"The date of their first meeting is nowhere given, but may reasonably be inferred from an address delivered by Parley P. Pratt in 1843 or '4. In this discourse Pratt tells of an occurrence which transpired on his way to his future Ohio home, which occurrence furnishes the key to his first connection with Mormonism. On his way he stopped at a humble cottage, the name of whose occupant he carefully fails to give. Here, while asleep (so he says), "a messenger of a mild and intelligent countenance suddenly stood before me (Pratt) arrayed in robes of dazzling splendor." According to Mormon theory, an angel is but an exalted man. Of course Sidney Rigdon was an exalted man; why not, then, an angel? This angel claimed to hold the keys to the mysteries of this wonderful country, and took Pratt out to exhibit those mysteries to him. Pratt then had portrayed to his mind the whole future of Mormonism; its cities, with inhabitants from all parts of the globe; its temples, with a yet unattained splendor; its present church organization was, with considerable definiteness, outlined; its political ambition to establish a temporal kingdom of God on the ruins of this government was set forth with quite as much definiteness as in the subsequent more publicly uttered, treasonable sermons. I conclude from the exact manner in which this "Angel of the Prairies" foreknew the ambitions, hopes, and future achievements of the Mormon Church and the similar admitted fore-knowledge of Rigdon and the subsequently established connection between Rigdon, Pratt, and Smith, that the "Angel of the Prairies" who outlined to Pratt his then contemplated and now executed religious fraud, was none other than Sidney Rigdon himself, and that this fact accounts for Pratt's failure to give the name of his host or the date of his first meeting with Rigdon." [133] [Footnote 133: _American Historical Magazine,_ Jan., 1907, p. 59. _Ante_ p. 51.] "THE ANGEL OF THE PRAIRIES."