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СКАЧАТЬ material for its purpose. But the fiction in the main has been "sorry stuff," utterly contemptible from its distortion of facts and sickening in its childish efforts to deny the Mormon leader or his people any honesty of purpose, uprightness of intention, or praise for what they have achieved. The latest work of Miss Lily Dougall, "The Mormon Prophet," however, does not belong to that class of fiction. Here, at least, we have a strong, clear-cut, purpose story, lofty in tone; its incidents easily within the lines of probability, and singularly free from the vulgarity of nearly all the writers of fiction who have made their work at any point touch Mormonism. It is an honest effort to account for Joseph Smith and his work; and, I may add, without depreciating any one worthy of consideration, that it enjoys the distinction of being about the first honest effort in the department of fiction to account for the Mormon Prophet. This, it must be explained, is not said in approval of the entire book or its purpose, but is said of the story as unobjectionable fiction and the honesty of effort upon the part of the authoress to solve what must have been to her, and what is to the world, a difficult problem.

      That Miss Dougall writes from intimate acquaintance with the early history of the Mormons is apparent on every page; that she has followed the order of events, all acquainted with the history of our people well know; and if, as she explains in her preface, she has taken "necessary liberty with incidents," those that she has used have not been violently wrested, and those invented have not been much out of harmony with the facts of history.

      The point at which her work is vulnerable is the point of view from which she treats her subject. In studying the character and achievements of Joseph Smith, she was evidently not ready to accept him as a prophet truly inspired of God, nor could she accept the theory of "conscious invention" as a reasonable explanation of his life's work; for, had that been the source of his efforts in rounding a religion, "it would not have left sufficient power to carry him through persecution, in which his life hung in the balance and his cause appeared to be lost;" nor could she believe "that the class of earnest men who constituted the rank and file of his early following would have been so long deceived by a deliberate hypocrite." "It appears to me," she explains "more likely that Smith was genuinely deluded by the automatic freaks of a vigorous but undisciplined brain, and that yielding to these, he became confirmed in the hysterical temperament which always adds to delusion self-deception, and to self-deception, half-conscious fraud." She calls to aid of her theory—and with marked skill, be it said—the inclination of the times toward superstition. "In his day," she remarks, "it was necessary to reject a marvel or admit its spiritual significance; granting the honest delusion as to his vision and his book, his only choice lay between counting himself the sport of devils or the agent of heaven; an optimistic temperament cast the die."

      This is Miss Dougall's point of view in the treatment of her subject, and it is utterly untenable. The facts in which Mormonism had its origin are of such a character that they cannot be resolved into delusion or mistake. Either they were truth or conscious, Simon-pure invention. It is not possible to place the matter on middle ground. Joseph Smith was either a true prophet or a conscious fraud or villain. Had his religion found its origin in the visions of his own mind, without any connection with material objects, as was the case with Emanuel Sweedenborg, then there would have been room for Miss Dougall's theory; but the facts in which Mormonism had its origin had to do with quite a different order of things. The ancient record of America, revealed to Joseph Smith by an angel, and which was finally given into his keeping to translate, was no visionary book—no mere creation of an overwrought brain but actual substance, sensible to touch as to sight, consisting of golden plates, with length, breadth, and thickness. Each plate was about seven by eight inches in dimension, and somewhat thinner than common tin; the whole bound together by rings made a volume some six inches in thickness. These plates Joseph Smith claimed to have handled, and during the time they were in his possession—some two years—he frequently removed them from place to place in the most matter-of-fact way. Others saw and handled them, also, not only the three men to whom the angel Moroni exhibited them, and whose testimony accompanies every Book of Mormon published, but eight other men, whose testimony is also published in every Book of Mormon, testify that Joseph Smith showed the plates to them; that they saw and handled them, and examined the characters engraven thereon. It cannot be said that Joseph Smith and these men were self-deceived in such things; not even the "automatic freaks of a vigorous but undisciplined brain," could delude itself in such matters. The Book of Mormon plates had an existence, and Joseph Smith and others who testified to the fact saw and handled them, or they were conscious frauds and lied and conspired to deceive.

      So with many other manifestations which the claims to have received. Many of them consisted of and conversations with resurrected personages—men of flesh and bone—who laid their hands upon the head of Joseph Smith and others who were with him. There was no chance for self-delusion or mistake to enter into such transactions, and no theory based upon the idea of Joseph Smith being "confirmed in the hysterical temperament" can explain away these stubborn facts, however well intentioned or skilfully worked out.

      It is to be regretted that Miss Dougall has not extended her studies of Mormonism beyond the Nauvoo period; had she done so she would have escaped some errors that now appear in her work, such as treating seriously the story of the Danite organization, which never had any existence by reason of any sanction given it by Church authorities. Nor would she have assumed so largely the ignorance of early converts of Mormonism, upon which she depends strongly for the working out of her theory Joseph Smith's character. Here in Utah, in the past, we have had with us very many of those early converts to Mormonism; some of them are still with us, and could Miss Dougall have met them she would have found them people of rather superior intelligence and character, and not at all the ignorant and superstitious persons they are generally supposed to have been. Nor would she have committed the blunder of saying that Mormons revered but one prophet. While it is doubtless true that Joseph Smith will always hold a pre-eminence among the prophets in the Church, yet the Mormons believe that all the men who have succeeded him in the Presidency of the Church have held the same keys of authority, possessed the same rights, and exercised the same prophetic powers that were exercised by him.

      In conclusion, let me say, it has been suggested that certain "claims made for the early followers of Joseph Smith were later repudiated by members of the sect." That is not true, so far as the Church is concerned. What individual members scattered over the country formerly occupied by the Saints, but over whom the Church has no jurisdiction—what they may have repudiated of Joseph Smith's early or even later teachings we cannot, of course, say; but for the Church, it can be said that not one of the early claims or teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith has ever been repudiated, nor is there any institution or doctrine of the Church, which did not arise from his teachings; for all of which he is morally responsible. Such changes as have taken place are but the natural developments of that which he founded.

      FOREWORD.

       Table of Contents

      This review of Mr. Harry Leon Wilson's book was submitted to several eastern papers for publication, but was not accepted by any of them. The refusal of the article by the several eastern publications to which it was submitted illustrates in a way the difficulties which the Mormon people have now for a long time met with in correcting the misrepresentations made of them, and from which they have suffered so much. Here was a book of no small pretentious the work of a popular author, pretending to deal with the historical facts and character of a great people much in the public eye, and very much maligned and seriously misrepresented by the writer of "The Lions." Yet no correction of this misrepresentation would be allowed by the publications to which this review was submitted. Mr. Wilson's book had a wide circulation, and every consideration of fairness demanded that the people suffering from its falsehoods should be heard if they asked for that hearing and presented their case in a proper spirit, and in a literary style suitable for such a controversy. Of the suitableness of the article I shall leave the reader to judge. After being rejected by eastern papers, it was finally published in the Deseret Evening News СКАЧАТЬ