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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE BIRTH OF MORMONISM
John Quincy Adams
PAPHOS PUBLISHERS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
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Copyright © 2016 by John Quincy Adams
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
The Birth of Mormonism
CHAPTER I: Joseph Smith, Jr., and His Golden Plates
CHAPTER II: The Translation
CHAPTER III
The Publication of the Book of Mormon
CHAPTER IV: The Organization of the Church
CHAPTER V: The Witnesses
CHAPTER VI
The Book of Mormon and the Doctrines and Covenants
APPENDICES: A Authorities Used in the Preparation of “The Birth of Mormonism”
B THE NAUVOO EXPOSITOR
C A CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTION OF JOSEPH SMITH, JR.
D ON MORAL CONDITIONS IN NAUVOO
The Birth of Mormonism
By
John Quincy Adams
PREFACE
IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO burden the reader with a history of how this book came to be written. Its genesis was a paper prepared as a contribution to local history. It has grown with the years; it has made use of sources not ordinarily accessible and possibly no longer in existence; and it is believed that it presents more completely the story of the birth of Mormonism than any publication now in print. It is sent forth with the hope that it will help to arouse the American people to endeavor more energetically to remove this moral menace to and blot upon our country—the greatest religious fraud of the nineteenth century, if not of all time.
John Quincy Adams.
Auburn, New York, 1916.
THE BIRTH OF MORMONISM
CHAPTER I
JOSEPH SMITH, JR., AND HIS GOLDEN PLATES
IT IS PERHAPS NECESSARY TO remind ourselves that the closing years of the eighteenth and the first third, or more of the nineteenth century, furnished fruitful soil for religious cranks and hobbies and isms. Possibly no period in modern history has witnessed a more luxuriant growth of such products. Morality and religion were at a low ebb, or at least the latter was chiefly for fightings within if not without; for vagaries, divisions, sensations, physical and emotional, almost without number; for “the falling,” “the jerking,” “the rolling,” and “the dancing,” exercises to the glory of God; for “Pilgrims” (1817) , who were led by an inspired prophet, and who made of raggedness and uncleanness a virtue, wearing their clothes unchanged as long as they would hold together; for Dylkes, “the Leatherwood God” (1828), who at an Ohio camp meeting, announced himself as the professed Messiah; for Jemimah Wilkinson, “the Universal Friend;” for William Miller and the end of the world, with proper ascension robes, and for Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Mormon Bible. This is not a complete catalogue of such movements during these years, and from such sowing we are still reaping a harvest.
Of course this religious ferment had in it good as well as evil, but when we are tempted to sigh for “the good old days” of our fathers, we would do well to quit sighing and read some history. It is thought by many now that the early settlement of this part of the “West,” (Western and Central New York) consisted only of God-fearing, man-loving men and women, with children just ripe for the Sunday School book, and that in these ways they are in contrast with the settlers of the West of these degenerate days. But if contemporary chronicles are to be believed, while “grace abounded” sin “did much more abound.” Mormonism was, therefore, planted in fertile soil. The climate was favorable to its growth. The people delighted in humbuggery, and Joseph Smith is one of the high-priests of the art.
“The First Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints” was organized April 6, 1830, at the house of Peter Whitmer, Fayette, Seneca County, N. Y., with six members. In the history of Mormonism this is its official birthday, corresponding to the Day of Pentecost in the Christian Church. Mormon historians describe the events of this day in glowing language. Orson Pratt subsequently figured out that it was just eighteen hundred years to a day since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We shall find very often that Mormon Apostles, Priests and Prophets are surprisingly accurate in such matters!
Like Pentecost this day does not dawn without a long process of preparation. We are here largely concerned with this preparatory work. In the first place we shall tell the life story of some of those who laid the foundations and are responsible for the beginnings of what has proved to be the most virile new religion which the fertile nineteenth century produced. Then we shall consider its sacred books, their character and origin. We begin, therefore, with “the Prophet, Seer and Revelator,” the first President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith, Jr.
Sharon, Vt., has the honor of being the place, December 23, 1805, the date, where and when Joseph Smith, Jr., first saw the light. Cannon says: “His parents were toilers, their characters were godly, and their names unstained.” Well known facts, however, scarcely sustain so favorable a judgment. Both parents were of Scotch descent. His father was ignorant, lazy, of not much account—certainly not eminent for godliness, nor yet very bad. Like his illustrious son, the future “patriarch” of the Church was engaged in hunting for Captain Kidd’s money—certainly not an immoral occupation—and was also charged, in company with Jack Downing, with making counterfeit money, but turned State’s evidence and thus escaped punishment. Joe’s mother, whom the prophet resembled, had more native wit and shrewdness than her husband, which stood her in place of “schooling.” She was given to reveries and fortune telling, was possibly a fanatic rather than a fraud, but was a good teacher for her son. Joseph was the fourth of nine children, and his mother early decided, probably in view of his mental ability to deceive in which he resembled her, that he was destined for a distinguished career as a prophet, magician, fortune teller, discoverer of springs of water or gold mines, or some other equally honorable and lucrative occupation.
In 1816, the family removed to Palmyra, N. Y., and two years and a half later to the town of Manchester. Here they squatted on a small farm, built a two-roomed log house, and lived until their fortunes were improved by the new religion, and they departed for Kirtland, Ohio. The universal testimony of those who knew them at this time is that the family were a lazy, illiterate, drinking, shiftless, good-for-nothing lot, having no regular occupation, doing everything by turns, and nothing long, and living largely off their neighbors, while Joe, whose besetting sin then, as later, was lying, was considered the most worthless of them all. When he learned to read nobody knows. His favorite poetry was the thrilling stanza:
“My name was Captain Kidd,
As I sailed, as I sailed;
And most wickedly I did,
God’s laws I did forbid,
As I sailed, as I sailed.”
If uniform tradition is to be believed, he was also an adept in robbing orchards and hen roosts, when the needs of the family required it—Joe was always kind to his family—and was very averse to any muscular exercise. Cunning apparently served him a better purpose than muscle. Tucker describes him as noted chiefly “for his indolent and vagabondish character and his habits of exaggeration and untruthfulness. . . . He could utter the most palpable exaggeration or marvellous absurdity with the utmost apparent gravity.” He was the pride of his father, “who has been heard to boast of him as the ‘genus of the family,’ quoting his own expression.” Whether this title was bestowed because of his prophetic gifts, or because he, more frequently than the other members, supplied the family table with the necessary things for this life, our sources do not tell. He assumed the prophetic roll quite early, and gave, as most later prophets do, oracular expositions of the book of The Revelation. Receiving his mother’s approval, he secured a divining rod and went into business. He also made much use of the “Palmyra seer stone,” or “peek stone,” said to have been shaped like a child’s foot, and to have been found, in fulfillment of Joe’s prophecy, in digging a well on the premises of Mr. Chase in 1820. Certain profane authorities assert that neither the story about the find nor shape of the stone is true. Like the golden plates it long since disappeared from mortal sight. Thus was Joe qualified and trained for his future work.
