* "Rigdon has not been in full fellowship with Smith for more than a year. He has been in his turn cast aside by Joe to make room for some new dupe or knave who, perhaps, has come with more money. He has never been deceived by Joe. I have no doubt that Rigdon was the originator of the system, and, fearing for its success, put Joe forward as a sort of fool in the play."--Letter from a resident near Nauvoo, quoted in the postscript to Caswall's "City of the Mormons". (1843) * For a collection of evidence on this subject, see Patterson's "Who Wrote the Mormon Bible?" ** "Scribner's Magazine," October, 1881. *** "New Light on Mormonism," p. 252. ***** "Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism," pp. 28, 46. In a historical inquiry of this kind, it is more important to establish the fact that a certain thing WAS DONE than to prove just HOW or WHEN it was done. The entire narrative of the steps leading up to the announcement of a new Bible, including Smith's first introduction to the use of a "peek-stone" and his original employment of it, the changes made in the original version of the announcement to him of buried plates, and the final production of a book, partly historical and partly theological, shows that there was behind Smith some directing mind, and the only one of his associates in the first few years of the church's history who could have done the work required was Sidney Rigdon. President Fairchild, in his paper on the Spaulding manuscript already referred to, while admitting that "it is perhaps impossible at this day to prove or disprove the Spaulding theory," finds any argument against the assumption that Rigdon supplied the doctrinal part of the new Bible, in the view that "a man as self-reliant and smart as Rigdon, with a superabundant gift of tongue and every form of utterance, would never have accepted the servile task of mere interpolation; there could have been no motive to it." This only shows that President Fairchild wrote without knowledge of the whole subject, with ignorance of the motives which did exist for Rigdon's conduct, and without means of acquainting himself with Rigdon's history during his association with Smith. Some of his motives we have already ascertained: We shall find that, almost from the beginning of their removal to Ohio, Smith held him in a subjection which can be explained only on the theory that Rigdon, the prominent churchman, had placed himself completely in the power of the unprincipled Smith, and that, instead of exhibiting self-reliance, he accepted insult after insult until, just before Smith's death, he was practically without influence in the church; and when the time came to elect Smith's successor, he was turned out-of-doors by Brigham Young with the taunting words, "Brother Sidney says he will tell our secrets, but I would say, 'O don't, Brother Sidney! Don't tell our secrets--O don't.' But if he tells our secrets we will tell his. Tit for tat!"