Doubtless the Lord had his own purpose to subserve in giving different kinds of testimony—divine and human—to the same truth. The testimony of the Three Witnesses, attended as it was by such remarkable displays of supernatural power, he knew would be opposed from the very circumstance of its being supernatural. It cannot be but that God fore-knew of the rise of that so-called "Rational Criticism" of divine things which would resolve inspired dreams, visions, revelations and the administration of angels into hallucinations, brought about first by an inclination to believe in the miraculous, (and "ordinarily," argue the "Rational Critics," "expectation is the father of its object.")[[1]] supplemented by the theory of self-deception, self-hypnosis or hypnotic influence of others. This particular school of philosophers took its rise in the last century, and in the twentieth is much in vogue.
It will be remembered that the starting point with "Rational Criticism" (and in that term is included the so-called "Higher Criticism") is unbelief in what is commonly called the miraculous, and if the followers of that school do not deny the possibility of the miraculous, they at least say that it has never been proven; and further, they hold that "a supernatural relation"—such as the testimony of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, for instance—"cannot be accepted as such, that it always implies credulity or imposture."[[2]] What chance, then, would the testimony of the Three Witnesses have with those who regard it as "an absolute rule of criticism to deny a place in history to narratives of miraculous circumstances?" This, they hold, "is simply the dictation of observation. Such facts have never been really proved. All the pretended miracles near enough to be examined are referable to illusion or imposture!"[[3]] Nor is this the climax of their absurdity, but they hold that the very "honesty and sincerity" of those who testify to the miraculous make them all the more untrustworthy as witnesses! I know this seems incredible; but what will be thought when I set down my authority for the statement, and it is learned that I quote no mere blatant declaimer against religion, nor any one of the many careless, or ill-informed writers of the so-called "Rational School of Critics," but the sober-minded, and earnest man of science, the late Professor Huxley? The statement quoted is from his paper on "The Value of Witnesses to the Miraculous."[[4]] In the course of treating upon some statements made by one Eginhard (eighth century A.D.), concerning miraculous events connected with SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, the professor takes occasion to bear testimony to the high character, acute intelligence, large instruction and sincerity of Eginhard; then speaking of him as a witness to the miraculous, makes this astonishing statement:
It is hard upon Eginhard to say, but it is exactly the honesty and sincerity of the man which are his undoing as a witness to the miraculous. He himself makes it quite obvious that when his profound piety comes on the stage, his goodness and even his perception of right and wrong make their exit.
In another paper to the same magazine, three months later, the professor, writing practically on the same subject, says:
Where the miraculous is concerned, neither undoubted honesty, nor knowledge of the world, nor proved faithfulness as civil historians, nor profound piety, on the part of eye witnesses and contemporaries affords any guarantee of the objective truth of their statements, when we know that a firm belief in the miraculous was ingrained in their minds, and was the presupposition of their observations and reasonings.[[5]]
This school of critics—and its following is much larger than is generally admitted—in this arbitrary way gets rid of the miracles of both the Old and the New Testament. The resurrection of Jesus, to them, is but a figment of the over-wrought minds of his disciples; and has no better foundation than the dreams and light visions of women, foremost among whom is Mary of Magdala,[[6]] the once possessed. The glorious departure of Jesus from the midst of his disciples, on Mount Olivet—after the resurrection—is merely a collective hallucination, an illusion—"the air on these mountain tops is full of strange mirages!"[[7]] The display of God's power on the day of Pentecost as revealed in the Acts of the Apostles, is a thunderstorm.[[8]] The speaking in tongues by the apostles on the same occasion and thereafter in the Church, is but the ecstatic utterance of incoherent sounds mistaken for a foreign language; while prophecy is but the fruit of mental excitement, a sort of ecstatic frenzy.[[9]]
With views such as these quite prevalent in Christendom, relative to miraculous events, it is but to be expected that the testimony of the Three Witnesses would be accounted for on some similar hypothesis. The early anti-Mormon writers generally assumed a conspiracy between Joseph Smith and the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and hence accorded no importance[[10]] to the testimony of either group—the Three or the Eight. Later, however, the force of the testimony of the Witnesses persisting, and pressing for an explanation which the theory of conspiracy and collusion did not satisfy, there began to be advanced the theory that probably Joseph Smith had in some way deceived the Witnesses and thus brought them to give their testimony to the world. "Either these Witnesses were grossly deceived by a lying prophet," says Daniel P. Kidder, who wrote an unfriendly book against the Church in 1843, "or else they wickedly and wilfully perjured themselves, by swearing to what they knew to be false." "The former," he adds, "although not very creditable to their good sense, is yet the more charitable opinion, and is rendered probable by the fact, that hundreds have been deceived in the same way. It is confirmed, moreover, by the well-known mental phenomenon, that to individuals accustomed to disregard the laws of veracity, truth and falsehood are alike. They can as easily persuade themselves of the one as of the other."[[11]]
Also the Rev. Henry Caswell, professor of divinity in Kemper College, Missouri, writing in 1843, said:
He [Joseph Smith] then persuaded [Martin] Harris to believe, that in some sense he actually beheld the wonderful plates. There was a worthless fellow named Oliver Cowdery, residing in the neighborhood, a school teacher by profession, and also a Baptist preacher, who, together with one David Whitmer, was similarly persuaded by our ingenious Prophet.[[12]]
Professor J. B. Turner, of Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, in his "Mormonism in All Ages" (1842), takes practically the same position, but goes a step further and undertakes to explain how the Prophet "deceived" the Witnesses, or how he "persuaded" them to believe, "in some sense," that they had actually beheld "the wonderful plates." In doing this the professor quotes the revelation given through the Prophet, in June, 1829, to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, previous to their viewing the Nephite plates.[[13]] Also the revelation to Martin Harris in which he is promised that he shall be a witness to the truth of the Book of Mormon.[[14]] In the revelations cited the Lord promises these men that they shall view the Nephite record; and directs what they shall say after they have seen and heard the things promised. Because some of the phraseology of these revelations is found also in the testimony of the Three Witnesses, the professor rushes to the conclusion that the Witnesses never really saw the vision, nor heard the voice of God as promised, but were persuaded to accept these revelations through Joseph Smith as their witness to the truth of the Book of Mormon. In other words Professor Turner's theory is that the Witnesses had no other evidence than the word of Joseph Smith for the existence of the plates and other sacred things connected with them! And he triumphantly exclaims: