MORMONS, or more properly THE Cnuacu or JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS. A religious sect of the United States. The early history of the Mormons is that of their founder, Joseph Smith. .I r.. who was born at Sharon, Windsor County, Vt., December 23, 1805. Ac cording to contemporary anti-Mormon descrip tions, or to the suppressed accounts of early Mormon apologists, Joseph's paternal grand father was a man of distorted religious views; his maternal grandfather, Solomon Mack, was an infirm beggar, and superstitious to a high de gree. Joseph's mother believed in cures by faith and in dreams as heavenly admonitions. The Prophet's father, after failing as a farmer, a storekeeper. and a root-digger in Vermont and New Hampshire. took up a land claim in Ontario County, N. V., in 1815. Like his son, lie was a confessed believer in witchcraft and demon posses sion. In his autobiography Smith called these the reports of evil-disposed and designing persons; by the later church historians they are either palliated or deprived of significance: however, to the student of heredity these details of Smith's ancestry are considered essential to a patho logical estimate of his character. The Mormons quote, only to refute, the hostile statements that Smith was a visionary, a fanatic, an impostor, and a libertine: instead, they esteem him a prophet, a seer, a vicegerent of Cod, and a martyr (Times and Seasons, v. 856). They grant that Joseph's education was defective and that as a boy he could hardly write his name. He himself asserted that he was 'a rough stone' and desired 'the learning of heaven alone.' His mother said of him that in his nineteenth year he had never read the Bible through.
The 'conversion' of .Joseph took place in 1820 near Palmyra. it was a time of great local ex citement on the subject of religion. Joseph had retired to a solitary place and knelt in prayer to God. Ile fell into a trance, and was seized with a feeling of great depression and terror. "Just at this moment of great alarm," he con tinues in his description of the event, "I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun. which descended gradually multil it fell upon Me. When the light rested upon me, I saw• two personages whose brightness and glory defy all description. standing above in the air. one of them spake unto me. . . . When I came to myself again 1 found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven." The second of the 'visions of ,Joseph' took place on September 21, 1823, whntt the heavenly messenger disclosed the hiding place of the gold plates upon which the Book of Mormon was asserted to be engraved. There was a series of seven visions in all, which extend over as many years, and which, as in the case of Mo hammed. have attributed by some to epilepsy.
Connected with these trances is the so-called "transcription of the gold plates." As a money digger among Indian mounds young Smith made use of a 'peek-stone.' This became the famous Trim and Thummim.' whereby "Joseph the Seer translated the reformed Egyptian of the plates of Nephi." Students of abnormal psyc•lrology infer from recent investigation of the original document with its sprawling superscription '('ar ac•tors' that it is analogous to the automatic writing of the semi-hypnotized crystal gazer, and urge that Smith's later methods of 'translating' bear nut this supposition of a sub-conscious activity. Throwing himself into a condition of revery by gazing, into his 'interpreters.' he dictated to his scribes what appeared to him to be communications of supernatural origin. Such an interpretation of Joseph's visions in terms of abnormal psychology is thought blasphemous by the Saints. They hold the records to be divinely inspired, while Smith compared his peculiar psychic experiences to those of Saint Paul. Of
Smith's writings the first eras the Book of Mor mon, begun in September, 1827, at Manchester, N. V.. continued at Harmony. Pa., and finished at Fayette, N. V.„Iune, 1820. The original manuscript has disappeared. There remains only a duplicate made by Smith's principal scribe, the schoolmaster Oliver Cowdery. The first edition was printed at Palmyra in 1830. Two other editions were published within ten years. The fifteen books of this "Sacred History of An cient America from the Earliest Ages After the Flood to the Beginning of the Fifth Century of the Christian Era" Smith himself thus summarized: '''Flee history of America is unfolded from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel to the beginning of the fifth cen tury of the Christian Era. We are informed by these records that America. in ancient times, has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second rare came directly from the city of .Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle temard the close of the fourth century. The are the Indians. Thes hook also tells us that our Saviour made His appearance upon this continent after llis resurrection; that lie planted the Gospel here in all its fullness and richness and lamer and blessing; that t lay had apostles, prophets. pas tors• teachers, and evangelists; the same order, the SII priesthood, the same ordina nces, gifts, pONN ere, and blessing, as was enjoyed on the Eastern Continent: that the people were cut off in consequence of their transgressions; that the last of their prophets who existed among them was commanded to write an abridgment of their prophecies, history, etc., and to hide it up in the ea rt h." Certain adverse critics dismiss the Book of Mormon as a mere hodgepodge of petty infor mation. gross anachronisms, and biblical bor rowings: this. in the opinion of another class of adverse critics, is to miss its significance both as a cryptic biography and as a characteristic bit of provincial Americana. The latter declare that in addition to private affairs inadvertently incorporated there are water marks of some his toric interest to be found in the document. They detect, in Scriptural paraphrase, descriptions of the current agitations against Rotnanism, infi delity, and Freemasonry. and even references to the so-called 'Washingtonian movement for total abstinence. The widely prevalent theory that the Indians were the lost ten tribes of Israel is also embodied. The Nephites were not merely the modern red men in disguise, but in their men tal habits they intimately resembled local sec tarians. The speech of Nephi contains quotations from the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the speech of Lehi reflects the heretical tenets charged against the Presbytery of Geneva, in whose bounds Joseph himself lived. Applying the methods of the higher criticism, unbelievers note that the book is filled with the catch words of the Methodist camp-meeting exhorter, and cite in particular the last section of the Book of Mormon, from its likeness to a Methodist book of discipline, as final proof of the writer's dependence on local theology. Believing the Book of Mormon to he the veritable word of God de livered through verbal inspiration, the Mormon apologists consider it unwarrantable to apply the higher criticism to their bible. Nevertheless such criticism renders untenable previous argu ments against the authenticity of the work.