Book of directly from the Bible, about 300
Mormon, passages, namely, large portions of Isaiah, the entire Sermon on the Mount (according to Matthew), and a few verses from[Paul. There are passages also which betray a dependence upon other books, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Methodist Discipline. The work is divided into fifteen books, which purport to have been written by as many different hands, containing a " Sacred History of Ancient America from the Earliest Ages after the Flood to the Beginning of the Fifth Century of the Christian Era." Smith himself has summarized its contents as follows:
" The history of America is unfolded from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America, in ancient times, has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about 600 before Christ. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle toward the close of the fourth century. The remnant are
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RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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the Indians. This book also tella us that our Savior made his appearance upon this continent after his resurrection; that he planted the Gospel here in all its fulness and richness and power and blessing, that the inhabitants had apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers ,?and evangelists; the same order, the same priesthood, the same ordinances, gifts, powers, and blessing as was enjoyed on the Eastern continent; that the people were cut off in consequence of their transgressions; that the last of their prophets [Mormon] vrho existed among them was commanded to write an abridgment of their prophecies, history, etc., and to hide it in the earth."
In the last days the Book of Mormon was to come to light, and, being joined with the Bible, was to serve the fulfilment of the thoughts of God. Mormon was accordingly the collector and reviser of the books; his son, Moroni, brought the work to its completion and about the year 420 a.d. hid the plates under the stone on the hill Cumorah.
Judged as a literary work the Book of Mormon is tedious, utterly devoid of taste, poetic grace, and
depth of thought, exhibiting no re- 4. Its ligious inspiration or moral earnest- Literary ness. It is full of grammatical blun- Character. ders and teems with anachronisms.
In the matter of doctrine the book — compared with the later revelations called forth by the exigencies that arose in the course of the system's development — contains little that is markedly characteristic. It foretells the call of Joseph Smith to be the prophet of the latter day; it is strictly chiliastic, and declares that all gifts, powers, and offices of the apostolic Church are to be found in the true church; it acknowledges the doctrine of the Trinity, rejects infant baptism, and commands baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; it asserts that the Bible is from God, but also that this fact does not exclude further revelations; finally, it contains three passages which, naturally interpreted, must be understood as condemning polygamy.
The question of the source of the Book of Mormon is important. For Mormon believers there is,
of course, no problem here. The ma-
5. Theories jority of anti-Mormon critics have ac-
of Its cepted the so-called Spaulding-Rigdon
Source, theory of the origin. Much of the
more recent criticism, however, tends to establish the theory of Smith's authorship. The Spaulding-Rigdon theory is, in brief, as follows: About the year 1809 there lived in Conneaut, O., a man named Solomon Spaulding. He had studied at Dartmouth College and had served some years as a Presbyterian minister. Later he took up a secular calling and devoted a part of his time to literary pursuits. Becoming interested in the Indian antiquities in the neighborhood of Conneaut he conceived the idea of a romance about the Indians before the discovery of America by Columbus. The work which he composed was finished about 1812, and bore the title, " The Manuscript Found." Spaulding availed himself of the well-known fable that the American Indians are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. To make his narrative more piquant he gave it the form of a translation of a manuscript composed by a member of an ancient tribe and recently discovered in an Indian mound. Spaulding took his manuscript to Pittsburg, intending to have it printed there. It lay a
considerable time in a printing-office, but was never printed. At last it was returned to the author, who at the time was living at Amity, Pa., where in 1816 he died. When the Book of Mormon appeared, Spaulding's widow and others, who had heard him read from his manuscript, declared that the book must have been taken in large part from the unpublished romance, with many theological interpolations. As, however, Spaulding's manuscript could never be found, a direct comparison with the Book of Mormon was impossible. (A manuscript discovered in Honolulu in 1885, which purported to be Spaulding's Indian romance and bears no resemblance to the Book of Mormon, is generally believed to be a forgery.) Beyond these well-established facts the claim is that Sidney Rigdon, who from 1829 on stood in close relation to Smith, may have had access to the Spaulding manuscript when he was employed as a printer in ' Pittsburg about 1812 and later, and may have made a copy of it and have placed the copy at Smith's disposal. This theory has been rendered fairly plausible by various external and internal evidences; yet the evidences fall far short of proof. Against the theory of Smith's authorship it has been urged that so ignorant a man could not have produced the work. But it may be replied that only an ignorant man could have produced it. In intellectual grasp and force Smith's later (well authenticated) utterances surpass it, but they resemble it in style. The style and contents of the Book of Mormon are such as one might expect from a man of Smith's peculiar nature and surroundings. He possessed a powerful, though prosaic, imagination, and a retentive memory; but his knowledge was slight and his judgment weak. From beginning to end the book exhibits these traits. The author — perhaps unconsciously— derived what he said from various and in part mutually opposed sources. Hence the confusion in his theology, which is wanting in consistency. Doctrines of the most various origin are illogically thrown together. Calvinism, Universalism, Methodism, chiliasm, Catholicism, deism, and freemasonry are discussed — though not by name — and this in a manner that strikingly corresponds to Smith's relations to these systems. The book is in a measure a mirror of the time, but in a still greater measure a sort of (unconscious) autobiography. At the same time there is no necessity to disallow evidence that the general idea — and even the framework — of the book was derived from an external source. The main contention is that what is really characteristic and personal in the book is from Smith himself.
Was Joseph Smith a deliberate falsifier and conscious impostor? Most non-Mormon writers answer this question with an emphatic affirm- 6. The ative. Some of the most careful in- Founder's vestigators, however (especially Sten- Character; house and Riley), believe that he was Oppor- in a large measure the victim of his tunism. own hallucinations — that he really believed himself an inspired prophet. That he also practised wilful deception in order to carry out his purposes can hardly be questioned. Had he been a mere impostor, he must have broken
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