ALEXANDER CAMPBELL AND THE BOOK OF MORMON IN 1831.
This is Mr. Schroeder's strongest "evidence," and must be met at its full height and value. In 1831, in this same Millennial Harbinger, Vol. II, beginning at p. 86, is an exhaustive review and analysis of the Book of Mormon, and the most powerful critique of it ever published. It is by the Reverend Alexander Campbell. After giving an analysis of each book, in the Book of Mormon, from Nephi I to Moroni, the last book in it, he then starts an investigation of its "internal evidences," and in the first subdivision he begins in this language: "Smith, its real author, as ignorant and impudent a knave as ever wrote a book, betrays the cloven foot in basing his whole book upon a false fact." Then he proceeds. On the "internal evidence" he uses the following language:
"The book proposes to be written at intervals and by different persons, during the long period of 1020 years, and yet for uniformity of style, there never was a book more evidently written by one set of fingers, nor more certainly conceived in one cranium since the first book appeared in human language, than this same book. If I could swear to any man's voice, face, or person, assuming different names, I could swear that this book was written by one man. And as Joseph Smith is a very ignorant man and is called the 'author' on the title page, I cannot doubt for a single moment but that he is sole 'author' and 'proprietor' of it."
Mr. Campbell also considers the testimony of the three witnesses, and of the eight witnesses, and denounces them. He is acquainted with the whole subject. He knows that it was claimed for the record that it was engraved on gold plates; that they were found buried in a stone box in New York; that an account is given in the record of the gospel having been preached in America in the first Christian century—for all these things are subjects of his criticism. He criticises nearly every important doctrine and historical event in the book. He revels in his criticism, and near the conclusion of the whole says:
"If this Prophet and his three prophetic witnesses had aught of speciosity about them in their book, we would have examined it and exposed it in a different manner. I have never felt so fully authorized to address mortal man in the style in which Paul Addressed Elymas, the sorcerer, as I feel towards this atheist Smith."
And now question to Mr. Campbell, and to Mr. Schroeder: Could the event described in the letter of Mr. Bently and confirmed by Mr. Campbell's editorial note, have happened in 1826 or 1827 without Mr. Campbell remembering it in 1831 when he wrote this scathing review and critique on the Book of Mormon? Let it be held in mind here how explicit the charge of Bently is. More than two years before the Book of Mormon made its appearance Rigdon told Bently "there was a book coming out the manuscript of which had been found on gold plates." Campbell was present and heard this remark, and also says that Rigdon at the same time observed that "the plates were dug up in New York," and that "the Christian religion had been preached in this country during the first Christian century, just as we were preaching it on the western reserve." Had these things been said in the presence of Alexander Campbell, two years before the Book of Mormon came out, and so said that they made such a lasting impression upon his mind that in 1844 he remembered them perfectly—will any reasonable person undertake to say that under the strong stress of feeling exhibited by Alexander Campbell against the Book of Mormon in 1831, remembering too that this same Sidney Rigdon had left the Campbellites and joined the Mormon Church—under these circumstances, will any person, reasonable or otherwise, say that during the writing of this long and bitter criticism of the Book of Mormon in 1831 the association of ideas and incidents would not have asserted itself and recalled this alleged Bently-Rigdon incident to the mind of Alexander Campbell? Yet not one word in the Campbell review of 1831, to indicate that the Bently-Rigdon incident ever happened.
Yet as he proceeded with his review, it would have been inevitable that he would have discovered Rigdon's forth-promised book—"the manuscript of which had been found engraved on gold plates." "Why, yes," he would have said, "that must be the book that Rigdon spoke to Bently about." He read in the preface to the first edition of the Book of Mormon—and Mr. Campbell made a specialty of this preface in his criticism—"I would also inform you that the plates of which hath been spoken were found in the township of Manchester, Ontario county, New York"—"Yes, I remember," Mr. Campbell would have exclaimed—"dug up in New York"—"I remember, that is what Sidney Rigdon said to Adamson Bently two or three years ago." He came to the account of the appearance of the risen Messiah among the aborigines of America; to the choosing of a ministry and commissioning them to preach the Gospel to all the people—"Yes," he would have exclaimed, "it is all here; that is what Rigdon said in that Bently conversation in 1826 or 1827,—'the Christian religion had been preached in this country during the first century, just as we are preaching it on the western reserve'—those were his very words, and now Rigdon has joined the movement of which the coming forth of this book is a leading incident! Well! well!"
Would not such have been the mental process? And would we not, in that event, have had the Book of Mormon criticised by Mr. Campbell in 1831, from quite a different view-point than that from which he treated it? Anyone who can believe that Campbell could remember such an incident as the Bently-Rigdon incident he recites in 1844, and yet that he failed to remember it under all the circumstances of writing his review of the Book of Mormon in 1831, need not stagger over believing any seeming miracle within the experience of man, however extravagant it may be.
I shall never be able to express in words the deep depression that overcame me when the conviction of Alexander Campbell's perfidy was forced upon me. In my early manhood I had read extensively in his works. The evidence he compiled and the argument he made in his great debate with Robert Owen, the English Communist, I regard as the grandest defense ever made of historic Christianity, while his debate with Bishop Purcell on the The Roman Catholic Religion is justly described as the "battle of the giants." In these and in his debates with William McCalla and the Reverend N. L. Rice, his bearing is admirable; he is the courteous gentleman, the splendid scholar, the patient philosopher, the fair opponent. In discussing the Book of Mormon, he exhibits a vulgarity, a bitterness utterly unaccountable, and entirely unworthy of himself; and lastly, and saddest of all, he descends to the low subterfuge of falsehood as in this Bently-Rigdon affair.
One may halt here. The Reverend Mr. Atwater quoted by Mr. Schroeder may now tell his little story, in 1873, of his "recollection" of Sidney Rigdon's reference to the mounds and other antiquities found in some parts of America, and of his saying before the Book of Mormon was published that "there was a book to be published containing an account of these things." Dr. Rosa of Painsville, Ohio, also quoted by Mr. Schroeder, can now tell, in 1841, of a conversation he had with Sidney Rigdon in the early part of 1830, about it being time for a new religion to spring up that "mankind were ripe, and ready for it;" and air his suspicions that Rigdon found his "new religion" in Mormonism, and on that and a remembrance of a casual remark of Rigdon's that he expected to be absent from home a few months, build his conclusion that Rigdon "was at least an accessory, if not the principal in getting up this farce"[128] of Mormonism. All this I say may be said by these "witnesses," but it is of no effect; for if sectarian prejudice and bitterness and jealousy, coupled with intellectual pride, can so swerve Alexander Campbell from the path direct of truth and fair dealing, it is not to be marveled at if a thousand little Reverend whiffets spring forward with their timely "recollections," that make against the truth.
[Footnote 128: American Historical Magazine, November, 1906, p. 532, ante p. 46.]
[IV.]
Mr. Schroeder's next development of his attempted "cumulative evidence and argument" is to establish a connection between Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, through Parley P. Pratt. He first deals with the movements of Pratt from his birth until he is established in Amherst, Lorain county, Ohio, a few miles west of Cleveland, in 1826. In order to lay a foundation for his conclusion Mr. Schroeder gives an exaggerated idea of the notoriety of Joseph Smith at this time "as a 'peep-stone' money digger, through mention made of him in papers published in several counties in southern New York and northern Pennsylvania."[129] For authority of this statement Mr. Schroeder cites only Tucker, author of "Origin and Progress of Mormonism," and the Rev. Clark Braden, in the "Braden-Kelly Debate." He might just as well have only cited Tucker, for Braden but repeats, in slightly altered form what was said by Tucker. The latter in his work produces not a single newspaper item, nor gives a single reference to any publication in justification of his statement. There was none to give prior to 1826. Joseph Smith's "notoriety" was purely local up to that time.
[Footnote 129: American Historical Magazine, Jan., 1907, p. 58. Ante p. 49.]
Mr. Schroeder represents that Parley P. Pratt was a peddler "who knew almost every body in western New York,"[130] therefore he very likely knew the Smiths previous to 1826. For the statement that Pratt was a peddler, and "ubiquitous," Mr. Schroeder can only cite an address, before the Union Home Missionary meeting in 1881, by Mrs. Horace Eaton, of Palmyra;[131] and she was evidently repeating one of the many idle rumors from the vicinity of Palmyra, as there is no evidence for the statement of Mrs. Eaton, and the story is refuted by the facts as stated in the first chapters of Pratt's "Autobiography," where his struggles to secure and clear a farm, in partnership with his brother, are detailed. This farm was near the then small town of Oswego, on Lake Ontario, in Oswego County. It is true that Pratt in the autumn of 1826 visited his uncles, Ira and Allen Pratt, in Wayne—then Ontario—county, New York,—exact location not given. There is nothing "ubiquitous" about his movements, or any evidence of his wide acquaintance with people.
[Footnote 130: "Hand Book on Mormonism" (1882), p. 3.]
[Footnote 131: American Historical Magazine, Jan., 1907, p. 58. Ante p. 49. Also "Hand Book on Mormonism," p. 3.]
To give a coloring of dishonesty to the character of Pratt, Mr. Schroeder writes the following passage:
"One of the temptations inducing Pratt's departure from New York was to get a country where, as he himself expresses it, there is 'no law to sweep (away) all the hard earnings of years to pay a small debt.' The ethical status of an average country-peddler who is willing to leave his native State to avoid the payment of his 'small debts' furnishes a fertile immorality in which to plant the seeds of religious imposture."[132]
[Footnote 132: American Historical Magazine, Jan., 1907, p. 59. Ante pp. 49-50.]
Mr. Schroeder conceals the fact that the "small debt" not "debts" as put by him, was merely a remainder due to Mr. Morgan of whom Pratt had purchased the farm near Oswego, and which owing to his brother's failure to meet his share of the payments, as also bad markets for the crop of 1826, Mr. Pratt could not pay. Whereupon the farm it had taken years to clear of timber, and the crop was seized by Morgan for that debt. Is Mr. Schroeder justified in giving a sinister aspect to this matter?
We have Pratt located in Amherst, 1826. Sidney Rigdon makes his second journey from Pennsylvania and arrives at Bainbridge, Ohio, in 1826, and in capacity of "Disciple" preacher visits the surrounding towns where he becomes acquainted with Pratt. All this is granted. Mr. Schroeder in trying to fix upon the exact time and circumstance of their first meeting, resorts to a jugglery of facts, and builds on the distorted mass such conclusions as can be characterized only by the term shameful. I quote Mr. Schroeder:
"The date of their first meeting is nowhere given, but may reasonably be inferred from an address delivered by Parley P. Pratt in 1843 or '4. In this discourse Pratt tells of an occurrence which transpired on his way to his future Ohio home, which occurrence furnishes the key to his first connection with Mormonism. On his way he stopped at a humble cottage, the name of whose occupant he carefully fails to give. Here, while asleep (so he says), "a messenger of a mild and intelligent countenance suddenly stood before me (Pratt) arrayed in robes of dazzling splendor." According to Mormon theory, an angel is but an exalted man. Of course Sidney Rigdon was an exalted man; why not, then, an angel? This angel claimed to hold the keys to the mysteries of this wonderful country, and took Pratt out to exhibit those mysteries to him. Pratt then had portrayed to his mind the whole future of Mormonism; its cities, with inhabitants from all parts of the globe; its temples, with a yet unattained splendor; its present church organization was, with considerable definiteness, outlined; its political ambition to establish a temporal kingdom of God on the ruins of this government was set forth with quite as much definiteness as in the subsequent more publicly uttered, treasonable sermons. I conclude from the exact manner in which this "Angel of the Prairies" foreknew the ambitions, hopes, and future achievements of the Mormon Church and the similar admitted fore-knowledge of Rigdon and the subsequently established connection between Rigdon, Pratt, and Smith, that the "Angel of the Prairies" who outlined to Pratt his then contemplated and now executed religious fraud, was none other than Sidney Rigdon himself, and that this fact accounts for Pratt's failure to give the name of his host or the date of his first meeting with Rigdon."[133]
[Footnote 133: American Historical Magazine, Jan., 1907, p. 59. Ante p. 51.]