Commenting on his conversion
Then came along the Book Called Priest's American Antiquities. I opend to the place and page where he speeks of an angel coming to visit or rather of Joseph Smith finding the golden plates or the Book of mormon being Showed to him by an angel. But however I was struck with Such a Sensation of fe[e]ling that it was the work of God the Spirit run through my veins as a Shock of Electric and I never rested till I Saw the Book and heard the first, Elder, Erast[u]s snow, Preach, then Elder Elisha H. Davis. The Seccond time I was fully convinced by the Spirit that it was the work of God. (Eugene England, "George Laub's Nauvoo Journal," BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 18 no. 2 [1978]:151-78, here, pp. 155-6)
What is rather interesting is that Josiah Priest’s book was critical of the veracity of the Book of Mormon, and yet, it was used as an instrument by which Laub was converted to the truthfulness thereof! As England wrote in a note (Ibid., 155 n. 5):
Josiah Priest's American Antiquities (Albany, N.Y.: Hoffman and White, 1830) was immensely popular in the 1830s, going through a number of editions of many thousands of copies. It catalogues various kinds of evidence that "America was, anciently, inhabited with partially civilized and agricultural nations, surpassing in numbers its present population" and that these inhabitants were in part immigrants that included "Asiatic nations, very soon after the flood," and also "Polynesians, . . . Phoenicians, . . . Israelites . . . ," etc. The passage that Laub is apparently referring to, on page 76 of the fifth edition (1835), mentions "the Mormonites, who pretend to have discovered a book with golden leaves, in which is the history of the American Jews, and their leader, Mormon, who came hither more than 2,000 years ago."
It is often said that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. I think this is a powerful example of such.
