The devotion of Harris to the impostor secured a fund sufficient for defraying the cost of printing the pretended revelation, and the sect began slowly to increase. The doctrines of Smith were not at first very clearly defined; it is probable that neither he nor Rigdon had determined what should be their precise character; but like their early contemporary the prophet Matthias (the interesting history of whose career was published in New-York several years ago by the late Colonel Stone), they had no hesitation in deciding on one cardinal point, that the revelations made to Smith at any time should be received with unquestioning and implicit faith, and the earliest of these revelations contemplated a liberal provision for all the prophet's personal necessities. Thus, in February, 1831, it was revealed to the disciples that they should immediately build the prophet a house; on another occasion it was enjoined that, if they had any regard for their own souls, the sooner they provided him with food and raiment, and every thing he needed, the better it would be for them; and in a third revelation, Joseph was informed that "he was not to labor for his living." All these "revelations" were received, and though the impostor seemed to intelligent men little better than a buffoon, his followers soon learned to regard him as almost deserving of adoration, and he began to revel in whatever luxury and profligacy was most agreeable to his vulgar taste and ambition. As in the case of the scarcely more respectable pretender, Andrew Jackson Davis, it was asserted that his original want of cultivation precluded the notion of his having by the exercise of any natural or acquired faculties produced his "revelations." Everywhere his followers said, "The prophet is not learned in a human sense: how could he have become acquainted with all the antiquarian learning here displayed, if it were not supernaturally communicated to him?" But to this question there was soon an answer equally explicit and satisfactory. The real author of the Book of Mormon was a Rev. Solomon Spaulding, who wrote it as a romance. Its entire history and the means by which it came into the possession of Smith are described, in the following statement, by Mr. Spaulding's widow:-- [Illustration: CROSSING THE MISSOURI.]