The Little Red Blog

Sunday Sermon: "Hellbound Train"

Hellbound Train

 Hellbound Train I'm on it's track

Too late now to turn my back

Conductor coming ticket in his hand

Come to claim my soul

Take me to his land

 

Hellbound Train I been so wrong

Too late now I'm moving on

Conductor standing watch in his hand

Got to get aboard take you to his land

 

I'm going down the road on  the Hellbound Train

Take a long look lady 'cause you won't see me again

Take a last look lady, yes hard and long

'Cause I'm going down the road on the Hellbound Train

 

Hellbound Train driving slow

Move on down to the Hell below

Conductor please won't you lend a hand?

Got to get on board take me to your land

 

Yes I know I've been so wrong

Too late now I'm moving on

Hellbound Train I'm on it's track

Moving down I can't look back

 

I'm going down the road on  the Hellbound Train

Take a long look lady 'cause you won't see me again

Take a last look lady, yes hard and long

'Cause I'm going down the road on the Hellbound Train

 

I'm going down the road on  the Hellbound Train

Take a long look lady 'cause you won't see me again

Take a last look lady, yes hard and long

'Cause I'm going down the road on the Hellbound Train

 

Lost and flying down the road on the Hellbound Train

Lost and flying down the road on the Hellbound Train

Hand and hand with the devil

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Written by David Baerwald and Will Sexton

David Baerwald - Hellbound Train Lyrics | Lyrics.com

(186) Hellbound Train - YouTube

See you in Hell!

Saturday Lecture: Thirsting for Ignorance

{Writing over a century ago, Gerald Stanley Lee, a self-proclaimed ‘disagreeable character,’ denounced modern education for forcing books upon children who didn’t want them, for turning reading into drudgery rather than pleasure, and for using the printed word to intimidate rather than to inspire the imagination. Shades of 11^th-grade English class, circa 1965!}

“I never read if I can help it.” (Gerald Stanley Lee)

Gerald Stanley Lee, from The Lost Art of Reading (1907):

Do you not know what it means when you, a civilized, cultivated human being, can stand face to face with a list headed  “books of the week,” and when, unblinking and shameless, and without a cry of protest, you actually read it through, without seeing, or seeming to see, for a single moment that right there in that list, in the fact that there is such a list, your civilization is on trial for its life? That any society or nation or century that is shallow enough to publish as many books as that has yet to face the most awful, the most unprecedented, the most headlong-coming crisis in the history of the human race?

I was born to read. I spent all my early years, as I remember them, with books, peering softly about in them. My whole being was hushed and trustful and expectant at the sight of a printed page. I lived in the presence of books, with all my thoughts lying open about me; a kind of still, radiant mood of welcome seemed to lie upon them. When I looked at a shelf of books, I felt the whole world flocking to me.

I have been civilized now, I should say, twenty, or possibly twenty-five, years, and my whole being has changed. I cannot so much as look upon a great many books in a library or any other heaped-up place, without feeling bleak and heartless. I never read if I can help it. My whole attitude toward current literature is grouchy and snappish, a kind of perpetual interrupted “What are you ringing my doorbell now for?" attitude. I am a disagreeable character.

It is a serious question whether the average American youth is ever given a chance to thirst for knowledge. He thirsts for ignorance instead. From the very first he is hemmed in by knowledge. The kindergarten with its suave relentlessness, its perfunctory cheerfulness, closes in upon the life of every child with himself. The dear old-fashioned breathing spell he used to have after getting here — whither has it gone? The rough, strong, ruthless, unseemly, grown-up world crowds to the very edge of every beginning life. It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year — newcomers to this planet — who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us.

There was a time when, if a man revealed in conversation that he was familiar with poetic structure in John Keats, it meant something about the man — his temperament, his imaginative or delighting power. Now, it means that he has taken a course in poetics in college, or teaches English in a high school, and is carrying deadly information about with him wherever he goes. It does not mean that he has a spark of the Keats spirit in him, or that he could have endured being in the same room with Keats, or Keats could have endured being in the same room with him, for fifteen minutes.

The greatest inconvenience of being born in the latter half of the nineteenth century is the almost constant compulsion one is under of finding people out, of making a distinction between the worthwhile people who know a beautiful thing and the boors of culture who know all about it. One sees on every hand today persons occupying positions of importance who have been taken through all the motions of education, from the bottom to the top, but who, whatever their positions might be, are clumsy and futile with knowledge. Their culture has not been made over into themselves. They have acquired it largely under mob-influence (the Dead Level of intelligence), and all that they can do with it, not wanting it, is to be teachery with it — to force it on other people who do not want it.

Whether in the origin, processes, or results of their learning, these people have all the attributes of a mob. Their influence and force in civilization is a mob influence, and it operates in the old and classic fashion of mobs upon all who oppose it. It constitutes at present the most important and securely intrenched intimidating force that modem society presents against the actual culture of the world, whether in the schools or out of them. Its voice is in every street, and its shout of derision may be heard in almost every walk of life against all who refuse to conform to it. There are but very few who refuse. Millions of human beings, young and old, in meek and willing rows are seen on every side, standing before It, the Dead Level, anxious to do anything to be graded up to It, or to be graded down to It, offering their heads to be taken off, their necks to be stretched, or their waists, willing to live footless all their days, anything, anything  whatever, bless their hearts! to know that they are on the Level, the Dead Level, the precise and exact Dead Level of Intelligence. The fact that this mob-power keeps its hold by using books instead of bricks is merely a matter of form.

If John Milton had had any idea when he wrote ‘Paradise Lost’ that it was going to be used mostly to batter children's minds with, it is doubtful if he would ever have had the heart to write it. It does not damage a book very much to let it lie on a wooden shelf little longer than it ought to. But to come crashing down into the exquisite filaments of a human brain with it, to use it to keep a brain from continuing to be a brain — that is, an organ with all its reading senses acting and reacting warm and living in it—is a very serious matter. It always ends in the same way, this modem brutality with books. Even Bibles cannot stand it. Human nature stands it least of all. That books of all things in this world, made to open men's instincts with, should be so generally used to shut them up with, is one of the saddest signs we have of the caricature of culture that is having its way in our modem world. It is getting so that the only way the average dinned-at, educated modem boy, shut in with masterpieces, can really get to read is in some still overlooked moment when people are too tired of him to do him good. Then softly, perhaps guiltily, left all by himself with a book he stumbles upon, his soul suddenly steals out and loves something.

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Gerald Stanley Lee - Wikipedia

A Letter from Santa Claus (in the Moon)

{I find this 1875 story by Mark Twain horrifying, not least because of the author’s threats against the life of someone named “George”. A little research reveals that “George” was George Griffin, “a former slave who worked as Mark Twain's butler for seventeen years, including the period when Twain was writing his 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is possible that the runaway slave Jim, one of the two main characters in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was modeled on George Griffin.” ¹ Susy Clemens, by the way, was Twain’s oldest daughter; she was three at the time of this disturbing letter.}

Palace of Saint Nicholas in the Moon
Christmas Morning

My Dear Susy Clemens,

I have received and read all the letters which you and your little sister have written me. I can read your and your baby sister's jagged and fantastic marks without any trouble at all. But I had trouble with those letters which you dictated through your mother and the nurses, for I am a foreigner and cannot read English writing well. You will find that I made no mistakes about the things which you and the baby ordered in your own letters--I went down your chimney at midnight when you were asleep and delivered them all myself--and kissed both of you, too. But there were one or two small orders which I could not fill because we ran out of stock.

There was a word or two in your mama's letter which I took to be "a trunk full of doll's clothes." Is that it? I will call at your kitchen door about nine o'clock this morning to inquire. But I must not see anybody, and I must not speak to anybody but you. When the kitchen doorbell rings, George must be blindfolded and sent to the door. You must tell George he must walk on tiptoe and not speak--otherwise he will die someday. Then you must go up to the nursery and stand on a chair or the nurse's bed and put your ear to the speaking tube that leads down to the kitchen and when I whistle through it you must speak in the tube and say, "Welcome, Santa Claus!" Then I will ask whether it was a trunk you ordered or not. If you say it was, I shall ask you what color you want the trunk to be, and then you must tell me every single thing in detail which you want the trunk to contain. Then when I say "Good-by and a merry Christmas to my little Susy Clemens," you must say "Good-by, good old Santa Claus, I thank you very much." Then you must go down into the library and make George close all the doors that open into the main hall, and everybody must keep still for a little while. I will go to the moon and get those things, and in a few minutes I will come down the chimney that belongs to the fireplace that is in the hall--if it is a trunk you want--because I couldn't get such a thing as a trunk down the nursery chimney, you know.

If I should leave any snow in the hall, you must tell George to sweep it into the fireplace, for I haven't time to do such things. George must not use a broom, but a rag--else he will die someday. If my boot should leave a stain on the marble, George must not holystone it away. Leave it there always in memory of my visit; and whenever you look at it or show it to anybody you must let it remind you to be a good little girl. Whenever you are naughty and someone points to that mark which your good old Santa Claus's boot made on the marble, what will you say, little sweetheart?

Good-by for a few minutes, till I come down to the world and ring the kitchen doorbell.

Your loving Santa Claus
Whom people sometimes call
"The Man in the Moon"

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Altogether Christmas Stories: A Letter From Santa Claus by Mark Twain

¹ A Letter from Santa Claus | Literawiki | Fandom

Sunday Sermon: "He Was a Friend of Mine"

He Was a Friend of Mine

He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
His killing had no purpose
No reason, or rhyme
Oh, he was a friend of mine

He was in Dallas town
He was in Dallas town
From a sixth-floor window
A gunman shot him down
Oh, he died in Dallas town

He never knew my name
He never knew my name
Though I never met him
I knew him just the same
Oh, he was a friend of mine

Leader of a nation for such a precious time
Oh, he was a friend of mine

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Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Roger Mc Guinn

He Was a Friend of Mine lyrics © Reservoir Media Management Inc

(109) The Byrds - He was a friend of mine (Remastered) - YouTube

Saturday Lecture: Pouring Gasoline on a Runaway Train

{Lest we forget: before “Woke” and “Cancel Culture” there was “Political Correctness,” and before “Cultural Marxism” there was the frightening specter of “Secular Humanism”. American conservatives have felt under siege since FDR, if not before (Woodrow Wilson, income tax, the Federal Reserve, suffragism, etc.); to their credit, they have always come up with clever phrases to caricature and to demonize their opponents. Let us briefly revisit the great Secular Humanism Scare of the Reagan era.}

“Friend, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community.” (“Ya Got Trouble,” from The Music Man)

Homer Duncan, from Secular Humanism: The Most Dangerous Religion in America (1979):

The conditions that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire are being reenacted. The goals that the Communists have set for our destruction are being fulfilled. We witness in dismay the decline in moral values. Corruption in politics and business is the order of the day. People are making plans for the coming economic crash. It seems inevitable. We often wonder how much longer our country can hold together under present conditions. Mr. Harry Conn, a noted engineer, has written, “It would appear we are presently witnessing the dissolution of the West. This dissolution is political, but in even more basic terms, it’s moral deterioration.” Harvard law professor Harold J. Berman has written, “Our whole culture seems to be facing the possibility of a kind of nervous breakdown.”

Dr. Francis Schaeffer writes:

“We are on the verge of the largest revolution the world has ever seen—the control and shaping of men through genetic engineering and chemical and psychological conditioning. Will people accept it? I don’t think they would if they had not already been taught to accept the propositions that lead to it, and if they were not already in despair.”

Every thinking person knows that we are losing more and more of our freedom every day. The noose is being tightened around our neck. America is like a runaway train on a downhill grade, and now Secular Humanism is destroying the braking system. We are already on fire; Secular Humanism is pouring gasoline on it.

Humanism is the religion which deifies man and dethrones God. Its avowed aim is to replace theism with humanism. “Humanists do not believe in God and, of course, they do not believe in salvation or damnation. They believe in the theory of evolution, which is often taught as a fact in schools and textbooks. Humanists believe that everyone has a right to full sexual freedom, and a right to determine the values and goals that affect their lives. They do not live by or believe in absolute standards of morality. They believe everyone has a right to maximum individual autonomy, meaning the right of each to do his own thing, whatever it may be.”

Humanists believe in the supremacy of human reason and in the inevitability of progress. However, because man is not progressing as rapidly as the Secular Humanists would desire, many have opted for forced progress and manipulative environmental control. A logical conclusion of Secular Humanism is also the State’s domination of the education system. Totalitarianism, therefore, could very well be the result of Secular Humanism.

Another tenet of Secular Humanism is the belief in science as the guide to progress and the provider of an alternative to both religion and morals. Therefore, science itself assumes a religious character, which can pose an equally frightening threat of totalitarianism. Secular Humanism has developed a ‘scientific theology’ that has evolved from a description of concrete objects and events to a study of relationships observable in complex systems. State technology has become more closely aligned with science and its goals. Many scientists have even suggested that State technology and money be used to genetically manipulate the citizenry.

Secular Humanism promulgates the idea that Man’s future and salvation are in Man’s hands, and that Man, not God, controls the destiny of the human race. If Man is master of his own destiny, he can create his own system of absolutes. Therefore, the Humanist cannot logically criticize the monstrosities perpetrated upon mankind by Hitler and Stalin, because each individual is absolute and the judge of his own actions.

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FYI, Duncan’s book included an introduction from Senator Jesse Helms:

When the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited children from participating in voluntary prayers in public schools, it also established a national religion in the United States—the religion of secular humanism. Since that time, our schools have been increasingly plagued with vandalism, crime, violence, drug abuse, and promiscuity; and academic standards and achievements have been falling sharply year by year. Sadly, our schools have reflected the disruption and discord of our society as a whole. As our nation faces the challenges of the 1980s, it is time to recognize the obvious: America has been ignoring its spiritual and moral heritage, and that is the road to disaster.

A Very Big Humbug (Conclusion)

{Consider this an epilogue, or perhaps a coda, to my (and Pascal’s) previous posts about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.}

According to Wikipedia, “Joseph Smith wrote that in 1820, while he had been praying in a wooded area near his home, God the Father and Jesus Christ together appeared to him, told him his sins were forgiven, and said that all contemporary churches had "turned aside from the gospel."

Again, according to Wikipedia, “Christianity’s three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) recount the story known as the “transfiguration”. Jesus and three of his apostles, Peter, James, and John, go to a mountain (later referred to as the Mount of Transfiguration) to pray. On the mountaintop, Jesus begins to shine with bright rays of light. Then the Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah appear and he speaks with them.” 

What criteria do we use to distinguish the above claims? We have only the testimony of eyewitnesses to go on. Were Jesus’ disciples more reliable chroniclers than was Joseph Smith? How do we conclude that Jesus was the messianic Son of God, while Joseph Smith was merely a savvy huckster who knew a good con when he invented one?

The following passages are from Sir Isaac Berlin’s The Magus of the North, a study of the thought of 18^th-century German philosopher (or anti-philosopher) Johann Georg Hamann:

Eighteenth-century German thinkers were profoundly troubled by the abyss between the general statements of philosophy and empirical reality, between universal ‘truths of reason’ and ‘truths of fact’. They agonized over the question of how necessary truths, good for everyone in all places and at all times—say, the existence of God, or of the immortal soul, or of universal objective moral truths—could be inferred from historical propositions, empirically known, and therefore contingent.

God spoke to men at identifiable times, in particular places. Jesus was crucified in a particular place at a particular time, certain apostles and prophets stated holy truths based on their experiences, commonly called supernatural, in particular places at particular times. Can the eternal truths revealed by sacred history rest on accounts which no evidence could render absolute, infallible?

If, for the sake of argument, the supernatural exists, and if the supernatural from time to time deigns to interact with the natural, how are we to distinguish revelation from delusion or invention? Matthew’s gospel refers to Jesus’ parables as revealing “things hidden since the foundation of the world,” and Paul writes to the Corinthians about “a man” (we understand it to be Paul) who was “caught up to paradise, [where] he heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” If someone serves, willingly or not, as a conduit for the divine, how can anyone else judge, evaluate, or assess the truth of what emerges? Why believe one set of implausible claims but dismiss another set? If Jesus could walk on water, why could Joseph Smith not produce a loose translation of a text he admittedly could not read?

According to the Book of Acts:

“A Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, addressed the Sanhedrin. ‘Leave these men [followers of the crucified Jesus] alone; let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them; you will only find yourself fighting against God.”  

And, according again to Matthew’s gospel, Jesus said this about identifying false prophets:

“By their fruits you will know them. Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.”

The fruits of Mormonism, like the fruits of Christianity, are a mixed bag; who could possibly weigh the good fruits against the bad, much less weigh one religion's yield against another's? 

Isaiah Berlin, on the quandary of the 18^th-century German thinkers:

“They concluded that all approaches of the varied religions were but tentative efforts to arrive at the one central truth, and that all these different avenues had an equal right to our respect and veneration.”

The flip side of that tolerant coin is that, for the skeptic, all religions equally merit disrespect and derision for their unsupported claims about invisible beings who dwell in an undetectable (except through the eyes of faith) supernatural realm.

Either way, Mormonism comes off as no better and no worse than Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other religion. ¹ Only the patina of antiquity distinguishes those older faiths from Joseph Smith’s 19^th-century invention; and Palmyra, New York is no more unlikely a place for divine revelation than Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or Mecca. “No prophet is accepted in his hometown,” said Jesus, and Joseph Smith was no exception to that rule. I do not accept his gospel, but, having grown up a stone's throw from Palmyra, I will try to show him more respect in the future.

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¹ Except, of course, for L. Ron Hubbard’s bogus Scientology, which is from the devil. The only science-fiction author worthy of having founded a religion was Philip K. Dick, and he had the good sense not to do so; instead, he simply left a scripture (the Exegesis) for posterity. I wonder if Urim and Thummim could translate that?

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Real vision or huckster's hoax?

    
Transfiguration or drug-induced hallucination?

Wednesday with Pascal: "No one dies for a lie."

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat has grudgingly come to admire Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, who, say what you will about his veracity, pulled an American scripture out of his hat.}

“No one would die for a lie.” (Claim frequently made by Christian apologists)

Just as Christianity depended for its force on the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, Mormonism depended on Joseph Smith’s claim to have had a series of visits from an angel named “Moroni” and to have unearthed and translated a set of ancient golden plates upon which the text was inscribed which became the Book of Mormon. St. Paul famously insisted that if Jesus did not rise, Christians’ faith was in vain; similarly, one could say that if Joseph’s golden plates were fraudulent, then Mormons have been duped.

Why should it be harder to believe that ancient plates containing divinely inspired texts were uncovered at Hill Cumorah in 1827 than to believe, as do most Christians, that it is possible (and even advisable) to consume the body and blood of the resurrected Christ two thousand years after his death? Mormons at least have eyewitness testimony to the reality of the gold plates:

The Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon were Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris. The following is their testimony that can be found in the first pages of the Book of Mormon:

“Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.”

OLIVER COWDERY / DAVID WHITMER / MARTIN HARRIS

Eight other individuals later swore that they had been shown the plates (and even allowed to examine them) by Joseph Smith. ¹ 

“No one would die for a lie” is an evergreen trope among Christian apologists, but it applies as well to other religions (Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, etc.), since the founders and adherents of those faiths also testified to miracles and wonders, visions and revelations. Proclaimers of (and believers in) such things were not infrequently persecuted and even killed for refusing to recant. Joseph Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Illinois, proving, then, by this logic, the legitimacy of his religious claims, his visions of God and Jesus, his periodic encounters with the angel Moroni, his discovery and then translation of the Book of Mormon, and so forth. 

Whatever one thinks of Mormonism, it seems clear that Joseph Smith must have been extraordinarily persuasive, even charismatic. He sold an entirely implausible tale, created a seemingly fantastical religion, and attracted a group of followers who in turn went out and converted others. Smith withstood dissent within his ranks, weathered charges of forgery and deceit, and went on to organize not just a church but a community. He won people’s trust and their loyalty despite the apparent outrageousness of his claims and the hardships that following him entailed. ²

Whether a religious visionary or an inspired charlatan, Joseph Smith emerged from the superstitious milieu of upstate New York’s “burnt-over district” and achieved unexpected and inexplicable success. While I do not believe a single word that came from his mouth or his pen, I can no more refute his stories than I can refute the Christian gospels with all their miraculous events. Do angels, demons, and gods exist? Do they traffic with humans? I have never encountered such beings, but many people claim to have done so. Perhaps some people are simply more attuned to a spiritual dimension which for me is nothing more than wishful thinking—or, as some would have it, “a very big humbug.” To paraphrase St. Paul, in this life we all see through Urim and Thummim darkly; who am I to deny that ultimate Truth might be found on a set of golden plates buried in a hillside in upstate New York, or deciphered at the bottom of a 19^th-century hat?

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FYI: Mormon historian Richard Lyman Bushman has just published Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History, a book on which he worked for over a decade. Not a forensic examination of the evidence for the plates but a survey of their significance over the years, Bushman’s volume is as much about America as it is about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

¹ Four of the eight were members of the Whitmer family, three others were Joseph Smith’s father and two of Joseph’s brothers, and the last of the witnesses was Hiram Page, who was Peter Whitmer’s son-in-law.

² To be clear, more than a few of Smith’s earliest converts eventually either left the Mormon fold of their own accord or were excommunicated over differences with Smith’s developing doctrines. The conflicts were never over the authenticity of the golden plates or of the Book of Mormon itself; rather, some followers were concerned that Joseph Smith had developed a disturbingly convenient (for him) habit of getting new revelations at the drop, as it were, of a hat.

The Disgraceful Murder of Joseph Smith

A Very Big Humbug (Part Three)

{As Pascal the existential Russian blue cat has learned in his research, the expression “curiouser and curiouser” aptly characterizes the origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.}   

Martin Harris was a wealthy and respected neighbor of Joseph Smith’s to whom the latter had confided the existence of the “gold plates” he had uncovered at Hill Cumorah. Harris, skeptical at first, and without having seen the plates, was persuaded by Smith of their authenticity. Harris agreed to assist Smith by transcribing the translated material. Smith did the translation himself with the divine assistance of two “seer stones” which had been unearthed along with the gold plates (those stones were later identified as “Uma Thurman” “Urim” and “Thummim”). Harris’s wife, however, suspected that Smith was a con man, and that the entire business was chicanery. After much pleading by Harris, who was desperate to convince his wife, Joseph Smith agreed that Harris (who still had not seen the plates) could take home the transcribed manuscript, which at that time consisted of 116 pages. Since only the one copy existed, Smith instructed Harris neither to let it out of his sight nor to speak of it to anyone outside of his immediate family.

“Harris readily agreed and eagerly set off for home with the manuscript. Upon arriving at his home in Palmyra, Harris locked the manuscript in a bureau drawer. The pages seemingly placated his wife, and, encouraged by having tangible evidence to support his claims regarding Joseph and the importance of their working together, Harris began to show the manuscript to people not named in the agreement he had made with Joseph. Soon, he was showing the manuscript to any visitor who would stop at his home. In a matter of days, the manuscript disappeared.”

On this telling, Martin Harris appears to have been a 19^th-century version of Donald Trump, a man completely unable to keep classified information to himself and likely to spill secrets to anyone within earshot. The manuscript was never recovered; suspicion fell on Harris’s wife, but nothing was ever proved. Thus, 116 pages of the Book of Mormon were forever lost; “to make matters worse, Joseph had been required to return the plates and the [seer stones] to the angel Moroni soon after he handed over the manuscript to Harris. With the loss of the manuscript, and now bereft of the plates and the means to translate them, Joseph feared that he had forfeited his divine appointment as revelator of a new Gospel.”

Let us pause to consider: Martin Harris’ wife, an unwavering skeptic when it came to Joseph Smith, was suspected of stealing, and then concealing, the manuscript her husband had brought home. What motive would she have had?  Perhaps she intended to unmask Joseph Smith and to expose his fantastical claims; with the manuscript gone, Smith would have had to translate the same material a second time—which, of course, would have been impossible if he was simply inventing the text as he went along. Any second translation could be compared to the first (after Harris’ wife had “recovered” the manuscript); if the translations failed to match, Smith would have been publicly shown to be a fraud.

It was both fortuitous, then, and tragic that Smith, as noted above, had given the plates back to the angel Moroni, along with Uma Thurman “Urim” and “Thummim”.  He could not repeat his translation of the 116 missing pages, and Harris’ scheming wife could not thereby expose Smith for any inconsistencies that might have resulted. At the same time, Joseph could not continue translating the sacred text; the Book of Mormon had been stillborn, or perhaps strangled in its crib.

Or so it seemed. But enter deus ex machina:

“It was only when Joseph received a revelation chastising him for his carelessness but assuring him that he would continue to serve as God’s revelatory instrument, that he found some measure of peace. The plates and the ‘interpreters’ were returned to him, and the way was once again open to Joseph to become the means of bringing forth a new sacred scripture.”

The completed Book of Mormon would lack the original 116 pages, their permanent loss being God's punishment upon Smith and Harris for their negligence. Under the circumstances, though, the decision not to retranslate the text was understandable:

“After praying for guidance as to how best to handle the lost pages, Joseph reportedly received a revelation that he was not to retranslate this portion of the plates. Doubters might use contradictions between manuscripts to discredit the work as a whole if the missing pages ever reappeared.”

Eventually, the more sophisticated followers of Joseph Smith came to understand that “The translation of the golden plates was not a letter for letter translation, rather it is more likely that feelings or ideas were conveyed, pondered upon, and then confirmed to be correct by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is not a word for word translation, rather a miraculous translation meant to not only convey the text, but more importantly the messages within it.”

Whatever else Joseph Smith may have been, he was nobody’s fool.  When he published the Book of Mormon in 1830, he was careful first to register a copyright for it in his name. At some point during the saga of unearthing and then translating the golden plates, Smith had learned, via revelation, that the Book of Mormon was not to be a mere stand-alone curiosity; it would be the foundation of a new religion, a new church, a new understanding of both God and man, and, in the long run, of a new Zion, the Promised Land regained at last. 

Joseph Smith instructs Martin Harris to keep the 116-page manuscript safe.

A Very Big Humbug (Part Two)

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat continues his deep dive into the quirky history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.}

“I heard of the sacred harp long ago back in my hometown / but I sure never thought old Daniel’d be the one to come and bring it around.” (The Band, “Daniel & the Sacred Harp”)

We should begin by reviewing Joseph Smith’s original visionary experiences.

• In 1820, the fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith was living with his family on a small plot outside of Palmyra, New York. Experiencing an adolescent crisis of faith, Joseph went into the woods by himself to pray for divine guidance. Surprisingly enough, he got what he wanted; God the Father and God the Son (Jesus) appeared and commanded Joseph not to join any of the existing churches, all of which, they said, were false. They told him to go home and to await a future vision that would reveal to him the truth.
• One night in September 1823 (200 years ago!), the previously unknown angel Moroni appeared in Joseph’s bedroom and told him of a hidden book engraved upon gold plates (tablets) which was buried somewhere in the hills outside Palmyra. The book, said the angel, contained the True Gospel of Jesus Christ and, as a bonus, the history of human settlement of the North American continent. Joseph was given a brief, tantalizing preview of the book but then was told he would have to wait another four years before the book’s exact location would be disclosed to him.
• Punctually, in September 1827, Moroni reappeared and directed Joseph to the gold plates, which were buried under a stone slab on a hill (Hill Cumorah) three miles south of the Smith family’s farm. Joseph was entrusted with the plates; he was also assigned the task of translating them with the assistance of Uma Thurman Urim and Thummim, two “seer stones” unearthed with the plates. ¹ Joseph was explicitly cautioned against translating certain sections of the book, because mankind was not yet ready for the whole revelation.

Why was Joseph Smith forced to wait seven years after his first vision of God before being allowed access to the Book of Mormon? Perhaps (though we have no evidence of this) he needed to undergo a process of purification, of studying scripture, of preparing himself spiritually, or of brushing up on Egyptian hieroglyphics, which the writing on the gold plates would be said to resemble. In fact, he seems to have spent his time helping on the family homestead, doing odd jobs for neighbors, using a dowsing rod to look for everything from water to buried treasure, and generally distinguishing himself by being completely undistinguished. By 1827, however, the 21-year-old lad was ready.

Having taking possession of the golden plates, Joseph took great pains to keep them hidden from greedy treasure-seekers, as well as from the merely curious and from skeptics hoping to debunk his tale. At various times, he hid the plates inside a hollowed-out log; in a cherrywood chest at home which he arranged to have built for just that purpose; and, on one occasion, inside a barrel of beans in the back of a wagon. Even in the safe confines of the family home, Joseph, under orders from Moroni, allowed no one else to see the actual plates, though he would occasionally let someone heft whatever container the plates were stored in so that they could affirm the weight, if not the actual contents, of said container.

The text written (engraved? chiseled?) on the plates would have been indecipherable, especially for Joseph, who was not entirely literate even in English. Fortunately, the seer stones, the Urim and Thummim, would unlock the mysteries of the Book of Mormon, and they would do so only for Joseph Smith, thus making him the sole translator of the text. Several individuals (primarily Martin Harris, Emma Smith, and Oliver Cowdery) transcribed Joseph’s oral translation as he relayed to them passages from the divinations of Urim and Thummim; those secretaries never examined the Book of Mormon, but dutifully took Joseph’s word for its contents.

The process of translation and transcription of the gold plates was, so far as I know, unprecedented, and it remains so to this day. As Paul Gutjahr understatedly notes, “Translating the plates was no easy task.” Joseph and Emma Smith, hounded by their neighbors in Palmyra who wanted to confirm Joseph’s discovery for themselves, relocated to Harmony, Pennsylvania where Emma’s family lived. They were soon joined by Martin Harris, a wealthy farmer from Palmyra for whom Joseph had occasionally worked; he was persuaded by Joseph of the plates’ authenticity (he was not, of course, allowed to see them) and he agreed to assist with translating them. As Gutjahr relates:

“The two men sat down to translate the plates, depending ever more heavily on the ‘interpreters’ [Urim and Thummim] and later a single seer stone (which Joseph had found while digging a well in 1822) to guide them. They sat at a table with a curtain dividing them as Joseph used the ‘interpreters’ to painstakingly dictate the plates’ message.² The work was so arduous, and Joseph’s claims at times so unbelievable, that Harris began to question whether Joseph was indeed translating ancient plates or simply making a fool of him and trying to swindle him out of his money. As the work proceeded, Harris repeatedly asked to see the plates, and repeatedly Joseph refused. Not even granted a glimpse of the plates, Harris began to doubt the whole endeavor.”

Those doubts were to be overcome. 

Joseph also enlisted his wife Emma and his younger brother Samuel in the task of translating the plates. “As they worked, Joseph removed the curtain between him and Emma. The plates simply sat on the table between them, although they remained hidden from view, wrapped in a linen tablecloth.” This arrangement meant that Joseph was unable to see the text he was translating, which proved only a minor inconvenience. Instead, he took to placing the seer stones inside a hat into which he peered; he would see words appearing in “bright Roman letters,” and he would then dictate twenty or thirty words at a time (“he even spelled out the more difficult names of people and places”) to his attentive scribe. According to Paul Gutjahr:

“Emma never saw the plates, but she did feel them, later reporting that they gave off a metallic sound when she thumbed them like pages in a book. Throughout the translation process, she sat in awe of Joseph’s ability to dictate such a complex work. She claimed that no other book was near him as he dictated God’s message, and she steadfastly maintained that Joseph could not have hidden such a book from her. Emma recalled that when they took breaks to eat or do chores, Joseph invariably resumed the story exactly where he had left off without referring to the manuscript they had just transcribed or to any other material.”

Emma—whose father, Isaac Hale, had once told Joseph to stop the nonsense about angels and gold plates and to find honest work instead—was as loyal a wife as any man, much less an appointed prophet of God, could have wanted. Over the years, her loyalty would be put to the test.

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Paul Gutjahr quotes are from his The Book of Mormon: A Biography.

¹ Urim and Thummim are said to be mentioned in the Old Testament; to my knowledge, there is no reference in scripture to Uma Thurman.

² The curtain was necessary because the angel Moroni had made it clear to Joseph that no one else was permitted to see the gold plates. Joseph’s secretiveness in the matter led to, shall we say, suspicions.

DIY Scripture! (Seer stones not included)

Wednesday with Pascal: "A Very Big Humbug" (Part One)

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat has delved into the origins and early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka Mormonism. Pascal is aware that I was born and raised just a few miles down the road from where Joseph Smith launched his faith-based enterprise; he may believe that explains my stubborn interest in religion despite my avowed atheism. In any case, Pascal may be scratching away at this subject for a while.}

According to historian Winthrop Hudson, “The first half of the nineteenth century in the United States was a time of eager expectancy, unbridled enthusiasm, and restless ferment. A new nation and a new world were being born, and to many anything and everything were possible. It was a period when a comet’s tail was said to have swept America, and everyone went a little mad.” The European Enlightenment had influenced the founders of the United States, but it had yet to work its way to the American frontier, which, in the first decades of the 19^th century, included everything west of New England and east of the Mississippi River. ¹

Today, we think of the “Bible Belt” as comprising the states of the old Confederacy and some of the adjacent Midwest states, but in the early 19^th century, religious enthusiasm in America was at its height in the “burnt-over district” of upstate and western New York:

“Across the rolling hills of western New York and along the line of DeWitt Clinton’s famed Erie Canal, there stretched in the second quarter of the nineteenth century a ‘psychic highway’. Upon this broad belt of land congregated a people extraordinarily given to unusual beliefs, particularly devoted to crusades aimed at the perfection of mankind and the attainment of millennial happiness.” ²

The area in question gave rise, in just a few decades, to such luminaries as the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, whose parlor pranks became the basis of Spiritualism; John Humphrey Noyes, who founded the Oneida Community (near Utica), which failed as a commune but succeeded as a business enterprise producing silverware; the Shakers, founded in England by Mother Ann Lee but transplanted to the town of Watervliet, New York in 1776, from which they spread throughout the country; and the famous William Miller and his Millerites near Dunkirk, who gave up waiting for the end of the world and became Seventh-day Adventists instead. Alongside these sects, a “Second Great Awakening” was taking place, an enthusiastic outburst of evangelical Protestant revivalism associated with preachers such as Charles Grandison Finney. In western New York in the early 19^th century, prophets, visionaries, and seers abounded.

Which brings me to Joseph Smith, pride of Palmyra, New York and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. To be clear: I do not believe for one second in the authenticity of Joseph Smith’s “visions” or of the gold plates from which he translated the Book of Mormon, a book which was nothing more than a preposterous fairytale overlaid with a Biblical veneer. I believe, in short, that the entire Mormon enterprise was a low-budget, backwoods con game that got spectacularly out of hand, leading to a religious movement that Joseph Smith, to his credit, was savvy enough to take advantage of—at least until the charade got him killed. Prior to his death, Smith had experienced over a decade of fame and influence, which, for what it’s worth, is far more than Jesus managed.

The success of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is testimony to human credulity, to the need to believe, to the power of the religious imagination, and to how communities can be shaped in part by ridicule, opposition, and even persecution, tribulations which Joseph Smith and his followers endured. As Adam Gopnik put it, the story of Mormonism “is the story of faith, not [simply] of Joseph Smith’s faith. The allegiance is to the community that nurtured you, and it is bolstered by the community’s history of persecution, which makes you understandably inclined to defend its good name against all comers. It isn’t the truth of the Book, or the legends of Nephi, that undergird Mormon solidarity even among lapsed or wavering believers; it’s the memories of what other people were prepared to do in order to prevent your parents from believing. A critique of the creed, even a rational one, feels like an assault on the community.”

Mormonism’s rise resembles the first two centuries of Christianity, filled with visions, miracles, and martyrs, thereby illustrating the maxim that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Allow me to cite the words of Orson Pratt, speaking about the Book of Mormon:

This book must be either true or false. If true, it is one of the most important messages ever sent from God to man. If false, it is one of the most cunning, wicked, bold, deep-laid impositions ever palmed upon the world, calculated to deceive and to ruin millions who will hear it as the word of God.

Pratt’s was by no means an objective observer; he was an early convert to Mormonism, brought into the fold in 1830 at the age of nineteen by his older brother, Parley Pratt. Orson became a prominent Mormon missionary, theologian, and member of the church’s Quorum of Twelve. He was also something of a renowned mathematician. ³

One of the now quaint 19^th-century epithets often applied to the Book of Mormon was the word “humbug,” which was synonymous at the time with “hoax” and “fraud”. Few critics thought Joseph Smith to have been delusional; they thought he was a charlatan whose new “revelations” were spun from whole cloth (or plagiarized from others' cloth). Brigham Young Jr. is said to have asked John Gilbert (the book’s original typesetter) what he thought of the Book of Mormon’s authenticity. When Gilbert replied that the book was “a very big humbug, a hoax of gigantic proportions,” Young smiled and said, “If it is a humbug, it is the most successful humbug ever known.”

However, as Paul Gutjahr has noted, “Whether the Book of Mormon is a humbug or not is something of a moot question. In the two centuries since the book’s appearance, it has attracted millions of adherents.⁴ Perhaps the book’s greatest attraction was how it provided tangible testimony that God was once again speaking to humanity.” What God had to say varied, but what His sayings had in common is that they were transmitted through Joseph Smith. Other church elders were occasionally granted revelations, but any that clashed with Smith’s were summarily rejected. Early Mormon history, as a result, is filled with heretics, false prophets, excommunications, and sectarianism. It is also filled with a good deal of bloodshed, much of it aimed at the Mormons but some of it instigated by Mormons against their perceived enemies. In this, as in so many other ways, Mormonism gives us a window into how religions are formed, how they are sustained, how they become domesticated (i.e., respectable), and what happens once their initial spiritual ardor cools down.

One ought not to push the parallels too far, but Joseph Smith of Palmyra, New York was, on the one hand, no more unlikely a prophet of God than Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Hosea, John the Baptist, or Jesus of Nazareth. On the other hand, if it’s true that God “writes straight with crooked lines,” He never used a line more crooked than Joseph Smith.

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¹ Thomas Jefferson’s “Louisiana Purchase” (1803) had in theory extended the frontier to the Pacific, and Lewis and Clark’s expedition would begin the process of exploration, settlement, and conquest of the inconvenient people who inhabited the territory. However, as of 1830, Chicago and St. Louis were about as far west as most Americans cared to venture.  

² Whitney Cross, quoted by Emerson Klees in Crucible of Ferment. 

³ Pratt’s life in the Mormon community was no bed of roses; his wife, Sarah, apparently caught the eye of Joseph Smith, who attempted to lure Sarah into his bed via his brand-new revelation of “plural marriages”. Rebuffed, Smith then spread the word that Sarah was having an affair with another member of the community (John C. Bennett), leading Orson Pratt to attempt suicide in 1842. He survived, although, in the long run, his marriage to Sarah did not.

⁴ Many of whom likely never read it, some of whom likely were unable to read it, and most of whom were likely attracted by the lifestyle of the community rather than by the pseudo-history so tediously detailed in the text.

Luckily, a photographer was on hand to capture the moment...