Here, then, is the mighty power of God, the angel, and voice of the Lord, which revealed such marvels in 1830, all concentrated in the person, and pouring from the mouth of the Lord's Prophet in 1829. * * * * The whole, then, of this mighty array of bombast, nonsense, and blasphemy, resolves itself into this: "Joe Smith is not only 'author and proprietor' of the Book of Mormon, as both he and his Witnesses declare, but he is also 'power of god,' 'angel,' 'voice,' 'faith,' 'eyes,' 'ears,' and 'hands' for the Witnesses themselves; that is, all the evidence the world has for the Book of Mormon, after all this bluster, is 'Joe Smith's say so.' He says that God instructs him, he instructs the Witnesses and the Witnesses instruct the world. Quod erat demonstradum!" (p. 179.)
Undoubtedly the "Illinois College" of the great State of Illinois was to be congratulated upon having as its chief professor, in 1842, a man of such acuteness of intelligence and profoundness of wisdom! Nor was Governor Thomas Ford, when, some years later, he wrote the history of Illinois, to be out-done by a mere professor of "Illinois College;" and therefore advanced what he had heard concerning the manner in which the testimony of the Witnesses was obtained. The Governor's peculiar relation to "Mormonism," no less than his exalted political station in Illinois, as also the fact that he is one of the principal historians of that very great state of the American Union, justifies me in setting down what he has said upon the subject in hand:
It is related that the Prophet's early followers were anxious to see the plates; the Prophet had always given out that they could not be seen by the carnal eye, but must be spiritually discerned; that the power to see them depended upon faith, and was the gift of God to be obtained by fasting, prayer, mortification of the flesh, and exercise of the spirit; that so soon as he could see the evidence of a strong and lively faith in any of his followers, they should be gratified in their holy curiosity. He set them to continual prayer, and other spiritual exercises, to acquire this lively faith by means of which the hidden things of God could be spiritually discerned; and at last, when he could delay them no longer, he assembled them in a room, and produced a box, which he said contained the precious treasure. The lid was opened; the Witnesses peeped into it, but making no discovery, for the box was empty, they said, "Brother Joseph, we do not see the plates." The Prophet answered them, "O ye of little faith! How long will God bear with this wicked and perverse generation? Down on your knees, brethren, every one of you, and pray God for the forgiveness of your sins; and for a holy and living faith which cometh down from heaven." The disciples dropped to their knees, and began to pray in the fervency of their spirit, supplicating God for more than two hours with fanatical earnestness; at the end of which time, looking again into the box, they were now persuaded that they saw the plates.
The governor then very sagely remarks, with a modesty so worthy to keep company with the exalted intelligence that could stoop to detail such mere drivel as above:
I leave it to philosophers to determine whether the fumes of an enthusiastic and fanatical imagination are thus capable of binding the mind and deceiving the senses by so absurd a delusion.[[15]]
Inadequate as these theories are to account for the testimony of the Three Witnesses, and contemptible as they are for their childishness, they do not fail of more modern advocates. In 1899 a work published by the Appletons, which, while it was a work of fiction, was nevertheless an earnest effort to account for Joseph Smith on some other basis than that of his being a conscious fraud, wickedly bent on deceiving mankind, adopted the theory that "Smith was genuinely deluded by the automatic freaks of a vigorous but undisciplined brain, and that yielding to these he became confirmed in the hysterical temperament, which always adds to delusion, self-deception, and to self-deception half-conscious fraud. In his day it was necessary to reject a marvel or admit its spiritual significance; granting an honest delusion as to his visions and his book, his only choice lay between counting himself the sport of devils or the agent of heaven; an optimistic temperament cast the die."[[16]]
It remained, however, for the year of grace 1902 to witness the setting forth of these theories under the learned formulas of a scientific treatise, in which the testimony of the Witnesses received special consideration. Mr. I. Woodbridge Riley, the author of the work referred to, after quoting the account of the exhibition of the plates by the angel to the Three Witnesses, as related in the History of Joseph Smith,[[17]] regards the duty before him to be to find to what degree the manifestations are explicable on the grounds "of subjective hallucination, induced by hypnotic suggestion."[[18]]
Mr. Riley proceeds to show that the Prophet possessed "magnetic power," and that the Witnesses were "sensitive subjects," and then says:
Given, then, such an influence, and sensitive subjects, and mental suggestion could produce anything in the way of illusion. Thus the explanation is subjective, not objective; it was captivation but not fascination; there was leader and led, and the former succeeded in inducing in the latter all the phantasmagoria of religious ardor. * * * * Again, the vision of the plates may be related in a larger way with what has gone before. Of the three classes of hallucinations, two have already been explicated. Joseph's father had the ordinary hallucination of dream; his grandfather that which persists into the waking state. The vision of the Three Witnesses is that form of hallucination which may occur either in the normal state, or be induced in the state of light hypnosis. The former is exemplified in day dreams; it is largely self-induced and implies some capacity or visualizing. The latter may also occur with the eyes open, but it is induced by the positive suggestion of another. * * * * * As the hypnotized soldier will hear the voice of his old commander, or the devout French peasant see his patron Saint, so was it in these manifestations. The ideas and interest which were uppermost in the mind were projected outwards. Harris had received the first "transcription of the gold plates;" Whitmer had been saturated with notions of ancient engravings; Cowdery, for weeks at a time, had listened to the sound of a voice translating the record of the Nephites. When the voice was again heard in the grove, when the four sought "by fervent and humble prayer to have a view of the plates," there is little wonder that there arose a psychic mirage, complete in every detail. Furthermore, the rotation in prayer, the failure of the first two attempts, the repeated workings of the Prophet over the doubting Harris, but served to bring out the additional incentives to the hypnotic hallucination.[[19]]
Thus "Rational Criticism" would explain away the testimony given by the Three Witnesses. The vision of the plates, of the angel, the glory of God that shone about the Witnesses, the voice of God from the midst of the glory—all was illusion, hallucination produced by mental suggestion, on the part of the Prophet. All was chimerical, a mental mirage!