Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 2

A SPIRITUAL CHAOS

IN 1830, there was published at Palmyra, New York, the Book of Mormon, a work which claims to set forth the dealings of God with the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, and which has given its name to the most unique of modern religions.

The person who offered the Book of Mormon for publication was a young man named Joseph Smith. His story of its origin has an interest which few persons have discovered in the book itself. According to his account, the Book of Mormon was a translation of an ancient scripture, written in a lost language on golden plates. An angel had come from heaven to give these plates to Joseph for, translation, and to inform him that he had been chosen by the Most High to restore true religion to a lost and corrupted world. Joseph had but little knowledge of his own language, and was totally ignorant of any other; but the Divine mission was not balked by that slight obstacle. Buried with the plates were two transparent stones, "Urim and Thummin!" The golden plates were written in "Reformed Egyptian." By looking through "Urim and Thummin," Joseph was enabled to translate this mysterious dialect into English which any lover of that tongue will agree is in need of reform.

The plates were "revealed unto Joseph " in 1823, given into his hands in 1827, and the translation was ready for the printer in 1829. The Mormon Church -- whose official title is "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" -- was organized April 6, 1830, at Fayette, New York. During most of this time, Joseph had been putting forth diverse "revelations," some of a very practical import, and generally claiming the powers and prerogatives of a prophet. Recognizing -- or being informed -- that his tale was a tax on credulity, Joseph provided himself with "witnesses." The first group, known as the "Three Witnesses," signed a statement declaring that they had seen both the golden plates and the angel who brought them. The second group, known as the "Eight Witnesses," couched their affirmation in a closer approach to legal language, and bore record "with words of soberness" that they had seen and "hefted" the wonderful plates, which "had the appearance of gold."

In spite of these testimonials, Smith's claims were not accepted by most of his neighbours, who declared that he had been a " money-digger" and "crystal gazer" from boyhood. The prophet was without honour in his own country, and -- it may be added -- his religion had not found its proper habitat. Not until Joseph's missionaries pushed their way into the settlements of the Mississippi valley did the new religion meet any considerable measure of success. Then for a time its progress was amazing. At the prophet's death, in 1844, from 50,000 to 100,000 people accepted him as the spokesman and vicegerent of God. Today probably not less than a million persons hold the same faith.

No one can understand the rise of Mormonism without some knowledge of the time and place in which it arose. Human movements which achieve even partial success usually have had help from circumstances; and never was such help more manifest than in the early years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Joseph Smith was not the man to surmount great obstacles and compel great and lasting changes by his own unaided force. He lacked energy, diplomacy, and steadfastness for such a task. In a less favouring age and society than that of Arabia in the seventh century, Mohammed might not have founded a world religion; but he would have made his mark as a notable schismatic or reformer. In a less favouring age and society than that which was ready to his hand, Joseph Smith would have been lost to sight. He could play his part only on a prepared stage; and such a stage was the Mississippi valley in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

The great valley was then a social, political, and religious chaos. It was part of the territory of a civilized nation, it had been settled by civilized men; but in manners, customs, and institutions, it was very imperfectly civilized. Subjected to primitive conditions, wrestling with a formidable wilderness, and for a long time engaged in warfare with a barbaric enemy, the western settlers brought with them the strength and tenacity of civilization, and left its refinements and restraints to follow as they might. Rifles and axes stocked the first emigrant wagons that crossed the Alleghanies; plows and spinning-wheels came next; mahogany and fine linen had to wait for a quieter day and an easier trail.

It was much the same with those intellectual and spiritual matters which more nearly concern this history. In 1830 the Mississippi valley presented the singular spectacle of a community which had escaped the bonds of religion without outgrowing its doctrines. Practically all the people came of religious ancestry, even of devout ancestry. They had a deep reverence for "things of the Spirit." They were fond of theological speculations. They deemed it a matter of vital import to learn what had become of the Lost Tribes of Israel; and they went insane formulating data on the second coming of Christ. As far as any scientific scepticism was concerned, they were innocent as the followers of Godfrey de Bouillon. But of definite religious standards, or organizations and teachers, to satisfy the prevailing interest in religious matters, they had most none.

Dorchester computes that in the year 1830, the Mississippi Valley contained 4,000,000 inhabitants. He reckons 348,490 of these as communicants of divers Protestant churches. Perhaps half as many more may be classed as Catholics. In Kentucky and to a less extent in other states were little groups of rational freethinkers, inheritors of Rousseau and Voltaire, men who had worked their way to a reasonably stable frame of mind on religious matters, however unsatisfactory their conclusions were deemed by the orthodox. The rest of the population of the valley -- five-sixths of the whole -- were religious without having an organized religion; were hungry for spiritual guidance without knowing how to get it. Their faith was in solution, ready to crystallize about any personality, any organization, any doctrine that could give point and purpose to their spiritual strivings, and lead them to the peace of assured conviction.

The religious instability of the time and region, and the feeble hold of existing churches on social life cannot be expressed by figures. They can be illustrated only. In many places of considerable popula- no sermon had been preached by an authorized clergyman for ten, twelve, or fifteen years. When a minister appeared in some of the back settlements, it was not uncommon for him to be asked to perform the marriage ceremony for couples who had been living together for years, and who, perchance, had children old enough to be interested in the novel occasion. The distances covered by some early circuit riders in their efforts to reach every part of the land are downright appalling, when the primitive modes of travel are considered. The Methodist clergyman stationed at Detroit, in 1822, had the whole territory of Michigan for his circuit, except one town in the upper peninsula, and was expected to minister to Maumee, Ohio, as well. It took four weeks to make his round, in good weather. In Danville, Kentucky, in 1818, there were two churches, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic. The Catholic membership is unknown, but it cannot have been large. The Presbyterian church did not have a single male member.

The churches were weak not only in numbers, but weak in learning, weak in organization, weak in the narrowness of their appeal. Most of the institutions which now bring the church into close contact with the workaday life of a community did not then exist -- at least, not west of the Alleghanies. There were church gymnasiums, social settlements, debating societies, Young Men's Christian Associations. The preachers, who with incredible toil and splendid courage made their way to and fro through the half wilderness, preached virtue as well as doctrine. But they had no organic plan of helping men to be either moral or devout: and, with few exceptions, their lack of learning and authority restricted them to a purely emotional appeal. Under such conditions, religious exercises came to consist in chief measure of gathering in crowds to hear about, the lost state of one's soul. The pioneer attended a meeting, and listened to the Word. His heart was touched, he was convicted of sin, converted, and sincerely believed that he had entered upon a new life. But there was nothing to keep him in the new life. When the novelty had worn off and the emotional crisis had passed, the convert backslid; to remain in outer darkness till converted again.

One exception must be made to this rather sweeping statement of church weakness. The Roman Catholic church, then as now, had all the varied machinery which enables a shepherd to watch over his flock. But the Puritan heritage of most American settlers in the great valley was so strong that conversion to Catholicism was practically out of the question. The prejudice against "Romanizing" was invincible. A man of Protestant lineage might transgress every disciplinary rule of his ancestral church, and nearly every rule of morality. He might never go near a church nor hear a sermon; or, on the other hand, he might run after every ragged street preacher who lifted the banner of a freakish faith. These things reflected in some measure on his repute as a man of sense and good conduct, but they did not cost him that indefinable and invaluable thing best expressed by the word "caste." But if such a man turned to the oldest and most opulent of all forms of Christianity, he was beyond the pale. The church which had crowned Charlemagne and blessed Columbus and planted the Cross on the Great River was deemed somehow unworthy to the ragged squatters along that river's banks.

The gulf which divided Roman Catholic and Protestant churches was the deepest and most nearly impassable barrier in the religious field, but not the only one. The age was an age of schism; and almost every new sect on the continent had a branch in the Mississippi valley. To give but a few instances, the Disciples of Christ took their rise in 1810. The Cumberland Presbyterians began a separate existence in the same year. The Reformed Methodists followed in 1814. The Hicksite Quakers broke away from the main body in 1827! The Methodist Protestant church was organized in 1830, and the Millerites discovered the exact date of the end of the world in 1831. Since the aforesaid ending was to come March 23, 1844, it will be seen that Miller and his disciples did not allow themselves very much time to effect the world's conversion. This point is worth noting when studying the claims and expectations of Mormon leaders at about the same period.

Into this chaos of churched and unchurched, this welter of formless fears and unformed faiths, came Mormonism. It was as arrogant as the teachings of Mohammed; as eclectic as the advertising of a quack doctor. It appealed, not to argument, but to authority; an angel of God had come down from heaven to re-establish His lost religion on earth, and make plain to His chosen prophet the way of salvation for mankind. It was ready to meet all doubts and to solve all problems. It had a prompt, specific answer for every question. It was willing to explain at length whence a man came, why he was here, and whither he was going. The definiteness of its answers appealed with irresistible force to that type of mind which cannot refrain from questioning and cannot endure suspense. The magnitude of its claims took the place of evidence. A man who merely claimed to have found a new and true meaning in a well-known Bible text might be asked for his authority. But the man who nonchalantly offered the world a whole new scripture, and proposed to retranslate the old one, who told what the pre-existing spirits of men were doing before creation and where Christ spent the three days between crucifixion and resurrection, found his audacity accepted as proof of divine guidance in inspiration.

The new religion was as catholic as it was audacious. It left nothing out of its revelations which could attract any one of whom its prophet had ever heard. To the curious, it proffered an authentic history of some part of those Lost Tribes, whose fate was so perplexing to our grandfathers. To the devout, it supplied a record of the dealings of God with the peoples of the Western Hemisphere. To the ambitious, it gave the companionship of a man who had conversed with angels, and who bore the seal of the Most High. To the humble, it offered enlistment in the literal army of God. It copied the grips and signs and passwords of secret societies; it mirrored the very health fads of the hour. "Hot drinks are not good for the body or for the belly," declared the prophet on one occasion -- perhaps when a Thompsonian "draught was racking his internal economy; and from that day to this, the Mormon who indulges in tea or coffee is counted a dangerous latitudinarian.

The very mechanism of the new propaganda was made ready in advance. Revivals had done little to provide permanent church homes for the devout, but they had accustomed the people to the phenomena of conversions in mass, and to trusting that ecstatic impulse known to Quakers as the "inner light." When Joseph Smith conversed with spirits, he did only what hundreds of others had done; what thousands hoped some day to do. When he found mysterious books and magic gems, he had merely succeeded in a search which engaged the attention of many. When he declared hysterical convulsions were caused by the presence of devils, the whole community agreed with his diagnosis; and who should dispute him when he assumed to drive those devils away? There was nothing in Smith's most extravagant claims to offend the average understanding in the society which heard those claims; and there was everything to excite curiosity.

Had there been a state church in the western country, or even a close-knit and well-appointed church system without state alliance, Mormonism would have progressed slowly if at all. Had there been a strong and stable government in the valley, Mormonism would have dropped some of its most characteristic features, or been suppressed as treason. Mormon writers have complained -- and justly -- of the barbarous mob violence which afflicted their church in Missouri and Illinois. But if there had been a government capable of suppressing the mob, the new religion might have prospered less, even if it had suffered less. Assuredly, no government with well-defined traditions of sovereignty would have granted such a charter as that given to the city of Nauvoo; and no state of European firmness of fiber would have looked on complacently at the efforts of Smith and Young to establish a boundless theocracy.

And here we touch the reason why Mormonism, with all its elements of attractiveness, roused furious and unreasoning opposition wherever it came in contact with non-Mormon communities. It sought to establish not only a church but a government, and a government whose character was opposed to every instinct and tradition of American life. The pioneer of the Mississippi valley saw no reason why Joseph Smith might not talk with angels; and the idea of a scripture showing God's workings on the Western Hemisphere appealed to his continental pride. But when asked to renounce his liberty of action, and when told that he must yield implicit obedience to the decrees of an irresponsible ruler, the pioneer rebelled; and he denounced those who did not rebel as traitors to the principles of American life. The democracy of the land was rough and chaotic; but it was deep and vital and it revolted instinctively at the idea of a theocratic despotism.

The troubles of Mormonism always have sprung from two sources; its claims to despotic and exclusive authority in civil affairs, and its teaching and practice of polygamy. The pioneer communities of 1830-45 resented most sharply the threat against their liberties. The nation today reprobates most severely the violation of its accepted social order. To the thoughtful student of affairs, the two offenses are one.