Mormon History
The Idea Behind the BOM - 1879
The Salt Lake Daily Tribune – June 14, 1879
SIDNEY RIGDON -- WALTER
SCOTT.
________
Which Originated the Controlling Idea of
Mormonism?
________
And keen thro' wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell. -- TENNYSON.
EDS. TRIBUNE: The periodical which
produced the greatest revolution in religious thought in this country, commenced
in August, 1823, at the little town of Bethany in (now) Western Virginia. It was
called The Christian Baptist, and was edited by Alexander Campbell. The
publication of this remarkable sheet, continued for seven years with increasing
interest, and only ceased to give place to a larger and more widely-circulated
monthly called The Millennial Harbinger.
Walter Scott was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1790, and was of the same
ancestry as his world-renowned namesake, Sir Walter Scott. During the existence
of The Christian Baptist, Scott was a frequent contributor to its pages,
and his numerous articles under the signature of "Phillip," gained him a
reputation scarcely inferior to that of the editor, A. Campbell himself, who was
ten years Scott's senior. This journal was issued but a short distance from
Pittsburg, at which place Scott was established as teacher from 1821 until 1826.
Scott was a graduate of the University of Edinburg, and some of his Pittsburg
pupils afterwards ranked among the finest scholars and most useful men in that
region of country. Among them were Chief Justice Lowrey and the eminent author
and professor, Dr. D. D. Richardson, at whose father's house in Pittsburg Scott
made his home. During the period of Sidney Rigdon's incumbancy as pastor of the
First Baptist Church of Pittsburg he was intimately associated with Walter
Scott, who was a preacher as well as teacher, and a preacher of what were then
regarded as very peculiar and even heretical views. Rigdon was neither a man of
scholarly parts nor was he of an original turn of mind. His forte was in
appropriating and assimilating the views, ideas and methods of others. In
quickness and facility of adopting, adapting and making his own the salient
peculiarities of these remarkable minds among whom he was thrown, lay Rigdon's
great power. The leading "Campbellites," as they have been called, were men of
unusual strength of character, of fine intellect and of unimpeachable moral
tone, robust, original, incisive. He was, indeed, the black sheep in the
Disciples' fold; unscrupulous, audacious, envious, intractable, vindictive,
Diotrephes-like; he was always putting himself forward and seeking the
pre-eminence. He was a compound of the Jew and the Jesuit -- judaic in
disposition and natural bent, jesuitical in all his methods. Scout it who will,
he is the real author and founder of Mormonism.
In the first number of The Christian Baptist, (August, 1823) appeared a
striking and powerfully written article from the pen of Walter Scott, with the
caption, "A Divinely Authorized plan of Teaching the Christian Religion," this
extract from which discloses the very germ of the Mormon pretension:
Were a vision vouchsafed us for the single purpose of revealing one uniform and
universal plan of teaching the Christian religion, would not every Christian
admire the goodness of God in determining a matter on which scarce two calling
themselves Christian teachers now agree? Would not every teacher feel himself
bound in duty to abandon his own plan and to adopt the plan of God; to study it,
to teach it, and, in short, to maintain its superiority and authority against
all other schemes, how plausible soever in their configuration, how apparently
suitable soever in their application? The writer has not been favored with any
vision on this matter, moreover, as he deems it unneccessary, he of course does
not expect any; and surely, if his plan be authorized by the example of God
himself; by the Lord Jesus Christ; by the Holy Spirit; in his method of
presenting the truth to all men in the Scriptures; if the apostle taught the
truth on this plan; and if missionaries in teaching idolaters, feel themselves
forced to the adoption of it, then there is no need of angel or vision."
The "vision" and the "angel" of Joseph Smith without which Mormonism would never
have existed -- started in the brains of Sidney Rigdon at Pittsburg, in 1823.
The formation of a new sect, however, outside of the "Campbellites," was
not contemplated by Rigdon until after he had been foiled in his attempts to
undermine "Campbellism" -- had found, in fact, that Alexander Campbell and his
compeers were "too many" for him. If he himself could not measure arms with
Campbell, "the Lord" could, through His servant Joseph, and should do it.
But the tracks have been so ingeniously and persistently covered that perhaps
the "oldest inhabitant" of Mormondom will be astonished when they are fully laid
bare. Truth will triumph yet, and Sidney Rigdon shall have all the credit, or
discredit, he deserves. GRANDISON.
SALT LAKE, June 12, 1879.
Note: This communication was sent to the Tribune by its own part-time
journalist, James Thornton Cobb. It is revealing of Cobb's personal psychology
that he chose the pen name of "Grandison" -- identifying himself with Joseph
Smith's old nemesis at Kirtland, the anti-Mormon firebrand Grandison Newell. Mr.
Cobb must have been well aware that, in 1836, there was a conspiracy within the
Mormon Church to put an end to Newell's threatening activities through his
secret assassination -- a plot which, apparently, Grandison Newell only barely
escaped. In the forty years that had passed since the Mormon attempt upon
Newell's life, James T. Cobb had seen both his mother and his first wife defect
from their families and unconsciously immolate their chances for future
happiness by entering into the harem of Brigham Young. Then, in February of
1876, James' fifteen-year-old daughter, Luella Van Cott Cobb, chose to become
the fifth plural wife of middle-aged John Willard Young, a son of Brigham Young
by his first wife. There is no reason to believe that all these tangled marital
ties inspired in James T. Cobb any familial attachment to Brigham Young, his
kinfolk, or his church. In fact, as RLDS President Joseph Smith III sagaciously
remarked
in 1883, the combined effect upon James' emotions was just the opposite:
"Mr. James T. Cobb is the son of the woman known as Brigham Young's Boston
wife... His domestic life was poisoned by the defection of his own wife; and
subsequently still, his daughter... I do not blame him for not liking polygamy,
or Brigham Young's memory, if it is true... that mother wife and daughter fell
into its meshes... I am persuaded to believe that the many newspaper articles so
lavishly scattered over the land, are in the main his work."