Omaha daily bee., 1902-03-03
ATTACKS MORMON PROPHET
U1ltarian B1pOunder Attacks Sincerity Of
Joseph Smith.
SAYS NOVEL INSPIRED BOOK Of MORMON
Believes that Fiction written by
Financially Embarrassed Minister
f. the Real Foundation OF
the Utah Faith.

The mallet Of disparagement was applied
20 the founders OF Mormorism vigorously
bY Rev. Newton Mann at Unity church Sun
dav morning. He referred to Joseph Smith,
the prophet, as one Of three arch con-
epirators," and said that the "humbug
of the revelation plates is too thin to merit
any extended consideration" and declared
of the process of translating them that had
she curtain obscuring Smith been slyly
drawn aside II would undoubtedly have re-
vealed the prophet reading the Spaulding
manuscript as revised by Rigdon."
Rev. Mann stated that he had laboriously
Waded through the 5sS pages of the Book
of Mormon and made other research in
preparation for yesterdays lecture. His
conclusion, 1t appeared, was that the book
was really only a crafty revision OF a novel
written by Rev. Solomon Spaulding, who
graduated from Dartmouth in 1888, and
who, after some years in the ministry found
need Of a means OF lifting himself out OF
debt. The first manuscript of the novel,
Rev. Mann said, is now at oberlin college,
nut spaulding re-wrote 1t to better its
atyle and IL was his second Mss that
sidney Rigdon, a young and INSCRIPTIONS
man looking to the Baptist ministry. stole
from the Patterson Job p~rintery in Pitts
burg and subsequently, gave to the second
Joseph Smith, whose birth had been her
aided by his mother as that Of a prophet,
and who early acquired an aptness at see
ing things which other people Of abstem-
Gus habits could not. Rev. Mann appeared
10 believe that Farley p. Pratt, a peddler,
brought Smith and Rigdon together, and
that the three of them sat up nights laying
out the work OF the heavenly messengers
that later were SO accommodating to their
needs. The word OF the men who testi-
ned to having seen the divine visitation
at the time Joseph translated the plates
behind a curtain with the Urim and Thum-
min which were stone spectacles supposed
IN have made plain any character writing
from an Egyptian inscription to a Horace
Greeley editorial, seemed to be .consid-
erably below par with the Unitarian ex-
pounder and he ceased to appear skeptical
only when he got into the later history
of Mormonism, when the events took the
more material form OF tall temples, stone
banks. tarred and feathered dignitaries OF
the church and the shooting Of the prophet
Joseph at Nauvoo, III, June "a, 1874.
In closing he said: Fairly to take the
measure OF so eccentric an Individual as
the Mormon prophet is not easy. sueh a
comnoiind OF . iittleness and greatness, Of
ignorance and power, OF fraud and piety
dlsconcerts all our reckoning. Possibly the
man thought he was doing good, hat the
tricks he resorted to were justinaole as
means to that end; and there is no dif-
nculty in seeing how he may have hon.
estly considered his revelations as good as
anybody's. Some such compromise as THIS
the final judgment Of mankind viii make
between the exaltation in which he Is held
~ h,s folIowers and the contempt heaped
upon him by his adversaries.'