CHAPTER V.
THE DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS OF THE REVELATION OF THE BIBLE 

The Versions about the Spanish Guardian--Important Statement by the Prophet's Father--The Later Account in the Prophet's Autobiography--The Angel Visitor and the Acquisition of the Plates--Mother Smith's Version

    The precise date when Joe's attention was first called to the possibility of changing the story about his alleged golden plates so that they would serve as the basis for a new Bible such as was finally produced, and as a means of making him a prophet, cannot be ascertained. That some directing mind gave the final shape to the scheme is shown by the difference between the first accounts of his discovery by means of the stone, and the one provided in his autobiography. We have also evidence that the story of a direct revelation by an angel came some time later than the version which Joe gave first to his acquaintances in Pennsylvania.

    James T. Cobb of Salt Lake City, who has given much time to investigating matters connected with early Mormon history, received a letter under date of April 23, 1879, from Hiel and Joseph Lewis, sons of the Rev. Nathaniel Lewis, of Harmony, Pennsylvania, and relatives of Joseph's father-in-law, in which they gave the story of the finding of the plates as told in their hearing by Joe to their father, when he was translating them. This statement, in effect, was that he dreamed of an iron box containing gold plates curiously engraved, which he must translate into a book; that twice when he attempted to secure the plates he was knocked down, and when he asked why he could not have them, "he saw a man standing over the spot who, to him, appeared like a Spaniard, having a long beard down over his breast, with his throat cut from ear to ear and the blood streaming down, who told him that he could not get it alone." (He then narrated how he got the box in company with Emma.) In all this narra tive there was not one word about visions of God, or of angels, or heavenly revelations; all his information was by that dream and that bleeding ghost. The heavenly visions and messages of angels, etc., contained in the Mormon books were afterthoughts, revised to order."

    In direct confirmation of this we have the following account of the disclosure of the buried articles as given by Joe's father to Fayette Lapham when the Bible was first published: --

    "Soon after joining the church he {Joseph} had a very singular dream.... A very large, tall man appeared to him dressed in an ancient suit of clothes, and the clothes were bloody. This man told him of a buried treasure, and gave him directions by means of which he could find the place. In the course of a year Smith did find it, and, visiting it by night, "I by some supernatural power" was enabled to overturn a huge boulder under which was a square block of masonry, in the centre of which were the articles as described. Taking up the first article, he saw others below; laying down the first, he endeavored to secure the others; but, before he could get hold of them, the one he had taken up slid back to the place he had taken it from, and, to his great surprise and terror, the rock immediately fell back to its former place, nearly crushing him {Joseph} in its descent. (While trying in vain to raise the rock again with levers, Joseph felt something strike him on the breast, a third blow k nocking him down; and as he lay on the ground he saw the tall man, who told him that the delivery of the articles would be deferred a year because Joseph had not strictly followed the directions given to him. The heedless Joseph allowed himself to forget the date fixed for his next visit, and when he went to the place again, the tall man appeared and told him that, because of his lack of punctuality, he would have to wait still another year before the hidden articles would be confided to him. "Come in one year from this time, and bring your oldest brother with you," said the guardian of the treasures, "then you may have them. "Before the date named arrived, the elder brother had died, and Joseph decided that his wife was the proper person to accompany him." (Mr. Lapham's report proceeds as follows:)

    "At the expiration of the year he {Joseph} procured a horse and light wagon, with a chest and pillow-case, and proceeded punctually with his wife to find the hidden treasure. When they had gone as far as they could with the wagon, Joseph took the pillow-case and started for the rock. Upon passing a fence a host of devils began to screech and to scream, and make all sorts of hideous yells, for the purpose of terrifying him and preventing the attainment of his object; but Joseph was courageous and pursued his way in spite of them. Arriving at the stone, he again lifted it with the aid of superhuman power, as at first, and secured the first or uppermost article, this time putting it carefully into the pillow-case before laying it down. He now attempted to secure the remainder; but just then the same old man appeared, and said to him that the time had not yet arrived for their exhibition to the world, but that when the proper time came he should have them and exhibit them, with the one he had now secured; until that time arrived, no one must be allowed to touch the one he had in his possession; for if they did, they would be knocked down by some superhuman power. Joseph ascertained that the remaining articles were a gold hilt and chain, and a gold ball with two pointers. The hilt and chain had once been part of a sword of unusual size; but the blade had rusted away and become useless. Joseph then turned the rock back, took the article in the pillow-case, and returned to the wagon. The devils, with more hideous yells than before, followed him to the fence; as he was getting over the fence, one of the devils struck him a blow on the side, where a black and blue spot remained three or four days; but Joseph persevered and brought the article safely home. "I weighed it," said Mr. Smith, Sr., "and it weighed 30 pounds. In answer to our question as to what it was that Joseph had thus obtained, he said it consisted of a set of gold plates, about six inches wide and nine or ten inches long. They were in the form of a book."¹

    ¹ Historical Magazine, May, 1870.

    We may now contrast these early accounts of the disclosure with the version given in the Prophet's autobiography (written, be it remembered, in Nauvoo in 1838), the one accepted by all orthodox Mormons. One of its striking features will be found to be the transformation of the Spaniard-with-his-throat-cut into a messenger from Heaven.²

    ² Millennial Star, Vol. XIV, Supt.

    It was, according to this later account, when he was in his fifteenth year, and when his father's family were "proselyted to the Presbyterian church," that he became puzzled by the divergent opinions he heard from different pulpits. One day, while reading the epistle of James (not a common habit of his, as his mother would testify), Joseph was struck by the words, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. "Reflecting on this injunction, he retired to the woods" on the morning of a beautiful clear day early in the spring of 1820, and there he for the first time uttered a spoken prayer. "As soon as he began praying he was overcome by some power, and "thick darkness" gathered around him. Just when he was ready to give himself up as lost, he managed to call on God for deliverance, whereupon he saw a pillar of light descending upon him, and two personages of indescribable glory standing in the air above him, one of whom, calling him by name, said to the other, "This is my beloved Son , hear him. "Straightway Joseph, not forgetting the main object of his going to the woods, asked the two personages: "which of all the sects was right. "He was told that all were wrong, and that he must join none of them; that all creeds were an abomination, and that all professors were corrupt. He came to himself lying on his back. The effect on the boy of this startling manifestation was not radically beneficial, as he himself concedes. "Forbidden to join any other religious sects of the day, of tender years, "and badly treated by persons who should have been his friends, he admits that in the next three years he "frequently fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth and the corruption of human nature, which, I am sorry to say, led me into diverse temptations, to the gratification of many appetites offensive in the sight of God. "It was during this period that he was most active in the use of his "peek-stone."

    On the night of September 21, 1823, to proceed with his own account, when again praying to God for the forgiveness of his sins, the room became light, and a person clothed in a robe of exquisite whiteness, and having "a countenance truly like lightning," called him by name, and said that his visitor was a messenger sent from God, and that his name was Nephi. This was a mistake on the part of somebody, because the visitor's real name was Moroni, who hid the plates where they were deposited.  Smith continues: --

    "He said there was a book deposited, written upon golden plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the Everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Saviour to the ancient inhabitants. Also, there were two stones in silver bows (and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim) deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones was what constituted seers in ancient or former times, and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book."

    The messenger then made some liberal quotations from the prophecies of the Old Testament (changing them to suit his purpose), and ended by commanding Smith, when he got the plates, at a future date, to show them only to those as commanded, lest he be destroyed. Then he ascended into heaven. The next day the messenger appeared again, and directed Joseph to tell his father of the commandment which he had received. When he had done so, his father told him to go as directed. He knew the place (ever since known locally as "Mormon Hill") as soon as he arrived there, and his narrative proceeds as follows: --

    "Convenient to the village of Manchester, Ontario Co., N. Y., stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box; this stone was thick and rounded in the middle on the upper side, and thinner toward the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all round was covered with earth. Having removed the earth and obtained a lever, which I got fixed under the edge of the stone, and with a little exertion raised it up, I looked in, and there, indeed, did I behold the plates, the Urim and Thummim and breastplate, as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in a kind of cement. In the bottom of the box were laid two stones crosswise of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them. I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger. I was again informed that the time for bringing them out had not yet arrived, neither would till four years from that time; but he told me that I should come to that place precisely one year from that time, and that he would there meet with me, and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates."

    Mother Smith gives an explanation of Joe's failure to secure the plates on this occasion, which he omits: "As he was taking them, the unhappy thought darted through his mind that probably there was something else in the box besides the plates, which would be of pecuniary advantage to him.... Joseph was overcome by the power of darkness, and forgot the injunction that was laid upon him. "The mistakes which the Deity made in Joe's character constantly suggest to the lay reader the query why the Urim and Thummim were not turned on Joe.

    On September 22, 1827, when Joe visited the hill (following his own story again), the same messenger delivered to him the plates, the Urim and Thummim and the breastplate, with the warning that if he "let them go carelessly" he would be "cut off," and a charge to keep them until the messenger called for them.

    Mother Smith's story of the securing of the plates is to the effect that about midnight of September 21 Joseph and his wife drove away from his father's house with a horse and wagon belonging to a Mr. Knight. He returned after breakfast the next morning, bringing with him the Urim and Thummim, which he showed to her, and which she describes as "two smooth, three-cornered diamonds set in glass, and the glasses were set in silver bows that were connected with each other in much the same way as old-fashioned spectacles. "She says that she also saw the breastplate through a handkerchief, and that it "was concave on one side and convex on the other, and extended from the neck downward as far as the stomach of a man of extraordinary size. It had four straps of the same material for the purpose of fastening it to the breast.... The whole plate was worth at least $500." The spectacles and breastplate seem to have been more familiar to Mother Smith than to any other of Joseph's contemporaries and witnesses.

    The substitution of the spectacles called Urim and Thummim for the "peek-stone" was doubtless an idea of the associate in the plot, who supplied the theological material found in the Golden Bible. Tucker considers the "spectacle pretension" an afterthought of some one when the scheme of translating the plates into a Bible was evolved, as "it was not heard of outside of the Smith family for a considerable period subsequent to the first story."³ This is confirmed by the elder Smith's early account of the discovery. It would be very natural that Rigdon, with his Bible knowledge, should substitute the more respectable Urim and Thummim for the "peek-stone" of ill-repute, as the medium of translation.

    ³ "Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism," p. 33.

    The Urim and Thummim were the articles named by the Lord to Moses in His description of the priestly garments of Aaron. The Bible leaves them without description;⁴ and the following verses contain all that is said of them: Exodus xxviii. 30; Leviticus viii. 8; Numbers xxvii. 21; Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8; Samuel xxviii. 6; Ezra ii. 63; Nehemiah vii. 65. Only a pretence of using spectacles in the work of translating was kept up, later descriptions of the process by Joe's associates referring constantly to the employment of the stone.

    ⁴ "The Hebrew words are generally considered to be plurales excellentia, denoting light (that is, revelation) and truth.... There are two principal opinions respecting the Urim and Thummim. One is that these words simply denote the four rows of precious stones in the breastplate of the high priest, and are so called from their brilliancy and perfection; which stones, in answer to an appeal to God in difficult cases, indicated His mind and will by some supernatural appearance.... The other principal opinion is that the Urim and Thummim were two small oracular images similar to the Teraphim, personifying revelation and truth, which were placed in the cavity or pouch formed by the folds of the breastplate, and which uttered oracles by a voice.... We incline to Mr. Mede's opinion that the Urim and Thummim were 'things well known to the patriarchs' as divinely appointed means of inquiries of the Lord, suited to an infantile state of religion. "Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature," Kitto and Alexander, editors

    Joe says that while the plates were in his possession "multitudes" tried to get them away from him, but that he succeeded in keeping them until they were translated, and then delivered them again to the messenger, who still retains them. Mother Smith tells a graphic story of attempts to get the plates away from her son, and says that when he first received them he hid them until the next day in a rotten birch log, bringing them home wrapped in his linen frock under his arm.⁵ Later, she says, he hid them in a hole dug in the hearth of their house, and again in a pile of flax in a cooper shop; Willard Chase's daughter almost found them once by means of a peek-stone of her own.

    ⁵ Elder Hyde in his "Mormonism" estimates that "from the description given of them the plates must have weighed nearly two hundred pounds."

    Mother Smith says that Joseph told all the family of his vision the evening of the day he told his father, charging them to keep it secret, and she adds: --

    "From that time forth Joseph continued to receive instructions from the Lord, and we continued to get the children together every evening for the purpose of listening while he gave us a relation of the same. I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any that ever lived upon the face of the earth -- all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy eighteen years old, who had never read the Bible through in his life.... We were now confirmed in the opinion that God was about to bring to light something upon which we could stay our mind, or that would give us a more perfect knowledge of the plan of salvation and the redemption of the human family."