was found "a curious instrument, called by the ancients the Urim and Thummim, which consisted of two transparent stones, clear as crystal, set in the two rims of a bow. This was in use in ancient times by persons called seers. It was an instrument by the use of which they received revelation of things distant, or of things past, or future."

Being in an unknown tongue, the book required to be translated before its contents could be intelligibly communicated to mankind; and Smith having now provided for himself a separate home, straightway commenced turning this ancient record into English. His mode of procedure was rather suspicious. He hung a blanket across the room, to conceal the sacred records from profane eyes, and then by means of the stone spectacles dictated the translation to one Oliver Cowdery. In this way the work proceeded, as Smith's 'pecuniary circumstances would permit,' until he had finished what he describes as the 'unsealed portion of the records.' This is that part of the revelations which is styled the Book of Mormon, the recognised Bible of the Latter-day Saints, deemed by them of equal authority with the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and represented to contain that 'fulness of the gospel' which was to be revealed in the latter days. An abstract of its contents is given in Burton's City of the Saints.

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When the volume was completed, there arose an obvious difficulty respecting its publication. As no man is accounted a prophet in his own country, who would believe the miraculous story about its origin, and the way in which the work had been brought to light? How was any one to know that it was not utterly a fabrication, and that Joseph Smith, junior, was not an arrant knave and impostor? Assuredly there ought to be witnesses to testify concerning the facts set forth, and vouch in some way for the credibility of Smith's pretensions. This circumstance was accordingly provided for; witnesses were providentially raised up' in the persons of Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris; and when the work was published in 1830 there was appended to it a statement by these three persons (hence known among Mormons as 'the three witnesses'), in which they solemnly declare that 'an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes that we beheld and saw the plates and engravings thereon.' This statement was presently supported by eight other witnesses, who testify expressly that 'Joseph Smith, junior, the translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated, we did handle with our hands; . . . . and we know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates . . . . and we give our names unto the world of that which we have seen; and we lie not, God bearing witness to it.' It might strike a sceptic as a suspicious circumstance,

that the 'eight,' with one exception, belong to two families, evidently on terms of intimacy with each other; and further, that three of them belong to the family of Joseph Smith-being, in fact, his father and two brothers. What is undoubtedly still more 'suspicious,' is that several years after, 'the three witnesses' having quarrelled with Smith, renounced Mormonism, and avowed the falsity of their testimony. The prophet was enraged by their apostacy; and in a publication of the new sect, called the Elder's Journal, he writes (1837) of Harris in a style of vituperation that is ludicrously feeble : There are negroes who have white skins (!) as well as black ones; Granny Parish and others, who acted as lackeys, such as Martin Harris. But they are so far beneath my contempt, that to notice any of them would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make.' In Smith's own neighbourhood the story of the origin of the book did not find much credence; but a shrewd critic will place no value on statements like that of Peter Ingersoll (one of Smith's nonMormon associates), though given upon oath: 'Smith told me the whole affair was a hoax, that he had no such book, and did not believe there was such a book in existence: but, said he, as I have got the fools fixed, I shall carry out the fun.' Such evidence is the mere reckless outcome of vulgar spite and hatred. No man in the process of founding a new religious sect, however corrupt his motives-no man earnestly interested in its mere success (apart altogether from considerations of its truth), would so express himself. There is nothing in the public career of the prophet to lead us to believe for a moment that he started his system for a 'lark.' It is beyond the power of any but a blockhead to think that the man who was torn by his infuriate enemies from the bosom of his wife, tarred and feathered in a meadow at midnight, and who heroically preached next day 'with his flesh all scarified and defaced,' was merely animated by a desire 'to carry out the fun.'

With the exception of the persons mentioned, we do not find that any other individuals, Mormonites or otherwise, ever professed to have seen the plates. Like Macpherson's Ossianic manuscripts, they have never been forthcoming, however loudly demanded; and of late years, all knowledge or account of them has been confessedly traditional.

The account so far given of the Book of Mormon will be understood to be that of the Mormonites themselves; but there remains to be presented another relation of its origin, which the American opponents of Mormonism consider the true one. According to this account, it would appear that one Solomon Spaulding (born in Ashford, Connecticut, 1761, and a graduate of Dartmouth College), a man who had once been a clergyman, and had afterwards gone into business, having his attention attracted about 1809 by the notion that the North American Indians were descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel, conceived that the idea might be turned to

account as the groundwork of a religious novel. He accordingly set about a work of that description, which he entitled The Manuscript Found; and labouring at it at intervals for three years, he in that time completed it. Two of the principal characters in this production are Mormon and his son Moroni-the same who act so large a part in Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon. As early as 1813 (according to the New American Cyclopædia), the work was announced in the newspapers as forthcoming, and as containing a description of the Book of Mormon. In the year 1812, Spaulding shewed his manuscript to a printer named Patterson, residing at Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania; but before any satisfactory arrangement had been made in regard to its publication, the author died (1816), and the manuscript is said to have remained for some time thereafter in Mr Patterson's possession. While here, it came under the notice of a compositor in his employment, named Sidney Rigdon, who was also a preacher in connection with some Christian sect, whose proper designation has not been stated. Rigdon (according to a statement published by Spaulding's widow in the Boston Journal, May 18, 1839) borrowed and copied the manuscript; and his possession of a copy was known to all in the printing-office, and was often mentioned by himself. The original manuscript was, however, she says, returned to her husband before his death, and subsequently read by several of her friends. But after her husband's decease, she seems to have spent the next three years in visiting her friends in different parts of the States; and during this period the manuscript was left at her brother's, somewhere near the residence of the Smiths. Whether Rigdon had, as she asserts, taken a copy of it, or whether the original now fell into the hands of Joseph Smith, there is no evidence for deciding. What in any case is a very significant circumstance, is that Rigdon afterwards became, next to Joseph Smith himself, the principal leader of the Mormons. How Smith and this person became connected is not known, but soon after leaving Mr Patterson's printing-office he came out as a preacher of doctrines very like those afterwards incorporated in the Book of Mormon, and had actually succeeded in obtaining a small body of converts, when Smith and he grew intimate about 1829-the year before the appearance in print of the famous work. No sooner was it published than the wife, several friends, and the brother of Solomon Spaulding affirmed the identity of the principal portions of the Book of Mormon with the novel of The Manuscript Found, which the author had from time to time, and in separate portions, read over to them. John Spaulding declared upon oath that his brother's book was a historical romance, relating to the first settlers in America, endeavouring to shew that the American Indians were descendants of the Jews, or of the lost ten tribes. He stated that 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 Lehi; and

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that it also mentioned the Lamanites. He added that he had recently read the Book of Mormon, and to his great surprise he found nearly the same historical matter and names as in his brother's writings. To the best of his recollection and belief, it was the same that his brother Solomon wrote, with the exception of the religious matter.' Similarly, John N. Miller of Springfield, Pennsylvania, testified, in September 1833, that in 1811 he was in the employment of Spaulding, lodged and boarded in his house, and frequently perused portions of The Manuscript Found, which the author also sometimes read to him. Miller says: 'I have recently examined the Book of Mormon, and find in it the writings of Solomon Spaulding from beginning to end, but mixed up with Scripture and other religious matter, which I did not meet in The Manuscript Found. Many of the passages in the Mormon Book are verbatim from Spaulding, and others in part. The names of Nephi, Lehi, Moroni, and, in fact, all the principal names are brought fresh to my recollection by the gold Bible.' Such evidence (and it might be indefinitely multiplied) is certainly very strong, and will probably constrain most readers to conclude that Spaulding's unpublished romance formed the basis of the Mormon Bible. If our conception of Smith's character be the true one (as we honestly think it is), he was just the kind of man to be charmed by a delusive hypothesis like that which is found in Spaulding's work. It would appeal to his fancy, his ignorance, and his impulsive credulity. He would naturally think it a probable account of the peopling of America, and there was nothing in the region of his moral nature sufficiently stern to deter him from investing the record with the dignity of supernatural sanctions.

As a literary composition, the work is but a bungling affair; the religious matter ingrafted upon the original romance being full of ungrammatical and illiterate expressions. For instance, such phrases as the following very frequently occur: "Ye are like unto they ;' 'Do as ye hath hitherto done;' 'I saith unto them;' 'These things had not ought to be ;' 'Ye saith unto him;' 'I, the Lord, delighteth in the chastity of women;' 'For a more history part are written upon my other plates.' Anachronisms are also frequent, and blunders of almost every imaginable kind abound.

In confirmation of the theory that only the 'religious matter' is Smith's, we may here state that this religious matter does not refer to old-world faiths and the practices of an ancient ritual, but to quite modern questions, such, we are told, as were rife in the villages of Western New York about 1830. Calvinism, Universalism, Methodism, Millenarianism, Roman Catholicism, are discussed. Infant baptism is warmly condemned, and polygamy, many will be surprised to learn, is repeatedly denounced; as, for example : For, behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the Scriptures. Behold David and

Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was. abominable before me, saith the Lord. Wherefore thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous. branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. 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, delighteth in the chastity of women. Freemasonry is also liberally anathematised, although Smith and his followers were subsequently not only initiated into its puerile mysteries, but modelled their hierarchy on its system of degrees.

Before the publication of the Book of Mormon, Smith had already gathered to himself a small number of adherents. Their notions of what they should preach were apparently rather confused, but moved by the interest then felt in Millenarianism (always a great favourite with the ignorant and superstitious) throughout Western New York, they finally settled into the doctrine that the millennium was close at hand, that the Indians were to be speedily converted, and that America was to be the final gathering-place of the saints, who were to assemble at New Zion or New Jerusalem, somewhere in the interior of the continent. In 1830, the year after Smith began to announce his visions and to speak of the discovery of the plates, his followers amounted to five persons. Among these were included his father and three brothers; but in the course of a few weeks the number increased to thirty. On the 1st of June, in the year just mentioned, the first conference of the sect, as an organised church, was held at Fayetteville, New York, where the prophet at that time resided. As the people of the neighbourhood generally regarded him as an impostor, his proceedings from the outset met with considerable opposition. Smith, on the present occasion, had ordered the construction of a dam across a stream of water, for the purpose of baptising his disciples. But before the ceremony was commenced, a mob collected, and broke down the preparations, using such language towards the prophet as was anything but flattering to him or his followers, threatening him with violence, and accusing him of robbery and swindling. They derided his prophetical pretensions, charged him with having lived the life of a reprobate, and in every way did their utmost to make him the object of ridicule and suspicion. Smith, however, was nothing daunted. With singular tact, as well as courage, he bore down all detraction by confessing boldly that he had once led an improper and immoral life; but, unworthy as he was, the Lord had chosen him-had forgiven him all his sins, and intended, in his own inscrutable purposes, to make him-weak and erring as he might have been the instrument of his glory. Unlettered and comparatively ignorant he acknowledged himself to be; but then, said he, was not St Peter illiterate? Were not John

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