Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 3

PROPHET VS. BUSINESS MANAGER

BRIGHAM YOUNG was thirty-one years old when he came to Kirtland, Ohio, nearly four years the senior of his accepted prophet. The two men now were adherents of the same religion; they were alike in being of New England birth and ancestry; alike in their physical vigour, their love of the good things of life, their boundless faith in the future. There the resemblance ended. The twelve years which Brigham and Joseph spent in the common cause but emphasized the difference in their natures.

Joseph was a prophet of pronunciamentos. Brigham was an apostle of work.

Joseph indulged in revelations on every commonplace topic. Brigham put forth but one revelation in his life. Joseph was sometimes impressive, sometimes jocular, but he was destitute of real seriousness and real humor. Brigham had plenty of both. Joseph was a scatterer. Brigham was a collector. Joseph turned aside after everything that crossed his path. Brigham never left his appointed trail. Joseph dreamed of being ruler of the United States. Brigham made himself czar of a desert empire; small, to be sure, but unique among modern communities -- and his own.

Both men were necessary to the creed they supported. Brigham could not have founded a church. Joseph could not have preserved one. Joseph and his earlier aids had gathered a thousand planks of doctrine. Brigham built these planks into a compact house of faith which endures to this day.

In 1832, Mormonism consisted of a supplementary scripture, the Book of Mormon; a quantity of unassorted revelations; a number of unconferred ecclesiastical titles; an inchoate theory of communism; and -- the claim of direct communication with the Most High through the prophet, Joseph Smith. This last was the basic asset of the new religion; the other things were but its trappings and suits. Other creeds derived authority from doubtfully interpreted texts, concerning which theologues had wrangled for sixteen centuries. Mormonism claimed a new revelation, which would make plain whatever the older scriptures had left uncertain; a continuous revelation, which would guide the faithful in every trial of their lives. It was this claim which made Mormonism a unique creed when Brigham Young came to Kirtland; and after more than fourscore years -- it is this claim which interposes the strongest barrier to the political or religious assimilation of the Mormon community with the rest of mankind.

There is a basic difference between religions of argument and religions of revelation. Revelation is despotic; argument is democratic. Of all world religions, Mohammedanism rests most completely on revelation; and by the same token, it has been associated in all ages with unblinking despotism. Calvinism is the most argumentative -- not to say the most disputatious -- type of Christianity; and for more than three centuries Calvinism has been the creed most intimately connected with struggles for liberty. In its claim of a new and directly inspired prophet, Mormonism was closely akin to the religion of Mohammed. It was destined to copy its Oriental prototype in political and domestic matters, as well as in theological ones.

But with the best will in the world to be a pasha as well as a prophet, Smith in 1832 lacked the machinery to carry out his own wishes and the logic of his church. He had been dealing in revelations for about five years. He had enjoyed the companionship of several men far abler and immeasurably more learned than himself. But up to this time, their joint labours had resulted chiefly in words, words, words. They had made converts -- times and conditions were such that any one could make converts to anything. They had at hand a vast body of material from which a skilful organizer could construct much. But of themselves, they could build nothing that did not need to be shored up afresh each day by a new dispensation from heaven. The church was so loosely organized that Smith had to have a special revelation from the Lord before he could settle the most trifling dispute or proceed with the most obvious work. If cities could be built by revelations alone, Smith would have peopled the continent. But city-building requires hard work and sound sense; and until Brigham Young came on the scene, these qualities were conspicuously lacking in Mormon leadership.

Mormon writers always assume that the personality of Joseph Smith and the authenticity of the Book of Mormon are as important to their religion as the personality of Christ and the authenticity of the Bible are to Christianity. Opposing writers tacitly grant that claim by learned philological and archaeological dissertations on the fraud of the Book of Mormon, and verbose affidavits to prove that Smith was not the sort of person the Lord would choose for a prophet. The controversy is worse than absurd. The claim to act as social mentor for the Almighty, and to pick out the people with whom He may deal is as presumptuous as the claim to be the bearer of His message to mankind, and deserves not a whit more consideration.

As for the Book of Mormon, the case is purely a question of evidence. Its detractors never have proved that the book was revamped from "Manuscript Found." Its believers never have proved that the book was written on golden plates and miraculously translated by the prophet; and this would seem to be the greater lapse of the two. Without going so far as to adopt the maxim that miracles never can be proved, since the credibility of the witnesses must always be less than the improbability of the event, we may ask at least as much evidence to establish a new revelation as would be required to establish title to a contested piece of real estate. Such evidence never has been offered for the Book of Mormon. The testimony of the so-called "witnesses" is not convincing-better testimonials and more of them can be had any day to confirm the merits of any quack medicine on the market. We may add that the "reformed Egyptian" in which the book was supposed to be written is a language wholly unknown to scholars, one of which no trace is preserved on monuments or papyrus.

The religion Smith founded, as well as his recorded history, shows him to have been a facile borrower. His mind was too untrained, his habits of thought too loose, to permit of plodding devotion to any of the ideas which in succession possessed him. He acquired the patter of a dozen subjects, and solid information about none. Under the influence of Orson Hyde, whose scholarship was limitless by comparison with Smith's ignorance, the prophet affected a devotion to learning, and for a time seemed to study violently. Sidney Rigdon inspired Smith with dreams of illimitable wealth and power; but Sidney's mind was as loose as Smith's. It was Brigham Young who brought care and method to the grandiose projects of the church leaders. It was Brigham who knew how to move by practical ways to a desired result. Smith had revelations that a temple should be built. Brigham went to work to build one. Smith and others tried to call wealth into existence by fiat, as in the "Bank" at Kirtland. Brigham laid plans to accumulate wealth by commonplace toil and thrift. Whatever he may have thought of the prophet at their first meeting, before his twelve years of probation were over, Brigham was planted on the bedrock of his native Yankee common sense, and had returned to the original New England gospel of work -- hard work for everybody.

It is thus that the real history of Mormonism came to be the biography of Brigham Young. Less brilliant, and far less learned than many devotees of the new faith, he excelled them all in his capacity for ordered, practical work. The prophet borrowed from the words and thoughts of others; but more and more as the years passed, he leaned on the works and deeds of Brigham. Without Smith -- and probably without Sidney Rigdon -- Mormonism could not have been founded. But without Brigham Young, the work of all his predecessors and colleagues would have been scattered and brought to naught.