THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
mont and New Hampshire his father removed with the family in 1815 to Palmyra, in Wayne (then a part of Ontario) County, N. Y., and after about four years to a farm near Manchester. Here their reputation was no better. They were considered deficient in honor and veracity, though not as positively malicious. The boys were lazy and roving, several of them could not read. Joseph was unkempt and immoderately lazy. He could read, though not without difficulty, wrote a very imperfect hand, and had a limited understanding of elementary arithmetic. The evolution of such a boy into the prophet and founder of a new religion is a highly interesting psychological problem, which can not be solved without a knowledge of his ancestry, of his mental peculiarities, and of his early environment. Four years after the vision of the plates (see I., § 1 above) he claimed to have been led to the spot and to have received from the angel the golden plates. They were covered with small and beautifully engraved characters in " reformed Egyptian." Joseph received besides a pair of crystals set in silver rings, a sort of supernatural spectacles, the veritable Urim and Thummim of the Old Testament, without which the mysterious writing could not be translated.
The first person to take an active interest in the Golden Bible was a farmer, Martin Harris, who had been in turn Quaker, Universalist, Baptist, and
Presbyterian, but always a dreamer
2. Transla- and fanatic, and affirmed that he had
tion of the visited the moon. Smith needed finan-
Book of cial help in order to publish his book,
Mormon, which Harris was ready to grant, if
only he could be fully convinced that the book was from God. He wished to see the golden plates ; but Smith, with the help of a special revelation, was able to make him content to believe without seeing. The prophet, however, made a copy of some of the letters found on the plates. These " caractors " Harris showed to Prof. Charles Anthon in New York, whose warnings were unable to shake the new disciple's confidence. Harris now became Smith's first amanuensis in the translation of the Golden Bible. When he had written 116 pages, Harris' unbelieving wife destroyed them. Smith doubted whether the sheets had been actually destroyed, and was therefore for some time in embarrassment, until he was instructed by revelation that the translation had fallen into the hands of godless persons, whom Satan had inspired to alter the words. He was therefore directed not to translate again what was lost; he should instead translate from the plates of Nephi, which contained a more detailed account than the book of Lehi, the source of the first translation. Smith now made his wife his amanuensis until the appearance of Oliver Cowdery, who became his first secretary. Cowdery had been a blacksmith, but had acquired a measure of knowledge sufficient to enable him to become a schoolmaster. The work of translating proceeded in the following manner: A curtain was drawn across the room in order to shield the holy document from profane eyes; seated behind the curtain, Smith, with the help of the Urim and Thummim, read from the golden plates to Cowdery, who
wrote down the translation sentence for sentence. The translation of this, the " Book of Mormon," was begun at Manchester soon after the alleged discovery of the golden plates, continued at Harmony, Pa., and finished at Fayette, N. Y., June, 1829. Before the work was finished, Smith and Cowdery were ordained by heavenly messengers to the Aaronic and Melchisedec priesthood; to the first by John the Baptist, to the latter by the apostles Peter, James, and John. The Aaronic priesthood gave them the authority to preach repentance and faith and to baptize by immersion for the remission of sins. The Melchisedec priesthood gave them the power to impart the Holy Ghost to the baptized through the laying on of hands. This power, the Mormons say, could at that time be imparted only by heavenly messengers; the true Church had utterly ceased to exist upon earth; there was no one who had the Holy Spirit. With Harris' help Smith had the book printed in the year 1830 in an edition of 5,000 copies. As the sale was slow at first, Harris forfeited his property; though within ten years two more editions were published. Prefixed to the book is the sworn statement of Cowdery, Whitmer, and Harris that they had seen the plates; moreover, the testimony of eight other men that they had both seen and handled them. The Rev. John Alonzo Clark once put the question to Harris: "Did you see the plates with your natural eyes just as you see the penholder in my hand? " Harris replied: " Well, I did not see them just as I see the penholder, but I saw them with the eye of faith. I saw them as plainly as I see anything whatever about me, although at the time it was covered with a cloth " {Gleanings by the Way, Philadelphia, 1842). A few years later all of the " three " witnesses fell away from Mormonism and declared their previous testimony to be false.
The book of Mormon contains about one-half as
much matter as the Old Testament, and in respect
of style is a crude imitation of the his-
3. Sum- torical and prophetic books. About mary of the one-eighteenth of the book is taken