(A Reply to Mr. Theodore Schroeder)
[I.]
When one undertakes at this late day a serious discussion of the Spaulding theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon, he instinctively feels inclined to begin with an apology to his readers. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating the Koran to him, Grotius answered that there was no proof. The statement here is Carlyle's; and the gruff old Scotch philosopher adds in his sour fashion, "It is really time to dismiss all that."[1] So indeed we think of this Spaulding myth in reference to its being the origin of the Book of Mormon.
[Footnote 1: "Heroes and Hero Worship," by Thomas Carlyle, lecture II.]
When the Church of which the Book of Mormon may be said, in a way, to have been the origin has survived the most cruel religious persecution of modern times, first in the expulsion of from twelve to fifteen thousand of its members from the state of Missouri; and, second, in the murder of its first prophet in Illinois, followed by the expatriation of between twenty and thirty thousand of its members from the territory of the United States; when that religious movement to which the Book of Mormon may be said to have given the first impulse, and is now a continuous, sustaining factor, has resulted in the founding of a number of American commonwealths in the inter-mountain country of the United States;[2] when that people who accept the Book of Mormon as a divine revelation have established, for an extent of well nigh three thousand miles through the plateau valleys of the Rocky Mountains—from the province of Alberta, Canada, to the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in the republic of Mexico—no less than between seven and nine hundred settlements, many of them prosperous towns of large manufacturing as well as of large agriculture and trade interests; when that same people have won world-wide renown as superior colonizers, and are eagerly sought for in such enterprises because of their well known sobriety, honesty, frugality and industry; when that same people are quietly building up an educational system including as it does the rounding of universities in its principal centers, and academies elsewhere as feeders to the central educational institutions;[3] when those who accept the Book of Mormon as a divine revelation continuously sustain a corps of missionaries, numbering from fifteen to eighteen hundred, to carry their message to the world, and these missionaries are at work in nearly all civilized nations, and in the islands of the Pacific, meeting their own expenses and manifesting the unselfishness of their faith by their works—their service for God and fellowman; when the Book of Mormon itself has been accepted in the first three-quarters of a century of its existence by hundreds of thousands of earnest people of average intelligence and certainly of independent character; when the Book of Mormon itself has been translated into and published in at least eleven languages, in a number of which it has run through many editions and the copies published run into the hundreds of thousands, and with no abatement of interest yet manifested; when the Book of Mormon is creating not only a people but also a literature, embracing history, poetry and philosophy; when it is inspiring music, painting and sculpture—when all this has come of the Book of Mormon, is it not really about time to dismiss all that silly talk of the Spaulding manuscript being stolen by Rigdon, revamped by him and palmed off upon the world by a backwoods boy as a revelation, and this practiced fraud and deception being the origin of all this that is here enumerated?
[Footnote 2: It must not be supposed that the migration of the Mormon people to the Salt Lake and adjacent valleys when that region was Mexican territory, resulted only in the founding of the state of Utah. Indirectly and directly, too, that movement contributed to the settlement of the entire inter-mountain region, and the founding of the States created out of that territory.]
[Footnote 3: This refers to the Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah, the Latter-day Saints' University in Salt Lake City, and fifteen Colleges and Academies in other parts of the territory occupied by the Saints in the inter-mountain west. See "Defense of the Faith and the Saints," Vol. I, p. 226.]
What faith men must have in fraud and dishonesty to think it can start and sustain all this! What a lasting victory is accorded to a thing conceived in fraud, brought forth in iniquity, and perpetuated by continuous falsehood! What credulity is required to believe all this! Let no one hereafter, standing in such ranks, dare say that "cheat" is a horse good only for a short race. They must know better than that from the stand they take in this Book of Mormon matter.
JUSTIFICATIONS FOR REPLYING TO MR. SCHROEDER
Two things, yea, three, justify a reply to Mr. Theodore Schroeder's series of articles on "The Origin of the Book of Mormon," published in the September and November numbers of the American Historical Magazine, for 1906, and the January and May numbers for 1907.