Commenting on the authorship of the article, “’Try the Spirits’,” Times and Seasons 3, no. 11 (April 1, 1842): 743-48, Alonzo L. Gaskill and Richard G. Moore wrote:
[Bruce] Van Orden cites Jonathan Neville, who holds that “Joseph
Smith was definitely not the actual author of ‘Try the Spirits,’ but . . . the
piece was a combination of the writings or contributions of Benjamin
Winchester, W. W. Phelps, and John Taylor.” See Jonathan Neville, Brought to
Light, 2nd ed. (Digital Legends, 2016), 41-81, cited in Van Orden, We’ll
Sing and We’ll Shout, 342n50. Though Neville and Van Orden seem quite
dogmatic about “Try the Spirits” not being authored by Joseph, there is
hesitancy in fully embracing their conclusion. We have, for example, two dates
on which Joseph appears to have taught on this subject; 27 June 1839 and
sometime between 26 June and 4 August of 1839. Most of the pieces Van Orden proposes
Phelps wrote on behalf of Joseph Smith are articles written in the Times and
Seasons and not the Prophet’s public discourses. Indeed, the public
discourses are often used to show how they differ from things published in
periodicals under Joseph’s name. See, for example, Brown, “The Translator and
the Ghostwriter,” 50-51. In the case of “Try the Spirits,” it does make its way
into the Times and Seasons—but not until almost three years after Joseph
first taught on the subject. When Joseph gave his 27 June 1839 discourse on
this subject, we know that that Wilford Woodruff took notes and then copied those
notes into his “Book of Revelations” notebook almost immediately thereafter.
See JSP, D6, 509. Thus, this strongly suggests that Joseph,
rather than Phelps, Taylor, or Winchester was the source for these ideas.
Willard Richards’s “Pocket Companion” version of this discourse is believed to
have come from an account of the discourse given to him by John Taylor, Wilford
Woodruff, or another apostle upon their arrival in England in early 1840. While
we know that Wilford Woodruff wrote his notes on the discourse in his “Book of
Revelations” almost immediately, we know “Woodruff also copied the discourse
into his 1839 journal. In the journal account, which Woodruff apparently made
sometime after he wrote his ‘Book of Revelations’ account, Woodruff expanded on
and reorganized the content in the earliest account.” “Significant differences
between Woodruff’s notebook and journal accounts” exist. See JSP, D6,
509. All of this is simply to say that, while some think Joseph is not the
direct author of “Try the Spirits” (as it appeared in the Times and Seasons
in April of 1842), it seems quite evident that he was the source of the
doctrinal ideas contained in the public discourse, and likely for much of the
language—regardless of whether Phelps, Taylor, Winchester, or Woodruff had influence
editorially. (Alonzo L. Gaskill and Richard G. Moore, The Revised and
Expanded Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith: Compared with the Earliest Known
Manuscripts [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2024], 564 n. 24)
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