The Character of Joseph and the Smith Family

#The Character of Joseph Smith and the Smith Family

Anti-Mormons have suggested that the Smith family were known for their “vicious habits” and their “lack of moral character.” Also they have proffered that Joseph Smith, Jr., was well-known for his “indolence, exaggeration, and untruthfulness.” They also claim that “more than sixty of Smith’s neighbors in Palmyra, New York, signed a statement to this effect.” They also suggest that Joseph, Sr., was “obsessed with the notion that somewhere near their home lay buried the fabled treasures of Captain Kidd.” Further, “The Smiths spent their time fortune telling and divining with the aid of forked sticks and seer-stones. They practiced magic and used occult methods in their endless, fruitless digging for the hidden.”

The purpose of this chapter is to first carefully examine the origin of these claims. Then, we will consider from a few different perspectives more legitimate evidences of the character of both Joseph’s family and Joseph himself.

The reader is first requested to read the material on Philastus Hurlbut in the resource article “Understanding the Anti-Mormon Movement.” Please read the section titled “The Basic History of the Anti-Mormon Movement” in its entirely.

Philastus Hurlbut in the early 1830s was hired by an anti-Mormon committee to find those who would attest to Joseph Smith’s “dishonesty.” He allegedly gathered affidavits from former Smith neighbors which attested to the Smith family’s questionable character. Hurlbut’s “research” and ill-gotten affidavits produced much of the libelous history of Joseph Smith and his family and of the early Church that is referenced by anti-Mormon writers today. These affidavits have remained an anti-Mormon treasure trove to which generations of critics have turned and returned for years.

Research by Brother Donald L. Enders contains an analysis of the Hurlbut-Howe affidavits (FARMS Insights, September 1993). In the affidavits, Hurlbut described the Prophet’s family as, among many other derogatory things, “lazy” and “indolent.” A neighbor, Joseph Capron, for example, declared that the Smiths’ “great object appeared to be, to live without work.” “It was a mystery to their neighbors,” said another neighbor David Stafford, “how they got their living.” Brother Enders found evidence, however, in the land and tax records, farm account books, and other credible public documents of that day, that on questions of testable fact, the affidavits cannot be trusted. Brother Enders has demonstrated that the Smiths’ farming techniques were virtually a textbook illustration of the best recommendations of the day, showing them to have been, by contemporary standards, intelligent, skilled, and responsible people. And they were very hard working. To create their farm, for instance, the Smiths moved many tons of rock and cut down about six thousand trees, a large percentage of which were one hundred feet or more in height and from four to six feet in diameter. Then they fenced their property, which required cutting at least six or seven thousand ten-foot rails. They did an enormous amount of work before they were able even to begin actual daily farming. Furthermore, in order to pay for their farm, the Smiths were obliged to hire themselves out as day laborers. Throughout the surrounding area, they dug and rocked up wells and cisterns, mowed, harvested, made cider and barrels and chairs and brooms and baskets, taught school, dug for salt, worked as carpenters and domestics, built stone walls and fireplaces, flailed grain, cut and sold cordwood, carted, washed clothes, sold garden produce, painted chairs and oil-cloth coverings, butchered, dug coal, and hauled stone. And, along the way, they produced between one thousand and seven thousand pounds of maple sugar annually. “Laziness” and “indolence” are difficult to detect in the Smith family.

And what resulted from the Smiths’ hard work? The 1830 tax records for Manchester Township appraised the family’s holdings at the average level per acre for farms in the vicinity. Of the ten farms owned by the Staffords, Stoddards, Chases, and Caprons—residents of the neighborhood who affixed their signatures prominently to affidavits denigrating the Prophet’s family—only one was assessed as more valuable per acre than the Smiths’. The others received lower appraisals—and, in some cases, significantly lower ones. So what conclusions may we draw? If the Hurlbut-Howe affidavits cannot be trusted on matters that can be quantified and tested, there seems little reason to trust their judgments in the less tangible matter of character. Clearly, in some cases they reflect religious hostility and perhaps envy from their less successful neighbors. As the Prophet’s brother expressed it, “We never knew we were bad folks until Joseph told his vision. We were considered respectable till then, but at once people began to circulate falsehoods and stories in a wonderful [extraordinary] way” (Deseret Evening News, 20 January 1894, 11).

Further research into census records of the day has shown that some of those attesting in the affidavits to specific conversations and observations were not even in the same state at the time of the alleged signings. It is possible that, in some instances, Hurlbut, eager to discredit Joseph Smith and Mormonism by any means, simply wrote these affidavits himself.

#Did Joseph Tell the Truth?

Please consider carefully the following two-verse extract from Joseph Smith’s own account of his First Vision experience:

I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air.

One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (JS-H 1:16-17).

Perhaps we should add to his account of the first vision his own simple autobiographical testimony of that event:

I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true; and while they were persecuting me, reviling me, and speaking all manner of evil against me for so saying, I was led to say in my heart: Why persecute me for telling the truth? I have actually seen a vision; and who am I that I can withstand God, or why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it; at least I knew that by so doing I would offend God, and come under condemnation (JSH 1:25).

Have you ever seriously considered just how important it is to you that Joseph literally had this encounter with the Father and the Son—that he was telling the absolute truth in recounting his experience in the grove?

Most all of you reading this chapter would acknowledge that Joseph did indeed have the experience exactly as he reported it, but let us assume for just a moment that he did not. Let us suppose he was not being truthful—that he was lying. How then should we regard him? Should we think him a guileless and well-meaning young man who simply desired to start a wholesome new religious movement? Was he someone who failed to find fulfillment in the religions of his day, and he felt he needed to do something about it? He certainly possessed the tools to do just that. He was a bright, charismatic young man with uncommon spiritual intuition and outstanding leadership skills. If he didn’t actually have this experience in the grove exactly as he represented it, perhaps we ought to forgive him. Even if he stretched the truth a bit, look at all the good that has come from his efforts.

One is reminded of C. S. Lewis’s statement about Jesus Christ:

“I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to (Mere Christianity, 55-56).

In like manner, if Joseph was not a prophet of God who conversed with God and with angels, then he was a damnable charlatan who pulled off a major and tragic religious scam that continues even today amongst a sincere and devoted people.

Joseph simply must have been a prophet of God just as he said he was. Today, the very spiritual lives of those of us in the Church depend utterly on the fact that he spoke the absolute truth. If he did not, then I and many of my Latter-day Saint friends are spiritually, emotionally, and mentally bereft and desperately without hope. I personally would have nothing left but profound despair.

There can be no doubting Joseph’s personal abilities. He possessed nearly irresistible charm, a magnetic personality, and unrivaled physical strength. But what about his integrity, his character? Was he the kind of person we can trust absolutely and unreservedly? Did he tell us the complete, absolute truth about all of his spiritual experiences?

It is vital that each of us avoids being merely “willing” to acknowledge that Joseph was a divinely called prophet. Each of us must possess the desire and expend the effort necessary to obtain an abiding, proactive testimony of his prophetic calling— independent of anyone else or anyone else’s beliefs. If we do not, then our entire relationship with the Church is on shaky ground. What about you? Do you have such a testimony? Can you bear, in any company and in any setting, a sincere and passionate testimony that he was a prophet of God?

In a peculiar way—because of our human nature—it is somehow easier for us to believe in the prophets in the distant past. It is not difficult, for example, to accept Moses, Isaiah, Lehi, or Nephi, or even Jesus Christ himself, but Joseph Smith is somehow more difficult to accept. The reason has to do with our temporal proximity to him. He lived less than two centuries ago. We are keenly aware of many of the nonprophetic aspects and issues of his life. Somehow this makes a difference. The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “The ancients are only venerable to us because distance has destroyed what was trivial; as the sun and stars affect us only grandly, because we cannot reach to all their smoke and surfaces and say, Is that all?” (The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. volume 6: Natural History of Intellect, and Other Papers, “Past and Present,” 387). The tendency for men to readily accept the dead prophets but struggle to accept living ones has apparently always existed. Hugh Nibley observed:

It is a plain fact that the true church upon the earth must and will always have at its head a living prophet. But that is unwelcome news to the world. It has always been poison. It is the one teaching that has made the restored gospel unacceptable to the wisdom of men. A dead prophet the world dearly desires and warmly cherishes; he is a priceless tradition, a spiritual heritage, a beautiful memory. But woe to a living prophet! He shall be greeted with stones and catcalls even by pious people. The men who put the apostles to death thought they were doing God a favor [John 16:2], and the Lord tells us with what reverence and devotion men adorn the tombs of the prophets whom they would kill if they were alive (Luke 11:47-48).

Men can read the words of a dead prophet and apply his heavy charges to that dead generation to which the prophet spoke, piously shaking their heads the while and repeating, “If we had been present in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” By that very statement, the Lord tells those devout lovers of dead prophets, “Ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets” (Matthew 23:30-31). Christ predicted that he, too, like the other prophets, would be eagerly sought after once he had left the earth—but then it would be too late.

Here we have something in the nature of a general principle. The rejection of living prophets and the veneration of dead ones is not a folly limited to one nation or to one generation. It meets us throughout the long history of Israel as a sort of standard procedure. Nor did it cease with the coming of Christ, who promised his disciples that they would be treated as badly and rejected as completely as he. The wise men of his time had a ready answer to Jesus: “Abraham is our father” (John 8:39), they protest. “We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God” (John 8:41). “We are Moses’s disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is” (John 9:28-29).

God had visited the earth in remote times; he had spoken to Abraham and to Moses. Venerable traditions burdened with a magnificent weight of art, poetry, scholarship, and ritual attested the sincere devotion of the race to the memory of God’s visits to men in times past. But to ask men to believe that that same God had spoken in their own day, and to a plain man who walked their streets—that was simply too much to take! That was the test that Christ’s generation could not pass (The World and the Prophets, 7).

In this chapter, we will concentrate on your own personal testimony of the prophet Joseph. We will examine four specific lines of evidence supporting Joseph’s spiritual claims about himself and his work: (1) What his contemporaries said about him; (2) The uncontestable authenticity of the Book of Mormon; (3) The fruits of Joseph Smith’s ministry; and (4) The testimonies of noble men today.

#What His Contemporaries Said of Him

How did his friends—those who associated with him most closely—really regard him? What about those who knew him most intimately? Would it not have been impossible for him to hide his real self from those closest to him during his ministry? Brigham Young is a prime example. Was Brigham perceptive and sensitive? Was he sophisticated in the ways of men? Did he have sound common sense, keen insights, and correct discernment? Might we expect him to have been able to detect disingenuousness, hypocrisy, deceit, and artificiality? Brigham Young declared of Joseph: “I feel like shouting hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever knew Joseph Smith, the Prophet” (JD, 3:51). Brigham later declared, “I honor and revere the name of Joseph Smith. I delight to hear it; I love it. I love his doctrine” (Discourses of Brigham Young, 458). And with his last breath on earth he reportedly whispered, “Joseph! Joseph! Joseph!” (JD, 13:216).

Lorenzo Snow said, “There never was a man that possessed a higher degree of integrity and more devotedness to the interests of mankind than the Prophet Joseph Smith” (CR, October 1897, 64).

When Zion’s Camp made the arduous journey from Kirtland to Missouri in 1834, one of the participants was a young man, L. O. Littlefield. He observed closely the prophet Joseph. According to Brother Littlefield’s journal, Joseph demonstrated on many occasions his “natural and inspired characteristic” of integrity. Littlefield said, “It is due his memory for me to here place on record the fact that I never, in that camp or during the trials of his later life, saw Joseph Smith the Prophet falter or shrink from the performance of any duty or undertaking that the Lord had commanded or inaugurated” (Juvenile Instructor, 27:223-24).

Another participant, Moses Martin, also wrote in his Journal of the Zion’s Camp march: “The road was so bad that we twice during the day had to unhitch our teams from our wagons and draw them by hand. Here I saw the Prophet wade in mud over the tops of his boot legs and help draw the wagons out” (Journal History, May 27, 1834).

Yet another member of the camp made similar observations: “Zion’s Camp, in passing through the State of Indiana, had to cross very bad swamps, consequently we had to attach ropes to the wagons to help them through, and the Prophet was the first man at the rope in his bare feet. This was characteristic of him in all times of difficulty” (Statement by John M. Chidester, Juvenile Instructor, 27:151).

George A. Smith also wrote concerning the Zions Camp ordeal:

The Prophet Joseph took a full share of the fatigues of the entire journey. In addition to the care of providing for the Camp and presiding over it, he walked most of the time and had a full proportion of blistered, bloody and sore feet, which was the natural result of walking from 25 to 40 miles a day in a hot season of the year. But during the entire trip he never uttered a murmur or complaint, while most of the men in the Camp complained to him of sore toes, blistered feet, long drives, scanty supply of provisions, poor quality of bread, bad corn dodger, frouzey [sic] butter, strong honey, maggotty [sic] bacon and cheese, etc. Even a dog could not bark at some men without their murmuring at Joseph. If they had to camp with bad water it would nearly cause rebellion, yet we were the Camp of Zion, and many of us were prayerless, thoughtless, careless, heedless, foolish or devilish and yet we did not know it. Joseph had to bear with us and tutor us, like children (George A. Smith’s Journal, June 25, 1834).

One of the most credible testimonies of the prophet Joseph came, ironically, from a man who was excommunicated from the Church in 1838, and never returned. This was David Whitmer, one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon. He was born a Pennsylvania German and carried into adulthood a hint of a German accent. He was about the same age as the Prophet Joseph. He was an outspoken rugged individualist and this quality verged on stubbornness. This utterly honest personality would have been the first to detect fraud and expose it. If Joseph had been intending to perpetrate some type of fraud, David Whitmer is not one he would have picked as a partner in his conspiracy. Throughout his eight years in the Church and his fifty years strictly separated from it, he never wavered regarding his testimony of the Book of Mormon and, by implication, of the prophet Joseph.

In addition to being one of the three Book of Mormon witnesses, David Whitmer became prominent in the leadership of the Church, serving as the “president of the Church in Missouri” which would be comparable to a stake president in terms of the current church organization.

Following his excommunication he moved to Richmond, Missouri, where he lived in a society hostile to his religious views, a situation that continually highlighted his rugged independence. There he ran a livery stable and haulage business. He remained in Richmond for fifty years until his death in 1888 at the age of 85.

David earned the solid respect of his non-Mormon townsmen through a half century of private integrity and doing business with them. He was also active in civil government. During fifty years in non-Mormon society, he insisted with the fervor of youth that he knew that the Book of Mormon was divinely revealed. Relatively few people in Richmond could accept such testimony, but none doubted his intelligence or complete honesty. No one summarized this view more clearly than Hiram Parker, a prominent businessman, who lived near Whitmer for a decade: “No one could know Uncle Davy and not like and trust him. . . . Children like him, men respected him and trusted him, and I never heard a word from anyone during my ten years’ acquaintance with him and those who had known him intimately for years that spoke a harsh word or uttered a doubt as to his truthfulness and general kindness of heart” (“Mormon Reminiscences,” published letter of Hiram Parker, Detroit, uncertain date). Parker had obviously reflected a good deal on how one might admire the man without accepting his message. Few of his townsmen could accept his Book of Mormon testimony, but “on any other subject or statement of fact neither myself or others could doubt.” Hiram Parker spent most of his life in selling in several states but had never met “a more honest guileless man”—How one can account for the delusion that must have possessed this old man is beyond me” (Ibid.).

The well-known story of the episode in 1833 in the public square at Independence, Missouri was told by New York convert John P. Greene:

When the mob assembled they went to the houses of several of the leading Mormons. And taking Isaac Morley, David Whitmer, and others, they told them to bid their families farewell, for they would never see them again. Then driving them at the point of the bayonet to the public square, they stripped and tarred and feathered them, amidst menaces and insults. The commanding officer then called twelve of his men. And ordering them to cock their guns and present them at the prisoners’ breasts, and to be ready to fire when he gave the word, he addressed the prisoners, threatening them with instant death unless they denied the Book of Mormon and confessed it to be a fraud; at the same time adding that if they did so, they might enjoy the privileges of citizens. David Whitmer, hereupon, lifted up his hands and bore witness that the Book of Mormon was the Word of God. The mob then let them go (Facts Relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons, 17).

David became widely known as “the last surviving witness,” and consequently he was interviewed far more extensively than the others. He claimed that thousands came to inquire, and more than fifty of these conversations are reported in reasonable detail in contemporary diaries, letters, and newspapers, supplemented by later recollections. These reports furnish us with a detailed historical record. So, today an investigator can test David Whitmer’s convictions almost as well as the visitor of the past century who talked with him personally. The following replies are taken from the better recorded interviews of about the last decade of his life. This composite interview has been constructed by the historian Richard Lloyd Anderson and reported in his book, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (80-82):

Q: Is your published testimony accurate?

A: “As you read my testimony given many years ago, so it stands as my own existence, the same as when I gave it, and so shall stand throughout the cycles of eternity” (Letter of David Whitmer to Dr. James N. Seymour, December 8, 1875).

Q: When did this event [the experience of the three Book of Mormon witnesses] take place?

A: “It was in June, 1829, the very last part of the month” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Life of Joseph F. Smith, 242).

Q: What was the approximate time of day?

A: “It was about 11 AM” (Journal of Edward Stevenson, December 22, 1877).

Q: What were the circumstances of the vision?

A: “[We] went out into the woods nearby, and sat down on a log and talked awhile. We then kneeled down and prayed. Joseph prayed. We then got up and sat on the log and were talking, when all at once a light came down from above us and encircled us for quite a little distance around, and the angel stood before us” (Letter of William H. Kelley to Saints’ Herald, January 16, 1882, Coldwater, Michigan).

Q: Describe the angel.

A: “He was dressed in white, and spoke and called me by name and said, ‘Blessed is he that keepeth His commandments.’ This is all that I heard the angel say” (Ibid.).

Q: Did the angel have the Book of Mormon plates?

A: “[He] showed to us the plates, the sword of Laban, the Directors, the Urim and Thummim, and other records. Human language could not describe heavenly things and that which we saw” (Journal of George Q. Cannon, entry dated February 27, 1884, cited in Instructor 80:520).

Q: Did the vision take place under natural circumstances?

A: “The fact is, it was just as though Joseph, Oliver, and I were sitting right here on a log, when we were overshadowed by a light. It was not like the light of the sun, nor like that of a fire, but more glorious and beautiful. It extended away round us. I cannot tell how far, but in the midst of this light, immediately before us, about as far off as he sits (pointing to John C. Whitmer, who was sitting 2 or 3 feet from him) there appeared, as it were, a table, with many records on it—besides the plates of the Book of Mormon, also the sword of Laban, the Directors, and the Interpreters. I saw them as plain as I see this bed (striking his hand upon the bed beside him), and I heard the voice of the Lord as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life declaring that they were translated by the gift and power of God” (Journal of Joseph F. Smith, cited in Joseph Fielding Smith, Life of Joseph F. Smith, 242).

Q: Can you explain the supernatural power that surrounded you?

A: “All of a sudden I beheld a dazzlingly brilliant light that surpassed in brightness even the sun at noonday, and which seemed to envelop the woods for a considerable distance around. Simultaneous with the light came a strange entrancing influence which permeated me so powerfully that I felt chained to the spot, while I also experienced a sensation of joy absolutely indescribable” (Omaha Herald, October 17, 1886).

Q: Did you see the Urim and Thummim?

A: “I saw the Interpreters in the holy vision; they looked like whitish stones put in the rim of a bow—looked like spectacles, only much larger” (Letter of James H. Hart to Deseret News, August 23, 1883, Seneca, Missouri, cited in Deseret Evening News, September 4, 1883).

Q: Did you see an actual table?

A: “You see that small table by the wall? . . . Well, there was a table about that size, and the heavenly messenger brought the several plates and laid them on the table before our eyes, and we saw them” (Ibid.).

Q: Did you handle the plates?

A: “I did not handle the plates—only saw them” (Journal of James H. Moyle, June 28, 1885).

“Joseph, and I think Oliver and Emma told me about the plates, and described them to me, and I believed them, but did not see except at the time testified of” (Journal of Nathan Tanner, Jr., April 13, 1886).

Q: How clearly could you see the plates?

A: “The angel stood before us, and he turned the leaves one by one” (Letter of P. Wilhelm Poulson to Deseret News, August 13, 1878, Ogden, Utah, cited in Deseret Evening News, August 16, 1878).

“He held the plates and turned them over with his hands, so that they could be plainly visible” (Chicago Times, October 17, 1881).

Q: Did the angel turn all the leaves before you as you looked on it?

A: “No, not all, only that part of the book which was not sealed, and what there was sealed appeared as solid to my view as wood” (Journal of Edward Stevenson, December 22, 1877).

Q: Can you describe the plates?

A: “They appeared to be of gold, about six by nine inches in size, about as thick as parchment, a great many in number and bound together like the leaves of a book by massive rings passing through the back edges. The engraving upon them was very plain and of very curious appearance” (Kansas City Daily Journal, June 5, 1881).

Q: Is it possible that you imagined this experience?

A: “Our testimony is true. And if these things are not true, then there is no truth; and if there is no truth, there is no God; and if there is no God, there is no existence. But I know there is a God, for I have heard His voice and witnessed the manifestation of his power” (Letter of James H. Hart to Deseret News, August 23, 1883, Seneca, Missouri, cited in Deseret Evening News, September 4, 1883).

Q: Do you remember the peculiar sensation experienced upon that occasion?

A: “Yes, I remember it very distinctly. And I never think of it, from that day to this, but what that spirit is present with me” (Ibid.).

More than one person appealed privately to the last-surviving witness to disclose deceit if it existed. James H. Moyle was later Assistant Secretary of Treasury in two U.S. administrations. Graduating with legal training at the University of Michigan in 1885, he determined to cross-examine the remaining Book of Mormon witness before returning to Utah. Young Moyle journeyed to Richmond, secured an appointment with David Whitmer, and spent some time recounting the persecutions and sacrifices of his family because of belief in Mormonism. He further contrasted his own situation with Whitmer’s. He was just beginning his own life’s career, and Whitmer was not far from death: “And so I begged of him not to let me go through life believing in a vital falsehood.” The thoughtful law student requested not confirmation, but disclosure: “Was there any possibility that he might have been deceived in any particular?” All of his life Moyle remembered the “unequivocal” affirmation of the testimony: “There was no question about its truthfulness” (James H. Moyle, “A Visit to David Whitmer,” Instructor 80 [1945]: 401).

George Q. Cannon spoke of the Prophet’s integrity, as manifested throughout his life of tribulation and persecution:

Think of what he passed through! Think of his afflictions, and think of his dauntless character! Did any one ever see him falter? Did any one ever see him flinch? Did any one ever see any lack in him of the power necessary to enable him to stand with dignity in the midst of his enemies, or lacking in dignity in the performance of his duties as a servant of the living God? God gave him peculiar power in this respect. He was filled with integrity to God; with such integrity as was not known among men. He was like an angel of God among them. Notwithstanding all that he had to endure, and the peculiar circumstances in which he was so often placed, and the great responsibility that weighed constantly upon him, he never faltered; the feeling of fear or trembling never crossed him—at least he never exhibited it in his feelings or actions. God sustained him to the very last, and was with him, and bore him off triumphant even in his death (JD, 23:36).

Josiah Smith described a personal encounter with Joseph:

When he grasped my hand in that cordial way (known to those who have met him in the honest simplicity of truth), I felt as one of old in the presence of the Lord, my strength seemed to be gone, so that it required an effort on my part to stand on my feet; but in all this there was no fear, but the serenity and peace of heaven pervaded my soul, and the still small voice of the spirit whispered its living testimony in the depths of my soul, where it has ever remained, that he was a Man of God (Deseret News,

8:117).

Elder Stephen L. Richards said:

My grandfather [Willard Richards] was a close friend and companion of this man. He knew him as intimately as one man may know another. He had abundant opportunity to detect any flaws in his character and discover any deceit in his work. He found none, and he has left his testimony to his family and to all the world that this man was true, that he was divinely commissioned for the work he had to do, and that he gave his life to the fulfillment of his mission (CR, October 1951, 117).

Such sentiments were widespread and of lasting significance among the Prophet’s acquaintances. As James B. Bracken recalled Joseph’s conduct during a trying experience in Missouri, he observed, “I never saw a nobler looking or acting man than Joseph Smith appeared on that occasion” (Juvenile Instructor, 27:203). Said Daniel D. McArthur, “To me he seemed to possess more power and force of character than any ordinary man. I would look upon him when he was with hundreds of other men, then, he would appear greater than ever” (Ibid., 128-29).

Sometimes first impressions, even among those who ought to have considered him their enemy, were telling. While a prisoner in Missouri, Joseph Smith was delivered into the custody of his bitter enemy, General Moses Wilson. Later General Wilson said of him, “He was a very remarkable man. I carried him into my house, a prisoner in chains, and in less than two hours my wife loved him better than she did me.” Some years later, when the Wilsons had moved to Texas, the General was engaged in raising a mob against some Mormon elders in that area. Upon hearing of these plans, Mrs. Wilson, although an aged lady, mounted her horse and rode thirty miles to warn the elders. No doubt her esteem for the Prophet largely motivated her in this action (JD, 17:92).

Eliza R. Snow wrote of Joseph: “Though his expansive mind grasped the great plan of salvation and solved the mystic problem of man’s destiny—though he had in his possession keys that unlocked the past and the future with its succession of eternities, in his devotions he was humble as a little child” (“Sketch of My Life,” 136).

John Henry Evans wrote:

If the Prophet was a pretender, then he must also have been a good actor. For it would require . . . no small amount of skill in the dramatic art to keep such men as Brigham Young, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, the two Pratts, Wilford Woodruff, Heber C. Kimball, Dr. Willard Richards, Orson Spencer, and hosts of others equally intelligent and alert, from becoming disillusioned with respect to the New Movement. That they did not, was a tribute either to the leader’s art in covering up his deception or to his sincerity (Joseph Smith, an American Prophet, 323).

“I never saw another man like Joseph,” said John W. Hess, as he spoke of the “kindness and simplicity” of his nature. “There was something heavenly and angelic in his looks that I never witnessed in the countenance of any other person.” The Prophet stayed for thirteen days at the Hess home, after which John, then a lad of fourteen, related that he “became very much attached to him, and learned to love him more dearly than any other person” he ever met, his father and mother not excepted (Juvenile Instructor, 27:302).

James W. Woods, the Prophet’s last attorney, was with him on the morning of June 27, 1844. Never a Latter-day Saint, he observed: “I do not think that Joe Smith was at heart a bad or wicked man, and you could see from his face that he was not naturally an unkind one” (Iowa Democrat, May 13, 1885).

Hyrum L. Andrus, in his book, Joseph Smith, the Man and the Seer, concluded his chapter on Joseph’s character:

Men with such a rare blend of admirable qualities as Joseph Smith possessed seldom appear on the scene of history. His physical appearance was commanding and inviting to look upon. His personality was charming and magnetic. While he possessed the strength of a giant, he had the agility of a chipmunk. Yet he was gentle and easy to approach, even by those in lowly stations. His keen penetrating eye was ever alert and discerning; and when truth was revealed, his courage and integrity in following its course knew no bounds. Such traits of character . . . caused Joseph Smith to stand out as a man among men and contributed to his stature as a Latter-day prophet of God (24-25).

#The Book of Mormon

In the spring of 1829 Joseph Smith was in his twenty-fourth year. He was an unlettered young man with little formal education. He was reared in the backwoods of New York and never looked inside a high school or a college. His wife Emma wrote of him: “Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter; let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon” (Joseph Smith, III, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” Saints’ Advocate 26:289-90). Between April and July of that year, Joseph dictated the entire contents of the Book of Mormon without any resource except an old hat, his seerstone, and “the gift and power of God” (D&C 135:3). Oliver Cowdery functioned as scribe.1

In the past twenty or so years, the Book of Mormon has successfully withstood

repeated and aggressive multidisciplinary academic scrutiny. It is simply impossible that Joseph Smith, or any man in 1829, however scholarly his background, could have produced and written the book. I maintain, with comfortable assurance, that anyone today who does not believe that the Book of Mormon is an authentic ancient document does not have sufficient knowledge of its content.

In a recent general conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke powerfully of his own personal testimony of the Book of Mormon. He spoke of Joseph and his brother Hyrum Smith in Carthage Jail. They both knew their martyrdom was imminent. Both bore powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon to each other and to the guards. Elder Holland said:

As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth? . . . Tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon (“Safety for the Soul,” Ensign, November 2009, 89, italics in the original).

Elder Holland then spoke of the almost endless array of fruitless attacks, scholarly and otherwise, made on the Book of Mormon in the past 179 years. He emphasized the importance of each member’s striving for his or her own personal testimony of the book:

I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this latter-day work—

and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these, our times—until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it testifies. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teaming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived, and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit (Ibid., 89-90, italics in original).

Elder Holland then concluded his talk with a powerful and poignant testimony:

I ask that my testimony of the Book of Mormon, and all that it implies, given today under my own oath and office, be recorded by men on earth and angels in heaven. I hope I have a few years left in my “last days,” but whether I do or do not, I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true, that it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the latter days (Ibid., 90).

#By His Fruits Ye Shall Know Him

The Lord gave the key for recognizing true prophets. He said: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:15-20). Let us look briefly at a few church statistics that illustrate the fruits of Joseph’s brief ministry.

Following the Church’s organization in a small log cabin in upstate New York in 1830, it took 117 years—until 1947—for the Church to grow from its initial six members to one million. The two-million-member mark was reached just 16 years later, in 1963, and the three-million mark in eight years more. This accelerating growth pattern has continued with about a million new members now being added every three years or so. Church membership as of 2007 was just over thirteen million.

At the time of this writing, there are over 50,000 full-time missionaries serving in 348 missions throughout the world. There are nearly 28,000 congregations and 124 temples located throughout the world, and church materials are available in 157 languages.

The Church sponsors four universities or colleges, and there are nearly 340,000 college-age students enrolled in institutes of religion.

#The Testimonies of Noble Men Today

During this final dispensation, we in the Church have been led by a group of men whom we refer to as “general authorities.” These are apostles (members of the quorum of Twelve and the quorum of the First Presidency) and members of the quorums of Seventy. Many of us have had the opportunity to know them personally and observe them closely. They are the cream of our culture. They are the finest, most noble, most dignified, most trustworthy people we know. Their integrity and honesty is unquestioned. We love them and are willing to follow them unquestioningly. To a man, they not only believe Joseph Smith told the truth about himself, but they have dedicated their lives to all Joseph taught.

I must of course, on my own, earn a testimony of the prophet Joseph independent of any other. But it is also true that the testimonies of these brethren have tangibly impacted my testimony. Though it is probably inappropriate to single one of them out, I can say with poignant feeling, “If Elder Neal A. Maxwell believed Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God, then so do I.”

1 See Appendix A, The Process of Translating the Book of Mormon.

For examples, see Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (FARMS).