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.]