New Witnesses for God (Volume 3 of 3)

by B. H. Roberts

III.

The Sidney Rigdon Theory.

It will be seen, by those who have followed us through the treatise on the Spaulding Theory, that Sidney Rigdon is considered a factor in that supposed scheme. It is generally thought that it was he who supplied the religious matter of the book, and who determined the parts of the Hebrew scripture that should be interwoven in its alleged historical parts. Such prominence, in fact, is given to Sidney Rigdon in bringing forth the Book of Mormon that I decided to consider his connection with it under this separate heading.

Mr. Sidney Rigdon always, and most emphatically, denied the story of his connection with Patterson and his printing establishment. In the January number (1836) of the "Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate" he denounces Howe's book and those who advocated it. Referring to Mr. Scott, Mr. Campbell and other professed ministers of the gospel, he said:

In order to avoid investigation this brotherhood will condescend to mean, low subterfuges, to which a noble-minded man would never condescend; no, he would suffer martyrdom first. Witness Mr. Campbell's recommendation of Howe's book, while he knows, as well as every person who reads it, that it is a batch of falsehoods.

Later, in a letter to Messrs. Bartlett and Sullivan, written from Commerce (afterwards Nauvoo), May 27, 1839, in a communication called forth by the publication of the bogus statement purporting to come from Mrs. Davison and published by the Rev. John Storrs, Elder Rigdon said:

Commerce, May 27, 1839. Messrs. Bartlett and Sullivan:—In your paper of the 18th instant, I see a letter signed my somebody calling herself Matilda Davison, pretending to give the origin of Mormonism, as she is pleased to call it, by relating a moonshine story about a certain Solomon Spaulding, a creature with the knowledge of whose earthly existence I am entirely indebted to this production; for, surely, until Dr. Philastus Hurlburt informed me that such a being lived, at some former period, I had not the most distant knowledge of his existence; and all I know about his character is the opinion I form from what is attributed to his wife in obtruding my name upon the public in the manner in which she is said to have done, by trying to make the public believe that I had knowledge of the ignorant, and, according to her own testimony, the lying scribblings of her deceased husband; for if her testimony is to be credited, her pious husband, in his lifetime, wrote a bundle of lies for the righteous purpose of getting money. How many lies he had told for the same purpose, while he was preaching, she has not so kindly informed us; but we are at liberty to draw our own conclusions, for he that would write lies to get money, would also preach lies for the same object. This being the only information which I have, or ever had, of the said Rev. Solomon Spaulding, I, of necessity, have but a very light opinion of him as a gentleman, a scholar, or a man of piety, for had he been either, he certainly would have taught his pious wife not to lie, nor unite herself with adulterers, liars, and the basest of mankind.

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 Pittsburg, and who is said to have kept a printing office, and my saying that I was concerned in the said office, etc., is the most base of lies, without even a shadow of truth. There was no man by the name of Patterson, during my residence at Pittsburg, who had a printing office; what might have been before I lived there I know not. Mr. Robert Patterson, I was told, had owned a printing office before I lived in that city, but had been unfortunate in business, and failed before my residence there. This Mr. Patterson, who was a Presbyterian preacher, I had a very slight acquaintance with during my residence in Pittsburg. He was then acting under an agency, in the book and stationery business, and was the owner of no property of any kind, printing office or anything else, during the time I resided in the city.^[[33]]

One can but regret the tone and coarseness of this letter of Sidney Rigdon's, but it cannot be denied but that it is a very emphatic contradiction of the charge that he was connected with the Spaulding manuscript theory of the Book of Mormon's origin, and it is very natural that a man of the nervous, irritable temperament of Sidney Rigdon would be very much vexed at connecting him with such a theory.

On the matter of Sidney Rigdon not being connected with the origin of the Book of Mormon we have also the statement of Oliver Cowdery, made on his return to the Church at Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), in October, 1848, a statement that was made in the presence of 2,000 Saints. In the course of his remarks, Oliver Cowdery then said:

I wrote, with my own pen, the entire Book of Mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph Smith, as he translated it by the gift and power of God, by means of the Urim and Thummim, or, as it is called by that book, "Holy Interpreters." I beheld with my eyes, and handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was transcribed. I also saw with my eyes and handled with my hands the "holy interpreters." That book is true. Sidney Rigdon did not write it. Mr. Spaulding did not write it. I wrote it myself as it fell from the lips of the Prophet.^[[34]]

Parley P. Pratt, who, with Oliver Cowdery, was the first to present the Book of Mormon to Sidney Rigdon some six months after its publication, is also on record as denying the story of Sidney Rigdon's connection with the origin of the Book of Mormon. When the "Davison Statement" was copied from the "Boston Recorder" into the "New York Era," Elder Pratt promptly denied the falsehood. The "Era" published the "Davison Statement" on the 20th, and in its issue of the 27th Elder Pratt published a somewhat exhaustive treatise in which the following occurs:

The piece in your paper states that "Sidney Rigdon was connected in the printing office of Mr. Patterson" (in Pittsburg), and that this is a fact well known in that region, and as Rigdon himself has frequently stated. Here he had ample opportunity to become acquainted with Mr. Spaulding's manuscript (romance) and to copy it if he chose. This statement is utterly and entirely false. Mr. Rigdon was never connected with the said printing establishment, either directly or indirectly, and we defy the world to bring proof of any such connection. * * The statement that Sidney Rigdon is one of the founders of the said religious sect is also incorrect.

The sect was founded in the state of New York, while Mr. Rigdon resided in Ohio, several hundred miles distant. Mr. Rigdon embraced the doctrine through my instrumentality. I first presented the Book of Mormon to him. I stood upon the bank of the stream while he was baptized, and assisted to officiate in his ordination, and I myself was unacquainted with the system until some months after its organization, which was on the 6th of April, 1830, and I embraced it in September following.

Again, in 1840, in a work entitled "Late Persecutions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints," referring to the persecutions in Missouri, in the course of which he also gave an account of the rise and progress of the doctrine of the Church, Elder Pratt says, relative to this Spaulding story:

There is one story, however, which I will notice, because some religious journals have given some credit to it. It is the story of Solomon Spaulding writing a romance of the ancient inhabitants of America which is said to be converted by Mr. Sidney Rigdon into the Book of Mormon. This is another base fabrication got up by the devil and his servants to deceive the world. Mr. Sidney Rigdon never saw the Book of Mormon until it had been published more than six months; it was then presented to him by the author of this history.^[[35]]

From another source there is also an emphatic denial of Sidney Rigdon's connection with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. This is the statement of Mr. Rigdon's son, John W. Rigdon. This gentleman wrote a somewhat extended biography of his father, Sidney Rigdon, which he placed in its manuscript form in the Church Historian's office, at Salt Lake City, where it is now on file. Mr. John W. Rigdon's account of his father's connection with the Book of Mormon agrees with the statement of Elder Pratt; and then, near the close of his narrative, he relates his own experience in connection with Mormonism, and his attempt to learn the truth from his father respecting the latter's early connection with the Book of Mormon. John W. Rigdon tells of his own visit to Utah, in 1863, where he spent the winter among the Mormon people. He was not favorably impressed with their religious life, and came to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon itself was a fraud. He determined in his own heart that if ever he returned home and found his father, Sidney Rigdon, alive, he would try and find out what he knew of the origin of the Book of Mormon. "Although," he adds, "he had never told but one story about it, and that was that Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery presented him with a bound volume of that book in the year 1830, while he (Sidney Rigdon) was preaching Campbellism at Mentor, Ohio." What John W. Rigdon claims to have seen in Utah, however, together with the fact that Sidney Rigdon had been charged with writing the Book of Mormon, made him suspicious; and he remarks:

I concluded I would make an investigation for my own satisfaction and find out, if I could, if he had all these years been deceiving his family and the world, by telling that which was not true, and I was in earnest about it. If Sidney Rigdon, my father, had thrown his life away by telling a falsehood and bringing sorrow and disgrace upon his family, I wanted to know it and was determined to find out the facts, no matter what the consequences might be. I reached home in the fall of 1865, found my father in good health and (he) was very much pleased to see me. As he had not heard anything from me for some time, he was afraid that I had been killed by the Indians. Shortly after I had arrived home, I went to my father's room; he was there and alone, and now was the time for me to commence my inquiries in regard to the origin of the Book of Mormon, and as to the truth of the Mormon religion. I told him what I had seen at Salt Lake City, and I said to him that what I had seen at Salt Lake had not impressed me very favorably toward the Mormon Church, "and as to the origin of the Book of Mormon I had some doubts." "You have been charged with writing that book and giving it to Joseph Smith to introduce to the world. You have always told me one story; that you never saw the book until it was presented to you by Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery; and all you ever knew of the origin of that book was what they told you and what Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates had told you. Is this true? If so, all right; if it is not, you owe it to me and to your family to tell it. You are an old man and you will soon pass away, and I wish to know if Joseph Smith, in your intimacy with him for fourteen years, has not said something to you that led you to believe he obtained that book in some other way than what he had told you. Give me all you know about it, that I may know the truth." My father, after I had finished saying what I have repeated above, looked at me a moment, raised his hand above his head and slowly said, with tears glistening in his eyes: "My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of that book is true. Your mother and sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson, were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of that book was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but the one story, and that was that he found it engraved upon gold plates in a hill near Palmyra, New York, and that an angel had appeared to him and directed him where to find it; and I have never, to you or to any one else, told but the one story, and that I now repeat to you." I believed him, and now believe he told me the truth. He also said to me after that that Mormonism was true; that Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and this world would find it out some day.^[[36]]

In addition to these solemn denials of Sidney Rigdon's connection with this Spaulding theory, we have another means of testing whether or not Sidney Rigdon was the author of the Book of Mormon. That test is the one already referred to when considering the difference of style between Spaulding's manuscript story, and the Book of Mormon. We have enough of Sidney Rigdon's writings before us to determine his literary style; namely, in the Historian's office we have in manuscript his description of the land of Zion, Jackson County, which he was commanded of the Lord to write. We have a number of his communications published in the "Evening and Morning Star," and also the "Messenger and Advocate." In these two publications also there are thirteen articles on the subject of the "Millennium" from his pen, and after careful comparison of his style with that of the Book of Mormon, I do not hesitate to say that Sidney Rigdon, not only never did, but never could have written the Book of Mormon. There are no phrases or conceptions in the Book of Mormon that are Sidney Rigdon's. There is nothing in common between his style and that of the Book of Mormon. There can be no doubt about it; Sidney Rigdon as the author of the Book of Mormon is impossible.

IV.

The "Joachim" fragment of the Spaulding-Rigdon Theory.

It was reserved for William Linn, author of the "Story of the Mormons,"^[[37]] a pretentious work of nearly 650 pages, to go "a far way" for an additional item which, in the full pride of an author who has made a new discovery, he adds to the Spaulding-Rigdon theory of the Book of Mormon's origin. This new item I have called the "Joachim Fragment of the Spaulding-Rigdon Theory." Mr. Linn, with evident pride, makes this mention of it in the preface of his book: "The probable service of Joachim's 'Everlasting Gospel,' as suggesting the story of the revelation of the plates, has been hitherto overlooked."^[[38]] In the body of his work he thus sets forth his idea of the part played by the "Everlasting Gospel," sometimes called by other writers, "The Eternal Gospel," and in the thirteenth century, when it was supposed to be in circulation among the Franciscan order of monks, it is spoken of as "The Book of Joachim."

That the idea of the revelation (i. e., of the existence of the Book of Mormon) as described by Smith in his autobiography was not original is shown by the fact that a similar divine message, engraved on plates, was announced to have been received from an angel nearly six hundred years before the alleged visit of an angel to Smith. These original plates were described as a copper, and the recipient was a monk named Cyril, from whom their contents passed into the possession of the Abbot Joachim, whose "Everlasting Gospel," founded thereon, was offered to the church as supplanting the New Testament, just as the New Testament had supplanted the Old, and caused so serious a schism that Pope Alexander IV took the severest measures against it.^[[39]]

This description of the origin of Joachim's "Everlasting Gospel" rests upon the respectable authority of Draper, in his "Intellectual Development of Europe."^[[40]]

Linn's argument is to the effect that this origin of the "Everlasting Gospel" suggested the origin of the Book of Mormon because of the resemblance between the celestial announcement of both, and also because that both, according to his idea of them, were declared to have the same purport—each was to be "a forerunner of the end of the world." He also urges the frequent use of the phrase, "Everlasting Gospel," in the discourses of the early Elders of the Church as evidence that there was some connection between these two things, the Book of Mormon and "The Book of Joachim." He further holds that Sidney Rigdon, in the course of his ecclesiastical reading would come in contact with the story of Joachim's "Everlasting Gospel;" that it would be just such a story as would be attractive to one of Sidney Rigdon's temperament. Linn throughout his work assumes a connection and collaboration between Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, and claims that the latter suggested the story of the "Book of Joachim," as the ground-work of Joseph Smith's account of the origin of the Book of Mormon. Our author thinks that Rigdon may even have found sufficient matter in relation to Joachim's "Everlasting Gospel," in Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," to suggest the account he induced Joseph Smith to give of the origin of the Book of Mormon, and makes the following quotation from Mosheim in proof of his contention:

About the commencement of this [the thirteenth] century there were handed about in Italy several pretended prophecies of the famous Joachim, Abbot of Sora, in Calabria, whom the multitude revered as a person divinely inspired, and equal to the most illustrious prophets of ancient times. The greatest part of these predictions were contained in a certain book entitled, "The Everlasting Gospel," and which was also commonly called the Book of Joachim. This Joachim, whether a real or fictitious person we shall not pretend to determine, among many other future events, foretold the destruction of the Church of Rome, whose corruptions he censured with the greatest severity, and the promulgation of a new and more perfect gospel in the age of the Holy Ghost, by the set of poor and austere ministers, whom God was to raise up and employ for that purpose

It is to be observed of this passage, as indeed of all that is said by Mosheim upon the subject, that there is no account here of an angel revealing the existence of the Book of Joachim to Cyril, or to any one else, which is the chief item of resemblance between Joseph Smith's story of the origin of the Book of Mormon and the alleged origin of "The Everlasting Gospel," as related by Draper and Linn. Indeed, in the closing lines of the very paragraph from Mosheim which Linn quotes as being the possible source of Sidney Rigdon's knowledge of the "Book of Joachim," it is stated that the Franciscans who accepted Joachim's book maintained that Saint Francis, the founder of their Order, had "spoken to mankind the true gospel, and that he was the angel whom Saint John saw flying in the midst of heaven;" which is quite a different account of this matter than that given by Draper. Whether or not Sidney Rigdon had access to the same source of information as Draper had, is, of course, not known; but certainly Draper did not obtain the account of the angel appearing to Cyril from Mosheim. As a matter of fact, there is much confusion and uncertainty among authorities respecting the origin of this "Everlasting Gospel," and some question whether such a book was ever put forth by Joachim. The work used at the time it was current in the thirteenth century was very often confounded with an introduction to the so-called "Everlasting Gospel," written, as Draper says, by John of Parma; and as others say by Gerhard, a Franciscan friar. The celebrated Dr. Augustus Neander, in his "General History of the Christian Religion and Church," holds to this same theory. He says:

A great sensation was now created by a commentary on the "eternal gospel," which after the middle of the thirteenth century the Franciscan Gerhard, who, by his zeal for Joachim's doctrines, involved himself in many persecutions and incurred an eighteen years' imprisonment, published under the title of "Introduction to the Eternal Gospel." Many vague notions were entertained about the "eternal gospel" of the Franciscans, arising from superficial views, or a superficial understanding of Joachim's writings, and the offspring of mere rumor of the heresy-hunting spirit. Men spoke of the "eternal gospel" as of a book composed under this title, and circulated among the Franciscans. Occasionally, also, this "eternal gospel" was confounded perhaps with the above-mentioned "Introduction." In reality, there was no book existing under this title of the "Eternal Gospel;" but all that is said about it relates simply to the writings of Joachim. * * * The whole matter of this work also seems to have consisted in an explanation of the fundamental ideas of the Abbot Joachim, and in the application of them to the genuine Franciscan order.^[[41]]

This exhibits much confusion and uncertainty concerning the story of Joachim and his book. Of course, it may be argued that this story of the Book of Joachim, as told by Draper and repeated by Linn, would furnish equally well the suggestion of the origin of the Book of Mormon, whether it was the statement of an historical fact or only the wild invention of a fanatical Franciscan, but it would be incumbent upon those who make such an argument to prove that Sidney Rigdon had knowledge of such a story.

Another suggestion may be argued that would tend to break down the probability of the origin of the "Everlasting Gospel" suggesting the origin of the Book of Mormon; and that is: Had Sidney Rigdon or any one else taken the story of the revelation of the Book of Joachim to Cyril and from it invented the account of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, he would very likely have taken other ideas attributed to this very worthy but over-zealous and weak-minded man of the thirteenth century. As, for example, Linn himself declares that the "Everlasting Gospel was offered to the Church as supplanting the New Testament, just as the New Testament had supplanted the Old," etc., a theory that would very likely have caught the fancy of such a man as Linn conceives Rigdon to have been. Yet Mormonism is as far removed from any such conception as this, as the east is from the west; for Mormonism gives full force to the present authority of both the Old and New Testaments as containing the word of God, and the Book of Mormon nowhere supplants these existing scriptures. Neander presents a more elaborate view of some of the theories of this same Joachim, and represents him as teaching the following:

The times of the Old Testament belong especially to God the Father; in it, God revealed himself as the Almighty, by signs and wonders; next, followed the times of the New Testament, in which God, as the Word, revealed himself in his wisdom, where the striving after a comprehensible knowledge of mysteries predominates; the last times belong to the Holy Spirit, when the first of love in contemplation will predominate. As the letter of the Old Testament answers to God the Father, the letter of the New Testament more especially to the Son, so the spiritual understanding, which proceeds from both, answers to the Holy Spirit. As all things were created by the Father through the Son; so in the Holy Spirit, as love, all were to find their completion. To the working of the Father—power, fear, faith, more especially correspond; to the working of the Son—humility, truth, and wisdom; to the working of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, and freedom.^[[42]]

In like manner he takes up the Apostles Peter, James, and John as in a way representing in the earth, respectively, the three periods in the process of the development of the Church. I insist that if Sidney Rigdon had become acquainted with that story of the "Everlasting Gospel," as it is told by Draper, he would unquestionably also have come to the knowledge of these theories of Joachim's; and if Sidney Rigdon was the kind of character that Linn represents him to be, he would unquestionably have taken up some of these vagaries and exploited them, either in the Book of Mormon or in the subsequent development of the Church and its system of doctrine. It is scarcely necessary to say that none of these ideas of the thirteenth century man is to be found in Mormonism, nor are any other of Joachim's ideas found in the Latter-day dispensation of the Gospel. The mere matter of using the phrase, "Everlasting Gospel," by the early Elders of the Church—and for matter of that by the present ministry of the Church—in their discourses and books, scarcely rises to dignity of a coincidence, since we have the phrase suggested in the remarkable prophecy on the restoration of the Gospel in the Revelations of St. John,^[[43]] without referring to any circumstance of the thirteenth century and the obscure literature concerning the Book of Joachim.

This whole theory of the suggested origin of the Book of Mormon from the story of the Book of Joachim, however ingenious it may be regarded, breaks down as the Spaulding-Rigdon theory does, under the absolute inability of all these speculators to show any connection, or collaboration, between Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon previous to the publication of the Book of Mormon. Their inventions fail; their speculations amount to nothing. It is impossible to show any contact between Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon before the Book of Mormon was published, therefore, whatever opportunity Sidney Rigdon may have had to become acquainted with the story of Joachim's "Everlasting Gospel," that knowledge could play no part whatever in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.

V.

Woodbridge Riley's Theory of the Origin of the Book of Mormon.

This theory may be said, in a way, to be a reversion to that of Alexander Campbell's; that is, a return to the theory that Joseph Smith was the "author" of the Book of Mormon. Mr. Riley's book, of 446 pages, is a well written thesis on the "Founder of Mormonism." It was published by Dodd, Mead & Company, 1902. It is a psychological study of Joseph Smith the Prophet. The purpose of the work is set forth in the author's preface, as follows:

The aim of this work is to examine Joseph Smith's character and achievements from the standpoint of recent psychology. Sectarians and phrenologists, spiritualists and mesmerists have variously interpreted his more or less abnormal performances—it now remains for the psychologist to have a try at them.

The work also has an introductory preface by Professor George Trumbull Ladd, of Yale University, in which Mr. Riley's essay is very highly praised. Indeed the work was offered to the Philosophical Faculty of Yale University as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and before this the matter of the essay had been utilized in 1898 for a Master of Arts thesis, under the title of "Metaphysics of Mormonism," so that from these circumstances we may venture the remark that Mr. Riley's book is of highly scientific character, at least in its literary structure, and has already attracted some considerable notice in the world.

To the Latter-day Saints it will be interesting, and of value at least in this, that they may accept it as one of many manifestations that the other theories accounting for the origin of the Book of Mormon are regarded as inadequate, if not exploded, since the learned find it necessary to set forth now a new theory, both for the origin of the Book of Mormon, and the life work of the Prophet Joseph.

Mr. Riley's conclusions, after patient consideration of what he regards as the elements entering into the composition of the Book of Mormon, are thus stated:

In spite of a continuous stream of conjectural literature, it is as yet impossible to pick out any special document as an original source of the Book of Mormon. In particular the commonly-accepted Spaulding theory is insoluble from external evidence and disproved by internal evidence. Joseph Smith's "Record of the Indians" is a product indigenous to the New York "Wilderness," and the authentic work of its "author and proprietor." Outwardly, it reflects the local color of Palmyra and Manchester, inwardly, its complexity of thought is a replica of Smith's muddled brain. This monument of misplaced energy was possible to the impressionable youth constituted and circumstanced as he was.^[[44]]

As for the process by which the book was produced, our author conceives it thus:

It was in western New York that the son of an obscure farmer gazed in his magic crystal, automatically wrote "a transcription of gold plates," dictated the Book of Mormon, and after strange signs and wonders, started his communistic sect.^[[45]]

Our author makes an extended pathological study of the prophet's ancestry, and arrives at the conclusion that their mental peculiarities and defects, culminate in epilepsy in Joseph Smith the Prophet. So that we may say, roughly speaking, that Mr. Riley's explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon, and Mormonism, is that it has its source in an epileptic, whose-hallucinations are honestly mistaken for inspired visions, and who possesses partly conscious and partly unconscious hypnotic power over others. And this theory is presented seriously to one of the first institutions of learning in America as a rational explanation of "Mormonism!"

Unfortunately for Mr. Riley's theory, however, another writer, an authority in his chosen field of investigation, a writer of text books for higher institutions of learning on this very subject, has spoken with marked emphasis not only with reference to epilepsy in general and the milder forms of its manifestation under the head of Paranoia, but has spoken of it with special reference to Joseph Smith, and distinctly separates him from such class of persons. Following are passages from Mr. Dana's works upon the subject:

A certain rather small per centage of epileptics become either demented or insane. True epilepsy is not compatible with extraordinary intellectual endowments. Caesar, Napoleon, Peter the Great and other geniuses may have had some symptomatic fits, but not idispathic [primary] epilepsy.^[[46]]

Again:

Paranoia is a chronic psychosis characterized by the development gradually and soon after maturity of systematized delusion, without other serious disturbances of the mind and without much tendency to dementia. * * * With some the systematized idea takes a religious turn, and the patient thinks he has some divine mission, or has received some inspiration from God; or the idea may take a devotional turn and the patient become an acetic. It is not, however, to be assumed that all promoters of new religious and novel social ideas are paranoics. Many of these are simply the natural developments of ignorance and a somewhat emotional and unbalanced temperament. The characteristics of the paranoic is that his work is ineffective, his influence brief and trivial, his ideas really too absurd and impractical for even ignorant men to receive. I do not class successful prophets and organizers like Joseph Smith, or great apostles of social reforms like Rousseau as paranoics. Insane minds are not creative, but are weak and lack persistence in purpose or power of execution.^[[47]]

It is not possible in this writing to enter into an extended consideration of this theory. Neither indeed is it necessary. One consideration alone is sufficient to overthrow these fanciful speculations of Mr. Riley. "Hitherto," says Renan in his Life of Christ, "it has never been given to aberration of mind to produce a serious effect upon the progress of humanity."^[[48]] As stated by Dana, the work of the paranoic is ineffective, his influence brief and trivial, his ideas impractical and absurd. I believe that doctrine. The dreams and hallucinations of the epileptic end in mere dreams and hallucinations; they never crystallize into great systems of philosophy or into rational religious institutions. They never result in great organizations capable of perpetuating that philosophy and that religion in the world. No matter how nearly genius may be allied to madness, it must remain genius and not degenerate to madness if it exercises any permanent influence over the minds of men, such as Mormonism has done over a large body of people, and resulted in permanent institutions. There is much glamor of sophistry, which may be taken by some for profound reason and argument, in Mr. Riley's book, but one word answers this so called philosophical accounting for our Prophet: The work accomplished by him, the institutions he founded, destroy the whole fabric of premises and argument on which this theory is based. Great as was the Prophet Joseph Smith—and he was great; to him more than to any other man of modern times was it given to look deep into the things that are; to comprehend the heavens, and the laws that obtain there; to understand the earth, its history, and its mission. He looked into the deep things of God, and out of the rich treasure of divine knowledge there, he brought forth things both new and old for the instruction of our race, the like of which, in some respects, had not been known in previous dispensations. But great as Joseph Smith was, rising up and towering far above him is the work that he accomplished through divine guidance; that work is infinitely greater than the Prophet, greater than all the prophets connected with it. Its consistency, its permanency, its institutions, contradict the hallucination theory advanced to account for its origin.^[[49]]

This theory of Mr. Riley's may be said to now occupy the attention of men, but as the theories of Campbell, the Spaulding theory, and the Rigdon theory of origin have one by one been discarded as untenable, and inadequate for the purposes for which they were invoked, so, too, will this epilepsy and hallucination theory of Mr. Riley's be discarded, since it will fail to give an adequate accounting for the Book of Mormon, which, so long as the truth respecting it is unbelieved, will remain to the world an enigma, a veritable literary Sphinx, challenging the inquiry and speculations of the learned. But to those who in simple faith will accept it for what it is, a revelation from God, it will minister spiritual consolation, and by its plainness and truth draw men into closer communion with God.