* "In a letter to Dr. Richardson, written in 1830, he [Scott] says the book of Elias Smith on the prophecies is the only sensible work on that subject he had seen. He thinks this and Crowley on the Apocalypse all the student of the Bible wants. He strongly commends Smith's book to the doctor. This seems to be the origin of millennial views among us. Rigdon, who always caught and proclaimed the last word that fell from the lips of Scott or Campbell, seized these views (about the millennium and the Jews) and, with the wildness of his extravagant nature, heralded them everywhere."--"Early History of the Disciples' Church in the Western Reserve," p. 186. Campbell taught that "creeds are but statements, with few exceptions, of doctrinal opinion or speculators' views of philosophical or dogmatic subjects, and tended to confusion, disunion, and weakness." Orson Pratt, in his "Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon," thus stated the early Mormon view on the same subject: "If any man or council, without the aid of immediate revelation, shall undertake to decide upon such subjects, and prescribe 'articles of faith' or 'creeds' to govern the belief or views of others, there will be thousands of well-meaning people who will not have confidence in the productions of these fallible men, and, therefore, frame creeds of their own.... In this way contentions arise." Finally, attention may be directed to the emphatic declarations of the Disciples' doctrine of baptism in the Mormon Bible:-- "Ye shall go down and stand in the water, and in my name shall ye baptize them.... And then shall ye immerse them in the water, and come forth again out of the water."--3 Nephi Xi. 23, 26. "I know that it is solemn mockery before God that ye should baptize little children.... He that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity; for he hath neither faith, hope, nor charity; wherefore, should he be cut off while in the thought, he must go down to hell. For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must perish because he hath no baptism."--Moroni viii. 9, xc, 15. There are but three conclusions possible from all this: that the Mormon Bible was a work of inspiration, and that the agreement of its doctrines with Disciples' belief only proves the correctness of the latter; that Smith, in writing his doctrinal views, hit on the Disciples' tenets by chance (he had had no opportunity whatever to study them); or, finally, that some Disciple, learned in the church, supplied these doctrines to him. Advancing another step in the examination of Rigdon's connection with the scheme, we find that even the idea of a new Bible was common belief among the Ohio Disciples who listened to Scott's teaching. Describing Scott's preaching in the winter of 1827-1828, Hayden says:--