped in the midst of it. When it first came upon
him it produced a peculiar sensation throughout his whole
system; and immediately his mind was caught away from the
natural objects with which he was surrounded, and he was
enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages,
who exactly resembled each other in their features or likeness.
He was informed that his sins were forgiven. He was also
informed upon the subjects which had for some time previously
agitated his mind—namely, that all the religious denominations
were believing in incorrect doctrines, and consequently that
none of them was acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom.
And he was expressly commanded to go not after them; and he
received a promise that the true doctrine, the fulness of the
gospel, should at some future time be made known to him; after
which the vision withdrew.”[44]
Joseph, upon whose word alone this narrative rests, relates that when he
came to himself he was lying on his back looking up into the clouds. He
seems to have accepted cheerfully the condemnation of all existing
religions, but the vision had no other practical effect upon him; as
Orson Pratt confesses, his life continued to be unedifying, and his
story of the celestial apparition was received with stubborn incredulity
by those who knew his character and habits. It was three years before he
professed to be favored with a second visit. Then, he says, a white and
lustrous angel came into his room while he was at prayer, and told him
that Heaven designed him for a great work. There was hidden in a certain
place, to be revealed hereafter, a book written upon gold plates, which
contained “the fulness of the everlasting gospel as delivered by the
Saviour to the ancient inhabitants” of the American continent. This was
the Mormon Bible, commonly known now as the Book of Mormon from the
title of one of its divisions. In his _Autobiography_ Joseph Smith
states that the angel was Nephi, author of the First and Second Books of
Nephi, which stand at the head of the Mormon scriptures; but in his
_Doctrine and Covenants_ he speaks of his visitant as Moroni, who wrote
the last book in the collection and placed the gold plates where they
were afterwards to be found. We do not know what explanation the Mormons
offer of this singular discrepancy. The vision was repeated during the
night, and Joseph was directed to search for the buried treasure in a
hill near Manchester, a village about four miles from Palmyra, in the
adjoining county of Ontario. He saw, as if in a dream, the exact spot in
which he was to dig. He went to Manchester and found the plates,
enclosed in a sort of box formed of stones set in cement. With them
“there were two stones in silver bows (and these stones, fastened to a
breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim), and the
possession and use of these stones was what constituted seers in ancient
or former times, and God had prepared them for the purpose of
translating the book”—an idea which Joseph borrowed, of course, from the
Jewish high-priest’s “rational of judgment,” described in Exodus, chap.
xxviii. Moroni (or was it Nephi?) would not allow the plates to be
removed yet; but he gave Joseph a great many interesting and
comfortable, though rather vague, instructions. He opened the heavens
and caused him to see the glory of the Lord. He made the devil and his
hosts pass by in procession, so that Smith might know them when he met
them. Once a year Joseph was to return to the same spot and receive a
new revelation. On the fourth anniversary of the discovery—that is, in
September, 1827—the angel placed the plates and the Urim and Thummim in
his hands, with a caution that he should let nobody see them. But he
seems to have talked freely about his experiences; for, according to his
own story, the whole country-side was up in arms to get the plates away
from him. He was waylaid and chased by ruffians with clubs. He was shot
at. His house was repeatedly mobbed; and when at last he removed to
Pennsylvania in search of peace, carrying the plates in a barrel of
beans, he was twice overtaken by a constable armed with a
search-warrant, who failed, however, to find what he was looking for.
Possibly the plates and the constable were equally fictions of Joseph
Smith’s imagination.
Incredulous historians of Mormonism offer various explanations of the
story which we have thus far recounted. They detect in Joseph Smith’s
alleged visions a close resemblance to the trance state sometimes
brought on by spiritual excitement among the Methodists and other sects
who make strong appeals to the emotional nature; or they refer his
supernatural exaltation to mesmeric clairvoyance; or they see in him
merely a “spiritual medium,” a precursor of the rappers and
table-tippers who became so common a few years later. Others, again,
account for the whole case upon the theory of demoniac possession; while
still others suppose that, having really discovered some sort of
metallic tablets, the dreams of a disordered mind supplied him with the
interpretation and the _dramatis personæ_.[45] It seems to us hardly
necessary to discuss these various explanations, for there is no proof
of the alleged facts. The whole narrative rests upon nothing but Joseph
Smith’s word. It is the story told by him in after-years to account for
the new gospel. There is none who shared with him the privilege of
angelic visitations. There is none who saw the great light, who heard
the mysterious voices, who even beheld Joseph himself at the moment of
the alleged revelations. No one knows what became of the golden plates.
The angel, said Joseph, came and took them away again. While they
remained in the prophet’s hands they were kept from curious eyes.
Prefixed to the Book of Mormon in the current editions is the “Testimony
of Three Witnesses”—Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin
Harris—that they were permitted to see the plates, and that a heavenly
voice assured them of the faithfulness of Smith’s translation; but all
these three witnesses afterwards confessed that their testimony was a
lie. To their certificate is appended the testimony of eight other
witnesses—namely, Joseph’s father and two brothers, four of the Whitmer
family, and a disciple named Page—who also profess to have seen the
plates; but their connection with the beginnings of the Mormon Church
makes it impossible to put confidence in their statement. We do not know
the circumstances under which the sight may have been vouchsafed to
them, and we certainly have no sufficient reason to believe their
word.[46]
Thus far, then, Mormonism is a mere legend. In 1828 it becomes
historical fact; and whatever may be thought of the prophet’s good faith
in the matter of his early dreams and visions, we find it impossible to
resist the conviction that henceforth he was only a conscious and daring
impostor. From this time to the day of his death, in his acts and his
writings, in his shrewdness, his ambition, and his reckless
courage—planning new settlements, fabricating new Bibles, uttering
forged revelations, nominating himself for President of the United
States, assuming to command armies, running a wild-cat bank, debauching
women—we can see nothing but a career of vulgar fraud. There was wild
fanaticism in the foundation of the Mormon Church; but it was not on the
part of Joseph Smith.
There is proof that about fifteen years before this pretended revelation
an ex-preacher, named Solomon Spalding, a graduate of Dartmouth College,
and a resident of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, offered for publication
at a Pittsburgh printing-office a book called the _Manuscript Found_, in
which he attempted to account for the peopling of America by deriving
the Indians from the lost tribes of Israel. It was a sort of Scriptural
romance, written in clumsy imitation of the historical books of the Old
Testament, and it contained, among its other divisions, a Book of
Mormon. Although announced for publication, it never appeared. The
manuscript remained in the printing-office for a number of years.
Spalding died in 1816. The bookseller died in 1826. Sidney Rigdon, one
of the first disciples of Mormonism, was a compositor in the
printing-office, and it seems to be pretty well established that he made
a copy of the book and afterwards gave it to Smith. At any rate the Book
of Mormon, when it came from the press in 1830, was immediately
recognized as an adaptation of Solomon Spalding’s romance. A great many
people had read parts of it during Spalding’s lifetime, and remembered
not only the principal incidents which it narrated, but the names of the
leading characters—Nephi, Lehi, Moroni, Mormon, and the rest—which Smith
boldly appropriated. Spalding’s only object was literary amusement, with
perhaps a little harmless mystification. The theological teachings
incorporated with his pretended history were the additions of Smith and
Rigdon. As it now stands the Mormon Bible purports to relate the
wanderings of a Hebrew named Lehi, who went out from Jerusalem six
hundred years before Christ, and, after travelling eastward eight years
“through a wilderness,” came to the sea-coast, built a ship, got a
mariner’s compass somewhere, set sail with his wife Sariah, his sons
Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Joseph, and Jacob, the wives of the four
elder sons, and six other persons, and in due time reached America.
After the death of Lehi the Lord appointed Nephi to rule over the
settlers, but Laman and Lemuel, heading a revolt, were cursed, and
became the ancestors of the Indians. We shall not waste much time over
this absurd and wearisome farrago, a mixture of Scriptural parodies,
stupid inventions, and bold thefts from Shakspeare and King James’
Bible. It is intolerably verbose, dragging through fifteen books,
stuffed with gross faults of grammar, anachronisms, and solecisms of
every kind, and comprising as much matter as four hundred and fifty of
these pages, or more than three entire numbers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
There are wonderful miracles and tremendous battles. Vast cities are
created in North and South America. Nations wander to and fro across the
continents. Priests, prophets, judges, and Antichrists, with names
curiously constructed out of those in the Jewish Scriptures, appear and
disappear like travesties of the persons in sacred history. The Nephites
and the Lamanites hack and slay each other. A republican form of
government is instituted, and is assailed by monarchical conspiracies.
Nephi, Jarom, Omni, Mosaiah, Mormon, Moroni, Alma, Ether, and other
leaders of the Nephites write the records of the people upon golden
plates, and save them for Joseph Smith to find in due season. Seers give
long-winded explanations of the divine purposes, and predict the
incidents of the beginning of Mormonism, which had already taken place
when Joseph Smith brought these predictions to light. The history of the
Nephites is supposed to be contemporaneous with the history of the Jews,
but entirely independent of it; their Scriptures are intended to
supplement, not contradict, the holy Bible. The crucifixion of our Lord
was announced to these American Jews by portents and prophecies, and
afterwards the Saviour came to the chief city of the Nephites, showed
his wounded hands and feet, healed the sick, blessed little children,
and remained here forty days teaching Christianity. Gradually the
Lamanites, or Indians, overcame the Nephites. In the year 384 a final
battle was fought on the hill Cumorah (Ontario County, New York), where
320,000 Nephites were slain. This was the end of the pre-Columbian
civilization of America, little or nothing being left of the Nephites
except Mormon and his son Moroni, who completed the records on the gold
plates and “hid them up” in the hill. Such, in brief outline, is the
Mormon Bible. With the narrative of the descendants of Lehi, however, it
contains an account of two other emigrations from Asia to
America—namely, that of the Jaredites, who came here direct from the
tower of Babel, and perished after they had stripped the continent of
timber, and that of a party of Jews who followed Lehi at the period of
the Babylonian captivity. The Jaredites came in eight small air-tight
barges, shaped like a covered dish, loaded with all manner of beasts,
birds, and _fishes_, and driven by a furious wind. The voyage lasted
three hundred and forty-four days, so that, in spite of the miraculous
gale astern, it was probably the slowest on record.
It would be an endless task to point out even a tithe of the huge
blunders in this fraudulent volume. We read of Christians a century
before Christ, of the Gospel and the churches six centuries before
Christ, of three oceans lying between Asia and America, of pious Hebrews
eating pork, of Jews long before the name of Jew was invented, of
horses, asses, swine, etc., running wild all over the face of this
continent in the time of the Jaredites, although it is certain that they
were first introduced by the Spaniards. Nephi, in giving an account of
the emigration of his father Lehi, says: “And it came to pass that the
Lord spake unto me, saying, Thou shalt construct a ship after the manner
which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these
waters. And I said, Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore _to
molten_, that I may make tools?... And it came to pass that I did make
tools of the ore which I _did molten_ out of the rock.” Nephi, like St.
John, was unable to write down all the things that Jesus taught:
“Behold, I _were_ about to write them all, but the Lord _forbid_ it.”
Alma declares: “And it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his seed
with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed;
therefore _whomsoever_ suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites
_were called that head_, and there was a mark set upon _him_.” Mormon is
one of the most eccentric in syntax of all the scribes: “And Ammaron
said unto me, I perceive that thou art a sober child, and art quick to
observe; therefore when _ye_ are about twenty-and-four years old I would
that _ye_ should remember,” etc. Nephi “_saw_ wars and _rumors_ of
wars.” Alma writes: “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_”! The language
of the precious records is described as “reformed Egyptian,” and Nephi
explains that it “consists of the learning of the Jews and the language
of the Egyptians,” though upon what principle they are combined we are
left to imagine. Pressed to exhibit a specimen of the mysterious
characters, Joseph Smith gave what purported to be a fac-simile of a few
lines to one of his disciples, who came to New York and submitted it to
Prof. Anthon. “It consisted,” says Prof. Anthon, “of all kinds of
crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared
by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various
alphabets, Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes; Roman
letters inverted or placed sideways were arranged and placed in
perpendicular columns; and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a
circle, divided into various compartments, decked with various strange
marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican calendar given by
Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it
was derived.” Mormon says he would have written in Hebrew, if the plates
had been large enough.
In giving the translation of the mysterious books to the world Joseph
Smith, whose education had been sadly neglected, made use of an
amanuensis. This at first was a farmer named Martin Harris. The prophet
sat behind a blanket stretched across the room, and, thus screened from
profane eyes, read aloud from the gold plates, by the miraculous aid of
the Urim and Thummim, the sacred text, which the confiding Harris
reduced to writing. The sceptical, of course, believe that what Smith
held before him was no pile of metallic tablets, but merely the
manuscript of Solomon Spalding, into which he emptied from time to time
a great deal of rubbish of his own make. No one, however, succeeded in
penetrating behind the blanket. The work had gone on for a year and a
half, when Harris, tempted by his wife, embezzled the manuscript. This
was a serious loss. Joseph could not reproduce it in the same words, and
it would not do to risk discrepancies. “Revelation” came to his aid in
this dilemma, and informed him that Harris had “altered the words” of
the manuscript “in order to catch him” in the translation. The stolen
pages were from the Book of Mormon; he must not attempt to replace them;
he should let them go, for a narrative of the same events would be found
in the Book of Nephi:
“And now verily I say unto you that an account of those things
that you have written, which have gone out of your hands, are
engraven upon the plates of Nephi; yea, and you remember it was
said in those writings that a more particular account was given
of these things upon the plates of Nephi. Behold they have only
got a part or an abridgment of the account of Nephi. Behold,
there are many things engraven on the plates of Nephi which do
throw greater views upon my gospel; therefore it is wisdom in me
that you should translate this first part of the engravings of
Nephi, and send forth in this work.”[47]
Oliver Cowdery now became scribe, and the task was finished without
further accidents, the Books of Nephi standing at the head of the
volume, and the remnant of the Book of Mormon, which gives its title to
the whole collection, coming near the end of the table of contents.
Still, the wretched Harris was not altogether cut off for his sin. He
owned a farm. When the translation was finished Heaven uttered, by the
mouth of Smith, “a commandment of God, and not of man, to Martin
Harris”: “I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property,
but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon. And misery
thou shalt receive if thou wilt slight these counsels—yea, even the
destruction of thyself and property.” So Harris mortgaged his farm to
pay the printer, and in 1830 appeared at Palmyra, New York, _The Book of
Mormon: an Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates taken from
the Plates of Nephi_. By Joseph Smith, Jr., author and proprietor.[48]