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A FOURFOLD TEST 
 OF MORMONISM 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY C. SHELDON 
 
 ProfeMor in Boetob University 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 

 Copyright. 1914, hj 
 HENRY C. SHELDON 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Scholars generally have had such 
 a lively impression of the utter ground- 
 lessness of the claims of Mormonism 
 that they have been inclined to shrink 
 from awarding those claims any serious 
 consideration. We can appreciate this 
 mental attitude; but we remind our- 
 selves that it is not always wise 
 and profitable to follow the dictates 
 even of a just disdain. Apart from 
 its intrinsic merits, a system which 
 seeks to perpetuate and extend itself 
 by a great force of missionaries kept 
 constantly in the field may well be 
 awarded a measure of careful scrutiny. 
 This conviction has led us to prepare 
 the present treatise. Our aim has been 
 to give in brief form a comprehensive 
 and thoroughly articulated criticism of 
 the Mormon religion. 
 6 
 
 343953 
 
.6 P3EPACE 
 
 The footnotes indicate in general 
 the sources from which we have 
 drawn. It is incumbent on us, how- 
 ever, to make grateful mention of 
 the information which has been fur- 
 nished in personal letters of very 
 competent observers of present-day 
 Mormonism in Utah. 
 
 Boston University, July, 1914. 
 
PART I 
 THE fflSTORICAL TEST 
 
v: 
 
 ^ 
 
 .v~- '' ^ 
 
 y y y dadt" t j 
 
 ^x 
 
 PART I 
 THE HISTORICAL TEST 
 
 The foremost credential of Joseph 
 Smith, Jr., whom the Mormons recog- 
 nize as their founder, was undoubtedly 
 the Book of Mormon, which was 
 published at Palmyra, New York, in 
 1830, as a translation of writings 
 engraved in Reformed Egyptian upon 
 plates which had been hidden some 
 fourteen centuries before in a hill 
 near the translator's home, and which, 
 according to his story, were brought 
 into his possession in 1827 through 
 the instrumentality of an angel. As 
 the agent for introducing this new 
 Bible into the world, Joseph Smith 
 had, among the enthusiasts who gath- 
 ered about him, a prestige which 
 kept him in the ascendant. As often 
 as any one of them was taken with 
 
 9 
 
10 A FOUEFOLD TEST 
 
 an ambition to play any sort of 
 independent role as prophet, or rev- 
 elator, he could be put to silence by 
 the superior authority of the man 
 who was reputed to have been the 
 chosen means of bringing to light a 
 full volume of sacred writings. 
 
 It is evident, then, that the first 
 demand, in a crucial dealing with 
 Mormonism, is to test the claims of 
 the founder in relation to the Book 
 of Mormon. The primary question is: 
 Are those claims credible, or do they 
 bear unmistakably the stamp of false- 
 hood and imposture? 
 
 Many considerations, some of which 
 are of compelling force, shut up the 
 critical investigator to the second al- 
 ternative. In the first place, the 
 antecedent character and occupation 
 of Joseph Smith invite strongly to 
 the belief that his discovery of the 
 Book of Mormon was a mere pre- 
 tense. He was notoriously given to 
 
OF MORMONISM 11 
 
 telling big stories. Pomeroy Tucker, 
 who was well acquainted with Joseph, 
 his family, and most of his earlier 
 followers, testifies that as a youth 
 and young man he was ^^noted for 
 his indolent and vagabondish character, 
 and his habits of exaggeration and un- 
 truthfulness."* Daniel Hendrix writes 
 from personal knowledge of Smith: 
 '^He was a good talker, and would 
 have made a fine stump-speaker if 
 he had had the training. He was 
 known among the young men I asso- 
 ciated with as a romancer of the 
 first water. I never knew so igno- 
 rant a man as Joe was to have such 
 a fertile imagination. He never could 
 tell a common occurrence in his 
 daily life without embellishing the 
 story with his imagination. ''^ S. S. 
 Harding, a native of Palmyra, makes 
 note of the fact that Smith as a boy 
 
 1 Origin, Riae, and Progress of Mormonism, p. 16. 
 
 3 Cited by W. A. Linn, The Story of the Mormons, p. 13. 
 
12 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 had such a reputation for exaggeration 
 that it was a customary comment in 
 the neighborhood when a specially 
 incredible story was narrated, ^'That 
 is as big a lie as young Joe ever told/'* 
 In 1833 eleven residents of Man- 
 chester and fifty-one residents of 
 Palmyra (the two neighboring towns 
 in which the Smith family lived dur- 
 ing their stay in the State of New 
 York) recorded their judgment on the 
 shiftless and untrustworthy character 
 of the Smith family, Joseph inclu- 
 ded.' 
 
 Not less full and explicit is the 
 testimony of witnesses, having per- 
 sonal knowledge, to the radical bent 
 of Joseph Smith to play the role of 
 a magical occultism in search for 
 hidden treasure. The fifty-one res- 
 idents of Palmyra mentioned above 
 
 1 Thomas Gregg, The Prophet of Palmsrra, p. 39. 
 
 2 E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unveiled, 1834, pp. 261, 262. Several 
 individual testimonies, besides these collective statements, are 
 cited by Howe from residents of these towns. 
 
OF MORMONISM 13 
 
 refer to the large amount of time 
 spent in digging for money imagined 
 to have been concealed in the earth. 
 Pomeroy Tucker narrates how Joseph 
 claimed by means of a ^'peep-stone," 
 or ' 'seer-stone" — a peculiar stone which 
 was discovered in 1819 while a well 
 was being dug on the premises of 
 Willard Chase — to be able to point 
 out the location of buried treasure. 
 He says that he practiced this im- 
 posture at intervals from 1820 to 
 1827, the latter date being that of 
 the alleged delivery to him of the 
 plates of the Book of Mormon.^ Isaac 
 Hale, whose daughter Emma, much 
 against the wish of her father, was 
 married to the pretentious treasure- 
 seeker, records this statement: "I first 
 became acquainted with Joseph Smith, 
 Jr., in November, 1825. He was at 
 that time in the employ of a set of 
 men who were called money -diggers, 
 
 I The Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism, pp. 19-26. 
 
U A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 and his occupation was that of see- 
 ing, or pretending to see, by means 
 of a stone placed in his hat, and his 
 hat closed over his face. In this 
 way he pretended to discover minerals 
 and hidden treasure/'* 
 
 Antecedents of this kind have an 
 unmistakable significance. Where in 
 all the world could a more select 
 agent be found for concocting the 
 fiction of the ^^Golden Bible'' than the 
 young man notorious for telling fan- 
 tastic yarns and for claiming to be 
 able with his magical peep-stone to 
 locate hidden treasures? Who can 
 fail to see that the story of the finding 
 and translation of the Book of Mor- 
 mon was squarely in line with the 
 swollen talk and peep-stone perform- 
 ances of this latter-day Joseph? All 
 these things fall into one continuous 
 series. The alleged translation, so far 
 as connected with any peculiar instru- 
 
 ^ £. D. Howe, Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 262-266. 
 
OF MORMONISM 15 
 
 mentality, was a peep-stone perform- 
 ance. The claim that ^'urim and 
 thummim'' (described as large prisms 
 set in rims) were employed was prob- 
 ably an afterthought, a refinement 
 on the crude original scheme of magic. 
 It is to be noticed that a Mormon 
 historian concedes that the peep-stone 
 figured in the work of translation, 
 though he supposes the urim and 
 thummim to have been used also.^ 
 
 In the second place the different 
 stories which Smith told about the 
 plates of the Book of Mormon im- 
 peach his honesty and veracity in 
 the matter. As appears in the testi- 
 mony of Peter IngersoU given below, 
 he declared primarily that no one 
 (himself excepted) could see the plates 
 and live.^ According to his declara- 
 tion made in the presence of Sophia 
 Lewis, the book of plates could not 
 
 » J. H. Evans, One Hundred Years of Mormonism, p. 70. Com- 
 pare B. H. Roberts, New Witness for God, iii, pp. 106-110. 
 « E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 232-237. 
 
16 A FOUKFOLD TEST 
 
 be opened under penalty of death by 
 any other person than his firstborn.^ 
 By the terms of the revelation dated 
 March, 1829, and printed in the 
 authoritative volume of Doctrine and 
 Covenants,^ only three of that genera- 
 tion were to be qualified to testify 
 along with Smith on the ground of 
 being shown that which had been 
 disclosed to him. In direct conflict 
 with the tenor of this revelation, a 
 statement incorporated with the Book 
 of Mormon affirmed that eight besides 
 the three had not only seen, but 
 handled, the plates. To the Rev. 
 N. C. Lewis, a relative of Smith's 
 father-in-law, he made promise that at 
 a certain future time, when the plates 
 would be placed on exhibition, there 
 would be a chance for him to view 
 them.' Thus involved and contra- 
 dictory were his declarations on the 
 
 1 Howe, p. 269. 
 
 2 Doctrine and Covenants, v, 10-14. 
 » Howe, pp. 266, 267. 
 
OF MORMONISM 17 
 
 possibility and the conditions of see- 
 ing the unearthed original of the Mor- 
 mon Bible. In other respects also 
 his stories failed to match. In the 
 final version an angel served as the 
 custodian of the plates. But as Hiel 
 and Joseph Lewis, sons of N. C. 
 Lewis, declare. Smith reported to their 
 father that the figure which con- 
 fronted him when he attempted to 
 get the plates was that of ''a Spaniard 
 having a long beard down over his 
 breast, with his throat cut from ear 
 to ear and the blood streaming down.''^ 
 With still more flagrant seK-contradic- 
 tion, he admitted in a burst of con- 
 fidence that the story of his great 
 discovery originated in a pleasantry 
 perpetrated on his own family. In 
 the affidavit of Peter IngersoU, as 
 given in 1833, we are informed that 
 he accompanied Smith on a trip to 
 the home of Isaac Hale, in Harmony, 
 
 » liim, The Story of the Mormons, p. 28. 
 
18 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 Pennsylvania, in order to assist him 
 to bring back the effects of the wife 
 whom he had secured shortly before 
 by an elopement. He says that Smith 
 was noticeably affected by the rebuke 
 which he received from his father-in- 
 law, and was not a little inclined to 
 accept his admonition to give up his 
 foolish search for money by means of 
 the peep-stone, but he felt that his 
 family would wish to push him on 
 in the old line. 'In this dilemma,'' 
 continues Ingersoll, ''he made me his 
 confidant, and told me what daily 
 transpired in the family of the Smiths. 
 One day he came and greeted me 
 with a joyful countenance. Upon ask- 
 ing the cause of his unusual happiness, 
 he replied in the following language: 
 'As I was passing yesterday across 
 the woods, after a heavy shower of 
 rain, I found in a hollow some beau- 
 tiful white sand that had been washed 
 up by the water. I took off my 
 
OF MORMONISM 19 
 
 frock and tied up several quarts of 
 it, and then went home. On entering 
 the house I found the family at the 
 table eating dinner. They were all 
 anxious to know the contents of my 
 frock. At that moment I happened 
 to think about a history found in 
 Canada, called a Golden Bible; so I 
 very gravely told them that it was 
 the Golden Bible. To my surprise, 
 they were credulous enough to believe 
 what I said. Accordingly, I told them 
 that I had received a commandment 
 to let no one see it, ''for," says I, 
 ''no man can see it with his natural 
 eye and live." However, I offered 
 to take out the book and show it to 
 them, but they refused to see it and 
 left the room. Now,' said Joe, 'I 
 
 have got the d d fools fixed, and 
 
 will carry out the fun.' Notwithstand- 
 ing he told me he had no such book 
 and believed there never was such a 
 book, he told me he actually went to 
 
20 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 Willard Chase to get him to make a 
 chest in which he might deposit the 
 Golden Bible. '^^ From Chase we learn 
 that the request for making the chest 
 was actually put forward, but was 
 not complied with because the de- 
 sired guaranty of good faith was not 
 furnished.^ Coupled with the con- 
 flicting statements of Smith about the 
 plates, this affidavit of Ingersoll, sup- 
 ported as it is by the testimony of 
 several of his acquaintances to his 
 integrity and reliabihty,* is well 
 adapted to carry the conviction that 
 it is a true report of the inception of 
 the Golden Bible project. It is any 
 amount more credible than all the 
 stories told about the visitation of 
 angels or the attempts of satanic foes 
 to wrest away the newly discovered 
 treasure. 
 
 In the third place the ample list 
 
 1 Howe, pp. 232-237. 
 a Ibid., p. 245. 
 > Ibid., 248, 249. 
 
OF MORMONISM 21 
 
 of demonstrations given by Joseph 
 Smith of his capability of downright 
 faking are destructive of faith in the 
 supposition that he either possessed or 
 translated any antique documents. At 
 the head stands the demonstration 
 which he incautiously gave in con- 
 nection with the Book of Mormon. 
 Being importuned by Martin Harris — 
 who mortgaged his farm to provide 
 money for the publication of the new 
 Bible — to give him a specimen of 
 the Reformed Egyptian in which the 
 volume was assumed to have been 
 written; Smith at length furnished the 
 specimen. Harris took this to Pro- 
 fessor Charles Anthon in New York 
 city. According to the statement of 
 the professor — which, as the testimony 
 of an upright disinterested party, 
 weighs incomparably more than that 
 which Smith was pleased to give of 
 the matter some years later — he saw 
 at once that a fraud was being at- 
 
22 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 tempted. The paper presented by 
 Harris, he says, was a singular scrawl. 
 ^^It consisted 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 al- 
 phabets. 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 evi- 
 dently copied after the Mexican cal- 
 endar given by Humboldt, but copied 
 in such a way as not to betray the 
 source whence it was derived. I am 
 thus particular as to the contents of 
 the paper, inasmuch as I have fre- 
 quently conversed with my friends on 
 the subject since the Mormonite excite- 
 ment began, and well remember that 
 
OF MORMONISM 23 
 
 the paper contained anything else but 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics.'' * 
 
 That Smith's claim to have an 
 antique book written in Reformed 
 Egyptian was a capital instance of 
 faking is further placed beyond rea- 
 sonable doubt by subsequent instances 
 of a like unscrupulous procedure on 
 his part. In 1835 he secured from a 
 traveUng showman some mummies, 
 attached to which were papyri in- 
 scribed with Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
 In 1842 he made bold to publish fac- 
 similes of the hieroglyphics and a 
 translation in which it was made out 
 that the curious characters incorpor- 
 ated a biography by the hand of 
 Abraham. Jules Remy, who obtained 
 a copy of the text and translation, 
 
 i Dated February 17, 1834, and printed in Howe's Mormonism 
 Unveiled, pp. 270-272. A letter of Anthon seven years later refers 
 to this visit of Harris, and also gives an account of a second visit. 
 Mormon apologists are able to point out some discrepancies be- 
 tween the two letters. But they are such as might result from a 
 memory not supported by records at hand, and on the main point 
 — the character of the pretended excerpt from the Book of Mor- 
 mon — the two letters show complete agreement. 
 
24 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 submitted them to Th6odule Dev6ria, 
 of the Museum of the Louvre, and 
 pubUshed his rendering alongside that 
 of Smith in 1861. The contrast be- 
 tween the two is striking. The French 
 savant, in fact, convicts Smith of 
 groundless pretense in his interpreta- 
 tion of the Egyptian characters.^ A 
 like result was reached by the English 
 Egyptologists, Budge and Woodward, 
 in 1903.^ More recently the fac- 
 similes were submitted to the inspec- 
 tion of the following experts: A. H. 
 Sayce, W. M. Fhnders Petrie, James 
 H. Breasted, Arthur C. Mace, John 
 Peters, S. A. B. Mercer, Edward 
 Meyer, and Friedrich Freiherr von 
 Bissing. Passing judgment in entire 
 independence of each other, these em- 
 inent scholars were fully agreed in 
 the conclusion that the facsimiles 
 were specimens of characters commonly 
 
 * Remy, A Journey to Great Salt Lake City, ii, pp. 536fif. 
 2 The Utah Survey, September, 1913, pp. 11, 12. 
 
OF MORMONISM 25 
 
 found in Egyptian tombs, and that 
 the interpretation by Joseph Smith 
 was utterly aside from their real 
 significance.^ 
 
 Another instance of fraudulent pre- 
 tense, historically less important but 
 quite as glaring as that just mentioned, 
 is reported by the Rev. Henry Caswall. 
 In 1842 he visited Nauvoo, lUinois, 
 then the headquarters of Mormonism. 
 To test the latter-day ' 'prophet'' he 
 took with him a Greek manuscript 
 of the Psalter, judged to be about 
 six hundred years old and quite antique 
 in appearance. The result of his 
 interview he reports in these words: 
 ''I handed the book to the prophet 
 and begged him to explain its con- 
 tents. He asked me if I had any 
 idea of its meaning. I replied that I 
 believed it to be a Greek Psalter; 
 but that I should like to hear his 
 
 1 Joseph Smith, Jr., as Translator. An Inquiry conducted by 
 Right Rev. F. S. Spalding. D.D., Bishop of Utah, 1912. 
 
26 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 opinion. ^No/ he said, 'it ain't Greek 
 at all, except perhaps a few words. 
 What ain't Greek is Egyptian; 
 and what ain't Egyptian is Greek. 
 This book is very valuable. It is a 
 dictionary of Egyptian hieroglyphics.' 
 Pointing to the capital letters at 
 the commencement of each verse, 
 he said: Them figures is Egyptian 
 hieroglyphics; and them which follow 
 is the interpretation of the hiero- 
 glyphics written in Reformed Egyptian. 
 Them characters is like the letters 
 which was engraved on the golden 
 plates.' "^ 
 
 On the same level with this case 
 of baseless pretense was the claim 
 of Smith to be able to translate the 
 Kinderhook plates and to discover in 
 them a history of one of the descendants 
 of Ham.^ These plates were dug up 
 near Kinderhook, Illinois, in 1843. 
 
 1 The City of the Mormons, or Three Days at Nauvoo in 1842, 
 second edition, 1843, p. 36. 
 
 * Reported in the Millennial Star, January 15, 1859. 
 
OF MORMONISM 27 
 
 Not a few were deceived by their 
 antique appearance, till at length ia 
 1879, W. Fulgate, one of those to 
 devise the humbug, made affidavit as 
 to how the plates had been fashioned 
 and caused to bear the semblance of 
 age.^ 
 
 A further instance, in a somewhat 
 different line but equally significant of 
 brazen pretence and headlong disre- 
 gard for truth, appears in the so-called 
 translation of the Christian Bible. 
 Large parts of the translation do not 
 differ at all from the King James 
 Version, and many other parts differ 
 only by slight verbal changes. But 
 an out and out addition is made to 
 the fiftieth chapter of Genesis, and 
 the twenty-ninth chapter of Isaiah is 
 arbitrarily amplified, the plain design 
 
 <>Linn, pp. 86, 87. The plea of a Mormon apologist that the 
 late date of Fulgate's testimony is ground for challenging its 
 truthfulness is far from disposing of the sworn statement. The 
 necessity that the witness should take account of his confederates, 
 as well as a natural hesitation to declare his share in a fraud on 
 the public, might easily have induced delay. 
 
28 A FOUKFOLD TEST 
 
 of this double outrage against the 
 text being the insertion of a forecast 
 of the prophetic vocation of Joseph 
 Smith and of the unearthing of the 
 Book of Mormon. In this barefaced 
 falsification, Rigdon, as being joint 
 translator with Smith, was an accom- 
 plice.* 
 
 The necessary inference from such 
 a series of unmasked pretenses is 
 that faith in Joseph Smith, as the 
 discoverer and translator of a veritable 
 1 Bible preserved in an antique lan- 
 guage, must be the product of igno- 
 rance, credulity, tradition, or sheer 
 Volition. Of substantial basis it is 
 thoroughly destitute, unless the Book 
 of Mormon itseK is of such a mar- 
 velous character, and so unaccountable 
 on ordinary grounds, as to afford 
 such a basis. That the book is not 
 thus distinguished will be shown in 
 due course. 
 
 1 Doctrine and Covenants, xxxv. 
 
OF MORMONISM 29 
 
 In the fourth place, the high pre- 
 tensions of Joseph Smith in relation 
 to the Book of Mormon must be re- 
 garded as most seriously damaged by 
 the historical demonstration that, to a 
 conspicuous degree, the groundwork of 
 that book was borrowed from a ro- 
 mantic story of Solomon Spaulding 
 entitled Manuscript Found. This was 
 begun in 1811 or 1812 at Conneaut, 
 Ohio, was left for a time in the print- 
 ing office of Patterson in Pittsburgh, 
 was probably taken thence to Amity, 
 Pennsylvania, to be retouched, and 
 was sent anew to Patterson's establish- 
 ment shortly before the death of the 
 author in 1816.* As first planned, 
 Spaulding's story contained an account 
 of a party of voyagers who left Rome 
 in the time of Constantine, and were 
 driven ashore on the American con- 
 tinent, where one of their number 
 
 1 See the very careful review of the matter by A. T. Schroeder, 
 The Origin of the Book of Mormon Reexamined in Its Relation to 
 Spaulding's Manuscript Foimd. 
 
30 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 left a narrative of their travels, as 
 also of Indian wars and customs, 
 which narrative Spaulding assumes to 
 have discovered and translated. The 
 story in this form came into the 
 possession of E. D. Howe in 1834, 
 and then passed out of sight until 
 it accidentally fell into the possession 
 of President Fairchild, of Oberlin, in 
 1884, and was deposited in the college 
 library. In the later and better remem- 
 bered form, as being that from which 
 the author often read to his friends, 
 the story was carried further back, 
 the voyagers were represented as start- 
 ing from Jerusalem, and an effort was 
 made to reproduce the antique biblical 
 style. In this respect the later form 
 of the story was widely contrasted 
 with the earlier. Several witnesses, 
 shortly after the appearance of the 
 Book of Mormon, affirmed, in the 
 most explicit terms, that the Spaulding 
 story to which they had listened had 
 
OF MORMONISM 31 
 
 this peculiar cast. Moreover, the 
 testimony of the brother of Solomon 
 Spaulding, of his business partner, and 
 of several others assures us that the 
 story in this form represented the 
 voyagers to America as being Jews 
 and as starting from Jerusalem. Herein 
 it corroborates the statement of Howe, 
 who says that the Oberlin manuscript 
 was shown to several of the witnesses 
 whom he cites and was characterized 
 by them as the earlier and discarded 
 form of the Spaulding romance.* It 
 is utterly vain, therefore, for Mormon 
 apologists, as they have been wont 
 to do, to plead the unlikeness of the 
 Oberlin writing to the Book of Mor- 
 mon as disproving the obligations of 
 Joseph Smith to Spaulding's manu- 
 script. It affords not the slightest 
 installment of a disproof of substantial 
 obligations. The most that could be 
 alleged would be that its style is in 
 
 1 Mormonism Unveiled, p. 288. 
 
32 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 contrast with that of the Book of 
 Mormon. The contrast, however, may 
 be explained by the twofold fact that 
 Spaulding in the later version of his 
 story wrote of set purpose in a pe- 
 culiar style, and that Joseph Smith, 
 in working over the materials fur- 
 nished by Spaulding, conformed them 
 to a very appreciable degree to his 
 own habits of expression. 
 
 When the Book of Mormon began 
 to be circulated those who had listened 
 to the Spaulding story, with its pe- 
 culiar names and its antique biblical 
 style, were at once struck with the 
 close resemblance between the two 
 writings, and several of them have 
 witnessed to that effect. John Spauld- 
 ing, to whom his brother Solomon 
 read passages of his Manuscript Found, 
 says: ''It was an historical romance of 
 the first settlers of America, endeavor- 
 ing to show that the American Indians 
 are descended from the Jews, or the 
 
OF MORMONISM 33 
 
 lost tribes. It gave a detailed account 
 of their journey from Jerusalem by 
 land and sea, till they arrived in 
 America under the command of Nephi 
 and Levi. They afterward had con- 
 tentions and quarrels and separated 
 into two distinct nations, one of which 
 he denominated Nephites and the other 
 Lamanites. Cruel and bloody wars 
 ensued, in which great multitudes were 
 slain. ... I have recently read the 
 Book of Mormon, and, to my great 
 surprise, I find nearly the same his- 
 torical matter, names, etc., as they 
 were in my brother's writings. I 
 well remember that he wrote in the 
 old style and commenced about every 
 sentence with, ^And it came to pass,' 
 or 'Now it came to pass,' the same as 
 in the Book of Mormon."* Joseph 
 Miller of Amity, Pennsylvania, noting 
 the fact that he often heard Spaulding 
 
 > This expression is repeated more than forty times in the first 
 chapter of the Mormon Bible. 
 
34 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 read from his manuscript, remarks: 
 ''I had the Book of Mormon in my 
 house for about six months for the 
 purpose of comparing it with my 
 recollection of the lost Manuscript 
 Found, and I unhesitatingly say that 
 a great part of the historical part of 
 the Book of Mormon is identical with 
 the manuscript, and I firmly believe 
 that the manuscript is the foundation 
 of the whole concern." Henry Lake, 
 who was partner with Solomon Spauld- 
 ing in rebuilding a forge at Conneaut, 
 spent many hours in hearing him 
 read from his manuscript. 'This 
 book,'^ he says, ^'represented the Amer- 
 ican Indians as the lost tribes, gave 
 an account of their leaving Jerusalem, 
 their contentions and wars, which were 
 many and great. One time, when he 
 was reading to me the tragic account 
 of Laban, I pointed out to him what 
 I considered an inconsistency, which 
 he promised to correct; but by re- 
 
OF MORMONISM 35 
 
 ferring to the Book of Mormon I 
 find, to my surprise, it stands there 
 just as he read it to me then. ... I 
 have no hesitation in saying that the 
 historical part of the Book of Mor- 
 mon is principally, if not wholly, taken 
 from The Manuscript Found. I well 
 recollect telling Mr. Spaulding that the 
 so frequent use of the words 'And it 
 came to pass,^ 'Now it came to pass,' 
 rendered it ridiculous." Hiram Lake, 
 son of the foregoing, testifies: ''My 
 father told me that the Book of 
 Mormon was unquestionably derived 
 from the Spaulding manuscript. Since 
 1834 I have conversed with Aaron 
 Wright, John N. Miller, and Nathan 
 Howard, old residents here [Conneaut], 
 now deceased, all of whom lived here 
 in 1811 and 1812, and who had heard 
 Spaulding's manuscript read, and they 
 told me they believed the Book of 
 Mormon was derived from Spaulding's 
 Manuscript Found. Some or all of 
 
36 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 these persons made affidavits to this 
 effect which were pubUshed in a book 
 called Mormonism Unveiled, edited by 
 E. D. Howe, of Painesville, Ohio." 
 Hiram Gould, referring to the same 
 persons, affirms: '^I heard them all 
 say that the Book of Mormon was 
 undoubtedly taken from a manuscript 
 written by Solomon Spaulding." Oliver 
 Smith, to whom Spaulding, while stop- 
 ping at his house, read one hundred 
 or more pages of the romance, makes 
 this statement: ^When the Book of 
 Mormon came into the neighborhood 
 and I heard the historical part of it 
 related, I at once said that it was 
 the writing of Solomon Spaulding."* 
 Very significant is the exclamation 
 which sprang from the lips of Squire 
 Wright when, in 1832, the Book of 
 Mormon was read in public at Con- 
 
 1 All of the above testimonies are given by Mrs. Ellen E. Dick- 
 inson, New Light on Mormonism, appendix. See also Howe, 
 Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 278-288. 
 
OP MORMONISM 37 
 
 neaut: ''Old come to pass has come 
 to life again !''^ 
 
 It amounts, we judge, to a his- 
 torical demonstration that the manu- 
 script story of Solomon Spaulding 
 served as an antecedent and ground- 
 work of the Book of Mormon. Con- 
 siderable liberty may have been used 
 by Joseph Smith, or by his accom- 
 plice, or by both in modifying details 
 and introducing supplementary ma- 
 terials, but that the general framework 
 and wide stretches of the subject- 
 matter of the Book of Mormon were 
 borrowed from Spaulding is not open 
 to reasonable doubt. 
 
 This conclusion holds whether or 
 not any reliable evidence is at hand 
 as to the medium through which 
 Joseph Smith was brought into pos- 
 session of the Spaulding manuscript, 
 or enabled to use its contents very 
 largely in shaping the Book of Mor- 
 
 > T. Gregg, The Prophet of Palmyra, p. 449. 
 
38 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 mon. As other noted crimes have 
 gone undetected, so might a carefully 
 concealed theft in this connection. 
 But, as a matter of fact, there is 
 evidence as to the medium in question, 
 which, if not demonstrative, affords a 
 basis for a thoroughly probable in- 
 ference. A sufficient list of data points 
 to Sidney Rigdon as the man who 
 helped Joseph Smith, by supplying 
 him with the highly imaginative story 
 of Spaulding, to pass on from his 
 empty bluff about a Golden Bible to 
 an appearance of a real discovery. 
 That this preacher, who was primarily 
 connected with the Baptists, and then 
 aflBliated with the Disciples, was none 
 too conscientious for a performance 
 of this kind, is indicated by the fact 
 of his cooperation with Smith, as 
 mentioned above, in an outrage upon 
 the integrity of the biblical text. That 
 he had opportunity for the knavish 
 performance is certified by his knOwn 
 
OF MOKMONISM 39 
 
 access to the printing establishment of 
 Patterson in Pittsburgh. He may not 
 have been employed at any time in 
 that establishment, but it is ascer- 
 tained that he was on intimate terms 
 with Lambdin, who was with Patterson 
 from 1812 to 1823, and so in all 
 likelihood had means of both knowing 
 about and seeing the Spaulding manu- 
 script. Among the evidences that he 
 improved his chance to get the man- 
 uscript into his possession are the 
 following: Joseph Miller of Amity, 
 Pennsylvania, who acted the part of 
 a friend in need to Spaulding in his 
 last days, says he told him ''there 
 was a man named Sidney Rigdon 
 about the office [of Patterson], and 
 they thought he had stolen the man- 
 uscript.''^ The conviction of Mrs. 
 Spaulding, as expressed a number of 
 years later, that the manuscript was 
 left among the efifects of her deceased 
 
 * Gregg, The Prophet of Palmyra, p. 442. 
 
40 A FOUEPOLD TEST 
 
 husband may be quoted in opposition 
 to this report by Miller; but it is 
 quite possible that she did not know, 
 or had forgotten, the fact that the 
 writing had been sent a second time 
 to the office of Patterson. That Rigdon 
 obtained possession of it is very def- 
 initely affirmed by John Winter, M.D. 
 He says that Rigdon showed it to 
 him while in his study in 1822 or 
 1823. The daughter of Dr. Winter 
 testifies: ^'I have frequently heard my 
 father speak of Rigdon having Spauld- 
 ing's manuscript, and that he had 
 gotten it from the printer to read as 
 a curiosity.''^ Mrs. Amos Dunlap in 
 1826-27, while visiting at the house 
 of Rigdon, saw him reading a man- 
 uscript which he was accustomed to 
 keep locked up in a trunk, and heard 
 him say, in response to the impatient 
 remark of his wife that she would 
 like to bum the thing up, ^It will 
 
 * Liim, p. 67; Schroeder, pp. 22, 23. 
 
OF MORMONISM 41 
 
 be a great thing some day/'^ There 
 is no reason for supposing that this 
 was other than the manuscript which 
 Dr. Winter saw in Rigdon's study 
 several years before. The Rev. Adam- 
 son Bentley wrote in 1841: ^T know 
 that Sidney Rigdon told me there was 
 a book coming out, the manuscript of 
 which had been found engraved on 
 gold plates, as much as two years 
 before the Mormon book made its 
 appearance or had been heard of by 
 me.^' This statement, though given to 
 the public more than a score of years 
 before the death of Rigdon, was never 
 contradicted by him.* How should 
 Rigdon at that date have had knowl- 
 edge of the prospective forthcoming 
 of the Book of Mormon? Taken in 
 connection with the testimony as to 
 his prior possession of the Spaulding 
 manuscript, and the well-established 
 
 1 Bchroeder, p. 24. 
 « Ibid., p. 23. 
 
42 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 indebtedness of the Book of Mormon 
 to that writing, Rigdon's forecast is 
 plain historical evidence that he had 
 come into collusion with Joseph Smith 
 and had supplied him with the specified 
 writing as the groundwork of his 
 fabulous Bible. This conclusion is 
 confirmed by evidence that Rigdon 
 was away from home for considerable 
 intervals, and in the neighborhood of 
 Smith, during the period in which 
 the Book of Mormon was being made 
 ready for publication. The remark of 
 V. Rudolph is on record ''that during 
 the winter previous to the appearance 
 of the Book of Mormon, Rigdon was in 
 the habit of spending weeks away from 
 his home, going no one knew where. ''^ 
 Pomeroy Tucker, who was on the ground 
 at the time, notes that a mysterious 
 stranger was seen at the Smith res- 
 idence in 1827 and again in 1828.^ 
 
 1 Mrs. Dickinson, New light on Mormonism, p. 252. 
 > The Origin of Mormonism, pp. 28, 46. 
 
OF MOEMONISM 43 
 
 Abel Chase, a near neighbor of Smith's, 
 reports: ^'I saw Rigdon at Smith's 
 at different times with considerable 
 intervals between/' Lorenzo Saunders, 
 another neighbor, says, ^'I saw Rigdon 
 at Smith's several times, and the first 
 visit was more than two years before 
 the Book appeared."^ 
 
 To complete the historical demon- 
 stration of the complicity of Rigdon 
 with Smith in concocting the Book 
 of Mormon two points need to be 
 added. In the first place, it is to be 
 noticed that a strain of the Camp- 
 bellite or Disciples' teaching, in which 
 Rigdon had been indoctrinated, per- 
 vades the Mormon Bible. Such char- 
 acteristic features as stress upon im- 
 mersion as the sole legitimate form 
 of baptism, great emphasis on the 
 eJEcacy of baptism, while a very 
 moderate view is taken of the virtue 
 of the eucharist, and a rather pro- 
 
 « Schroeder, p. 30. 
 
44 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 nounced expectation of the coming and 
 millennial reign of Christ, are un- 
 equivocally reproduced. The second 
 point concerns the subsequent relation 
 of Rigdon to Smith. The former was 
 shown considerable deference and in 
 various relations was treated as only 
 second to Smith. But, on the other 
 hand, he was subjected to such hu- 
 miliations as a high-spirited man could 
 scarcely have endured who was not 
 rendered comparatively helpless by 
 consciousness of complicity in fraud. 
 So Linn argues with a good show of 
 reason. ^The iron hand,'' he says, 
 ^Vith which Smith repressed Rigdon 
 from the date of their arrival in 
 Ohio afifords strong proof of Rigdon's 
 complicity in the Bible plot, and of 
 the fact that he stood to his accomplice 
 in the [relation of a burglar to his mate, 
 where the burglar has both the boodle 
 and the secret in his possession.''^ 
 
 1 The Story of the Mormons, p. 132. 
 
OF MOEMONISM 45 
 
 As we have taken pains to state, 
 proof of the indebtedness of the Book 
 of Mormon to the romance of Solomon 
 Spaulding is of much greater import 
 than the determination of the question 
 whether Rigdon served as the inter- 
 mediary between the two writings. 
 We cannot forbear the judgment, how- 
 ever, that the data which make for 
 an affirmative answer to this question 
 are really conclusive. 
 
 It should not be overlooked that 
 the Spaulding manuscript enters into 
 the case against Mormonism rather as 
 as auxiliary than as a fundamental. 
 It helps to explain how the young 
 man who was given to the telling of 
 big stories, who made a pretense 
 of handling magical instrumentalities, 
 who contradicted himself in his ref- 
 erences to the plates, and who later 
 indulged in capital instances of down- 
 right faking, was furnished with the 
 idea, the framework, and to a con- 
 
46 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 siderable extent the specific contents 
 of the Book of Mormon. In strictness, 
 however, the supposed function of the 
 given document in originating the 
 Book of Mormon is no necessary basis 
 of an adverse verdict. The proof of 
 fraudulent pretense on the part of 
 Joseph Smith is not dependent upon 
 verifying that function. This will be 
 made to appear in the remainder of 
 this essay, and especially in the section 
 immediately following. 
 
PART II 
 THE CRITICAL TEST 
 
 47 
 
PART II 
 THE CRITICAL TEST 
 
 The indubitable characteristics of 
 the Book of Mormon afford the most 
 conclusive refutation of the claims of 
 Joseph Smith in relation to its dis- 
 covery and translation. Should all 
 other hnes of evidence be put out 
 of sight, a critical mind would find 
 in the book itself overwhelming proof 
 of its being no antique reahty, but a 
 modem fraudulent concoction. The 
 evidences of its recent date permeate 
 the book and are absolutely decisive. 
 
 To begin with, in the so-called Book 
 of Mormon things pertaining to the 
 scientific or natural order are given a 
 false and arbitrary setting. The mar- 
 iner's compass, or an instrument ful- 
 filling an identical purpose, is brought 
 into service six hundred years before 
 
 49 
 
50 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 the Christian era/ At a time when 
 the sun was universally supposed to 
 move round the earth, the opposite 
 or Copernican theory is represented 
 as being an established truth. '^Sure 
 it is the earth that moveth and not 
 the sun. "2 Cows, asses, horses, sheep, 
 swine, and elephants are represented 
 as abounding on American soil.' The 
 statement is wide of the truth. At 
 the given date the horse and the 
 elephant existed only as fossil remains 
 of extinct species; and as for cows, 
 sheep, and swine, the nearest of kin 
 to them in the country were the bison, 
 the musk-ox, the big-horn sheep, and 
 the peccary, belonging for the most 
 part to Umited districts and incapable 
 of domestication.* 
 
 :-/m; V<... 1^^ ^..^^■^••^'^'^' 
 
 1 Alma, xvii, 12, p. 314; l^ephi, v, 4, p. 33. Here, as elsewhere, 
 we cite from the fifth European e^^ ^o fi, 1854. 
 
 2 Helaman, iv, 8, p. 421. 
 
 « 1 Nephi, V, 45, p. 44; Ether, iv, 3, p. 533. cfkt-^ ^U9 
 * Edward J. Payne, History of the New World Called America, 
 i, 283-290. The statement of Payne relative to the horse and the 
 elephant is made on the authority of Darwin. Recent naturalists 
 have generally been in full agreement with the statement. 
 
OF MORMONISM 51 
 
 In the second place, New Testament 
 events are represented as being antici- 
 pated by religious leaders in America 
 with a definiteness and clarity which 
 put to shame the prophetic foresight of 
 the most illuminated of the Old Tes- 
 tament seers. No competent biblical 
 critic in the world could fail to dis- 
 cover that we have here a transcript 
 from the New Testament audaciously 
 set forth as matter of foresight. In 
 scores of particulars this is made 
 evident. The father of Nephi is repre- 
 sented as able to declare at Jerusalem 
 that the Messiah should come in six 
 hundred years; that a messenger, who 
 should acknowledge himself not worthy 
 to unloose the latchet of his shoe, 
 should go before him in the wilderness; 
 that this messenger should baptize in 
 Bethabara, beyond Jordan; that he 
 should baptize the Messiah, and char- 
 acterize him as the Lamb of God 
 appointed to take away the sins of 
 
52 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 the world.^ At a period when no 
 saint or sage in Palestine had the 
 least abiUty to state such things, it 
 is said to have been a matter clearly 
 understood in America that the Mes- 
 siah would bear the name of ''Jesus 
 Christ the Son of God'';^ that his 
 mother would be the Virgin Mary;^ 
 that he would be scourged and cruci- 
 fied and would rise from the dead 
 on the third day;* that his cause 
 would be carried forward by twelve 
 apostles f that one of them, bearing 
 the name of John, should write the 
 Apocalypse,^ that the law of Moses 
 should cease to be in force after the 
 coming of Christ;' and that Israel 
 should be like branches broken off 
 from the olive tree, though destined 
 
 1 1 Nephi, iii, 3-5, p. 17. Xj,)0> ». V4 
 
 2 2 Nephi, xi, 4, p. 97. a^^Vj i*\ , p.'\\ 
 
 > Mosiah, i, 14, p. 150; Alma, v, 2, p. 227. 
 
 4^Mosiah, i, U)p. 150. ^.: ^ p. 'yl\^ ( t^.> ,- (' \ 
 
 6 1 NepHi; iu, 19. p. 21. ^\y^u. .. p . f ^ ' ' '""''- 
 " 1 Nephi, iii, 52, 53, p. 29. The Apocalypse is not named, but 
 
 clearly enough indicated. ^*f^2''^ 
 
 7 2^Nephi, xi, 7, p. 97. 
 
OF MORMONISM 53 
 
 later to be grafted in/ Respecting 
 some of these things, the apostles were 
 still in need of light after the day of 
 Pentecost. The whole list falls within 
 an horizon in essential contrast with 
 that of Old Testament prediction. 
 From beginning to end it plainly is 
 history set forth by a barefaced fiction 
 as matter of prophetical foresight. 
 
 In the third place the claim of the 
 Book of Mormon to be an antique 
 production is squarely refuted by the 
 fact that it is permeated with the 
 phraseology of the King James Version 
 of the Bible, a version that did not 
 exist till about twelve hundred years 
 after the Golden Bible of Joseph 
 Smith, Jr., was presumed to have been 
 deposited in a spot conveniently near 
 to the future residence of the Smith 
 family. This point cannot be better 
 elucidated than in the following words 
 of one who was converted to Mor- 
 
 « 1 Nephi, iii, 7, p. 18. 
 
54 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 monism in youth, but later outgrew it 
 and subjected it to a trenchant crit- 
 icism: 'Trom page 2 to page 428, 
 pretending to embrace a period from 
 600 B. C. to A. D., I have counted 
 no less than two hundred and ninety- 
 eight direct quotat ons from the New 
 Testament; some of them paragraphs 
 of verses, some of them sentences 
 from verses. Besides these there are 
 whole chapters of the Old and the 
 New Testament copied verbatim and 
 often not acknowledged. '^^ In the 
 face of such an ample borrowing, in 
 respect of phraseology, from the age 
 of the first Stuart King of England, 
 it is no cause for surprise to find such 
 a reminiscence of WiUiam Shakespeare 
 as is contained in this expression: 
 ^The cold and silent grave whence 
 no traveler can return. ''^ 
 In the fourth place, the Book of 
 
 1 John Hyde, Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs, 1857, pp. 
 233, 234. 
 
 2 2 Nephi, i, V p. 55. 
 
OF MORMONISM 55 
 
 Mormon advertises its modern origin 
 by the use of dogmatic phrases and 
 conceptions essentially foreign to an 
 antique Jewish people, but quite at 
 home in evangelical communions of 
 the nineteenth century. It represents 
 such expressions as '^the atonement of 
 Christ/'^ and ^^the atoning blood of 
 Christ/'* as already naturalized before 
 the Christian era. It records the 
 broad dogmatic proposition that noth- 
 ing short of an infinite atonement 
 will suffice for the sins of the world.' 
 It carries back to a remote pre-Chris- 
 tian age the language of modern 
 revivalistic fervor in that it represents 
 Nephi as saying, ''I glory in my Jesus, 
 for he hath redeemed my soul from 
 hell.''* With nearly as flagrant dis- 
 regard of historic conditions, the Book 
 of Mormon introduces such terms as 
 
 1 Jacob, iii, 4, p. 122. 
 a Mosiah, ii, 1, p. 152. 
 « Alma, xvi, 28, p. 304. 
 *2 Nephi, xv, p. 113. 
 
56 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 church, dissenter, and Bible (in the 
 sense of a collection of sacred books) 
 long before the time in which they 
 are discernible in Jewish usage.^ ' Mat- 
 ters of doctrine which ancient Judaism 
 never settled, and in large part n^er 
 discussed, but which were at the front 
 in interdenominational controversy at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury are determined with the utmost 
 precision in this pretended translation 
 from long-buried plates. In truth, 
 Alexander Campbell was not charge- 
 able with any great excess of sarcasm 
 when he wrote in 1832: ^The prophet 
 Smith, through his stone spectacles, 
 wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his 
 Book of Mormon, every error and 
 almost every truth discussed in New 
 York for the last ten years. He 
 decides all the great controversies — 
 infant baptism, ordination, the Trinity, 
 
 1 1 Nephi, i, 36; iii, 33, 40-53, et passim; Helaman, iv, 5; 3 
 Nephi, iii, 5; 2 Nephi, xii, 6, 8. 
 
OF MORMONISM 57 
 
 regeneration, repentance, justification, 
 the fall of man, the atonement, tran- 
 substantiation, fasting, penance, church 
 government, the call to the ministry, 
 the general resurrection, eternal pun- 
 ishment, who may baptize, and even 
 the question of free masonry, repub- 
 Ucan government, and the rights of 
 man/'^ 
 
 In addition to the glaring displace- 
 ment of reputed historical matter in 
 these different lines, the Book of 
 Mormon asks us to believe that this 
 continent was the scene of a widely 
 disseminated Jewish, or, rather, Jewish- 
 Christian, civilization for six hundred 
 years, and for a good part of the 
 next four hundred years was the site 
 of a flourishing Christian church which 
 was set forward and furnished with a 
 full quota of apostles by Christ through 
 the medium of a direct personal man- 
 ifestation. Now, what does archaeology 
 
 1 An Analysis of the Book of Mormon, p. 13. 
 
58 A FOUKFOLn TEST 
 
 know of a civilization Hebrew in origin 
 and Christian in substance, which flour- 
 ished on the American continent for 
 the period of a thousand years, and 
 which retained more or less contact 
 with that wing of the immigrants (the 
 so-called Lamanites) that is reputed 
 to have sunk into relative barbarism 
 and to have become what is known 
 as the Indian race? Would it be any- 
 thing less than an astounding marvel 
 that a people like the Nephites, who 
 remained keenly cognizant of their or- 
 igin from Jerusalem, and were well 
 advanced in the arts, should have left 
 neither reminiscence of their Judaic 
 descent nor memorial of their Judaic 
 or Christian civilization? But such are 
 the facts. There are, it is true, indi- 
 cations that the semicivilized races of 
 the Aztecs and Peruvians were pre- 
 ceded by peoples who had developed 
 no little skill in architecture. But 
 reliable traces of a Jewish or Christian 
 
OF MORMONISM 59 
 
 civilization on this continent, antedat- 
 ing the European settlement, have 
 never been discovered. At least they 
 have not been discovered by competent, 
 sober-minded, and truth-telling inves- 
 tigators.* The entire affluent history of 
 
 1 See D. G. Brinton, On the Various Supposed Relations Be- 
 tween the American and the Asian Races, Reprinted from the 
 Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology; also his 
 book on The American Race. Brinton, who ranks among the fore- 
 moet investigators of Indian antiquities, while expressing appreci- 
 ation for the learning and industry which such writers as Adair and 
 Kingsborough have expended on the theory of the Hebrew descent 
 of the Indians, makes the emphatic statement: "No one at present 
 would acknowledge himself a beUever in this theory" (The American 
 Race, p. 18). 
 
 The results attained by the most industrious of Mormon apolo- 
 gists in no wise call for a revision of Brinton's judgment (see B. H. 
 Roberts, New Witness for God, Vols. II and III). The tokens of 
 a prolonged Hebrew civilization in this country which he is able 
 to adduce reduce to some pieces of parchment bearing Hebrew 
 sentences, found at Pittsfield, and a tablet inscribed with the Ten 
 Commandments in Hebrew, discovered at Newark. Neither of 
 these memorials is proved to be of ancient date; and even if that 
 much could be established in their behalf, the evidence furnished by 
 them for a prolonged Hebrew civilization in America would amount 
 to nothing as against the opposing evidence contained in the 
 native languages. As well suppose the Latin language to have left 
 no discoverable trace on the speech of Italy as to suppose tribes 
 which were the offshoots of a civilized Hebrew race, and had no 
 vital contact with any other race, to have left no distinct token of 
 their Hebrew antecedents in their language. As to Flood stories 
 analogous to the Hebrew, these were current among peoples ante- 
 dating the national existence of the Hebrews and furnish no proof 
 even of casual contact with them. The same may be said of the 
 presence of such a figiire as Quetzalcoatl in the Aztec, or Toltec, 
 
60 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 a thousand years, we must conclude, 
 tapered down to nothing. It accom- 
 plished no adequate purpose. Joseph 
 Smith, it is true, would have us believe 
 that the Golden Bible deposited in the 
 hill of Cumorah was a sufficient end 
 to be achieved by the long history. 
 But having already conclusive rea- 
 sons for rejecting his estimate of that 
 ambitious romance, we find in the 
 wretched abortiveness of the pretended 
 history an additional ground for rating 
 it as a baseless fiction. 
 
 Among subsidiary criticisms of the 
 Book of Mormon place may be given 
 to its disagreement with the verdict 
 of recent scholarship on the book of 
 Isaiah. That verdict is that the last 
 twenty-seven chapters of this prophet- 
 ical book belong to the period of the 
 Babylonish captivity. The Book of 
 
 mythology. Divinities plajdng an exceptional role are found in 
 other mythologies, as Osiris in the Egs^ptian and Baldur in the 
 Scandinavian. To explain the Mexican god on the score of the 
 Hebrew antecedents of his worshipers is quite gratuitous. 
 
OF MORMONISM 61 
 
 Mormon, on the other hand, presumes 
 that these chapters were extant some 
 generations before the captivity — hav- 
 ing been written by Isaiah the son 
 of Amos — and that they were conveyed 
 to this country by Nephi six hundred 
 years before the Christian era. The 
 revised view of the book of Isaiah 
 has not indeed been universally adopted 
 in learned circles, but the movement 
 of free scholarship toward it for several 
 decades has been very pronounced. So 
 there is at least probable ground for 
 convicting the Book of Mormon of a 
 blunder such as betrays a modem hand 
 in its production. 
 
 Of the incredible things in the in- 
 credible book which Joseph Smith pre- 
 tended to have received through angelic 
 ministration no item is perhaps more 
 fantastic than that which recounts the 
 voyage of the Jaredites to America 
 in very peculiarly constructed barges.^ 
 
 1 Ether, i. 
 
62 A FOUKFOLD TEST 
 
 Anyone who can believe this story 
 ought not to feel obliged to challenge 
 the historicity of any of the marvelous 
 tales of Alice in Wonderland. 
 
 In addition to all the rest, the 
 claim of the Book of Mormon to a 
 sacred character is discredited by its 
 barrenness. Apart from materials pla-x 
 giarized from the Bible, it is almost^ 
 entirely destitute of an edifying con- 
 tent. Its continual iteration in slightly 
 diversified form of two scenes, the one 
 a representation of disobedience and 
 chastisement, and the other containing 
 a description of repentance and renewed 
 opportunity, is terribly wearisome. In 
 its doctrinal teachings it has, to be 
 sure, a number of respectable tenets; 
 but the doctrines inculcated are not 
 above the level of the contemporary 
 theology from which we are authorized 
 to regard them as borrowed, and in 
 one particular there is a descent to 
 the plane of the most aberrant think- 
 
OF MORMONISM 63 
 
 ing of the time. We refer to the 
 singular notion that the transgression 
 of Adam was one of the most necessary 
 and salutary events that ever hap- 
 pened, since otherwise the race would 
 have continued in a perfectly static, 
 poverty-stricken, and joyless condition.^ 
 
 Mormon apologists are wont to make 
 large account of the witnesses to the 
 Book of Mormon, or to the reaHty of 
 the plates on which the book was 
 alleged to have been based. But against 
 the accumulated evidence which has 
 been presented what can the testimony 
 of the witnesses prove? Plainly noth- 
 ing, except that the witnesses were 
 deceived, or were partners in deceit, 
 or were the subjects, to a greater or 
 less extent, of both orders of experience. 
 
 The witnesses fall into two groups, 
 the first of which consisted of Oliver 
 Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin 
 Harris, and the second of eight per- 
 
 » 2 Nephi, i, 8, pp. 68, 59. 
 
64 A POUKFOLD TEST 
 
 sons, all of whom, with the exception 
 of Hiram Page, belonged to either the 
 Whitmer or the Smith family. These 
 men, it is to be noticed, with scarcely 
 an exception, were so closely associated 
 with the pseudo prophet in his Golden 
 Bible project, almost from its incep- 
 tion, that they might with a fair 
 degree of propriety be styled his con- 
 federates in that project. Further, it 
 is to be noticed that their testimony 
 is not given in the form of personal 
 affidavits. The three and the eight 
 subscribed respectively to statements 
 which undoubtedly Smith, or his prin- 
 cipal accomplice, had drawn up for 
 them, and it is legitimate to suppose 
 that with their uncritical turn of mind 
 even the most honest among them did 
 not scrutinize closely the terms of the 
 statements. 
 
 The witnesses of the first group 
 testified that they were shown the 
 plates of the Book of Mormon by 
 
OF MORMONISM 65 
 
 an angel, and saw the writing en- 
 graved upon them, and were assured 
 by the voice of God that it had been 
 correctly translated. How the voice 
 of God imparted this information, 
 whether through an inward impression 
 or otherwise, is not stated. The door 
 is left open to the supposition that 
 the wish to accredit the Book of 
 Mormon was the effective source of 
 the voice. As respects the angel bear- 
 ing the plates, he would seem to have 
 belonged rather to the sphere of sub- 
 jective fancy than to that of objective 
 reality. Smith in his report of the 
 matter admits that Harris experienced 
 difficulty in getting the vision of the 
 angel and the plates and, moreover, 
 stops short of squarely affirming that 
 he really obtained the vision^; and 
 Harris too, when questioned as to 
 whether he saw the reported objects 
 with his literal sight, felt obliged to 
 
 1 Millennial Star, vol. xiv, supt., p. 19; cited by Linn, p. 80. 
 
66 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 reply that it was by the spiritual eye 
 or the eye of faith.^ Of the remaining 
 two witnesses David Whitmer was 
 doubtless at that stage, being exceed- 
 ingly visionary, a good subject for 
 hypnotic suggestion. That his expe- 
 rience may have been of this order 
 is suggested by the fact that the 
 vision, instead of being imposed upon 
 neutral subjects, was wrought out in 
 the woods by prayer and stress. On 
 the score of natural eyesight there is 
 no apparent reason why he should have 
 seen what the physical eyes of Harris 
 could not discover. As to Oliver 
 Cowdery, who had acted as Smith's 
 secretary in preparing the Book of 
 Mormon, he was too closely allied 
 with his principal not to be able to 
 testify to seeing what he was desired 
 to see. It is not improbable that he 
 was a conscious partner in the fraud 
 which was being perpetrated. His after 
 
 1 Tucker, The Rise of Mormonism, p. 71. 
 
OF MORMONISM 67 
 
 career proves that he was a man of 
 very shifty character. In 1838 the 
 Mormons cast him out under charges 
 of being a thief, swindler, liar, and 
 counterfeiter.^ At the same date they 
 forced out David Whitmer and painted 
 his character also in black. Harris 
 too was consigned to the outer dark- 
 ness. In 1837 Smith reviled him as a 
 Negro with a white skin, and the next 
 year denounced him as a ^liar and 
 swindler. "2 The worth of a judicial 
 sentence cannot, of course, be attached 
 to these verdicts. While Cowdery was 
 doubtless a knave, we are not forbid- 
 den to believe that Whitmer and Harris 
 were weak and wrong-headed rather 
 than unprincipled. But the group as a 
 whole reduces, on examination, to a 
 rather beggarly set of witnesses. 
 
 The second group, made up of eight 
 witnesses, testify simply that they were 
 
 1 Linn, p. 81. 
 
 a Ibid., p. 84; Gregg, p. 24. 
 
68 A FOUKFOLD TEST 
 
 shown the plates by Joseph Smith, Jr., 
 and handled with their own hands 
 as many of the plates as the said 
 Smith had translated. The latter state- 
 ment, it may be observed, could be 
 signed by the most radical disbeliever 
 in the reputed origin of the Book of 
 Mormon. As to being shown the 
 plates, that is quite a different thing 
 from having any guaranty as to the 
 character or content of the writing 
 engraved upon them. In fact, the 
 testimony of this whole group of wit- 
 nesses furnishes no evidence that plates 
 serving as a real basis of the Book of 
 Mormon were in existence. Supposing 
 plates to have been actually seen and 
 handled, the only rational conclusion 
 would be that they were devised for 
 the occasion; and for witnesses drawn 
 from the Smith and Whitmer families 
 we can be assured that a very clumsy 
 device would have answered the pur- 
 pose. It would not have needed any- 
 
OF MOEMONISM 69 
 
 thing so well executed as the Kinder- 
 hook plates referred to above. It may 
 be worth adding that three of this 
 group finally abandoned Mormonism. 
 Plainly the evidence with which they 
 had been favored was not sufficient 
 to rivet their minds to the Mormon 
 system. Of the five remaining members 
 of the group three belonged to the 
 Smith family. It appears, therefore, 
 that, apart from that family, only two 
 in the entire list of witnesses who 
 signed the statements dictated by Jo- 
 seph Smith remained steadfast adher- 
 ents of Mormonism. It may not be 
 on record that those who fell away 
 formally withdrew their testimony; but 
 naturally they would not be forward 
 to confess themselves to have been 
 either dupes or knaves. 
 
 That Smith might easily have im- 
 posed upon the untrained and credulous 
 men whom he selected as witnesses 
 is suggested by the case of James 
 
70 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 J. Strang, who joined the Mormons 
 shortly before the assassination of 
 Smith, in 1844, and who went on to 
 supervise an independent community 
 at Voree, Wisconsin, which later was 
 transferred to Beaver Island in Lake 
 Michigan. Conceiving that some an- 
 tique plates would make a suitable 
 embellishment for his prophetical mis- 
 sion, he set about to supply them, and 
 later to translate the characters en- 
 graved upon them by the aid of 
 urim and thummim alleged to have 
 been brought to him by an angel. 
 Nor did he fail to obtain his witnesses. 
 Four men testified that, digging accord- 
 ing to his direction, they found the 
 plates. The names of these witnesses 
 are recorded as Aaron Smith, J. B. 
 Wheelan, James M. Van Nostrand, 
 and Edward Whitcomb.^ If Strang 
 could thus play a successful ruse, why 
 not Joseph Smith likewise? 
 
 1 Gregg, The Prophet of Pahnyra, pp. 312-319. 
 
OF MOEMONISM 71 
 
 Quite enough space has been given 
 to the so-called 'Witnesses." As was 
 noted, their testimony, in the face of 
 the overwhelming evidence on the 
 origin and character of the Book of 
 Mormon, can only show that either 
 they were deceived, or were partners 
 in deceit, or belonged, to a greater or 
 less extent, both to the class of dupes 
 and to that of deceivers. 
 
 Since Joseph Smith is convicted of 
 imposture both by the evidence bear- 
 ing on the production of the Book of 
 Mormon and by the contents of that 
 book, his claim to a prophetical voca- 
 tion is completely nullified in the sight 
 of history as to its primary and basal 
 credential; and, being proved guilty of 
 fraudulent pretense in this capital 
 matter, he is entitled to no sort of 
 credence in connection with the sub- 
 sequent '^revelations'^ of which he 
 claimed to be the mouthpiece. It 
 may be worth while, however, to take 
 
72 A FOUEFOLD TEST 
 
 a glance at these so-called revelations 
 which have been gathered together in 
 the book constituting the second great 
 authority of the Mormons, The Doc- 
 trine and Covenants of the Church of 
 Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 
 
 It can hardly escape the notice of 
 the reader that in respect of form the 
 ^'revelations'^ are not adapted to sug- 
 gest a divine source. There is in 
 them a large element of rambling 
 sermonic discourse. A wordy reli- 
 giosity, a mechanical stringing together 
 of phrases, pictorial representations, 
 and conceptions borrowed from the 
 Bible, is nearly everywhere in evidence. 
 There is rarely a direct approach to, 
 or an economical dealing with, the 
 real point which the revelation was 
 designed to enforce. In short, the 
 style of the revelations implies that the 
 Lord who gave them must have been 
 singularly lacking in business capacity. 
 
 Again the subject-matter of many 
 
OF MORMONISM 73 
 
 of the revelations is adapted to pro- 
 voke the smile of incredulity. Things 
 of trivial import, matters which or- 
 dinary common sense and decent exec- 
 utive abiUty might be regarded as 
 competent to dispose of, are paraded 
 with the solemn sanction of divine 
 mandates. The borders of the burlesque 
 are sometimes approached, not to say 
 plainly crossed over, as, for instance, 
 in the revelation ordering the details 
 of a stock company and the erection 
 of a boarding house at Nauvoo.^ 
 
 Again, the tenor of one and another 
 revelation makes a mock of divine 
 knowledge and foresight. A conspic- 
 uous example appears in the divine 
 message dated May, 1829. This was 
 in response to the exigency which had 
 arisen through the loss of a consider- 
 able parcel of manuscript containing 
 the first part of the so-called translation 
 of the Book of Mormon. In response 
 
 » Doctrine and Covenants, cxxiv. 
 
74 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 to the persistent request of Martin 
 Harris he was given permission to 
 show the curious pages to his wife 
 and a few others. The inclusion of 
 the wife was a poor mark of discretion. 
 Utterly averse to her husband's as- 
 sumption of financial responsibility for 
 what she regarded as an insane and 
 wicked project she took pains to insure 
 that the manuscript should never see 
 the light again. At least this is the 
 probable conclusion. To be sure, Mrs. 
 Harris was able to deny that she had 
 burned up the vanished pages. But 
 that is by no means equivalent to 
 asserting that they passed beyond her 
 custody; and the fact that no trace 
 was ever gained of what would natur- 
 ally have been conserved as a curiosity 
 by anyone in a less intense mood 
 than Mrs. Harris makes for the con- 
 clusion that they did not pass outside 
 of her jurisdiction. By this outcome 
 Joseph Smith was thrown into a 
 
OF MORMONISM 75 
 
 quandary. He knew that his magic 
 spectacles were not equal to supplying 
 an exact duplicate of the lost pages, 
 and he was haunted by the suspicion 
 that those pages might be brought 
 forward, in case their subject-matter 
 should be given out a second time, to 
 convict him of false pretense. So he 
 availed himself of a ' 'revelation" which 
 warned him that designing men had 
 planned to change and pervert the 
 contents of the missing pages, and 
 directed him to substitute other matter 
 for that which they contained.^ But 
 how could these designing men tamper 
 with the writing on the specified pages 
 without leaving the marks of their 
 tampering? and how could they expect 
 to accomplish anything without pro- 
 ducing the precise manuscript which 
 Harris took away and which was in 
 his own handwriting? How could they 
 make an abusive use of a manuscript 
 
 1 Doctrine and Covenants, x. 
 
76 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 which all the known facts indicate 
 was beyond the use or abuse of any 
 party outside the Harris domicile? 
 Manifestly, the Lord who dictated the 
 given revelation had no knowledge of 
 the actual conditions. 
 
 Still further, the pretended revela- 
 tions contain a sufficient quota of pre- 
 dictions which the course of events has 
 stamped as empty vaporings. Thus, 
 in 1832, the solemn declaration was 
 made: ''Not many days hence the 
 earth shall tremble and reel to and 
 fro as a drunken man, and the sun 
 shall hide his face.''^ An equally poor 
 venture in prophesying was made when 
 Smith sent a messenger to New York, 
 Albany, and Boston, to warn the people 
 of those cities that, in case of their 
 rejecting the things announced, their 
 utter desolation was impending and the 
 hour of their judgment was nigh.^ 
 
 1 Doctrine and Covenants, Ixxxviii, 87. 
 
 2 Ibid., Ixxxiv, 112-115. 
 
OF MORMONISM 77 
 
 Truly ridiculous is that revelation made 
 to appear which appointed John Whit- 
 mer historian/ when it is joined with 
 the subsequent dismissal of the ap- 
 pointee with this contemptuous char- 
 acterization of him by Smith and 
 Rigdon: ^^We never supposed you 
 capable of writing a history. "^ A 
 reference might also be made to the 
 prediction that the discomfited Latter 
 Day Saints in Missouri should forth- 
 with begin to prevail against their ene- 
 mies,' though in this instance a chance 
 was prudently reserved to lay the blame 
 of the unmitigated disaster which en- 
 sued to the misconduct of the Saints. 
 
 That a man much given to prophesy- 
 ing should occasionally make an ap- 
 proach to picturing a future unfoldment 
 is no ground for surprise. We are 
 therefore far from discovering in Joseph 
 Smith's alleged prediction respecting 
 
 » Doctrine and Covenants, xlvii. 
 
 3 Millennial Star, rsd, p. 133; cited by Linn, p. 114. 
 
 * Doctrine and Covenants, dii, 6. 
 
78 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 the Civil War any token of prophetical 
 vocation.^ Not to emphasize the fact 
 that the prediction seems not to have 
 been published till long after its osten- 
 sible date (December 25, 1832), it 
 could easily have been suggested by 
 the slavery agitation going on at that 
 time, and especially by the nullification 
 ordinance of South Carolina, which was 
 passed in that very year and was a 
 matter for earnest discussion at the 
 time the revelation purports to have 
 been given. Moreover, the forecast of 
 the Civil War was conjoined with 
 prognostications that had no fulfill- 
 ment. What really is disclosed here is 
 a pretender whose venture happened 
 to be partially successful. 
 
 Among the revelations which are 
 alleged to have been vouchsafed to 
 the founder of Mormonism there is 
 none which so effectually wrecks his 
 claims as that in authorization of 
 
 1 Doctrine and Covenants, Ixxxvii. 
 
OF MORMONISM 79 
 
 polygamy. Its very content is a 
 fundamental refutation of those claims. 
 But that is a point for subsequent 
 consideration. What we need to note 
 in this connection is the flagrant self- 
 contradiction which it involved. In 
 the Book of Mormon, a writing reputed 
 to be in its original form almost too 
 sacred for the sight of mortal eyes, we 
 have this unequivocal condemnation 
 and prohibition of polygamy: ' 'Behold 
 David and Solomon truly had many 
 wives and concubines, which thing 
 was abominable before me, saith the 
 Lord. . . . Wherefore I the Lord God 
 will not suffer that this people shall 
 do like unto them of old. Wherefore 
 my brethren hear me, and hearken 
 to the word of the Lord; for there 
 shall not any man among you have 
 save it be one wife; and concubines he 
 shall have none; for I the Lord God 
 delighteth in the chastity of women.''^ 
 
 > Jacob, ii,- OTP- HS. 
 
80 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 Furthermore, in the Book of Mor- 
 mon, the Lamanites, though repre- 
 sented as justly abhorred for serious 
 offenses, are emphatically commended 
 for their avoidance of polygamy and 
 concubinage. Because of this one vir- 
 tue it is declared of them, ^^the Lord 
 God will not destroy them, and one 
 day they shall become a blessed peo- 
 ple."^ Twice over in reputed revela- 
 tions Smith used language, in 1831, 
 which impHes the standpoint of monog- 
 amy. What else, taken as honest 
 speech, can these sentences mean? 
 ^Thou shalt love thy wife with all 
 thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her 
 and none else.'^^ ^ ^Marriage is or- 
 dained of God unto man; wherefore 
 it is lawful that he should have one 
 wife, and they twain shall be one 
 flesh. ''^ In face of all this, in a 
 revelation bearing date of July 12, 
 
 1 Jacob, ii, 9, p. 119. 
 
 2 Doctrine and Covenants, xlii, 22. 
 « Ibid., xUx, 15, 16. 
 
OF MORMONISM 81 
 
 1843 (but first published at Salt Lake 
 City in 1852), the license of David and 
 Solomon is approved, plain authoriza- 
 tion is given to the multiplying of 
 wives to any extent that may suit 
 a man's convenience and pleasure, and 
 destruction is threatened against Emma 
 Smith, the first wife of Joseph, unless 
 she should desist from her opposition 
 to the polygamous scheme.^ What less 
 is this than a virtual confession of 
 the pseudo prophet that his claim to 
 derive his oracles from the Lord was 
 a lying pretense? The deliverance at 
 Nauvoo in 1843 simply negates the 
 Book of Mormon as well as the rev- 
 elations of 1831. No wit of man 
 can reconcile them, and it does not 
 appear that Joseph Smith made the 
 attempt. According to the credible 
 report of William Law, who was at 
 one time a trusted associate, when 
 charged with contradicting the Book 
 
 » Doctrine and Covenants, cxxxii. 
 
82 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 of Mormon in his revelation on plural 
 marriage, he replied: ^'O, that was 
 given when the church was in its 
 infancy 5 then it was all right to feed 
 the people on milk, but now it is 
 necessary to give them strong meat.''^ 
 The frivolous makeshift may have 
 served a temporary purpose; but of 
 course it sanctions a contemptuous 
 treatment of the authority of the Book 
 of Mormon. If a solemn injunction 
 of that book on a matter of capital 
 importance, and formally assuming to 
 mend the imperfection of antique prac- 
 tice, can be stigmatized as infantile 
 diet, why may not any other portion 
 of the book be set aside under the 
 same disparaging category? To one 
 who has eyes to see it is plain enough 
 that Smith overruled and trampled 
 under foot his earlier deliverances sim- 
 ply because his lust was for him 
 more imperious than the claims of 
 
 * Gregg, The Prophet of Palmyra, p. 513. 
 
OF MORMONISM 83 
 
 self-consistency. That people can be- 
 lieve in him in spite of this crookedness 
 only adds another to the historic 
 proofs of the possibilities of human 
 credulity 
 
'\'* c 
 
PART III 
 THE RATIONAL TEST 
 
 1$-% ^/Vi 
 
 85 
 
PART III 
 
 THE RATIONAL TEST 
 
 In a rational point of view Mormon- 
 ism is discredited by the superstitious 
 and intemperate appeal of the founder 
 to the instrumentaUty of magic. What 
 well-informed person can believe that 
 either the peep-stone found in the well 
 of Willard Chase, or the prisms dig- 
 nified with the name of urim and 
 thummimy had any virtue to transfer 
 Reformed Egyptian into English? The 
 English of the first edition of the 
 Book of Mormon was indeed execrable 
 at various points; but to suppose that 
 an antique language can be trans- 
 formed into any kind of Enghsh by 
 means of bits of mineral substance is 
 to canonize the queer. Doubtless by 
 gazing fixedly into a crystal an im- 
 
 87 
 
88 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 pressible subject can be thrown into 
 a state of reverie, as he can also by 
 gazing fixedly at the tip of his nose; 
 but neither the crystal nor the tip 
 of the nose ever qualifies for trans- 
 lating an absolutely unknown tongue 
 into one's vernacular. Smith's pre- 
 tense that he was supplied with the 
 venerable Israelite instrument, the urim 
 and thummim, in no wise alleviates 
 the incredible magic involved in the 
 alleged transaction. For the scholarly 
 verdict is that the use of urim and 
 thummim among the Israelites was 
 only a solemn form of casting lots, 
 a means of deciding between the simple 
 alternatives of yes and no. Any such 
 virtue as the Mormon prophet attached 
 to this instrumentality does not come 
 into view. Moreover, the fact is to 
 be emphasized that in the great 
 prophetical era of Israel no recourse 
 seems to have been had to urim and 
 thummim. The lofty-minded men who 
 
OF MORMONISM 89 
 
 had a well-grounded confidence that 
 the Spirit of God wrought in them had 
 no use for such insensate tools as 
 are claimed to have been employed 
 in the origination of the Book of Mor- 
 mon.* 
 
 The appeal which Mormon apologists 
 have made to the marvels of science, 
 in justification of the efiicacy of such 
 things as peep-stones and prisms, is 
 entirely irrelevant. Science has been 
 able to achieve real results by accom- 
 modation to the actual constitution of 
 the world. Ten thousand years of 
 dabbling with such instrumentaHties as 
 are reputed to have served Joseph 
 Smith would be as utterly abortive 
 as have been the efforts of the pseudo 
 science of astrology through its long 
 history. It should be noted, further, 
 that our apologists come very near to 
 admitting that Smith's accomplishment 
 
 I See article, "Urim and Thummim." in Hastings's Dictionary 
 of the Bible. 
 
90 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 of his task by means of mineral 
 ^^translators'' was an empty pretense. 
 One and another of them, in attempt- 
 ing to explain the undeniable char- 
 acteristics of the Book of Mormon, 
 have felt obliged to affirm for their 
 prophet a pretty wide range of free 
 mental activity. How instruments that 
 act mechanically can enter into part- 
 nership with the free movements of 
 a human mind they have not explained. 
 A man can see his face when he 
 gazes into a looking-glass; but it would 
 be a very extraordinary looking-glass 
 which could become an effective 
 partner in the free working out of 
 a great mental program. In short, 
 our apologists, besides contradicting 
 the interpretation put upon the matter 
 by Smith's contemporaries, manifestly 
 hazard the sacrifice of one interest in 
 attempting to cover another: they in- 
 vite to skepticism as to the fact of 
 the urim and thummim having played 
 
OF MORMONISM 91 
 
 any part in the so-called transla- 
 tion. 
 
 A criticism scarcely less scathing 
 holds against the procedure attributed 
 to the Lord in relation to the plates 
 of the Book of Mormon. Why should 
 he have been so wonderfully con- 
 cerned to keep them hidden away 
 from human sight? Apart from the 
 message which they contained, what 
 were the plates but old metal? and, 
 when once the message had been 
 transcribed, of what possible use could 
 they be except as an accessible test 
 of the fidelity with which the tran- 
 scription, or translation, had been 
 made? To charge the Lord with 
 keeping them out 'of sight on the 
 score of their sacredness is to charge 
 him with patronizing an arrant fetish- 
 ism. Things are sacred in proportion 
 to their fulfillment of useful offices. 
 Old metal hidden away from sight is 
 fruitful of no worthful result whatever. 
 
92 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 God could not possibly have any mo- 
 tive for the hiding. The motive was 
 altogether with Joseph Smith. The 
 rational inference is that he represented 
 the plates as forbidden to the sight 
 of men just because he had no plates, 
 at least none that could endure critical 
 inspection for the briefest interval. U 
 Passing on to more general grounds 
 of rational objection to Mormonism, 
 we notice the artificial basis of author- 
 ity which it imports by its intemperate 
 stress upon isolated divine workings, 
 upon baldly supernatural or quasi- 
 supernatural interventions. No doubt 
 supernatural workings may be so har- 
 moniously interwoven with other con- 
 tents of a great historical system as 
 to be a valuable factor in the total 
 evidence for the system. But a cordial 
 admission of this fact in no wise 
 excludes occasion to challenge the rat- 
 ing of the formally supernatural which 
 is characteristic of Mormonism. It 
 
OF MORMONISM 93 
 
 virtually ignores the great truth that 
 the Holy Spirit may be operative in 
 and through the historic process, and 
 thereby bring forth most precious and 
 substantial results. In the advancing 
 and deepening convictions which lift 
 civilizations up to a purer ideal it is 
 disinclined to see any token of divine 
 revelation. God must break into the 
 world by a formal manifestation and 
 give a formal message through a specific 
 mouthpiece, or he must stay out of 
 the world and keep silence. This 
 point of view is conspicuous in various 
 deliverances of Mormon writers. Let 
 the following serve as examples: ^If 
 no one man can know a minister of 
 God without revelation, then no large 
 body of men can know him; and, 
 surely, they cannot testify of what 
 they do not know. No matter what 
 is said against Joseph Smith, or who, 
 or how many say it, or however 
 credible the witnesses, they are not 
 
94 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 competent to testify, because they have 
 not the gift of revelation.''^ '^One 
 thing is certain; if the angel has not 
 come — if the gospel is not restored — 
 if the records of Joseph are not re- 
 vealed, then there is no kingdom of 
 God on earth, no authority to preach 
 or administer ordinances among 
 men."^ V 
 
 On the basis from which such state- 
 ments proceed no historical evolution 
 can carry any weight as against a 
 specific utterance of a man who has 
 been credited with a prophetical voca- 
 tion and assumes to speak in the 
 name of the Lord. For example, by 
 virtue of a growing insight into the 
 proper application of gospel principles 
 a universal consensus may be worked 
 out in Christian minds as to the 
 essential wrong and injustice of human 
 
 1 Orson Spencer, Letters on the Most Prominent Doctrines, 
 Letter ii, 1847, pp. 45, 46. 
 
 2 Orson Pratt, Series of Pamphlets, No. I, p. 8. 
 
OF MORMONISM 95 
 
 slavery; that, we are asked to believe, 
 is of no significance. It is destitute 
 of all divine authority. The pro- 
 nouncement of one fulfilling the role 
 of a prophet can nullify the whole 
 consensus and obligate to a contrary 
 judgment. God works out nothing 
 through the historic evolution. All 
 depends upon the edict voiced by the 
 professional spokesman. This, to all 
 appearance, is the ruling point of 
 view in Mormonism, and it is glaringly 
 exhibited in connection with the doc- 
 trine of polygamy. By virtue of the 
 monogamic ideal which shines forth 
 from the bibhcal revelation (in spite 
 of its record of polygamous practice in 
 certain instances), by respect for the 
 great principle of equality of male and 
 female in Christ, by aiT irrepressible 
 sense of the injustice of condemning 
 a devoted wife to take up with the 
 mere fraction of a husband, by a 
 recognition of the natural conditions 
 
96 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 of true heart devotion and real con- 
 jugal unity, Christians came universally 
 to condemn polygamy and to cast it 
 out as incompatible with a decent 
 civilization. All that, from the Mor- 
 mon standpoint, counts for nothing. 
 Joseph Smith said that he had a 
 revelation legitimating polygamy, and 
 his word ends the matter. God dem- 
 onstrated his will in this so-called 
 revelation. In the working out and 
 deep implantation in a Christian civ- 
 ilization of the family ideal his will 
 in no wise came to expression. 
 
 The theory is so narrow-gauge, and 
 so opens the door to noxious imposi- 
 tions, that manifestly it falls quite 
 outside the pale of rational approval. 
 Moreover, in its apphcation by Mor- 
 mons to the point before us there 
 is an altogether gratuitous element. ^ 
 Even if constrained to hold in theory 
 that the specific utterance of a prophet 
 is the one thing that carries weight. 
 
OP MORMONISM 97 
 
 why should they attach a decisive 
 authority to the revelation of Smith 
 in favor of polygamy, standing as it 
 does in contradiction to previous rev- 
 elations of his and to the plain text 
 of the Book of Mormon? Why not 
 take this aberrant revelation as a 
 proof that, if ever he was called to 
 the prophetical office, he had turned 
 truant to his calling and become an 
 instrument of seduction? What less 
 than extraordinary blindness could ex- 
 clude the choice of this alternative? 
 So the Mormons are guilty of a 
 double blunder in this matter. They 
 hold a one-sided and artificial premise 
 respecting the method of divine work- 
 ing and divine revelation, and they 
 make a gratuitous and aberrant appli- 
 cation of that premise. 
 
 A narrowness quite as flagrant as 
 that just noticed appears in the utter 
 disparagement which exponents of 
 Mormonism have been wont to visit 
 
98 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 upon the Christian world at large and 
 in the crying up of their own system 
 as possessed of sole legitimacy. Often 
 enough in the course of history a 
 bigoted self-appreciation has been ex- 
 hibited, and illustration has been given 
 of the besetting sin of religious society 
 by the claim of this or that party to 
 possess a monopoly of spiritual goods. 
 There is good reason, however, to 
 conclude that no one of these parties, 
 even the most eccentric, has surpassed 
 the Mormons in the given respect. 
 The founder set the standard of self- 
 appreciation at the highest notch by 
 representing that God Almighty was 
 entirely subservient to his scheme, and 
 bound to bless whomsoever he might 
 bless, and to curse whomsoever he 
 might curse.^ What Joseph Smith 
 claimed for himself Mormon preachers 
 and writers have often claimed for 
 their sect. They have asserted a 
 
 i Doctrine and Covenants, czzxii, 47. 
 
OF MORMONISM 99 
 
 monopoly of divine interest and favor 
 for the Church of Jesus Christ of 
 Latter Day Saints, and have stig- 
 matized the Christian world at large 
 as an apostate and God-forsaken do- 
 main. It is bold impudence, contends 
 Orson Pratt, for the non-Mormon 
 churches to call themselves Christian 
 churches. ^They have nothing to do 
 with Christ, neither has Christ any- 
 thing to do with them, only to pour 
 out upon them the plagues written. . . . 
 All who will not now repent, as the 
 authority is once more restored to 
 the earth, and come forth out of the 
 corrupt apostate churches and be 
 adopted into the Church of Christ 
 and earnestly seek after the blessings 
 and miraculous gifts of the gospel 
 shall be thrust down to hell, saith the 
 Lord God of Hosts.'^^ ^^Modern Chris- 
 tianity,'' writes Orson Spencer, ''is the 
 very opposite extreme and counterpart 
 
 » Series of Pamphlets, No. Ill, p. 8; No. V, p. 8. 
 
100 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 of the ancient order of apostles and 
 prophets. . . . The very religion of 
 modern Christianity is about as great 
 a curse as can be inflicted upon its 
 possessors without doing violence to 
 their power of agency. . . . The reign 
 of Satan for near eighteen hundred 
 years has almost efifaced every relic 
 of Bible truth from the earth. ''^ Now 
 and then doubtless a Mormon has 
 spoken a charitable word respecting 
 the character and fate of those in 
 outside Gentilism. Brigham Young 
 showed himself capable of doing that.^ 
 But, on the other hand, he made this 
 emphatic declaration: '^Every spirit 
 that does not confess that God sent 
 Joseph Smith, and revealed the ever- 
 lasting gospel to and through him, is 
 of Antichrist, no matter what it pro- 
 fesses with regard to revealed religion 
 and the account that is given of the 
 
 1 Letters Exhibiting the Most Prominent Doctrines, pp. 79, 140, 
 207, 208. 
 
 2 Journal of Dia/^ourses, viii, pp. 36, 154. 
 
OF MORMONISM 101 
 
 Saviour and his Father in the Bible. 
 They may say that they acknowledge 
 him until doomsday, and he will never 
 own them, nor bestow the Holy Spirit 
 upon them, and they will never have 
 visions of eternity opened to them 
 unless they acknowledge that Joseph 
 Smith is sent of God/'^ Of kindred 
 import is the following sentence from 
 the lips of this Mormon president: 
 ^The moment a person decides to 
 leave this people, he is cut off from 
 every object that is durable for time 
 and eternity/'^ '^We are standing 
 here,'' said John Taylor, "as the repre- 
 sentatives of God, and the only true 
 representatives he has upon earth.''' 
 In a like vein are the statements in 
 a Mormon catechism which affirm that 
 there can be only one Church of 
 Christ in the world, and take pains to 
 describe this one Church in a way 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, viii, pp. 176, 177. 
 a Ibid., iv, p. 31. 
 » Ibid., V, p. 87. 
 
102 A FODKFaLD TEST 
 
 which identifies it with the Mor- 
 mon.^ 
 
 As will be shown when we come to 
 treat of its sacerdotal phase, Mormon- 
 ism claims a vast preeminence as 
 possessing the one legitimate priesthood 
 through whose offices alone heirship to 
 the full glory of the eternal kingdom 
 is possible. Those destitute of those 
 offices must remain everlastingly in a 
 comparatively servile rank. 
 
 The holders of such a lien on God 
 and such a monopoly of his kingdom 
 ought certainly to furnish tremendous 
 credentials. Where are these to be 
 found? Our review has shown that 
 Mormonism in the conditions of its 
 origin presents the reverse of a cre- 
 dential, and facts yet to be stated 
 will indicate that its after history 
 furnishes no compensation for this for- 
 midable drawback. The appeal to signs 
 and wonders, so prominent in Mormon 
 
 1 Catechism for Children by Elder John Jaques. 
 
OF MORMONISM 103 
 
 apologetics, amounts to nothing sub- 
 stantial. Numerous modern parties 
 have made the same appeal, and, so 
 far as discoverable, with equal right. 
 Take, as examples, the Roman Church 
 at Lourdes and other shrines, the 
 Dowieites, Christian Scientists, Faith- 
 healers, and others. The number of 
 competitors does not permit that the 
 Mormon Church should find in that 
 range any proof of lofty preeminence 
 and sole legitimacy. What we have 
 is not proof, but boasting, and such 
 boasting as a man of insight and 
 experience would expect to find only 
 where a combination of ignorance and 
 fanaticism prevails. A Church that 
 has been so nearly powerless to emulate 
 the wealth of the Christian world in 
 a deeply spiritual literature and in 
 shining examples of piety simply makes 
 itself ridiculous when it puts a ban 
 upon Christendom and claims a monop- 
 oly of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 
104 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 Passing on to prominent features in 
 the doctrinal system of Mormonism, 
 we find a basis of refutation in its 
 materialism, its polytheism, its phalli- 
 cism, and its rank sacerdotalism. 
 
 The founder supplied a very compre- 
 hensive basis for the materialistic phase 
 of the Mormon system. Not only 
 did he proclaim the doctrine, so con- 
 stantly repeated by his followers down 
 to this day, that ^'the Father has a 
 body of flesh and bones as tangible 
 as man's, ''^ but he ruled out spirit 
 as distinct from matter. These are 
 his words: '^AU spirit is matter, but 
 it is more fine or pure, and can only 
 be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot 
 see it; but when our bodies are purified 
 we shall see that it is all matter. ''^ 
 Orson Pratt, reputed to have been 
 the most scholarly man among the 
 early Mormons, wrote at length in 
 
 1 Dootrine and Covenants, czxx, 22. 
 « Ibid., cxxxi, 7, 8. 
 
OF MORMONISM 105 
 
 support of this all-inclusive material- 
 ism. ^The Father/' he declared, 'Is 
 a material being. The substance of 
 which he is composed is wholly ma- 
 terial."^ Like descriptions were applied 
 by him to the Son and the Holy Spirit j 
 and, speaking of Deity in general, he 
 made it to consist of particles detached 
 to a greater or less degree from each 
 other by intervening spaces.^ Later 
 writers may have shown less boldness 
 than Orson Pratt in advocating the 
 materialistic creed; still as recent a 
 writer as James E. Talmage has penned 
 this sentence: "I submit that to deny 
 the materiality of God's person is to 
 deny God, for a thing without parts 
 has no whole, and an inamaterial body 
 cannot exist. ''^ 
 
 While perfectly free to assign a 
 body of specific dimensions to God the 
 Father, Mormons have felt a degree 
 
 1 Series of Pamphlets, No. II, p. 4. 
 » Ibid., The First Great Cause, p. 12. 
 • The Articles of Faith, 1899, p. 48. 
 
106 A FOUKFOLD TEST 
 
 of hesitation to apply the like descrip- 
 tion to the Holy Spirit. In so far, 
 however, as they have respected the 
 dictum of Joseph Smith on the non- 
 existence of pure spirit, they have been 
 under practical compulsion to ascribe 
 a body to the Holy Spirit, only one 
 of a vague sort, like a widely extended 
 vapor, gas, ether, or peculiar species 
 of fluid. Orson Pratt defines it as a 
 widely diffused complex of particles. 
 ''No two persons,'^ he says, "can 
 receive the same identical particles of 
 this Spirit at the same instant; a part 
 therefore of the Holy Spirit will rest 
 upon one man, and another part will 
 rest upon another. ^'^ Parley P. Pratt 
 speaks of the Holy Spirit as ''a divine 
 substance or fluid. ^'^ As represented 
 by Nels L. Nelson, the Holy Spirit 
 is a universal force, serving to God as 
 a mediimi through which he may act 
 
 1 Series of Pamphlets, Absurdities of Immaterialism, p. 24. 
 • Key to the Science of Theology, p. 29. 
 
OF MORMONISM 107 
 
 throughout a wide range, though in 
 person he is confined to a definite 
 place.^ In other words, he identifies 
 the Holy Spirit with an impersonal 
 cosmic energy, and assigns to his 
 anthropomorphic deity a greater or less 
 abihty to direct this energy. 
 
 The materialistic phase of Mormon- 
 ism makes a congenial basis for the 
 polytheistic phase. A god who is 
 nothing more than a parcel of matter, 
 subject to the limitations of body, and 
 having occasion to move from place to 
 place, is neither so high in nature nor 
 so inclusive but that he may very 
 well have many associates. So the 
 Mormons were prompt to infer. With 
 marked decision they espoused a pro- 
 nounced polytheism. Joseph Smith 
 may not have said much on this sub- 
 ject. He gave, however, an adequate 
 suggestion in this sentence, spoken in 
 the temple at Nauvoo, April 6, 1844: 
 
 I Sdentifio Aspects of Mormonism, pp. 49, 50. 
 
108 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 *^You have got to learn to be gods 
 yourselves, and to be kings and priests 
 to God, the same as all gods have 
 done before you. ' '^ In equivalent terms 
 Brigham Young declared, 'The Lord 
 created you and me for the purpose 
 of becoming gods like himself. "^ In 
 a Mormon catechism we have this 
 question and answer: ''Are there more 
 gods than one? Yes, many."^ A 
 writer ambitious to demonstrate the 
 scientific character of Mormonism re- 
 jects the supposition of a supreme 
 First Cause and substitutes a line of 
 perfected psychic beings or gods, reach- 
 ing back indefinitely.* Each one of 
 these beings, he assumes, attained to 
 godhood by a process of development. 
 "As man, God once was; as God is, 
 man may become.'^ The scheme seems 
 to confron t us with such a multiplicity 
 
 > Journal of Discourses, vi, p. 4. 
 
 2 Ibid., iii, p. 93. Compare P. P. Pratt, Key to the Science of 
 Theology, pp. 32-37. 
 
 • Catechism for Children by Jaques. 
 
 * Nelfl L. Nelson, Scientific Aspects of Mormonism, pp. 237, 262. 
 
OF MORMONISM 109 
 
 of gods as threatens to be wearisome 
 to contemplate. But our author offers 
 a species of relief by suggesting that 
 in practice it may be legitimate and 
 wise to center our attention upon the 
 God who presides in our corner of 
 the universe, the God of the biblical 
 revelation. This God he supposes to 
 occupy now a high position, though 
 necessarily "before he attained to god- 
 hood, he passed through mutations 
 such as are inevitable in a course of 
 psychic evolution/'^ As beginning at 
 an initial point and growing up, the 
 God thus acknowledged does not ap- 
 pear to be remote in type from the 
 Adam of whom Brigham Young said: 
 "He is our Father and our God, and 
 the only God with whom we have to 
 do.''* The cited author, however, is 
 not inclined to adopt President Young's 
 
 iPage 273. Compare B. H. Roberts, New TTitnees for God, 
 1911, i, pp. 467, 468, 473. 
 s Journal of Disooursea, i, p. 50. 
 
110 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 doctrine of the Adam God without a 
 qualification.^ 
 
 The next phase of Mormon doctrine 
 which we are to consider — its pro- 
 nounced phallicism, or stress on phys- 
 ical procreation — is not without a dis- 
 tinct aflBliation with the phase just 
 reviewed. A god who is only an 
 advanced man, and who is possessed in 
 the most literal sense of bodily organs, 
 might conceivably gain a numerous 
 progeny by ordinary generation. Possi- 
 bly the anthropomorphic conception of 
 Deity would not by itself have en- 
 throned the supposition that his agency 
 in producing children is of the given 
 type. But when once polygamy be- 
 came a dominant interest among 
 Mormons, there was naturally a ten- 
 dency to rival the most pronounced 
 phallic system of the pagan world in 
 stress on the procreative function of 
 the gods. We are not greatly sur- 
 
 > Pp. 293, 294. 
 
OF MORMONISM 111 
 
 prised, therefore, to hear Brigham 
 Young declaring of God, ''He created 
 man as we create our children; for 
 there is no other process of creation/'^ 
 Language as blunt as this may not 
 often occur in Mormon writings; but 
 the point of view which it asserts has 
 not lacked expression. It appears in 
 B. H. Roberts's comment on the teach- 
 ing of Joseph Smith as meaning ''that 
 man is the offspring of Deity, not in 
 any mystical sense, but actually; that 
 man has not only a Father in heaven, 
 but a mother also.'^^ Other statements 
 as little ambiguous can be found.^ 
 
 The zeal for polygamy which gained 
 hospitality for such a picture of Deity 
 became controlling in the Mormon 
 hierarchy. By a rapid development 
 the doctrine of plural marriage ad- 
 vanced to a position of exceptional em- 
 phasis. Brigham Young showed how 
 
 » Journal of Discourses, xi, p. 122. 
 
 2 New Witness for God, 1911, i, p. 457. 
 
 » See J. D. Nutting, The Private Doctrines of Mormon Theology. 
 
112 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 deeply his mind was imbued with the 
 doctrine when he declared that if 
 his women should leave him, ^^he 
 would go and search up others, it 
 being the duty of every righteous man 
 and woman to prepare tabernacles for 
 all the spirits they can.''^ Not less 
 significant of his mental attitude on 
 this subject is the following: '^If I be 
 made the king and lawgiver to my' 
 family, and I have many sons, I shall 
 become the father of many fathers, 
 for they will have sons, and so on, 
 from generation to generation; and in 
 this way I may become the father 
 of many fathers and the king of many 
 kings. In this way we can become 
 King of kings and Lord of lords, or 
 Father of fathers, or Prince of princes; 
 and this is the only course, for another 
 man is not going to raise up a king- 
 dom to you.''^ Giving expression to 
 
 » Journal of Discourses, iv, p. 66. 
 s Ibid., iii, p. 266. 
 
OF MORMONISM 113 
 
 the imperative nature of his polyg- 
 amous tenet, the Mormon president 
 added, ''If any of you will deny the 
 pluraUty of wives, and continue to do 
 so, I promise that you will be damned.'' 
 For one confessing himself a Mormon 
 not to believe in polygamy, said Orson 
 Pratt, is utterly absurd. "A person 
 might as well say, 'I am a follower of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, but I do not 
 beUeve in him.' ''^ "This doctrine of 
 eternal union of husband and wife 
 and of plural marriage," asserted Jo- 
 seph F. Smith, ''is one of the most 
 important doctrines ever revealed to 
 man or any age of the world. With- 
 out it man would come to a full stop; 
 without it we never could be exalted 
 to associate with and become gods/'^ 
 "I bear my testimony,'' said George 
 Teasdale, "that plural marriage is as 
 true as any principle which has been 
 
 » Journal of Discourses, October 7, 1874, xvii, 224. 
 2 Ibid., December 7, 1879, xxi, p. 10. 
 
114 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 revealed from the heavens. I bear my 
 testimony that it is a necessity, and 
 that the Church of Christ in its full- 
 ness never existed without it. Where 
 you have the eternity of marriage you 
 are bound to have plural marriage.''^ 
 Polygamy is not a theme naturally 
 fruitful of poetic inspiration. A Mor- 
 mon hymnist, however, has succeeded 
 in expressing his zeal for this part of 
 his creed in rhjnne as follows: 
 
 Through him who holds the sealing power, 
 
 Ye faithful ones, who heed 
 Celestial laws, take many wives, 
 
 And rear a righteous seed. 
 Though fools revile, I'll honor you 
 
 As Abraham, my friend: 
 You shall be gods, and shall be blest 
 
 With lives that never end.^ 
 
 Thus the Mormon hierarchy have 
 given complete demonstration of their 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, January 13, 1884, xxv, p. 21. 
 
 2 Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs, seventeenth edition, Liver- 
 pool, 1881, No. 326. 
 
OF MORMONISM 115 
 
 conviction that polygamy belongs in 
 the very foundation of their system. 
 It is much too basal to be dislodged. 
 To renounce it would be like tearing 
 out the comer stone. The agreement 
 to give up the practice of polygamy 
 which, in 1895, was put into the 
 constitution of Utah as a condition of 
 Statehood by no means imphed a 
 renunciation of the doctrine of polyg- 
 amy; and after-events have powerfully 
 confirmed the suspicion that the pur- 
 pose to give up the practice was not 
 seriously entertained by a portion of 
 the hierarchy. 
 
 In sacerdotal assumptions, or stress 
 on priestly prerogatives, Mormonism is 
 not distanced by any rival known to 
 history. As was indicated above, it 
 claims that only through the good 
 ofiices of its priesthood can men attain 
 to the full glory and felicity of the 
 heavenly estate. This high destiny, 
 Joseph Smith clearly asserted, can be 
 
116 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 reached only through marriage for 
 eternity, and marriage for eternity can 
 be validly consummated only through 
 the instrumentality of those who hold 
 the keys of priesthood.^ As many as 
 have not availed themselves of this 
 instrumentality, says Parley P. Pratt, 
 "will remain in a single state in their 
 saved condition, to all eternity, with- 
 out the joys of eternal union with the 
 other sex, and consequently without a 
 crown, without a kingdom, without the 
 power to increase. Hence they are 
 angels, and are not gods; and are 
 ministering spirits, or servants, in the 
 employ and under the direction of the 
 Royal Family of Heaven — the Princes, 
 Kings, and Priests of Eternity.''^ 
 
 A hierarchy which thus claimed the 
 right to reach its hand into the eternal 
 world was not likely to be very modest 
 in respect of its prerogatives to super- 
 
 1 Doctrine and Covenants, cxxxii, 15-20. 
 
 2 Key to the Science of Theology, p. 173. 
 
OF MORMONISM 117 
 
 vise this present world. Within the 
 community of Latter Day Saints it 
 claimed a practically unlimited author- 
 ity. Heber C. Kimball spoke as a 
 faithful representative of the hierarchy 
 when he told his hearers that they 
 were clay to be molded according to 
 the dictation of the presiding potter. 
 "I have/^ he said, "to do the work 
 he tells me to do, and you have to 
 do the same. ... If Brother Brigham 
 tells me to do a thing, it is the same 
 as though the Lord told me to do it. 
 This is the course for you and every 
 other saint to take.'^^ That the Mor- 
 mon president thought as well of his 
 authority as did his priestly associate 
 is evinced by this utterance: "No man 
 need judge me. You know nothing 
 about it, whether I am sent or not; 
 furthermore, it is none of your business, 
 only to listen with open ears to what 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, i, p. 161. 
 
118 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 is taught you and to serve God with 
 an undivided heart. '^^ 
 
 The community of Latter Day Saints 
 was far from constituting the whole 
 earthly domain over which the Mor- 
 mon priesthood claimed the right of 
 sovereign control. It asserted that it 
 stood above all earthly powers, and 
 was vested with full authority to direct 
 them. ^The priesthood/' wrote Parley 
 P. Pratt, ^^holds the power and the 
 right to give laws and commandments 
 to individuals, churches, rulers, nations 
 and the world; to appoint, ordain, and 
 establish constitutions and kingdoms; 
 to appoint kings, presidents, governors, 
 or judges, and to ordain and anoint 
 them to their several callings; also to 
 instruct, warn, and reprove them by 
 the word of the Lord."^ ''Some peo- 
 ple,'' observed John Taylor, ''ask. What 
 is priesthood? I answer, It is the 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, i, p. 341. 
 
 2 Key to the Science of Theology, pp. 66, 67. 
 
OF MORMONISM 119 
 
 legitimate rule of God, whether in 
 heaven or on the earth; and it is the 
 only legitimate power that has a right 
 to rule upon the earth; and when the 
 will of God is done on earth as it is 
 in heaven, no other power will bear 
 rule.''^ So runs the oft-repeated claim 
 of the Mormon hierarchy A medieval 
 pope never magnified ecclesiastical au- 
 thority in terms more emphatic than 
 those which this boastful priesthood 
 has employed in description of its own 
 prerogatives. The record which it has 
 made in ordering the political conduct 
 of its votaries, striking as that is, 
 affords but a very partial illustration 
 of the sovereignty over mundane affairs 
 which it has described as belonging to 
 itself by right. 
 
 To state these features of Mormon 
 teaching is to judge them in the sight 
 of an enlightened philosophy and theol- 
 ogy. The materialized and humanized 
 
 J Journal of Discourses, v, p. 187. 
 
120 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 conception of God, or, rather, of a 
 plurality of gods, which is put for- 
 ward, provides for no ultimate or uni- 
 versal sovereignty. Beings who grow 
 up to godhood from small manlike 
 beginnings, and who are limited in 
 space, fall utterly short of the requisite 
 endowments for real lordship over the 
 universe. They are simply finite fac- 
 tors in a historic evolution. They are 
 grounded in and subordinate to an im- 
 personal cosmos, which imposes upon 
 them the laws to which they must 
 conform in order to attain to god- 
 hood. As compared with the Supreme 
 Being recognized in Christian philos- 
 ophy and theology, who is the veritable 
 Creator and Lord of the universe, they 
 are a paltry substitute for God. And 
 not only are they poverty-stricken in 
 respect of majesty and sovereign power; 
 they furnish no intelligible basis of 
 that unity which the mind requires 
 for its satisfaction when contemplating 
 
OF MOEMONISM 121 
 
 the wonderfully complex and wonder- 
 fully ordered universe. The coordinat- 
 ing One, philosophically requisite for a 
 real cosmos, or harmonious system, is 
 outside of all analogy with this crowd 
 of so-called gods. 
 
 In respect of the phallic aspect in its 
 creed, Mormonism has never justified 
 the notion that mere physical pro- 
 creation is the measure of possible 
 exaltation or advance toward godhood. 
 The notion is not merely crude; it is 
 absurd as well. Capacity for dominion 
 depends on no such low basis, but, 
 rather, on intellectual and moral great- 
 ness. It is perfectly conceivable that 
 the first in a genealogical line should 
 be least of all adapted to a position of 
 lordship, that an Adam should be 
 utterly distanced in this respect by 
 thousands upon thousands of his de- 
 scendants. Chronological priority in no 
 wise describes merit or high capacity; 
 neither does the number of one's 
 
122 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 progeny. Breadth, power, and wealth 
 of personaHty, which alone entitle to 
 dominion, are not dependent on these 
 things. It is the number and quality 
 of a man's virtues that count and not 
 the number of his wives. Furthermore, 
 it cannot be overlooked that the scheme 
 of plurality of wives is branded with 
 selfishness and injustice. The number 
 belonging to the male and to the 
 female sex respectively is too nearly 
 equal to make it possible for men to 
 multiply wives without diminishing the 
 chances of their fellows to enter at 
 all into marital relations. A selfish 
 plutocratic hierarchy might conceiv- 
 ably be pleased with the license of 
 the harem system; but men who recog- 
 nize the demands of equality and 
 justice can discover no apology for 
 such a system. 
 
 The sacerdotal phase of Mormon- 
 ism invites, like the other phases 
 commented upon, to unsparing crit- 
 
OF MORMONISM 123 
 
 icism. It pictures God as inconceivably 
 narrow, technical, and lacking in mag- 
 nanimity. No one but a grand master 
 of red tape, a being a thousand times 
 more concerned about method than 
 about the interests of those to whom 
 the method applies, could be imagined 
 to make the destiny of the race de- 
 pend on a few external performances 
 of a priesthood, in any such degree 
 and manner as the Mormon teaching 
 assumes. It is almost a marvel that 
 the Latter Day Saints themselves can 
 respect a God who rests the well-being 
 of the rational and moral creation on 
 that ridiculously contracted pedestal. 
 
 In addition to the consideration of 
 the four doctrinal phases specially 
 selected for criticism, a brief com- 
 ment on the doctrine of ^'blood atone- 
 ment" will not be amiss. Expression 
 was given to this grim tenet September 
 21, 1856, in addresses by J. M. Grant 
 and Brigham Young. The former re- 
 
124 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 marked: '^I say that there are men 
 and women that I would advise to go 
 to the President immediately, and ask 
 him to appoint a committee to attend 
 to their case; and then let a place be 
 selected, and let that committee shed 
 their blood. . . . We have those amongst 
 us that are full of all manner of abom- 
 inations, those who need to have their 
 blood shed, for water will not do, their 
 sins are of too deep a dye."^ ^ There 
 are sins," said Brigham Young, ^^that 
 men commit for which they cannot 
 receive forgiveness in this world, or 
 in that which is to come, and if they 
 had their eyes open to see their true 
 condition, they would be perfectly will- 
 ing to have their blood spilt upon the 
 ground, that the smoke thereof might 
 ascend to heaven as an offering for 
 their sins, and the smoking incense 
 would atone for their sins."* A few 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, iv, p. 49. 
 « Ibid., iv, p. 53. 
 
OF MORMONISM 125 
 
 months later he expounded the de- 
 mands of love to the neighbor in this 
 pecuhar manner: 'This is loving our 
 neighbor as ourselves : if he needs help, 
 help him; if he wants salvation, and 
 it is necessary to spill his blood on 
 the earth in order that he may be 
 saved, spill it."^ These instructions 
 look as if they were meant to be 
 carried out in practice. A Mormon 
 apologist would have us believe that 
 never were they really acted upon; 
 but there is evidence to the contrary.* 
 It is worthy of note too that the 
 apologist finds no better reason for 
 not putting the doctrine in practice 
 than the prejudice of the nations and 
 the laws growing out of this prejudice. 
 "When the time comes that the law 
 of the Lord shall be in full force upon 
 the earth, then the penalty will be 
 inflicted for those crimes committed by 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, iv, p. 219. ^ ^ „ ii^„k.t« 
 
 2 Linn. pp. 454-457; F. J. Cannon and G. L. Knapp. Bngham 
 Young and His Mormon Empire, pp. 266-268. 
 
126 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 persons under covenant not to com- 
 mit them/'^ 
 
 Only an exegesis that is discredit- 
 ably narrow and destitute of a sense 
 for perspective can find any basis for 
 this doctrine in the Scriptures. It 
 is transcended in the better range of 
 Old Testament teaching, and receives 
 no sanction in the New Testament. 
 The text in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 ix. 22, which our apologist supposes 
 to contain a categorical declaration that 
 without the shedding of blood there 
 is no remission, contains nothing of 
 the sort. Closely examined, it will be 
 seen to embody only the historical 
 statement, that in the symbolical ritual 
 of Israel rites contemplating the remis- 
 sion of sins usually, though not uni- 
 versally, contained the element of 
 bloody sacrifice. As for rational war- 
 rant for the merciless tenet, it is 
 
 * C. W. Penrose, Blood Atonement as Taught by Leading Elders 
 of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, pp. 43, 44. 
 
OF MORMONISM 127 
 
 scarcely possible to imagine how any- 
 one can suppose that a wise, holy, 
 and righteous God can refuse to be 
 satisfied by the deepest contrition 
 which the human spirit can render, and 
 consent to be appeased only by blood 
 smoking from the ground. A God 
 exceedingly responsive to physical phe- 
 nomena, but blind to the worth of 
 the spiritual, might adopt that plan 
 of administration. The infinite Father 
 of spirits cannot be thought to pro- 
 ceed thus. 
 
 The foregoing discussion is not 
 meant, of course, to imply that Mor- 
 mon teaching has not taken over from 
 the common stock of Christian prin- 
 ciples and maxims many things that 
 are worthy of all acceptation. Never- 
 theless, the conclusion is unavoidable 
 that a system which incorporates and 
 emphasizes the criticized doctrines is 
 vitiated to its foundations. 
 
PART IV 
 THE PRACTICAL TEST 
 
 129 
 
PART IV 
 THE PRACTICAL TEST 
 
 In taking up the data which make 
 for the practical refutation of Mor- 
 monism it is not necessary to bring 
 any sweeping charge against the char- 
 acter and conduct of the Mormons as 
 a body. That a large proportion of 
 them have been better than the system 
 in which they have been ensnared may 
 readily be admitted. Still further, it 
 can be granted that a scheme of 
 minute official oversight, such as is im- 
 posed upon the Mormon people, might 
 be — so long as it should find subjects 
 content to remain in a relatively 
 passive state — favorable to the cultiva- 
 tion of a species of external morality. 
 Concessions like these ought to be 
 made by the critic without reluctance. 
 He has no occasion to picture the 
 
 131 
 
132 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 Mormons as exceptionally bad. He 
 achieves the purpose of refutation in 
 showing that their record is far from 
 being in accord with their enormous 
 claims, that it has been, in fact, no 
 whit better than might be expected 
 of any erring sect inflamed with a 
 special zeal. 
 
 The ground of adverse comment 
 on Mormon conduct extends most 
 unmistakably to the record of the 
 founder. Not to mention other things, 
 two serious counts stand against him 
 in connection with the closing period, 
 or the years spent at Nauvoo. In 
 the first place, he was given up to 
 an unbridled libertinism. Curiously 
 enough, a hint is furnished of his 
 marital infidelity in the revelation in 
 which he justifies polygamy, for in 
 that document his wife Emma is 
 solemnly enjoined to forgive his tres* 
 passes.^ He practiced largely before 
 
 1 Doctrine and Covenants, czxzii, 56. 
 
OF MORMONISM 133 
 
 formulating a dogma which might serve 
 to exculpate his practice. Evidence of 
 his unbridled license is conclusive. 
 Orthodox Mormon historians freely ad- 
 mit that their ''prophet'' practiced the 
 theory of plurality of wives and ad- 
 vised his intimates to do likewise. J. 
 H. Evans gives the names of four of 
 the extra wives of Smith, and takes 
 no pains to suggest that he is pre- 
 senting a full hst.i Writing in 1873, 
 Stenhouse was able to testify: ''At the 
 present time there are probably a dozen 
 'sisters' in Utah who proudly acknowl- 
 edge themselves to be the 'wives of 
 Joseph,' and how many others there 
 may have been who held that relation- 
 ship 'no man knoweth.' "* The same 
 candid writer avers also that one 
 woman in Utah informed him that the 
 said Joseph taught her that it was the 
 privilege of wives to entertain 'proxy 
 
 » One Hundred Years of Mormonism, pp. 473, 474. 
 a The Rooky Mountain Saints, p. 185. 
 
134 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 husbands' during the absence of their 
 liege lords on mission.^ While thus 
 convicted of libertinism, the ^prophet' 
 is amenable to the charge of occasion- 
 ally indulging in strong drink to the 
 point of intoxication. The Rev. Henry 
 Caswall records four instances as re- 
 ported to him, with specification of 
 place and circumstances, in which the 
 Mormon leader was plainly intox- 
 icated.2 William Law, while excusing 
 Smith from the charge of habitual 
 excess in drink, testifies that he saw 
 him drunk on one occasion.^ J. C. 
 Bennett, who was closely associated 
 with Smith at Nauvoo for an interval, 
 declared it a matter of common knowl- 
 edge that the ' 'prophet" occasionally 
 got ^'gloriously drunk;''* but here the 
 
 1 Page 301. 
 
 2 The City of the Mormons, pp. 49-51. 
 
 » Gregg, The Prophet of Palmyra, p. 510. 
 
 * The History of the Saints, 1842, p. 94. The record for occa- 
 sional intoxication seems to go back to an early period. Levi 
 Lewis testifies that he saw Smith drunk three times while he was 
 preparing the Book of Mormon (Howe, Mormonism Unveiled, 
 p. 268). 
 
OF MORMONISM 135 
 
 character of the witness robs the 
 testimony of independent value. 
 
 That the followers of Smith at 
 Nauvoo were not distinguished by 
 exemplary conduct is well attested. 
 Their reputation for thieving was wide- 
 spread, and that in some part they 
 earned the reputation is not open to 
 doubt. The Rev. Henry Caswall re- 
 cords something of what he heard in 
 1842 about the disregard of property 
 rights by the '^Saints.'' ''My host/' 
 he says, ''mentioned that he had lived 
 five years among heathen Indians, and 
 had never been robbed by them of the 
 most trifling article. During the three 
 years which have elapsed since the 
 settlement of the Mormons at Mont- 
 rose and Nauvoo fourteen robberies, to 
 the amount of two thousand dol- 
 lars, have been committed upon his 
 property.''^ Unequivocal evidence that 
 much stealing was practiced by the 
 
 1 The City of the Mormons, p. 61. 
 
136 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 ^'Saints" is contained in the necessity 
 which the church authorities recognized 
 for public declarations that they did 
 not sanction the practice.^ According 
 to John D. Lee, Joseph Smith, in an 
 address in 1840, used this language: 
 ^'I wish you all to know that because 
 you were justified in taking property 
 from your enemies, while engaged in 
 war in Missouri, which was needed to 
 support you, there is now a different 
 condition of things. We are no longer 
 at war, and you must stop stealing. 
 When the right time comes we will 
 go in force and take the whole State 
 of Missouri. It belongs to us as our 
 inheritance, but I want no more steal- 
 ing. ''^ As the moral atmosphere of 
 Nauvoo was no safeguard against a 
 Uberal practice of stealing, so it did 
 not exclude the kindred crime of coun- 
 terfeiting. Referring to denials in rela- 
 
 » Linn, pp. 259, 260. 
 
 a Confession of John Doyle Lee, edition of 1905, pp. 127, 128. 
 
OF MOEMONISM 137 
 
 tion to the matter, Stenhouse remarks: 
 ''That bogus money was made and 
 m circulation in and around Nauvoo, 
 and also was sent to a distance for 
 circulation, can certainly not be denied. 
 That some of 'the brethren' were 
 engaged in its manufacture seems to 
 be well supported by facts which sub- 
 sequently transpired/'* The full meas- 
 ure of this criminality need not, of 
 course, be charged against Mormonism 
 as such. In the mixed multitude which 
 was gathered to its standard at Nau- 
 voo there were undoubtedly men of 
 bad antecedents. What can fairly be 
 charged against Mormonism is that, on 
 the one hand, it showed little power to 
 vitalize conscience, and, on the other, 
 by its overweening assumptions of 
 superior rights in the world, tended 
 to nurture the conviction in the minds 
 of raw recruits that the ^'Gentiles" 
 were lawful spoil. 
 
 » The Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 218. 
 
138 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 In Utah, as the evidence abundantly 
 shows, the Latter Day Saints continued 
 to make a mixed record. A few years 
 after their establishment there, Brig- 
 ham Young had occasion to rebuke 
 the ^'elders of Israel' ' for their pro- 
 fanity. ^'You will rip, and curse, and 
 swear,'^ he told them, ''as bad as any 
 pirates ever did.''^ At the same time 
 he complained of thieving, noting that 
 his own woodpile had not been re- 
 spected, ''Stories could be told of 
 this kind,'^ he said, "that would make 
 professional thieves ashamed.''^ In an- 
 other instance he charged some of the 
 bishops with being guilty of defalcation. 
 "We have documents,'' he declared, "to 
 show that bishops have taken in hun- 
 dreds of bushels of wheat, and only a 
 small portion of it has come into the 
 general tithing office; they stole it to 
 let their friends speculate upon."^ Re- 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, i, p. 211. Compare iii, p. 50. 
 
 2 Ibid., i, p. 213. 
 
 « Ibid., iii, p. 342. 
 
OF MORMONISM 139 
 
 ferring at one time to the practices 
 of Mormon merchants, he said: ''I 
 could not be honest and do as they 
 do; they make five hundred per cent 
 on some of their goods, and that too 
 from innocent, confiding, poor, indus- 
 trious people/'i In a later address, 
 while expressing his confidence in the 
 good character of a large majority of 
 Latter Day Saints, he added: 'Tet 
 we fellowship those who are full of 
 iniquity and evil, individuals who are 
 full of the spirit of Anti-christ.''^ 
 Some allowance may be made for 
 President Young's well-developed fac- 
 ulty for scolding; still his words afford 
 a sufficient assurance that the Mormon 
 community in its chosen retreat did 
 not exemplify a specially high level of 
 righteousness. At one epoch the level 
 must have been decidedly low, if we 
 are to trust this declaration of J. M. 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, xi, 114. 
 
 2 Ibid., xvi. 26, 27. 
 
140 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 Grant spoken on the eve of the so- 
 called reformation: ^'Some have received 
 the priesthood and a knowledge of the 
 things of God, and still they dishonor 
 the cause of truth, commit adultery 
 and every other abomination beneath 
 the heavens/'^ 
 
 In bringing up the darkest crime 
 which has stained Mormon annals in 
 Utah, we have no intention of imply- 
 ing that the Mormon people as a body, 
 or any considerable fraction of them, 
 had any responsible connection with 
 that awful tragedy. The Mountain 
 Meadow massacre (1857), in which a 
 party of emigrants passing through 
 Utah on their way to California was 
 treacherously and cruelly murdered, to 
 the number of one hundred and twenty 
 men, women, and children, was the 
 crime of the few rather than of 
 the many. It is chargeable, however, 
 against Mormonism in so far as this 
 
 1 Journal of Discourses, iv, p. 49. 
 
OF MORMONISM 141 
 
 pretentious system furnished in its 
 characteristic teachings such a hotbed 
 for fanaticism as might easily be pro- 
 ductive of outrage in the absence of 
 powerful restraints. 
 
 As to the history of the Mountain 
 Meadow massacre, two facts are well 
 estabUshed. The first is that Mormons 
 shared directly in its perpetration. This 
 is admitted by their apologist, C. W. 
 Penrose.^ John D. Lee, who fulfilled 
 the role of a scapegoat and was executed 
 in 1877 for his part in the massacre, 
 declared that the work of blood was 
 wrought by fifty-four Mormons and 
 three hundred Indians.^ The second 
 assured fact is that the Mormons were 
 the principals in the tragedy and that 
 the Indians are to be rated as their 
 auxiliaries. Not only does the detailed 
 narrative of Lee bring this out clearly; 
 it is implied also in the admitted fact 
 
 »The Mountain Meadow Massacre, an Address, October 26, 
 1884. 
 a Confession, p. 315. 
 
142 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 that a messenger was sent to Brigham 
 Young to get his decision on the fate 
 of the emigrants. The sending of the 
 messenger amounts to an assumption 
 on the part of those sending him that 
 it lay within the province of Mormon 
 power and influence to destroy or to 
 spare the contemplated victims. The 
 word returned from the Mormon pres- 
 ident was that the emigrants should 
 be allowed to pass on; but it came 
 apparently too late. By the direction 
 of the local authorities of Cedar City 
 and vicinity the massacre had already 
 been accompHshed before the import 
 of Brigham Young's reply was known. 
 Thus the central authority seems not 
 to have been directly implicated in the 
 deed. That it can be excused from 
 condoning the crime and hushing up 
 all reference to it after its commission 
 is far from evident. The allegation 
 that Brigham Young supposed the 
 massacre to have been perpetrated 
 
OF MORMONISM 143 
 
 solely by the Indians has far too much 
 the appearance of a convenient myth, 
 besides being contradictory to the state- 
 ments of Lee and Hamblin.^ 
 
 The Mountain Meadow atrocity was 
 the most appalling exhibition of a 
 fanaticism which reached its chmax 
 among the Mormons between 1856 and 
 1858. In the practice of polygamy 
 their system provided a snare for the 
 conscience which wrought mischief at 
 the time of its introduction and is 
 still a demoralizing factor. In the 
 interval between its formal justifica- 
 tion through the pretended revelation 
 of Smith and its open promulgation 
 (1843-1852) it was the occasion of 
 much hypocrisy and falsehood. The 
 ''prophet'' himself furnished a conspic- 
 uous precedent. In the Times and 
 Seasons of February, 1844, together 
 with his brother Hyrum, he gave his 
 
 1 Lee's Confession, pp. 336ff.; Linn, pp. 530-532; Cannon and 
 Knapp, Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire, p. 280. 
 
144 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 signature to a statement which rates 
 polygamy among ^^false and corrupt 
 doctrines.'^ Near the same date a 
 published card, prepared by the direc- 
 tion of Emma Smith, denied the exist- 
 ence of polygamy among the Latter 
 Day Saints, and one of the signers was 
 Eliza R. Snow, who at that very time 
 was a plural wife of Joseph Smith.^ 
 Parley P. Pratt, while in England, de- 
 nounced the doctrine of plural marriage 
 in strong terms. In the Millennial 
 Star of 1846 he declared the doctrine 
 ''as foreign from the real principles of 
 the Church as the devil is from God,'' 
 though he was perfectly aware of the 
 fact that it had been formally approved 
 and practiced by the highest author- 
 ities of the Mormon communion. In 
 France Elder John Taylor used lan- 
 guage in 1850 which his hearers could 
 only interpret as meaning that the 
 
 1 Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young and HIb Mormon Empire, 
 p. 72. 
 
OF MORMONISM 145 
 
 charge of teaching and practicing polyg- 
 amy was a slander against the Latter 
 Day Saints; yet he himself had at that 
 very time four wives in Utah.^ 
 
 Since the admission of Utah to 
 Statehood,^ polygamy has been no less 
 fruitful of crookedness than it was at 
 the primary stage. In direct contra- 
 vention of the revelation promulgated 
 by President Wilford Woodruff,^ and 
 of the clause in the State constitution 
 forever excluding polygamy, high 
 officials in the Mormon Church went 
 right on with their polygamous prac- 
 tices. The next year after the adoption 
 of the constitution Apostle A. H. 
 Cannon transgressed its provision by 
 taking a new wife, and Apostle Teas- 
 dale did likewise soon after. During 
 
 1 John Hyde, Mormonism, pp. 13-15. 
 
 * The enabling act was passed in 1894, and the constitution 
 adopted in 1895. 
 
 8 The manifesto put forth in 1890, though not in the form of a 
 revelation, was freely accorded that character by Mormon authori- 
 ties, and after considerable delay was included in the book of 
 Doctrine and Covenants. 
 
146 A FOUKFOLD TEST 
 
 the investigation incident to the ques- 
 tion of seating Senator-elect Smoot 
 (1904-1907) evidence of polygamous 
 cohabitation was brought out in ample 
 measure. Among those confessing their 
 bad faith was President J. F. Smith. 
 He admitted that since the pledge to 
 give up polygamy had been made he 
 had had eleven children bom to him 
 by his five wives. With this example 
 of the leaders before them it lies in 
 the nature of the case that not a few 
 should be snared into violating both 
 the requirement of an acknowledged 
 revelation and the demand of the State 
 constitution.^ If any feature of relief 
 is discoverable it lies in the judgment, 
 sometimes expressed, that the senti- 
 
 1 A writer who had abundant opportunity to know the facts ha« 
 expressed them in these emphatic terms: "This is the new polygamy 
 of Mormonism. The church leaders dare not acknowledge it for 
 fear of the national consequences. They dare not even secretly 
 issue certificates of plural marriage, lest the record should be 
 betrayed. They protect the polygamist by a conspiracy of false- 
 hood which is almost as shameful as the shame which it seeks to 
 cover; and the infection of the duplicity spreads like a plague to 
 corrupt the whole social life of the people" (F. J. Cannon, Under 
 the Prophet in Utah, 1911, p. 341). 
 
OF MORMONISM 147 
 
 ment against the practice of polygamy 
 has made in recent years distinct ad- 
 vances among the younger Mormons. 
 It is not in evidence, however, that the 
 theory of the intrinsic legitimacy of 
 polygamy is being renounced in any 
 part of the Mormon domain. By force 
 of natural connection between theory 
 and practice it may be expected that 
 the demoralizing duplicity, which has 
 been so pronounced since the admis- 
 sion of Utah to statehood, will not be 
 subject to any speedy cure. 
 
 Aside from the blot caused by 
 polygamy the social life of the Mor- 
 mons, if not specially open to censure, 
 cannot claim to be specially free from 
 stain. A rather favorable report may 
 indeed be made respecting their tem- 
 perance habits and business honesty; 
 but divorce has often had place among 
 them on trivial grounds, and in some 
 of their communities forced marriages 
 have been of frequent occurrence. 
 
148 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 In respect of patriotic devotion, 
 Mormons in the present very likely do 
 not in general allow themselves, by 
 force of the theocratic assumptions 
 pertaining to their system, to be 
 crowded into a feeling of hostility or 
 indifference toward the national gov- 
 ernment. But it lies in the nature of 
 those assumptions to work more or 
 less in that direction, and how effec- 
 tually they can work was illustrated 
 by a good part of the Brigham Young 
 regime in Utah. His treatment of 
 United States authority would have 
 earned him, on any strict construc- 
 tion of the obligations of citizenship, 
 the rewards of high treason. A sort 
 of excuse for his hostile and contemp- 
 tuous attitude was indeed alleged to 
 exist in the deeds of violence per- 
 petrated against the Saints in Missouri 
 and Illinois. But the doings of border 
 communities, provoked, though not in 
 their actual form justified, by the 
 
OP MORMONISM 149 
 
 intemperate claims of the strange reli- 
 gionists, afforded no valid ground for 
 reviling and resisting the national gov- 
 ernment. Apart from the impulses of 
 theocratic sovereignty, and aside from 
 a constituency recognizing the claims 
 of that order of sovereignty, Brigham 
 Young would not have been inclined 
 to carry himself as he did toward the 
 authority of the United States. In 
 this line he was giving a prelude to 
 that larger exhibition of lordship in 
 which the Mormon hierarchy has de- 
 clared its right and its expectation 
 to figure. A purely spiritual dominion 
 has never been its ideal. 
 
 Enough has been said, we judge, to 
 estabUsh our contention. That con- 
 tention, it will be remembered, was 
 not that the Mormons as a body can 
 be proved to have been signally derelict 
 in morals, but only that their conduct 
 has not been any better than might 
 be expected of any erring sect imbued 
 
150 A FOURFOLD TEST 
 
 with a special zeal. The result stands 
 out clearly from the review that the 
 moral record of the Latter Day Saints 
 puts to shame their pretense to be in 
 a preeminent sense the people of the 
 Lord. 
 
 We are forced to the conclusion that 
 Mormonism, in consideration of the 
 conditions of its origin, the content 
 of its teaching, and the facts of its 
 history, is entitled to but the scantiest 
 respect. Its founder is convicted by 
 the most decisive evidence of down- 
 right imposture. An element of self- 
 deception may have been combined 
 with the imposture, but it certainly 
 collides with a sane historical judgment 
 not to admit the latter in full measure. 
 In several of its most prominent doc- 
 trines Mormonism has exhibited a 
 thoroughly retrograde tendency; and 
 in its practical fruits it has rather 
 refuted than in any wise justified 
 its enormous pretensions. The honest 
 
OF MORMONISM 151 
 
 devotion which many thousands of 
 adherents have rendered to the Mor- 
 mon system need not indeed be rated 
 as religiously worthless; but it must 
 be pronounced a great pity that the 
 devotion has not been centered upon 
 a more worthy object. 
 
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