The point at which her work is vulnerable is the point of view from which she treats her subject. In studying the character and achievements of Joseph Smith, she was evidently not ready to accept him as a prophet truly inspired of God, nor could she accept the theory of "conscious invention" as a reasonable explanation of his life's work; for, had that been the source of his efforts in rounding a religion, "it would not have left sufficient power to carry him through persecution, in which his life hung in the balance and his cause appeared to be lost;" nor could she believe "that the class of earnest men who constituted the rank and file of his early following would have been so long deceived by a deliberate hypocrite." "It appears to me," she explains "more likely 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." She calls to aid of her theory--and with marked skill, be it said--the inclination of the times toward superstition. "In his day," she remarks, "it was necessary to reject a marvel or admit its spiritual significance; granting the honest delusion as to his vision and his book, his only choice lay between counting himself the sport of devils or the agent of heaven; an optimistic temperament cast the die." This is Miss Dougall's point of view in the treatment of her subject, and it is utterly untenable. The facts in which Mormonism had its origin are of such a character that they cannot be resolved into delusion or mistake. Either they were truth or conscious, Simon-pure invention. It is not possible to place the matter on middle ground. Joseph Smith was either a true prophet or a conscious fraud or villain. Had his religion found its origin in the visions of his own mind, without any connection with material objects, as was the case with Emanuel Sweedenborg, then there would have been room for Miss Dougall's theory; but the facts in which Mormonism had its origin had to do with quite a different order of things. The ancient record of America, revealed to Joseph Smith by an angel, and which was finally given into his keeping to translate, was no visionary book--no mere creation of an overwrought brain but actual substance, sensible to touch as to sight, consisting of golden plates, with length, breadth, and thickness. Each plate was about seven by eight inches in dimension, and somewhat thinner than common tin; the whole bound together by rings made a volume some six inches in thickness. These plates Joseph Smith claimed to have handled, and during the time they were in his possession--some two years--he frequently removed them from place to place in the most matter-of-fact way. Others saw and handled them, also, not only the three men to whom the angel Moroni exhibited them, and whose testimony