Were
they, then, enthusiasts, practicing a fraud upon themselves by their own fevered
imaginations? If perchance this could have been their mental condition in the
beginning, surely after they had been disappointed in all their hopes, stripped
of every vestige of an authority among their fellows, publicly humiliated and
finally disfellowshipped and left to dwindle in the rear while the great cause rolled
indifferently on; and finding their time, talent, possessions, and characters
all spent in a cause which now seemingly forsakes them, we say, surely then
their fevered fanaticism would have been chilled, their judgment in forty years
of disappointment would have become cooled, and they would have seen their
error. Then, if they were not honest enough to retract, they, like all victims
of enthusiasm, upon being liberated, would have been more or less vindicative,
and would have sought revenge on the men who had misled them and the system that
they had wrought their downfall. This state of mind they never arrived at,
though every condition in their history was favorable to it had they in the
beginning been enthusiasts. Thence we find no sound premises upon which to
charge them with over enthusiasm.
DELUDED?
Is it in the power of man, young or old, learned or ignorant to bring angels
down from heaven or escort men into the presence of heavenly beings? And
then and there command those men in such a manner that throughout all their
days they dare not go contrary to that command? Not even though a score of
years have passed after the “magician’s” death? If this is a delusion you
must ascribe to the boy prophet supernatural power—a power superior to all
mankind and that would require more faith than to believe that he was a
prophet.
The
objector may observe that it was a hallucination of the mind that these three
men experienced. It is indeed a most incredible thing that three men of
different dispositions and in sound health should each have the same hallucination
at the same time, and, under different conditions, each remain the same in
relation thereto. To believe such would truly be a most overwhelming hallucination.
However if this thing be a delusion the world is openly challenged to reveal
the fraud, expose the cheat, and thereby enlighten and disenthrall the
thousands of honest men and women gathered from nigh “every nation under
heaven.” (Nephi Lowell Morris, The “Book of Mormon: The Story of Its
Discovery—its Construction—the Testimony of the Witnesses—The Internal Evidences
of its Truth [Salt Lake City: Desert News, 1899], 24-25)
