river and baptized each other by immersion. Joseph then ordained Oliver
to the Aaronic priesthood, and Oliver ordained Joseph. In April, 1830,
the “Church of Christ” was organized at the house of Peter Whitmer in
Fayette, Seneca County, New York, the company of the faithful consisting
only of the prophet, his two brothers, his scribe, and two Whitmers; but
in the course of the summer several other converts appeared, and Joseph
became associated with three men of some ability and education, who gave
the Mormon creed a doctrinal development which the founder himself was
quite incapable of devising. These three were Sidney Rigdon, Orson
Pratt, and Parley P. Pratt. They were devotees of the sensational and
inspirational school, ready for any new form of spiritual extravagance,
believers in visions, crack-brained students of the prophecies. Rigdon
had been a preacher among the Campbellites—a sect whose fundamental
doctrine it is that no precise doctrines are necessary. Read your Bible,
say they, select your opinions from it, don’t allow infant baptism, but
get yourselves baptized by immersion as often as you commit sin. Upon
this broad foundation they can erect as many different systems of
theology as they have congregations. Rigdon had outgrown the
latitudinarianism and bibliolatry of the Campbellites, and at the time
of Joseph Smith’s appearance he was preaching a religion of his own,
rousing his little Ohio congregation with apocalyptic dreams and
interpretations, and bidding them look for the instant coming of the
Lord. Although his name does not appear in the roll of the first
converts and apostles, it is certain that he was intimately associated
with Smith from the beginning; it is certain that he embodied his
peculiar views in the Mormon creed; it is suspected that he had more
than a half-share in arranging the original machinery of imposture.
Parley P. Pratt was likewise a Campbellite preacher, a man of ardent and
passionate temperament, restless, eloquent, a brilliant albeit somewhat
rude orator. Orson Pratt, inclining rather towards metaphysical
speculations than prophecy and spiritual excitement, became the Mormon
philosopher and controversialist, and to him are attributable the
extraordinary materialistic doctrines which form so important a part of
the new system.[49] When Smith and his companions began to preach it
does not appear that they had any scheme of theology ready at hand.
Moroni and the golden plates made up the sum of their first teachings.
There was comparatively little doctrine of any kind in the Book of
Mormon; but, as Joseph’s prophetic pretensions found acceptance, it
became necessary for the prophet to announce some positive creed. In
setting it forth, point after point, he appealed neither to history nor
to reason; “revelation” taught him from day to day all that he wished to
know; and so, little by little, he built up a mass of dogma in which it
is impossible to discover any regular plan. The authoritative handbook
of Mormon theology as it existed in Smith’s time is a small volume first
published in 1835, entitled _The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, carefully selected from the
revelations of God_, by Joseph Smith, President of said Church. It
comprises two parts. The first consists of seven Lectures on Faith,[50]
which need not detain us; the second and more important contains about
one hundred “revelations,” addressed sometimes to Smith, sometimes to
one or another of the disciples, sometimes to the church, and
occasionally to sceptical Mormons who showed signs of becoming
troublesome. They embrace counsels and instructions of all kinds, for
the organization of the hierarchy, the preaching of the new gospel, the
regulation of private business affairs, and the management of
congregations. Here is a sample of a “revelation given in Kirtland,
August, 1831”: “Let my servant Newel K. Whitney retain his store—or, in
other words, the store yet for a little season. Nevertheless, let him
impart all the money which he can impart, to be sent up unto the land of
Sion.” A few days later the voice of heaven spoke through Joseph Smith
again:
“And now verily I say that it is expedient in me that my servant
Sidney Gilbert, after a few weeks, should return upon his
business, and to his agency in the land of Sion; and that which
he hath seen and heard may be made known unto my disciples, that
they perish not. And for this cause have I spoken these things.
And again, I say unto you, that my servant Isaac Morley may not
be tempted above that which he is able to bear, and counsel
wrongfully to your hurt, I gave commandment that his farm should
be sold. I willeth not that my servant Frederick G. Williams
should sell his farm, for I the Lord willeth to retain a
stronghold in the land of Kirtland for the space of five years,
in the which I will not overthrow the wicked, that thereby I may
save some.”
There was a special revelation to the prophet’s wife, Emma, who never
quite relished Joseph’s proceedings:
“Hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God while I speak unto
you, Emma Smith, my daughter; for verily I say unto you all
those who receive my gospel are sons and daughters in my
kingdom. A revelation I give unto you concerning my will, and if
thou art faithful and walk in the paths of virtue before me, I
will preserve thy life and thou shalt receive an inheritance in
Sion. Behold, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou art an elect
lady whom I have called. Murmur not because of the things which
thou hast not seen, for they are withheld from thee and from the
world, which is wisdom in me in a time to come. And the office
of thy calling shall be for a comfort unto my servant, Joseph
Smith, Jr., thy husband, in his afflictions, with consoling
words in the spirit of meekness.”
She was afterwards styled by the saints the Elect Lady, or “Cyria
Electa,” and was “ordained” by Joseph as his scribe in the place of
Oliver Cowdery. The dogmas to be found in this book are few and simple.
The saints were taught to believe in “God the Eternal Father, and in his
Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost”; to believe that men will not
be punished for original sin; that the four saving ordinances of the
Gospel are faith, repentance, baptism, and the laying-on of hands for
the Holy Ghost; that the church enjoys still, as it did in primitive
times, “the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing,
interpretation of tongues, etc.”; that the Bible, “as far as it is
translated correctly,” and the Book of Mormon are both the word of God;
that “the organization of the primitive church—viz., apostles, prophets,
pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc.”—ought to be revived; and that
Israel will be literally gathered and the ten tribes restored, Sion
built on this continent, the personal reign of Christ established on
earth, and the earth renewed in paradisaic glory. Finally, the book
contains elaborate instructions for the establishment of a double
priesthood; that of Melchisedech is the higher, and embraces the offices
of apostle, Seventy, patriarch, high-priest, and elder; the other is
that of Aaron, and includes bishop, priest, teacher, and deacon; it can
only be held by the lineal descendants of Aaron, who are designated by
revelation.
It will be seen how artfully this plan of a church was adapted to the
purposes of Smith and Rigdon, supposing them to have been, as we have no
doubt they were, arrant and conscious cheats. There was novelty and
mystery enough in it to attract the fanatical, and there was not so very
much after all to shock their common sense; while the doctrine of
continuous revelation and the prophetic office left a door wide open for
the introduction of other inventions as fast as they were found
desirable. We shall see, further on, what monstrous blasphemies and
absurdities were in reality adopted as the saints became strong enough
to bear them.
Noyes, in his _History of American Socialisms_, speaks of Western New
York as “the volcanic region” of spiritual and intellectual disturbance.
Here sprang up Mormonism; here were first heard the ghostly rappers;
here raged Millerism and Second-Adventism; here John Collins founded the
Skaneateles community on the basis of “no God, no government, no
marriage, no money, no meat”; here arose the “inspired” Ebenezer colony,
since removed to Iowa; here flourished all manner of Fourierite
phalanxes, wild social experiments, and extravagant beliefs; here at the
present day are found the Brocton community, with their doctrine of
“divine respiration,” and the Perfectionists of Oneida, perhaps the
worst of all the professors of free-love. In this region of satanic
activity the Mormon preachers made disciples so fast that Smith was soon
encouraged to undertake the “gathering of the tribes.” He had visited
Sidney Rigdon at Kirtland, Ohio, early in 1831, and had a revelation
commanding the saints in New York to follow him. But in June the town of
Independence, in Jackson County, Missouri, was revealed as the site of
the American Sion, and there some hundreds of the faithful, selling all
that they had in the East, assembled and laid the foundation of a
temple. With this event begins a phase of Mormonism—the political
separation of the Latter-Day Saints from the Gentiles—which at once
illustrates most forcibly its fanaticism and accounts for its temporal
success. Henceforth the leaders had only to give the word of command,
and the people went wherever the finger of the prophet pointed,
sacrificed their lands and houses, broke off domestic ties, and marched
through pain, starvation, and death into the parched wilderness. The
settlement at Kirtland, however, was retained; a revelation even
commanded the saints to build there a house for Joseph Smith “to live
and translate in,” and another great temple for the Lord. This was
fortunate, because the Mormons were soon expelled from Independence by a
mob; and when Joseph, in obedience to revelation, raised an army of two
hundred men, and, with the title of “commander-in-chief of the armies of
Israel,” marched twelve hundred miles on foot to reinstate them, his
expedition was dispersed by cholera and thunder-storms as soon as it
reached the scene of action. The saints were never restored to the homes
from which they had been driven out; yet to this day they look for a
restoration. They refused all offers to sell their estates; they hold
the Missouri title-deeds as the most precious of their inheritances; the
city of the Great Salt Lake is only the temporary home of their exile;
and Brigham Young, in his will, which was published the other day, after
giving instructions for his funeral, says: “But if I should live to get
back to the church in Jackson County, Missouri, I wish to be buried
there.”
It is not our purpose to follow the persecuted fanatics in all their
early migrations. Driven from place to place, they came, in 1840, to
Hancock County, Illinois, where the owner of a large tract of wild land
gave Smith a portion of it, in order to create a market for the rest.
The prophet sold it in lots to his followers, at high prices, and there,
on the bank of the Mississippi, the Mormons built the city of Nauvoo. It
was revealed to them that they should build a goodly and holy
“boarding-house,” and give Joseph Smith and his posterity a place in it
for ever, and those who had money were commanded by name to put it into
the enterprise (“Revelation given to Joseph Smith, Jan. 19, 1841”). They
were to build a magnificent temple also; they were to organize a
military force, known as the Nauvoo Legion; they were to create, in
short, within the limits of Illinois, a theocratic state, with Joseph
Smith at its head as mayor, general, prophet, church president, and
inspired mouthpiece of the divine will. The city grew as if by magic.
The legislature of Illinois granted it a charter of such extraordinary
liberality that its officers became practically independent of all other
authority. The apostles, sent all over America and England, preached
with such zeal that in the course of six years no fewer than fifteen
thousand believers were numbered in the Nauvoo community. Arrested
several times for treason, for instigating an attempt at murder, and for
other crimes, Joseph Smith was released by Mormon courts and set all
“Gentile” laws at defiance. He was absolute in everything, organizing
the government upon the most despotic principles, yet copying in some
things the system and the phraseology of the Hebrew nation. His aides
and counsellors received names and titles imitated from the Bible.
Brigham Young was “the Lion of the Lord,” Parley P. Pratt was “the
Archer of Paradise,” Orson Pratt was “the Gauge of Philosophy,” John
Taylor was “the Champion of Right,” Lyman Wight was “the Wild Ram of the
Mountains.” No one could deal in land or liquor except Joseph Smith. No
one could aspire to political office or to church preferment without his
permission. No one could travel abroad or remain quiet at home except by
his consent. In Kirtland, with the assistance of Rigdon, he had started
a bank and flooded the country with notes that were never redeemed. In
Nauvoo he amassed what was, for that time and that region, the great
fortune of $1,000,000. From the first gathering of the saints into
communities he had made it a practice to use them in politics. He had
given their votes to one party or another as interest dictated, and in
1844 he went so far as to offer himself for the Presidency of the United
States, and sent two or three thousand elders through the States to
electioneer for him.
As he grew in pride and prosperity the revelations multiplied, the faith
became more and more extravagant, the ceremonies and ordinances of the
church more cumbrous and more mystical. Moroni and Raphael, Peter and
John, visited and conversed with him. He healed the possessed; he
wrestled with the devil. The brethren began to prophesy in the temple;
mysterious impulses stirred the congregations; “a mighty rushing wind
filled the place”; “many began to speak in tongues; others saw glorious
visions, and Joseph beheld that the temple was filled with angels, and
told the congregation so. The people of the neighborhood, hearing an
unusual sound within the temple, and seeing a bright light like a pillar
of fire resting upon it, came running together and were astonished at
what was transpiring.”[51] This diabolic manifestation, or alleged
manifestation, reminds us of the scenes in the Irvingite congregations
in London six years previously, when those brethren likewise prophesied
in an unknown language. But the specimens of the Mormon “gift of
tongues” which have been preserved for us are not calculated to inspire
awe. “Eli, ele, elo, ela—come, coma, como—reli, rele, rela, relo—sela,
selo, sele, selum—vavo, vava, vavum—sero, sera, seri, serum”—such was
the style of the rhapsodies which inflamed the zeal of the Mormon
saints.[52]
It was discovered that there was no salvation in the next world without
Mormon baptism, and, to provide for the generations which preceded
Joseph Smith, every saint was told to be immersed vicariously for his
dead ancestors. There was incessant dipping and sputtering; the whole
church for a season was in a chronic state of cold and dampness; and the
recorders worked their hardest, laying up in the temple the lists of the
regenerated for the information of the angels. The double hierarchy
became so complicated that long study was needed to comprehend it. The
church offices were multiplied. The authority of the president and the
apostles grew more and more despotic. A travelling showman visited the
West with some Egyptian mummies. Joseph Smith bought them, and, finding
in the wrappings a roll of papyrus, he produced a miraculous translation
of the hieroglyphics as the “Book of Abraham.” A fac-simile of the
papyrus was taken to Paris in 1855 by M. Rémy and submitted to the
Egyptologist Devéria, who found it to consist of a representation of the
resurrection of Osiris, together with a funerary manuscript of
comparatively recent date.
All who have studied the manufacture of American religions and social
philosophies are aware how characteristic of these moral and
intellectual rebellions is an attack upon the Christian law of
marriage.[53] The inventions of Joseph Smith soon took the usual course,
although it was probably not until near the end of his career that he
became bold enough to contemplate the general establishment of polygamy.
It appears that as early as 1838 he had a number of “spiritual wives”
who cohabited with him, and Mr. Stenhouse asserts that “many women” have
boasted to him that they sustained such relations with the prophet. This
sort of license, however, was an esoteric doctrine, for the advanced
believers only, not for the common people. Indeed, in 1842, although a
practical plurality had been for some time enjoined by the illuminated,
the doctrine was formally repudiated by a number of elders, apostles,
and women, who declared that they knew of no other marriage than that of
one wife to one husband. In 1845 an appendix on “Marriage” was added to
the book of _Doctrine and Covenants_, in which occurs the following
passage: “Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the
crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one
man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in case
of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.” Yet it is beyond
all question that Joseph long before this had been involved in serious
domestic difficulties on account of the jealousy of his true wife, Emma,
and he was obliged to resort to “revelation” to pacify her. The
“Revelation on Celestial Marriage,” which enjoins a plurality of wives
as a service especially acceptable to God, purports to have been given
at Nauvoo in 1843. It contains these sentences:
“And let mine handmaid Emma Smith receive all those that have
been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure
before me. And I command mine handmaid Emma Smith to abide and
cleave unto my servant Joseph and to none else. And again verily
I say, let mine handmaid forgive my servant Joseph his
trespasses, and then shall she be forgiven her trespasses.”
The revelation, however, was kept secret until long after Joseph’s
death. Emma, if not satisfied, was quieted. The spiritual marriages went
on, and even the initiated continued to deny them. John Taylor, the
present head of the church, held a public discussion of Mormonism in the
English colony at Boulogne in 1850, and stoutly denied the doctrine of
polygamy, although he had at the time five wives in Utah.
It was polygamy that brought Joseph to his violent end. He had attempted
to take the wife of a disciple named Law. The husband rebelled, and with
one or two other malcontents established a paper called the _Nauvoo
Expositor_, for the purpose of exposing the secret corruptions of the
prophet and his chief associates. Only one number was printed. Joseph
ordered the press to be destroyed and the type scattered. Law and his
party appealed to the authorities of the county for redress. Writs of
arrest were issued, and set aside by the Mormon courts. The government
called out the militia to enforce the process. An armed conflict
appeared inevitable, when the Mormon leaders surrendered, and Joseph
Smith, Hyrum Smith, John Taylor, and Willard Richards were lodged in the
county jail at Carthage. There, on the 27th of June, 1844, they were
attacked by an armed mob. Hyrum was shot down at the first volley and
almost instantly expired. Joseph, after defending himself with a
revolver, attempted to escape by the window, and was killed by a
discharge of musketry from the yard below.
In his lifetime the prophet was often denounced and resisted by his own
followers; “revelation” repeatedly put down revolts; apostates in great
numbers, including the very founders of the church, were cut off and
given over to Satan for questioning the truth of Joseph’s inspired
utterances. But his death healed all such quarrels. He became in the
eyes of his fanatical followers the first of saints, the most glorious
of martyrs. To this day even those who do not believe in Mormonism argue
that Joseph must have believed in it, because for its sake he lived a
life of persecution and submitted to a cruel death. The narrative which
we have briefly sketched is enough to show the fallacy of this
reasoning. Mormonism gave Joseph Smith wealth, power, flattery, and
sensual delights. It found him a miserable, penniless country boy; it
made him the ruler of a state, the autocrat of a thriving community, the
head of a harem. There never was a time when the choice was offered him
between worldly advantage on the one hand and fidelity to his creed on
the other. To renounce his pretensions would have been the ruin of his
fortunes. Having once entered upon the career of imposture, he had every
temptation to persevere to the end. He was mobbed and exiled and
imprisoned, not because he believed in the Book of Mormon, but because
he warred upon existing social and political institutions; and there was
nothing to make his death more sacred than that of any other cheat and
libertine who is murdered by masked ruffians in a frontier settlement.
After his death the twelve apostles ruled the church, waiting for the
will of Heaven to designate by inspiration a new leader.[54] Sidney
Rigdon claimed the prophetic office, but was rejected and driven forth.
The prime mover in his excommunication was the senior apostle, to whom
the accident of rank gave a practical precedence in all the affairs of
the church. He taught the saints to be patient and expectant, to
reverence Joseph as their chief for all eternity, to be governed by
Joseph’s voice, to cease vexing themselves about Joseph’s successor.
This was Brigham Young.
At length the time was ripe and the minds of the people were prepared.
On the 24th of December, 1847, Brigham ascended the pulpit to preach.
The Gentiles assert that he arranged his face and dress, modulated his
voice, regulated his gestures, to imitate the departed prophet. The
effect was electrical. The people believed that Joseph stood before
them. Women screamed and fainted; men wept; cries resounded through the
temple. Here was the successor of Joseph at last, and Brigham Young was
made president of the church, and recognized as “prophet, seer, and
revelator.” He was a man greatly inferior in education to some of the
other leaders, and he had done little as yet to justify the preference
now shown him. He was a native of Vermont, and one of the early
converts. Before joining the church he had been a painter and glazier.
In the church he was noted as a stanch, shrewd, hard-working, useful
brother, not much troubled with visions or theological theories, rarely
caught up by those tempests of spiritual madness which used to sweep
through the congregations. He could not have devised the imposture which
Joseph and Rigdon created. He could not have built up the elaborate
system which they constructed out of Old-World religions and modern
politics. He was fierce, and perhaps fanatical, but he had little
imagination and little inventiveness. In the case of other early Mormons
it was sometimes doubtful whether they were not occasionally deceived by
their own impostures, hurried along by a spirit which they had raised
and knew not how to control; but Brigham offered no cause for such
suspicion. He left Mormonism a very different thing from what it was in
1840, yet he added nothing to it. A change had been going on insensibly
ever since the saints gathered at Nauvoo; a further change had been
begun by the preaching of Orson Pratt; and Joseph Smith had originated
two great movements—the introduction of polygamy and the removal into
the heart of the wilderness—which Brigham was to bring to their term. He
is the developer, therefore, of other men’s ideas.