milar mummery born
from the quickened imagination of a zealot.

Smith succeeded in interesting one Harris to act as his amanuensis in
his interpretation of these books of Mormon. The future prophet sat
behind a screen with the supposed gold plates in his hat. He dictated
through the stones Urim and Thummim. With a keen imagination and natural
aptitude for the strikingly dramatic, he was able to present formally
his ritual, tabernacle, holy of holies, priesthood and tithings,
constitution and councils, blood atonement, anointment, twelve apostles,
miracles, his spiritual manifestations and revelations, all in
reminiscence of the religious tenets of many lands.

Such religious movements rise and fall at periodic intervals. Sometimes
they are never heard of outside the small communities of their birth; at
other times they arise to temporary nation-wide importance, but they are
unlucky either in leadership or environment and so perish. The Mormon
Church, however, was fortunate in all respects. Smith was in no manner a
successful leader, but he made a good prophet. He was strong physically,
was a great wrestler, and had an abundance of good nature; he was
personally popular with the type of citizen with whom he was thrown. He
could impress the ignorant mind with the reality of his revelations and
the potency of his claims. He could impress the more intelligent, but
half unscrupulous, half fanatical minds of the leaders with the power of
his idea and the opportunities offered for leadership.

Two men of the latter type were Parley P. Pratt and Sidney Rigdon. The
former was of the narrow, strong, fanatic type; the latter had the cool
constructive brain that gave point, direction, and consistency to the
Mormon system of theology. Had it not been for such leaders and others
like them, it is quite probable that the Smith movement would have been
lost like hundreds of others. That Smith himself lasted so long as the
head of the Church, with the powers and perquisites of that position,
can be explained by the fact that, either by accident or shrewd design,
his position before the unintelligent masses had been made impregnable.
If it was not true that Joseph Smith had received the golden plates from
an angel and had translated them--again with the assistance of an
angel--and had received from heaven the revelations vouchsafed from time
to time for the explicit guidance of the Church in moral, temporal, and
spiritual matters, then