may easily have coined into a vision of God. Seven years however elapse, before this bold conception embodies itself in a detailed scheme. While “the vision tarries,” the nascent Prophet relapses, if the story be true, into the vagrant habits of his early life, which show him to be constitutionally of a deeply superstitious turn. By the aid of seer-stones and hazel-rods, he had gained no small reputation as a money-digger. Certainly, if he failed to track the secret veins of silver, he did not fail to sound the depths of human credulity. At the end of seven years, he is prepared to enter upon prophetical functions, and announces a new revelation, whose origin forms a curious record in the annals of literary forgery. A disabled clergyman, Mr. Spalding, residing in Ohio, amused the heavy hours occasioned by chronic disease, and indulged a creative fancy in penning a historical romance, entitled “the Manuscript found.” Seizing on the familiar idea that the North American Indians are lineal descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel, it purported to trace those tribes from the time when history loses them, and to describe their settlement on this continent, their division into existing clans, with their wars and mode of living. As the fiction was bold and lively, it was read in successive portions by the author’s friends, as rapidly as he composed. His premature death prevented its publication; and it lay for many years amongst dusty papers, almost forgotten. By what legerdemain it came into the hands of Joseph Smith, none but he could disclose, while it was his interest to conceal. Too many witnesses, however, attest the substantial identity of the published book of Mormon with this manuscript, to admit a doubt of the plagiarism: and the mysterious disappearance of the document from the family archives, affords presumption of the theft.
When the mind is quickened by enthusiasm, the slightest incidents become tributary to the one idea which fills and masters it. The romance of Mr. Spalding gave to Smith the key-note of his imposture. The golden plates which he professed to dig by divine direction from the hill-side at Cumorrah, taught that Christ, after his ascension into Heaven, again descended and planted his Church among the lost tribes of Israel on this continent—that these,
