The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901 Part 18

In January, 1833, Smith announced a revival of the "gift of tongues,"

and inst.i.tuted the ceremony of was.h.i.+ng the feet.* Under the new system, Smith or Rigdon, during a meeting, would call on some brother, or sister, saying, "Father A., if you will rise in the name of Jesus Christ you can speak in tongues." The rule which persons thus called on were to follow was thus explained, "Arise upon your feet, speak or make some sound, continue to make sounds of some kind, and the Lord will make a language of it." It was not necessary that the words should be understood by the congregation; some other Mormon would undertake their interpretation. Much ridicule was incurred by the church because of this kind of revelation. Gunnison relates that when a woman "speaking in tongues" p.r.o.nounced "meliar, meli, melee," it was at once translated by a young wag, "my leg, my thigh, my knee," and, when he was called before the Council charged with irreverence, he persisted in his translation, but got off with an admonition.** At a meeting in Nauvoo in later years a doubting convert delivered an address in real Choctaw, whereupon a woman jumped up and offered as a translation an account of the glories of the new Temple.

* This ceremony has fallen into disuse in Utah.

** "The Mormons." p. 74.

At the conference of June 4, 1831, Smith ordained Elder Wright to the high priesthood for service among the Indians, with the gift of tongues, healing the sick, etc. Wright at once declared that he saw the Saviour.

At one of the sessions at Kirtland at this time, as described by an eye-witness, Smith announced that the day would come when no man would be permitted to preach unless he had seen the Lord face to face. Then, addressing Rigdon, he asked, "Sidney, have you seen the Lord?" The obedient Sidney made reply, "I saw the image of a man pa.s.s before my face, whose locks were white, and whose countenance was exceedingly fair, even surpa.s.sing all beauty that I ever beheld." Smith at once rebuked him by telling him that he would have seen more but for his unbelief.

Almost simultaneously with Smith's first announcement of his prophetic powers, while working his "peek-stone" in Pennsylvania and New York, he, as we have seen, claimed ability to perform miracles, and he announced that he had cast out a devil at Colesville in 1830.* The performance of miracles became an essential part of the church work at Kirtland, and had a great effect on the superst.i.tious converts. The elders, who in the early days labored in England, laid great stress on their miraculous power, and there were some amusing exposures of their pretences. The Millennial Star printed a long list of successful miracles dating from 1839 to 1850, including the deaf made to hear, the blind to see, dislocated bones put in place, leprosy and cholera cured, and fevers rebuked. Smith, Rigdon, and Cowdery took a leading part in this work at Kirtland.** To a man nearly dead with consumption Rigdon gave a.s.surance that he would recover "as sure as there is a G.o.d in heaven." The man's death soon followed. When a child, whose parents had been persuaded to trust its case to Mormon prayers instead of calling a physician,***

died, Smith and Rigdon promised that it would rise from the dead, and they went through certain ceremonies to accomplish that object.****

* For particulars of this miracle, see Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, pp. 28, 32.

** While Smith was in Was.h.i.+ngton in 1840, pressing on the federal authorities the claims of the Mormons for redress for their losses in Missouri, he preached on the church doctrines. A member of Congress who heard him sent a synopsis of the discourse to his wife, and Smith printed this entire in his autobiography (Millennial Star, Vol. XVII, p.

583). Here is one pa.s.sage: "He [Smith] performed no miracles. He did not pretend to possess any such power." This is an ill.u.s.tration of the facility with which Smith could lie, when to do so would serve his purpose.

*** The Saints were early believers in faith cure. Smith, in a sermon preached in 1841, urged them "to trust in G.o.d when sick, and live by faith and not by medicine or poison" (Millennial Star, Vol. XVIII, p. 663). A coroner's jury, in an inquest over a victim of this faith in London, England, cautioned the sect against continuing this method of curing (Times and Seasons, 1842, p. 813).

**** For further ill.u.s.trations of miracle working, in Ohio, see Kennedy's "Early Days of Mormonism," Chap. V.

The lengths to which Smith dared go in his pretensions are well ill.u.s.trated in an incident of these days. Among the curiosities of a travelling showman who pa.s.sed through Kirtland were some Egyptian mummies. As the golden plates from which the Mormon Bible was translated were written in "reformed Egyptian," the translator of those plates was interested in all things coming from Egypt, and at his suggestion the mummies were purchased by and for the church. On them were found some papyri which Joseph, with the a.s.sistance of Phelps and Cowdery, set about "translating." Their success was great, and Smith was able to announce: "We found that one of these rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph.* Truly we could see that the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of truth." That there might be no question about the accuracy of Smith's translation, he exhibited a certificate signed by the proprietor of the show, saying that he had exhibited the "hieroglyphic characters" to the most learned men in many cities, "and from all the information that I could ever learn or meet with, I find that of Joseph Smith, Jr., to correspond in the most minute matters." * When the papyri were shown to Josiah Quincy and Charles Francis Adams, on the occasion of their visit to Nauvoo in 1844, Joseph Smith, pointing out the inscriptions, said: "That is the handwriting of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful. This is the autograph of Moses, and these lines were written by his brother Aaron. Here we have the earliest account of the creation, from which Moses composed the first Book of Genesis."--"Figures of the Past," p. 386.

Smith's autobiography contains this memorandum: "October 1, 1835. This afternoon I labored on the Egyptian alphabet in company with Brother O. Cowdery and W. W. Phelps, and during the research the princ.i.p.als of astronomy, as understood by Father Abraham and the Ancients, unfolded to our understanding." When he was in the height of his power in Nauvoo, Smith printed in the Times and Seasons a reproduction of these hieroglyphics accompanied by this alleged translation, of what he called "the Book of Abraham," and they were also printed in the Millennial Star.* The translation was a meaningless jumble of words after this fas.h.i.+on:--

* See Vol. XIX, p. 100, etc., from which the accompanying facsimile is taken.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Egyptian Papyri 188]

"In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my father, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence, and finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the Fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same, having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring to be one also who possessed great knowledge, and to possess greater knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness."

Remy submitted a reproduction of these hieroglyphics to Theodule Deveria, of the Museum of the Louvre, in Paris, who found, of course, that Smith's purported translation was wholly fraudulent. For instance, his Abraham fastened on an altar was a representation of Osiris coming to life on his funeral couch, his officiating priest was the G.o.d Anubis, and what Smith represents to indicate an angel of the Lord is "the soul of Osiris, under the form of a hawk."* Smith's whole career offered no more brazen ill.u.s.tration of his impostures than this.

* See "A Journey to Great Salt Lake City", by Jules Remy (1861), Note XVII.

A visitor to the Kirtland Temple some years later paid Joseph's father half a dollar in order to see the Egyptian curios, which were kept in the attic of that structure.

A well-authenticated anecdote, giving another ill.u.s.tration of Smith's professed knowledge of the Egyptian language is told by the Rev. Henry Caswall, M.A., who, after holding the Professors.h.i.+p of Divinity in Kemper College, in Missouri, became vicar of a church in England. Mr.

Caswall, on the occasion of a visit to Nauvoo in 1842, having heard of Smith's Egyptian lore, took with him an ancient Greek ma.n.u.script of the Psalter, on parchment, with which to test the prophet's scholars.h.i.+p. The belief of Smith's followers in his powers was shown by their eagerness to have him see this ma.n.u.script, and their persistence in urging Mr.

Caswall to wait a day for Smith's return from Carthage that he might submit it to the prophet. Mr. Caswall the next day handed the ma.n.u.script to Smith and asked him to explain its contents. After a brief examination, Smith explained: "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. These figures (pointing to the capitals) is Egyptian hieroglyphics written in the reformed Egyptian. These characters are like the letters that were engraved on the golden plates."*

* "The City of the Mormons," p. 36 (1842).

CHAPTER V. -- SMITH'S OHIO BUSINESS ENTERPRISES

When Rigdon returned to Ohio with Smith in January, 1831, it seems to have been his intention to make Kirtland the permanent headquarters of the new church. He had written to his people from Palmyra, "Be it known to you, brethren, that you are dwelling on your eternal inheritance."

When Cowdery and his a.s.sociates arrived in Ohio on their first trip, they announced as the boundaries of the Promised Land the towns.h.i.+p of Kirtland on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Within two months of his arrival at Kirtland Smith gave out a "revelation" (Sec.

45), in which the Lord commanded the elders to go forth into the western countries and buildup churches, and they were told of a City of Refuge for the church, to be called the New Jerusalem. No definite location of this city was given, and the faithful were warned to "keep these things from going abroad unto the world." Another "revelation" of the same month (Sec. 48) announced that it was necessary for all to remain for the present in their places of abode, and directed those who had lands "to impart to the eastern brethren," and the others to buy lands, and all to save money "to purchase lands for an inheritance, even the city."

The reports of those who first went to Missouri induced Smith and Rigdon, before they made their first trip to that state, to announce that the Saints would pa.s.s one more winter in Ohio. But when they had visited the Missouri frontier and realized its distance from even the Ohio border line, and the actual privations to which settlers there must submit, their zeal weakened, and they declared, "It will be many years before we come here, for the Lord has a great work for us to do in Ohio." The building of the Temple at Kirtland, and the investments in lots and in business enterprises there showed that a permanent settlement in Ohio was then decided on.

Smith's first business enterprise for the church in Ohio was a general store which he opened in Hiram. This establishment has been described as "a poorly furnished country store where commerce looks starvation in the face."* The difficulty of combining the positions of prophet, head of the church, and retail merchant was naturally great. The result of the combination has been graphically pictured by no less an authority than Brigham Young. In a discourse in Salt Lake City, explaining why the church did not maintain a store there, Young said:--

* Salt Lake Herald, November 17, 1877.

"You that have lived in Nauvoo, in Missouri, in Kirtland, Ohio, can you a.s.sign a reason why Joseph could not keep a store and be a merchant? Let me just give you a few reasons; and there are men here who know just how matters went in those days. Joseph goes to New York and buys $20,000 worth of goods, comes into Kirtland and commences to trade. In comes one of the brethren. Brother Joseph, let me have a frock pattern for my wife: What if Joseph says, 'No, I cannot without money.' The consequence would be, 'He is no Prophet,' says James. Pretty soon Thomas walks in.

'Brother Joseph, will you trust me for a pair of boots?' 'No, I cannot let them go without money.' 'Well,' says Thomas, 'Brother Joseph is no Prophet; I have found THAT out and I am glad of it.' After a while in comes Bill and Sister Susan. Says Bill, 'Brother Joseph, I want a shawl. I have not got any money, but I wish you to trust me a week or a fortnight.' Well, Brother Joseph thinks the others have gone and apostatized, and he don't know but these goods will make the whole church do the same, so he lets Bill have a shawl. Bill walks of with it and meets a brother. 'Well,' says he, 'what do you think of Brother Joseph?' 'O, he is a first rate man, and I fully believe he is a Prophet. He has trusted me with this shawl.' Richard says, 'I think I will go down and see if he won't trust me some.' In walks Richard.

Brother Joseph, I want to trade about $20.' 'Well,'says Joseph, 'these goods will make the people apostatize, so over they go; they are of less value than the people.' Richard gets his goods. Another comes in the same way to make a trade of $25, and so it goes. Joseph was a first rate fellow with them all the time, provided he never would ask them to pay him. And so you may trace it down through the history of this people."*

* Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, p. 215.

If this a.n.a.lysis of the flock which Smith gathered in Ohio, and which formed the nucleus of the settlements in Missouri, was not permanently recorded in an official church record, its authenticity would be vigorously a.s.sailed.

Later enterprises at Kirtland, undertaken under the auspices of the church, included a steam sawmill and a tannery, both of which were losing concerns. But the speculation to which later Mormon authorities attributed the princ.i.p.al financial disasters of the church at Kirtland was the purchase of land and its sale as town lots.* The craze for land speculation in those days was not confined, however, to the Mormons.

That was the period when the purchase of public lands of the United States seemed likely to reach no limit. These sales, which amounted to $2,300,000 in 1830, and to $4,800,000 in 1834, lumped to $14,757,600 in 1835, and to $24,877,179 in 1836. The government deposits (then made in the state banks) increased from $10,000,000 on January 1, 1835, to $41,500,000 on June 1, 1836, the increase coming from receipts from land sales. This led to that bank expansion which was measured by the growth of bank capital in this country from $61,000,000 to $200,000,000 between 1830 and 1834, with a further advance to $251,000,000.

* "Real estate rose from 100 to 800 per cent and in many cases more. Men who were not thought worth $50 or $100 became purchasers of thousands. Notes (sometimes cash), deeds and mortgages pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, till all, or nearly all, supposed they had become wealthy, or at least had acquired a competence."--Messenger and Advocate, June, 1837.

The Mormon leaders and their people were peculiarly liable to be led into disaster when sharing in this speculators' fever. They were, however, quick to take advantage of the spirit of the times. The Zion of Missouri lost its attractiveness to them, and on February 23, 1833, the Presidency decided to purchase land at Kirtland, and to establish there on a permanent Stake of Zion. The land purchases of the church began at once, and we find a record of one Council meeting, on March 23, 1833, at which it was decided to buy three farms costing respectively $4000, $2100, and $5000. Kirtland was laid out (on paper) with 32 streets, cutting one another at right angles, each four rods wide. This provided for 225 blocks of 20 lots each. Twenty-nine of the streets were named after Mormons. Joseph and his family appear many times in the list of conveyors of these lots. The original map of the city, as described in Smith's autobiography, provided for 24 public buildings temples, schools, etc.; no lot to contain more than one house, and that not to be nearer than 25 feet from the street, with a prohibition against erecting a stable on a house lot.*

* Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, pp. 438-439.

Of course this Mormon capital must have a grand church edifice, to meet Smith's views, and he called a council to decide about the character of the new meeting-house. A few of the speakers favored a modest frame building, but a majority thought a log one better suited to their means.

Joseph rebuked the latter, asking, "Shall we, brethren, build a house for our G.o.d of logs?" and he straightway led them to the corner of a wheat field, where the trench for the foundation was at once begun.*

No greater exhibition of business folly could have been given than the undertaking of the costly building then planned on so slender a financial foundation.