CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
1820-1830.
A Glance Eastward—The Middle States Sixty Years Ago—Birth and Parentage of Joseph Smith—Spiritual Manifestations—Joseph Tells his Vision—And is Reviled—Moroni Appears—Persecutions—Copying the Plates—Martin Harris—Oliver Cowdery—Translation—The Book of Mormon—Aaronic Priesthood Conferred—Conversions—The Whitmer Family—The Witnesses—Spaulding Theory—Printing of the Book—Melchisedec Priesthood Conferred—Duties of Elders and Others—Church of Latter-day Saints Organized—First Miracle—First Conference—Oliver Cowdery Ordered to the West.
Let us turn now to the east, where have been evolving these several years a new phase of society and a new religion, destined presently to enter in and take possession of this far-away primeval wilderness. For it is not alone by the power of things material that the land of the Yutas is to be subdued; that mysterious agency, working under pressure of high enthusiasm in the souls of men, defying exposure, cold, and hunger, defying ignominy, death, and the destruction of all corporeal things in the hope of heaven's favors and a happy immortality, a puissance whose very breath of life is persecution, and whose highest glory is martyrdom—it is through this subtile and incomprehensible spiritual instrumentality, rather than from a desire for riches or any tangible advantage that the new Israel is to arise, the new exodus to be conducted, the new Canaan to be attained.
Sixty years ago western New York was essentially a new country, Ohio and Illinois were for the most
