It was in 1834. The Church had been organized at Fayette, Seneca county, New York, and had been removed thence to Kirtland and vicinity in Ohio. In this place a man named D. P. Hurlburt joined its ranks. Anti-"Mormon" writers have been in the habit of dubbing him "Dr. Philastus Hurlburt" so as to lend dignity to this explanation; but the man was never a "doctor" of law or medicine or divinity or of anything else; he had been given this first name "Doctor" because he was the seventh son and according to the belief of a certain class at the time was expected to become a physician. He had been a Methodist but had been expelled from that denomination for immoral conduct. Soon after his conversion to "Mormonism" he was ordained to the priesthood and sent on a mission to Pennsylvania; but falling into disrepute there he was recalled. Tried before the brethren at Kirtland for conduct unbecoming a Latter-day Saint he was found guilty and threatened with excommunication if he did not repent and improve his life. He manifested signs of penitence and was forgiven. But he declared afterwards—and he may be believed for the thing is in strict accord with the rest of his conduct—that he had only shammed repentance in order to ascertain whether he could deceive the Prophet Joseph. He again fell into sin for which in June 1833 he was cut off from the Church. His disappointed ambition sought revenge. Collecting together the enemies of the Saints in and about Kirtland he incited them to deeds of violence against the Prophet and the Saints generally. In April 1834 he was arrested and tried for threatening Joseph's life and compelled by the court to "enter into a new recognizance with good and sufficient security in the sum of two hundred dollars hereafter to keep the peace and be of good behavior to the citizens of the State of Ohio generally and to the said Joseph Smith Junior in particular for the period of six months."

Now it happened that while doing missionary work in Pennsylvania, part of which of course consisted in preaching the Book of Mormon, he heard of a Mr. Solomon Spaulding and a certain manuscript which he had written and which it was said resembled the Nephite Record. Hurlburt, however, his mind occupied with other matters, paid no attention at the time to either the man or his story. But revenge against his one-time religious friends now whetted his curiosity in both. So he went post-haste to his old field of labor, his interest keenly alive to any scrap of information he might brush up concerning the alleged similarities between the Manuscript and the "Mormon Bible."

Naturally enough his eagerness was rewarded by a wealth of important "facts." He learned that in 1812 there had lived at Conneaut, Ohio, a man by the name of Solomon Spaulding. This man had received, it was asserted, a "good education," having been graduated from Dartmouth College in 1785. For some time after his graduation, he had held a pastorate of an obscure church, but becoming dissatisfied with Christianity, he had turned infidel. While living in Ohio, he became interested in the ancient mound builders, whose ruins are so numerous in that State, and conceived an ambition to write "a fanciful history of the ancient races of this country." This ambition was subsequently realized in a work which bore the attractive title, The Manuscript Story, and which he was in the habit of reading for the delectation of his neighbors. In the same year (1812) he removed with his family to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, for the purpose, it appears, of getting his work published. Here he fell in with a printer named Patterson, to whom he submitted the manuscript. Mr. Patterson, it was claimed, returned it to Mr. Spaulding with the advice to "polish it up." After two years' residence at Pittsburg, the family moved to Amity in the same State, where the author died in 1816. This manuscript story, Hurlburt was assured, resembled very closely the contents of the Book of Mormon—so closely, in fact, that the old neighbors of Mr. Spaulding were struck with the similarities as soon as they heard the latter read by the "Mormon" elders, though it had been eighteen or twenty years since they had been amused by the "romance." Like the Book of Mormon, they told him, it was written in "Bible style." The expression "and it came to pass" occurred so often that some of the neighbors used to call the author "Old Come-to-pass." Nay, they further affirmed the proper names were identical with those in the "Mormon Bible." They distinctly remembered the names "Nephi," "Lehi," and "Moroni."

But where was the Story? and how was Hurlburt to get it? Spaulding's widow, by this time Mrs. Davidson, was living in Massachusetts; no doubt she would have it. To her therefore he wrote. She replied that it was now in a small trunk which had belonged to her husband and which was at her uncle's in Pennsylvania. But Mr. Hurlburt might have it, provided he would return it and give her when it was published one-half the proceeds. Hurlburt promised and she let him take the manuscript.

Acting on the hints he had received during his absence from Ohio, he returned to the neighborhood of Kirtland bearing Mr. Spaulding's Story and also weighty thoughts concerning the Book of Mormon, the latter of which he intended to elaborate into a volume. He lacked means, however, to publish it. So he revealed enough of his theory in public lectures to induce his friends to contribute several hundred dollars towards the enterprise. In due time the book appeared, bearing the sensational title Mormonism Unveiled, by E. D. Howe, in which the Book of Mormon was declared to have originated in the Spaulding Manuscript Story.

The substance of this Howe-Hurlburt explanation is as follows: While Spaulding was at Pittsburg, there lived at this place a young man named Sidney Rigdon who worked for Mr. Patterson in the printing office. Young Rigdon, always on the lookout, it seems, for future greatness, and having an opportunity and plenty of time while the manuscript lay on the shelf of the printing house, copied it word for word and stowed away his copy till a propitious moment should arrive when he might make something out of it. In course of time he drifted into the ministry—we are using the language of non-"Mormon" writers—wandering around from one denomination to another but meantime revolving in his mind his literary project and working at odd moments upon a new version of the Story. When his work was completed, which differed from that of Spaulding chiefly in that he had injected into it a strong vein of theology, he named it the Book of Mormon and gave it to Joseph Smith with instructions to say that it had been revealed to him by an angel. Such in brief is the theory advanced in Mormonism Unveiled to account for the Nephite record.

This Howe-Hurlburt explanation of the origin of the "Mormon Bible" was instantly accepted by those who refused to listen to Joseph Smith's. And wherever the Latter-day Saint elders went, they were confronted with the bald assertion: "Joseph Smith did not write the book; Sidney Rigdon wrote it from the Spaulding manuscript!" This theory, to paraphrase what has been asserted of Hume's "the-miraculous-in-the-impossible" idea, has always served as a sort of Aladdin's lamp with those who lack the time, the brains, or the inclination to look into the story for themselves. Rub this wonderful lamp, and all the hitherto mysterious avenues of knowledge respecting the origin of the work open up, and the nefarious conduct of Joseph Smith and his colleagues in the matter springs up like a vision. A catch phrase was needed which on the lips of the ignorant would have identically the same effect as on the lips of the learned, and at the same time require no exertion on the part of either in the way of study or reflection. It was invented by Howe and Hurlburt. It has a talismanic effect when uttered with a sober countenance and grave accents. Men who are utterly incapable of following a train of thought for ten minutes at a time bandy this explanation about among their friends when a really intelligent investigator suggests how difficult it is to arrive at a conclusion respecting the origin of the Book of Mormon. I venture the assertion that no man can honestly examine this theory and then conscientiously advance it as a satisfactory explanation of the Nephite record.

In support of this hypothesis concerning the origin of the Book of Mormon, not a scintilla of real evidence has ever been adduced, either in this original statement by Howe-Hurlburt or in the hundred-and-one revampings of it by later exponents. It is true that there has been published a "terrifying" array of affidavits by old persons who soberly avow that in their early youth they heard Solomon Spaulding read parts of his manuscript and that after a lapse of from twenty to even sixty years they have a vivid recollection of names and incidents contained in the Story. But it is over-taxing our powers of credulity to ask us to believe that so slight an incident as this could have made so striking an impression on their minds when there was nothing in the nature of the thing itself to awaken at the time anything more than the most commonplace interest.

There are too many weak places in the theory to entitle it to any serious consideration as an explanation of how we got the Book of Mormon.

In the first place, it has never been shown that Sidney Rigdon was at Pittsburg when Spaulding was there, that he was ever in the employ of Patterson the printer, and that therefore he was ever in a position to purloin the manuscript. All statements to the contrary are mere assertion. Rigdon himself declared that he had never been at Pittsburg till 1822, eight years after Spaulding's departure from that city with his manuscript securely locked up in a trunk. But granting that Rigdon was at Patterson's printing office while Spaulding was at Pittsburg, what motive could he have had to steal the Story? It is highly improbable to say the least that Rigdon would have kept the manuscript by him from 1812 till 1830, a period of eighteen years. But even if we admit that he did all this, it has to be shown how a man of Rigdon's position and ability would steal such a miserable piece of writing as this Spaulding Manuscript is. In the absence therefore of any working motive on the part of Sidney Rigdon in this alleged conduct in relation to Spaulding's narrative, the "Mormons" may well be pardoned for refusing to credit the story.

In the next place, the advocates of this theory have never been able to explain how it was that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon got together prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon. The assertion that they did is wholly gratuitous. The testimony of every one connected with the matter is against the allegation. Joseph Smith in his journal records that the first meeting between him and Rigdon took place in December 1830. Parley P. Pratt in his Autobiography gives the circumstances of his meeting with Sidney in the fall of 1830 and presenting him with a copy of the Book of Mormon, which the latter was by no means desirous of receiving. Oliver Cowdery declared that he wrote the Book of Mormon with his own hand. And finally, Sidney Rigdon himself solemnly protested to the world that he never saw or heard of the Nephite record till it was presented to him by Parley P. Pratt in the latter part of 1830, several months after its publication. A theory surely has little claim to our respect which is based on the mere assumption that all these men deliberately lied.

Concerning Rigdon's testimony, we may add another word, inasmuch as an anti-"Mormon" historian has recently averred that this great preacher never directly denied his connection with the origin of the Book of Mormon. In 1863 his son John W. Rigdon visited Utah and was so much concerned over the association which his father was commonly thought to have had with the Prophet prior to the publication of the book that he determined when he returned to the East to obtain a final statement from his father. Accordingly, when the two met again, John W. said: "You have always told me one story, that you never saw the Book of Mormon until it was presented to you by Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery; that all you ever knew of the origin of that book was what they told you and what Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates had told you. Is this true? If so all right; if it is not you owe it to me and to your family to tell it. You are an old man and you will soon pass away and I wish to know if Joseph Smith, in your intimacy with him for fourteen years, has not said something to you that led you to believe he had obtained that book in some other way than what he told you. Give me all you know about it that I may know the truth." Sidney Rigdon looked at his son a moment, raised his hand above his head, and said slowly and emphatically, his eyes moistening with tears: "My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of that book is true. Your mother and sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson, were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of the book was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith, and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith, he never told me but the one story, and that was that he found it engraved upon gold plates in a hill near Palmyra, New York, and that an angel had appeared to him and directed him where to find it, and I have never to you or to any one else told but the one story, and that I now repeat to you." "I believed him," continues Mr. John W. Rigdon, "and now believe that he told me the truth. He also said to me after that that Mormonism was true; that Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and this world would find it out some day." It is difficult to believe that Sidney Rigdon would face the stern and terrible realities of the eternal world with a lie foul and deadly on his lips. A short time ago (in 1904) John W. Rigdon demonstrated his belief in his father's words by joining the Church in New York City.

It has always been the custom of anti-"Mormon" writers to evade these weak points on the ground that "it is more important to establish the fact that a certain thing was done than to prove just how or when it was done." But since it is clear from the facts in the case that "neither time nor place did then adhere," and that our opponents are endeavoring 'to make both,' the precise point at issue is how and when. Such an evasion as this is additional evidence of the weakness of the Hurlburt-Howe explanation.

A recent "historical inquiry" into "Mormonism" makes what it imagines a strong point in favor of the Spaulding theory out of the relationship which Sidney Rigdon sustained to Joseph Smith. "We shall find," it says, "that almost from the beginning of their removal to Ohio, Smith held him in a subjection which can be explained only on the theory that Rigdon, the prominent churchman, had placed himself completely in the power of the unprincipled Smith, and that instead of exhibiting self-reliance, he accepted insult after insult until just before Smith's death he was practically without influence in the church." But it is extremely improbable that a man "as self-reliant and smart as Rigdon was" would have submitted with so much servility to the dictation of "an ignorant country clown." This explanation defeats its purpose by raising a fresh barrier to our belief in the hypothesis. The thing we must believe if we credit this theory is that a really learned and eloquent preacher "with a superabundant gift of tongue and every form of utterance" at his command would steal without any conceivable motive a miserable manuscript that any schoolboy would be ashamed to call his own; that an ambitious and irascible temper so accustomed to leadership everywhere else would cringe in abject submission to the contemptuous dictates of an uncouth country boy twelve years his junior; and that this man could not in the thirty-five years remaining of his life, though removed from the Church, recover from this personal despotism! And what motive could Sidney Rigdon have had for all this craven servility which utterly broke his spirit, despoiled his highest hopes, and crushed his very manhood? Poverty, ignominy, persecution, and disgrace all his days! If Rigdon had been a preacher of any other sect, his eloquence and learning would have commanded a reasonable competence during his life. With any other religion he might have enjoyed a life of ease and respectability instead of sharing with the "Mormons" the hatred and opposition of mankind. In a society such as, according to those who believe that he was the "organizing genius of Mormonism," he possessed the ability to effect, he might have been the foremost character instead of remaining the mere dupe and tool of another who is regarded as greatly his inferior. Then too, if we would believe this theory, we must not call to mind the magnificent opportunity he had when the death of Joseph Smith removed the only partner of his "guilty secret!" One word of his on this occasion, granting his relationship with the Prophet to have been such as his enemies affirm, would have sounded the death-knell of "Mormonism" and would have brought him honor and praise from those who had fought against the Church. That he would have done this had he been in possession of such a secret is evident from what he did do; for he did his utmost to break up the Church when he discovered that it was not likely to give encouragement to his ambition for leadership. Besides, a man who is capable of perpetrating such a fraud as is charged against Sidney Rigdon would scarcely have any scruples about revealing the secret when it was so clearly to his advantage to do so. At any rate, we may well be pardoned for entertaining doubts as to this alleged wickedness on the part of Rigdon so long as there is no explanation of his silence when the Prophet died. There is a more sensible way to account for this "servility" and "meanness of spirit" on the part of Sidney Rigdon; that namely which accounts for the "servility" and "meanness" of "Mormons" generally: Truth took hold of his heart, plain Bible truth, and he "feared" to lose his soul by utterly renouncing it.

The Spaulding Manuscript Recovered.

Such in general were the arguments with which the Saints met the bald assertions of their opponents. But of recent years, this absurd theory has had new light thrown upon it by the recovery of the original Manuscript Story of Solomon Spaulding. When this Spaulding origin of the Nephite Record was first invented, the Saints of course demanded that the manuscript be produced as proof that there was sufficient resemblance between it and the Book of Mormon to warrant the conclusion that the one originated in the other. Or if this were not done, that there be exhibited at least quotations from it. But it was asserted that the Manuscript had been destroyed in a fire that occurred in the printing establishment owned by E. D. Howe, the author of Mormonism Unveiled! For Hurlburt had neither published the work nor returned it to its owner, Mrs. Davidson, though she had repeatedly requested him to send it back according to his agreement. And so the matter rested until a few years ago.

In 1884, the late President James H. Fairchild of Oberlin College, Ohio, was on a visit to Honolulu and was staying with his old friend Mr. L. L. Rice, who had purchased the printing establishment of Howe, the author and publisher of Mormonism Unveiled. Mr. Rice and Mr. Fairchild were looking over the numerous old documents which the former had in his possession to see if there was anything valuable pertaining to the Civil War when they came upon the Manuscript Story of Mr. Spaulding. Having heard of the alleged connection between this narrative and the Book of Mormon, their curiosity was naturally aroused concerning this old manuscript, and they sat down and carefully compared the two works. The result of their examination may be learned from Mr. Fairchild's published statement: "The theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon in the traditional manuscript of Solomon Spaulding will probably have to be relinquished... Some other explanation of the Book of Mormon must be found, if any explanation is required." Two years later, the Manuscript Story was published, nearly half a century after it was said to have been destroyed.

The contents of this notorious work are as follows: Some time during the reign of Constantine in Rome, a certain Fabius embarks for Britain with an important message for the Islanders. Near the British coast, however, the ship encounters a storm, is driven about aimlessly by the raging elements, and finally, in fulfillment of a prediction by someone on board, approaches the coast of America. Upon landing, the Romans are welcomed by the "Deliwares," a tribe of Indians among whom they decide to make a home. Now it happened that they had on board their vessel seven young women, three of whom were "ladies of rank" and the rest "healthy bucksome Lasses." Desiring to make the best of their lot, it was decided, since there were more men than women, that these latter should choose husbands; which they did, leaving the rest of the men to live in single blessedness or select dusky helpmates. After a residence of about two years among the "Deliwares," they move westward several days' journey to a tribe called the "Ohons." These natives, by reason of the labors of a wise man named Lobaska, are more civilized and refined than the tribe they have left. In this part of the country, there exist two great empires, one on the south side of the Ohio called Kentuck, the other on the north side bearing the name Sciota. Here follows a description of the natives, their habits, laws, government, and religion. Upon this background, which occupies the first fifty-five pages—nearly half the book—there is constructed a slender love story. Elseon, a prince of the Kentucks, pays a visit to the court of Sciota, where he falls in love with Lamesa, daughter of the Sciotan emperor. A law of both nations forbids the marriage of these two, but they nevertheless determine to wed, so they elope to the empire of the Kentucks, where there prevails a more liberal construction of the law, and they are joined in matrimony. War, therefore, breaks out between these two peoples, in which thousands are slain on both sides, and in which victory perches on the banner of the Kentucks. At this point, the narrative suddenly breaks off, evidently unfinished.

The work, in published form, contains about one-tenth as much reading matter as the Book of Mormon. It is wretchedly composed; it is filled with dashes indicating broken sentences; only in the latter half, which is by far the best written, are there any traces of imagination, and even then there is a frequent falling from the sublime to the ludicrous; there are occasional passages containing obscene suggestions; and the task of reading it is intolerably tedious. The manuscript, as we have it, answers perfectly to the description given it by Mr. Patterson in his advice to the author "to polish it up;" for certainly one can hardly conceive a literary work more painfully in need of polishing.

While it must be admitted there are some general resemblance between this work and the Book of Mormon, both in content and in external details, still candor and honesty will force from the bitterest anti-"Mormon" of reasonable veracity the admission that the differences between the two works are so great as forever to preclude the possibility of any connection between them. Both the Manuscript Story and the Nephite Record claim to be translations; but the former is a translation of a Latin parchment found in an Ohio mound, the latter is a translation of golden plates written in what is known as reformed Egyptian. Mormon's abridgment was revealed through the instrumentality of an angel and translated by direct inspiration; the Story of Fabius is a "romance" discovered by the merest accident, the fiction of discovery being merely a cheap literary device to increase its sale. The one is a record of Hebrew colonies led hither by the divine hand, while the other is an account of a Roman company driven to America by the mishap of adverse winds. The Manuscript Story assumes the existence of the tribes of Indians on this continent at the time when the Romans landed here; the Book of Mormon gives the origin of the red man in the western hemisphere. Spaulding's narrative, if it arouse interest at all, will do so entirely by reason of a slender element of love, the religious being wholly absent except where the creeds and ceremonies of the heathen natives are described; Mormon's history, on the contrary, is wanting in the love-element and depends mainly upon the religious, which colors almost every instance.