Naturally this exciting period was also a season of powerful Methodistic revivals. These sensational experiences belong, like spiritualism and the other delusions which we have mentioned, to what has been called “inspirational” as distinguished from rationalistic Protestantism, and they are apt to run their course together. Between 1825 and 1830 the revival movement was carried to great lengths, and its excesses seem to have been most marked in Central and Western New York just at the time when Mormonism arose there. We speak of the revivals as Methodistic only by way of defining their character; they were by no means restricted to the Methodist denomination. The most famous revival preacher of the day was the Rev. Charles G. Finney, a Presbyterian; and any one who is curious about the spiritual uproar which he carried through the State with him is referred to the chapter on “Fanaticism in Revivals” in the Personal Reminiscences of Dr. Gardiner Spring, of the Brick (Presbyterian) Church in New York City.[[43]]
It was in such a time, equally favorable to delusions and impostures, that Joseph Smith, the inventor of Mormonism, made his appearance. The accounts of his early life are not satisfactory. His origin was obscure. His neighbors were ignorant. Little is on record except his Autobiography and a sketch by his mother, neither of which productions is entitled to much credit. It is evident, however, that he was caught up by the religious excitement which raged all around him. We are assured that on at least two special occasions during his boyhood he was “powerfully awakened” by Methodist revivalists. His writings abound with revival phraseology; his pretended revelations are full of the cant-terms of the camp-meeting; his code of doctrines bears traces of the denominational controversies which were most active in Western New York when he emerged upon the stage of history. In 1827 he was an illiterate and idle rustic of twenty-two years, living at Palmyra, in Wayne County, New York. His parents were shiftless and visionary people, who got drunk, and used the divining-rod, and dug for hidden treasures, and, according to their neighbors, stole sheep. Joseph was no better than the rest of the family. By natural disposition he was a dreamer and an adventurer. According to his own account, he began to see miraculous appearances in the air and to hear the voices of spiritual messengers as early as his fifteenth year. It was in one of his seasons of “awakening,” when, perplexed by the contradictions of rival sects, he went into a grove and asked the Lord which he should follow, in the firm persuasion that his question would be answered by some physical manifestation. We give the Mormon account of the result of his experiment:
“At first he was severely tempted by the powers of darkness, which endeavored to overcome him; but he continued to seek for deliverance, until darkness gave way from his mind. He at length saw a very bright and glorious light in the heavens above, which at first seemed to be at a considerable distance. He continued praying, while the light appeared to be gradually descending towards him; and as it drew nearer it increased in brightness and magnitude, so that by the time that it reached the tops of the trees the whole wilderness for some distance around was illuminated in the most glorious and brilliant manner. He expected to have seen the leaves and boughs of the trees consumed as soon as the light came in contact with them; but perceiving that it did not produce that effect, he was encouraged with the hopes of being able to endure its presence. It continued descending slowly, until it rested upon the earth and he was enveloped in the midst of it. When it first came upon him it produced a peculiar sensation throughout his whole system; and immediately his mind was caught away from the natural objects with which he was surrounded, and he was enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages, who exactly resembled each other in their features or likeness. He was informed that his sins were forgiven. He was also informed upon the subjects which had for some time previously agitated his mind—namely, that all the religious denominations were believing in incorrect doctrines, and consequently that none of them was acknowledged of God as his church and kingdom. And he was expressly commanded to go not after them; and he received a promise that the true doctrine, the fulness of the gospel, should at some future time be made known to him; after which the vision withdrew.”[[44]]
Joseph, upon whose word alone this narrative rests, relates that when he came to himself he was lying on his back looking up into the clouds. He seems to have accepted cheerfully the condemnation of all existing religions, but the vision had no other practical effect upon him; as Orson Pratt confesses, his life continued to be unedifying, and his story of the celestial apparition was received with stubborn incredulity by those who knew his character and habits. It was three years before he professed to be favored with a second visit. Then, he says, a white and lustrous angel came into his room while he was at prayer, and told him that Heaven designed him for a great work. There was hidden in a certain place, to be revealed hereafter, a book written upon gold plates, which contained “the fulness of the everlasting gospel as delivered by the Saviour to the ancient inhabitants” of the American continent. This was the Mormon Bible, commonly known now as the Book of Mormon from the title of one of its divisions. In his Autobiography Joseph Smith states that the angel was Nephi, author of the First and Second Books of Nephi, which stand at the head of the Mormon scriptures; but in his Doctrine and Covenants he speaks of his visitant as Moroni, who wrote the last book in the collection and placed the gold plates where they were afterwards to be found. We do not know what explanation the Mormons offer of this singular discrepancy. The vision was repeated during the night, and Joseph was directed to search for the buried treasure in a hill near Manchester, a village about four miles from Palmyra, in the adjoining county of Ontario. He saw, as if in a dream, the exact spot in which he was to dig. He went to Manchester and found the plates, enclosed in a sort of box formed of stones set in cement. With them “there were two stones in silver bows (and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim), and the possession and use of these stones was what constituted seers in ancient or former times, and God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book”—an idea which Joseph borrowed, of course, from the Jewish high-priest’s “rational of judgment,” described in Exodus, chap. xxviii. Moroni (or was it Nephi?) would not allow the plates to be removed yet; but he gave Joseph a great many interesting and comfortable, though rather vague, instructions. He opened the heavens and caused him to see the glory of the Lord. He made the devil and his hosts pass by in procession, so that Smith might know them when he met them. Once a year Joseph was to return to the same spot and receive a new revelation. On the fourth anniversary of the discovery—that is, in September, 1827—the angel placed the plates and the Urim and Thummim in his hands, with a caution that he should let nobody see them. But he seems to have talked freely about his experiences; for, according to his own story, the whole country-side was up in arms to get the plates away from him. He was waylaid and chased by ruffians with clubs. He was shot at. His house was repeatedly mobbed; and when at last he removed to Pennsylvania in search of peace, carrying the plates in a barrel of beans, he was twice overtaken by a constable armed with a search-warrant, who failed, however, to find what he was looking for. Possibly the plates and the constable were equally fictions of Joseph Smith’s imagination.
Incredulous historians of Mormonism offer various explanations of the story which we have thus far recounted. They detect in Joseph Smith’s alleged visions a close resemblance to the trance state sometimes brought on by spiritual excitement among the Methodists and other sects who make strong appeals to the emotional nature; or they refer his supernatural exaltation to mesmeric clairvoyance; or they see in him merely a “spiritual medium,” a precursor of the rappers and table-tippers who became so common a few years later. Others, again, account for the whole case upon the theory of demoniac possession; while still others suppose that, having really discovered some sort of metallic tablets, the dreams of a disordered mind supplied him with the interpretation and the dramatis personæ.[[45]] It seems to us hardly necessary to discuss these various explanations, for there is no proof of the alleged facts. The whole narrative rests upon nothing but Joseph Smith’s word. It is the story told by him in after-years to account for the new gospel. There is none who shared with him the privilege of angelic visitations. There is none who saw the great light, who heard the mysterious voices, who even beheld Joseph himself at the moment of the alleged revelations. No one knows what became of the golden plates. The angel, said Joseph, came and took them away again. While they remained in the prophet’s hands they were kept from curious eyes. Prefixed to the Book of Mormon in the current editions is the “Testimony of Three Witnesses”—Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris—that they were permitted to see the plates, and that a heavenly voice assured them of the faithfulness of Smith’s translation; but all these three witnesses afterwards confessed that their testimony was a lie. To their certificate is appended the testimony of eight other witnesses—namely, Joseph’s father and two brothers, four of the Whitmer family, and a disciple named Page—who also profess to have seen the plates; but their connection with the beginnings of the Mormon Church makes it impossible to put confidence in their statement. We do not know the circumstances under which the sight may have been vouchsafed to them, and we certainly have no sufficient reason to believe their word.[[46]]
Thus far, then, Mormonism is a mere legend. In 1828 it becomes historical fact; and whatever may be thought of the prophet’s good faith in the matter of his early dreams and visions, we find it impossible to resist the conviction that henceforth he was only a conscious and daring impostor. From this time to the day of his death, in his acts and his writings, in his shrewdness, his ambition, and his reckless courage—planning new settlements, fabricating new Bibles, uttering forged revelations, nominating himself for President of the United States, assuming to command armies, running a wild-cat bank, debauching women—we can see nothing but a career of vulgar fraud. There was wild fanaticism in the foundation of the Mormon Church; but it was not on the part of Joseph Smith.
There is proof that about fifteen years before this pretended revelation an ex-preacher, named Solomon Spalding, a graduate of Dartmouth College, and a resident of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, offered for publication at a Pittsburgh printing-office a book called the Manuscript Found, in which he attempted to account for the peopling of America by deriving the Indians from the lost tribes of Israel. It was a sort of Scriptural romance, written in clumsy imitation of the historical books of the Old Testament, and it contained, among its other divisions, a Book of Mormon. Although announced for publication, it never appeared. The manuscript remained in the printing-office for a number of years. Spalding died in 1816. The bookseller died in 1826. Sidney Rigdon, one of the first disciples of Mormonism, was a compositor in the printing-office, and it seems to be pretty well established that he made a copy of the book and afterwards gave it to Smith. At any rate the Book of Mormon, when it came from the press in 1830, was immediately recognized as an adaptation of Solomon Spalding’s romance. A great many people had read parts of it during Spalding’s lifetime, and remembered not only the principal incidents which it narrated, but the names of the leading characters—Nephi, Lehi, Moroni, Mormon, and the rest—which Smith boldly appropriated. Spalding’s only object was literary amusement, with perhaps a little harmless mystification. The theological teachings incorporated with his pretended history were the additions of Smith and Rigdon. As it now stands the Mormon Bible purports to relate the wanderings of a Hebrew named Lehi, who went out from Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ, and, after travelling eastward eight years “through a wilderness,” came to the sea-coast, built a ship, got a mariner’s compass somewhere, set sail with his wife Sariah, his sons Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Joseph, and Jacob, the wives of the four elder sons, and six other persons, and in due time reached America. After the death of Lehi the Lord appointed Nephi to rule over the settlers, but Laman and Lemuel, heading a revolt, were cursed, and became the ancestors of the Indians. We shall not waste much time over this absurd and wearisome farrago, a mixture of Scriptural parodies, stupid inventions, and bold thefts from Shakspeare and King James’ Bible. It is intolerably verbose, dragging through fifteen books, stuffed with gross faults of grammar, anachronisms, and solecisms of every kind, and comprising as much matter as four hundred and fifty of these pages, or more than three entire numbers of The Catholic World. There are wonderful miracles and tremendous battles. Vast cities are created in North and South America. Nations wander to and fro across the continents. Priests, prophets, judges, and Antichrists, with names curiously constructed out of those in the Jewish Scriptures, appear and disappear like travesties of the persons in sacred history. The Nephites and the Lamanites hack and slay each other. A republican form of government is instituted, and is assailed by monarchical conspiracies. Nephi, Jarom, Omni, Mosaiah, Mormon, Moroni, Alma, Ether, and other leaders of the Nephites write the records of the people upon golden plates, and save them for Joseph Smith to find in due season. Seers give long-winded explanations of the divine purposes, and predict the incidents of the beginning of Mormonism, which had already taken place when Joseph Smith brought these predictions to light. The history of the Nephites is supposed to be contemporaneous with the history of the Jews, but entirely independent of it; their Scriptures are intended to supplement, not contradict, the holy Bible. The crucifixion of our Lord was announced to these American Jews by portents and prophecies, and afterwards the Saviour came to the chief city of the Nephites, showed his wounded hands and feet, healed the sick, blessed little children, and remained here forty days teaching Christianity. Gradually the Lamanites, or Indians, overcame the Nephites. In the year 384 a final battle was fought on the hill Cumorah (Ontario County, New York), where 320,000 Nephites were slain. This was the end of the pre-Columbian civilization of America, little or nothing being left of the Nephites except Mormon and his son Moroni, who completed the records on the gold plates and “hid them up” in the hill. Such, in brief outline, is the Mormon Bible. With the narrative of the descendants of Lehi, however, it contains an account of two other emigrations from Asia to America—namely, that of the Jaredites, who came here direct from the tower of Babel, and perished after they had stripped the continent of timber, and that of a party of Jews who followed Lehi at the period of the Babylonian captivity. The Jaredites came in eight small air-tight barges, shaped like a covered dish, loaded with all manner of beasts, birds, and fishes, and driven by a furious wind. The voyage lasted three hundred and forty-four days, so that, in spite of the miraculous gale astern, it was probably the slowest on record.
It would be an endless task to point out even a tithe of the huge blunders in this fraudulent volume. We read of Christians a century before Christ, of the Gospel and the churches six centuries before Christ, of three oceans lying between Asia and America, of pious Hebrews eating pork, of Jews long before the name of Jew was invented, of horses, asses, swine, etc., running wild all over the face of this continent in the time of the Jaredites, although it is certain that they were first introduced by the Spaniards. Nephi, in giving an account of the emigration of his father Lehi, says: “And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying, Thou shalt construct a ship after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters. And I said, Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools?... And it came to pass that I did make tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock.” Nephi, like St. John, was unable to write down all the things that Jesus taught: “Behold, I were about to write them all, but the Lord forbid it.” Alma declares: “And it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed; therefore whomsoever suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites were called that head, and there was a mark set upon him.” Mormon is one of the most eccentric in syntax of all the scribes: “And Ammaron said unto me, I perceive that thou art a sober child, and art quick to observe; therefore when ye are about twenty-and-four years old I would that ye should remember,” etc. Nephi “saw wars and rumors of wars.” Alma writes: “And when Moroni had said these words, he went forth among the people, waving the rent of his garment in the air, that all might see the writing which he had wrote upon the rent”! The language of the precious records is described as “reformed Egyptian,” and Nephi explains that it “consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians,” though upon what principle they are combined we are left to imagine. Pressed to exhibit a specimen of the mysterious characters, Joseph Smith gave what purported to be a fac-simile of a few lines to one of his disciples, who came to New York and submitted it to Prof. Anthon. “It consisted,” says Prof. Anthon, “of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets, Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes; Roman letters inverted or placed sideways were arranged and placed in perpendicular columns; and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle, divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican calendar given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived.” Mormon says he would have written in Hebrew, if the plates had been large enough.
In giving the translation of the mysterious books to the world Joseph Smith, whose education had been sadly neglected, made use of an amanuensis. This at first was a farmer named Martin Harris. The prophet sat behind a blanket stretched across the room, and, thus screened from profane eyes, read aloud from the gold plates, by the miraculous aid of the Urim and Thummim, the sacred text, which the confiding Harris reduced to writing. The sceptical, of course, believe that what Smith held before him was no pile of metallic tablets, but merely the manuscript of Solomon Spalding, into which he emptied from time to time a great deal of rubbish of his own make. No one, however, succeeded in penetrating behind the blanket. The work had gone on for a year and a half, when Harris, tempted by his wife, embezzled the manuscript. This was a serious loss. Joseph could not reproduce it in the same words, and it would not do to risk discrepancies. “Revelation” came to his aid in this dilemma, and informed him that Harris had “altered the words” of the manuscript “in order to catch him” in the translation. The stolen pages were from the Book of Mormon; he must not attempt to replace them; he should let them go, for a narrative of the same events would be found in the Book of Nephi:
“And now verily I say unto you that an account of those things that you have written, which have gone out of your hands, are engraven upon the plates of Nephi; yea, and you remember it was said in those writings that a more particular account was given of these things upon the plates of Nephi. Behold they have only got a part or an abridgment of the account of Nephi. Behold, there are many things engraven on the plates of Nephi which do throw greater views upon my gospel; therefore it is wisdom in me that you should translate this first part of the engravings of Nephi, and send forth in this work.”[[47]]