DIRECT EXTERNAL EVIDENCE—REFLECTIONS ON THE TESTIMONY OF THE ELEVEN WITNESSES.  
Doubtless the Lord had his own purpose to subserve in giving different kinds of testimony—divine and human—to the same truth. The testimony of the Three Witnesses, attended as it was by such remarkable displays of supernatural power, he knew would be opposed from the very circumstance of its being supernatural. It cannot be but that God fore-knew of the rise of that so-called "Rational Criticism" of divine things which would resolve inspired dreams, visions, revelations and the administration of angels into hallucinations, brought about first by an inclination to believe in the miraculous, (and "ordinarily," argue the "Rational Critics," "expectation is the father of its object.")[1] supplemented by the theory of self-deception, self-hypnosis or hypnotic influence of others. This particular school of philosophers took its rise in the last century, and in the twentieth is much in vogue.
 
It will be remembered that the starting point with "Rational Criticism" (and in that term is included the so-called "Higher Criticism") is unbelief in what is commonly called the miraculous, and if the followers of that school do not deny the possibility of the miraculous, they at least say that it has never been proven; and further, they hold that "a supernatural relation"—such as the testimony of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, for instance—"cannot be accepted as such, that it always implies credulity or imposture."[2] What chance, then, would the testimony of the Three Witnesses have with those who regard it as "an absolute rule of criticism to deny a place in history to narratives of miraculous circumstances?" This, they hold, "is simply the dictation of observation. Such facts have never been really proved. All the pretended miracles near enough to be examined are referable to illusion or imposture!"[3] Nor is this the climax of their absurdity, but they hold that the very "honesty and sincerity" of those who testify to the miraculous make them all the more untrustworthy as witnesses! I know this seems incredible; but what will be thought when I set down my authority for the statement, and it is learned that I quote no mere blatant declaimer against religion, nor any one of the many careless, or ill-informed writers of the so-called "Rational School of Critics," but the sober-minded, and earnest man of science, the late Professor Huxley? The statement quoted is from his paper on "The Value of Witnesses to the Miraculous."[4] In the course of treating upon some statements made by one Eginhard (eighth century A.D.), concerning miraculous events connected with SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, the professor takes occasion to bear testimony to the high character, acute intelligence, large instruction and sincerity of Eginhard; then speaking of him as a witness to the miraculous, makes this astonishing statement:
 
It is hard upon Eginhard to say, but it is exactly the honesty and sincerity of the man which are his undoing as a witness to the miraculous. He himself makes it quite obvious that when his profound piety comes on the stage, his goodness and even his perception of right and wrong make their exit.
 
In another paper to the same magazine, three months later, the professor, writing practically on the same subject, says:
 
Where the miraculous is concerned, neither undoubted honesty, nor knowledge of the world, nor proved faithfulness as civil historians, nor profound piety, on the part of eye witnesses and contemporaries affords any guarantee of the objective truth of their statements, when we know that a firm belief in the miraculous was ingrained in their minds, and was the presupposition of their observations and reasonings.[5]
 
This school of critics—and its following is much larger than is generally admitted—in this arbitrary way gets rid of the miracles of both the Old and the New Testament. The resurrection of Jesus, to them, is but a figment of the over-wrought minds of his disciples; and has no better foundation than the dreams and light visions of women, foremost among whom is Mary of Magdala,[6] the once possessed. The glorious departure of Jesus from the midst of his disciples, on Mount Olivet—after the resurrection—is merely a collective hallucination, an illusion—"the air on these mountain tops is full of strange mirages!"[7] The display of God's power on the day of Pentecost as revealed in the Acts of the Apostles, is a thunderstorm.[8] The speaking in tongues by the apostles on the same occasion and thereafter in the Church, is but the ecstatic utterance of incoherent sounds mistaken for a foreign language; while prophecy is but the fruit of mental excitement, a sort of ecstatic frenzy.[9]
 
With views such as these quite prevalent in Christendom, relative to miraculous events, it is but to be expected that the testimony of the Three Witnesses would be accounted for on some similar hypothesis. The early anti-Mormon writers generally assumed a conspiracy between Joseph Smith and the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and hence accorded no importance[10] to the testimony of either group—the Three or the Eight. Later, however, the force of the testimony of the Witnesses persisting, and pressing for an explanation which the theory of conspiracy and collusion did not satisfy, there began to be advanced the theory that probably Joseph Smith had in some way deceived the Witnesses and thus brought them to give their testimony to the world. "Either these Witnesses were grossly deceived by a lying prophet," says Daniel P. Kidder, who wrote an unfriendly book against the Church in 1843, "or else they wickedly and wilfully perjured themselves, by swearing to what they knew to be false." "The former," he adds, "although not very creditable to their good sense, is yet the more charitable opinion, and is rendered probable by the fact, that hundreds have been deceived in the same way. It is confirmed, moreover, by the well-known mental phenomenon, that to individuals accustomed to disregard the laws of veracity, truth and falsehood are alike. They can as easily persuade themselves of the one as of the other."[11]
 
Also the Rev. Henry Caswell, professor of divinity in Kemper College, Missouri, writing in 1843, said:
 
He [Joseph Smith] then persuaded [Martin] Harris to believe, that in some sense he actually beheld the wonderful plates. There was a worthless fellow named Oliver Cowdery, residing in the neighborhood, a school teacher by profession, and also a Baptist preacher, who, together with one David Whitmer, was similarly persuaded by our ingenious Prophet.[12]
 
Professor J. B. Turner, of Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, in his "Mormonism in All Ages" (1842), takes practically the same position, but goes a step further and undertakes to explain how the Prophet "deceived" the Witnesses, or how he "persuaded" them to believe, "in some sense," that they had actually beheld "the wonderful plates." In doing this the professor quotes the revelation given through the Prophet, in June, 1829, to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, previous to their viewing the Nephite plates.[13] Also the revelation to Martin Harris in which he is promised that he shall be a witness to the truth of the Book of Mormon.[14] In the revelations cited the Lord promises these men that they shall view the Nephite record; and directs what they shall say after they have seen and heard the things promised. Because some of the phraseology of these revelations is found also in the testimony of the Three Witnesses, the professor rushes to the conclusion that the Witnesses never really saw the vision, nor heard the voice of God as promised, but were persuaded to accept these revelations through Joseph Smith as their witness to the truth of the Book of Mormon. In other words Professor Turner's theory is that the Witnesses had no other evidence than the word of Joseph Smith for the existence of the plates and other sacred things connected with them! And he triumphantly exclaims:
 
Here, then, is the mighty power of God, the angel, and voice of the Lord, which revealed such marvels in 1830, all concentrated in the person, and pouring from the mouth of the Lord's Prophet in 1829. * * * * The whole, then, of this mighty array of bombast, nonsense, and blasphemy, resolves itself into this: "Joe Smith is not only 'author and proprietor' of the Book of Mormon, as both he and his Witnesses declare, but he is also 'power of god,' 'angel,' 'voice,' 'faith,' 'eyes,' 'ears,' and 'hands' for the Witnesses themselves; that is, all the evidence the world has for the Book of Mormon, after all this bluster, is 'Joe Smith's say so.' He says that God instructs him, he instructs the Witnesses and the Witnesses instruct the world. Quod erat demonstradum!" (p. 179.)
 
Undoubtedly the "Illinois College" of the great State of Illinois was to be congratulated upon having as its chief professor, in 1842, a man of such acuteness of intelligence and profoundness of wisdom! Nor was Governor Thomas Ford, when, some years later, he wrote the history of Illinois, to be out-done by a mere professor of "Illinois College;" and therefore advanced what he had heard concerning the manner in which the testimony of the Witnesses was obtained. The Governor's peculiar relation to "Mormonism," no less than his exalted political station in Illinois, as also the fact that he is one of the principal historians of that very great state of the American union, justifies me in setting down what he has said upon the subject in hand:
 
It is related that the Prophet's early followers were anxious to see the plates; the Prophet had always given out that they could not be seen by the carnal eye, but must be spiritually discerned; that the power to see them depended upon faith, and was the gift of God to be obtained by fasting, prayer, mortification of the flesh, and exercise of the spirit; that so soon as he could see the evidence of a strong and lively faith in any of his followers, they should be gratified in their holy curiosity. He set them to continual prayer, and other spiritual exercises, to acquire this lively faith by means of which the hidden things of God could be spiritually discerned; and at last, when he could delay them no longer, he assembled them in a room, and produced a box, which he said contained the precious treasure. The lid was opened; the Witnesses peeped into it, but making no discovery, for the box was empty, they said, "Brother Joseph, we do not see the plates." The Prophet answered them, "O ye of little faith! How long will God bear with this wicked and perverse generation? Down on your knees, brethren, every one of you, and pray God for the forgiveness of your sins; and for a holy and living faith which cometh down from heaven." The disciples dropped to their knees, and began to pray in the fervency of their spirit, supplicating God for more than two hours with fanatical earnestness; at the end of which time, looking again into the box, they were now persuaded that they saw the plates.
 
The governor then very sagely remarks, with a modesty so worthy to keep company with the exalted intelligence that could stoop to detail such mere drivel as above:
 
I leave it to philosophers to determine whether the fumes of an enthusiastic and fanatical imagination are thus capable of binding the mind and deceiving the senses by so absurd a delusion.[15]
 
Inadequate as these theories are to account for the testimony of the Three Witnesses, and contemptible as they are for their childishness, they do not fail of more modern advocates. In 1899 a work published by the Appletons, which, while it was a work of fiction, was nevertheless an earnest effort to account for Joseph Smith on some other basis than that of his being a conscious fraud, wickedly bent on deceiving mankind, adopted the theory that "Smith was genuinely deluded by the automatic freaks of a vigorous but undisciplined brain, and that yielding to these he became confirmed in the hysterical temperament, which always adds to delusion, self-deception, and to self-deception half-conscious fraud. In his day it was necessary to reject a marvel or a............