hours and days in meditation and prayer, after the true manner of
all accredited saints, and was soon repaid by the visits of angels. One
of these came to him when he was but eighteen years old, and the house
in which he was seemed filled with consuming fire. The presence--he
styles it a personage--had a pace like lightning, and proclaimed himself
to be an angel of the Lord. He vouchsafed to Smith a vast deal of highly
important information of a celestial order. He told him that his
(Smith's) prayers had been heard, and his sins forgiven; that the
covenant which the Almighty had made with the old Jews was to be
fulfilled; that the introductory work for the second coming of Christ
was now to begin; that the hour for the preaching of the gospel in its
purity to all peoples was at hand, and that Smith was to be an
instrument in the hands of God, to further the divine purpose in the new
dispensation. The celestial stranger also furnished him with a sketch of
the origin, progress, laws and civilization of the American aboriginals,
and declared that the blessing of heaven had finally been withdrawn from
them. To Smith was communicated the momentous circumstance that certain
plates containing an abridgment of the records of the aboriginals and
ancient prophets, who had lived on this continent, were hidden in a hill
near Palmyra. The prophet was counseled to go there and look at them,
and did so. Not being holy enough to possess them as yet, he passed some
months in spiritual probation, after which the records were put into his
keeping. These had been prepared, it is claimed, by a prophet called
Mormon, who had been ordained by God for the purpose, and to conceal
them until he should produce them for the benefit of the faithful, and
unite them with the Bible for the achievement of his will. They form the
celebrated Book of Mormon--whence the name Mormon--and are esteemed by
the Latter-Day Saints as of equal authority with the Old and New
Testaments, and as an indispensable supplement thereto, because they
include God's disclosures to the Mormon world. These precious records
were sealed up and deposited A. D. 420 in the place where Smith had
viewed them by the direction of the angel.

The records were, it is held, in the reformed Egyptian tongue, and Smith
translated them through the inspiration of the angel, and one Oliver
Cowdrey wrote down the translation as reported by the God-possessed
Joseph. This translation was published