The Visionary World of Joseph Smith
 by Richard Lyman Bushman

BYU Studies, as a gift to Meridian Magazine readers, has made available hundreds of articles relating to Joseph Smith from over forty years of research. Most articles can be downloaded for free. Contributors such as Dallin H. Oaks, Larry C. Porter, Richard Bushman, and Richard Lloyd Anderson give us a treasure trove of little-known insights and knowledge about the Prophet.

Want to know what Joseph Smith’s personality was like? See “The Character of Joseph Smith,” by Richard Bushman. Want to know what’s all the fuss concerning Joseph Smith and hunting for treasure? See “The Mature Joseph Smith and Treasure Seeking,” by Richard Lloyd Anderson.

Ever wanted to know the details concerning Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign? See "The Campaign and the Kingdom” by Margaret C. Robertson.

You can read about Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Papyri, the ten accounts of the First Vision, his 76 documented visionary experiences, or a host of other subjects. Enjoy this excerpt from a BYU Studies article by Richard Bushman and then feel free to download any article on Joseph that looks interesting.

                                          —James T. Summerhays, BYU Studies

In the fall of 1829, when the first proofs of the Book of Mormon were coming off E. B. Grandin’s press in Palmyra, Solomon Chamberlin, a restless religious spirit who lived twenty miles to the east, broke a journey to Upper Canada, stopping not far from the residence of Joseph Smith Sr. Born in Canaan, Connecticut, in 1788, Chamberlin had joined the Methodists at age nineteen, moved on to the Methodist Reformed Church about seven years later, and then tried life on a communal farm where property was held in common, following the New Testament pattern.

Dissatisfied with the religions he had tried, Chamberlin prayed for further guidance, and in 1816, according to his account, “the Lord revealed to me in a vision of the night an angel,” whom Chamberlin asked about the right way. The angel told him that the churches were corrupt and that God would soon raise up an apostolic church. Chamberlin printed up an account of his visions and was still distributing them and looking for the apostolic church when he stopped in Palmyra.

In “A Short Sketch of the Life of Solomon Chamberlain,” written at Beaver, Utah, when Chamberlin was nearly seventy, he said, “When the boat came to Palmyra, I felt as if some genii or good Spirit told me to leave the boat.” Guided by his inspiration, Chamberlin walked south from the town center, heard about the “gold bible” at the house where he spent the night, and the next day made his way to the place where Joseph Smith Sr. was living.

“[I] found Hyrum walking the floor, As I entered the door, I said, peace be to this house. He looked at me as one astonished, and said, I hope it will be peace, I then said, Is there any one here that believes in visions or revelations he said Yes, we are a visionary house.

I said, Then I will give you one of my pamphlets, which was visionary, and of my own experience. They then called the people together, which consisted of five or six men who were out at the door. Father Smith was one and some of the Whitmer’s. They then sat down and read my pamphlet. Hyrum read first, but was so affected he could not read it. He then gave it to a man, which I learned was Christian Whitmer, he finished reading it.

I then opened my mouth and began to preach to them, in the words that the angel had made known to me in the vision, that all Churches and Denominations on the earth had become corrupt, and no Church of God on the earth but that he would shortly rise up a Church, that would never be confounded nor brought down and be like unto the Apostolic Church. They wondered greatly who had been telling me these things, for said they we have the same things wrote down in our house, taken from the Gold record, that you are preaching to us. I said, the Lord told me these things a number of years ago, I then said, If you are a visionary house, I wish you would make known some of your discoveries, for I think I can bear them.”

After hearing the Smiths’ story, Solomon was convinced that this was the work he was looking for. The Smiths gave him sixty-four pages of Book of Mormon proofs, and he set off again for Canada, this time as a missionary for the gold bible. Solomon was later baptized by Joseph Smith and, in 1862, died in Washington County, Utah.

Chamberlin’s story captures the attention of anyone interested in the cultural history of Joseph Smith’s time. One reason is that Solomon and Hyrum, though complete strangers when they met in 1829, recognized each other as kindred spirits.

When Solomon asked Hyrum if he believed in visions or revelations, Hyrum answered, “Yes, we are a visionary house.” Apparently Hyrum saw in Chamberlin’s pamphlet the same message that he and the others had learned from Joseph’s experiences and from the Book of Mormon. At least as Solomon told the story—and John Taylor later copied the whole account into his Nauvoo journal—Joseph Smith and Solomon Chamberlin had received similar instructions from heaven.

Chamberlin’s story of meeting the Smiths, although involving only himself and a half dozen others, had implications for many more. Chamberlin’s and Hyrum’s mutual understanding of the word “visionary” implies a general category of people who were known to believe in visions. For the recognition to occur, visionary houses and visionary persons must have been a well-known type. Solomon and Hyrum shared membership in a class of people who believed that the heavens sometimes opened to human view.

Evidence of this early nineteenth-century visionary culture can be found in today’s computer culture with a few clicks of a mouse. The heading “visions” turns up a dozen titles in a standard research library’s catalog, and a little more searching produces more. I have found thirty-two pamphlets that relate visionary experiences published in the United States between 1783 and 1815, all but seven about visions experienced after 1776.

Still more visions are embedded in religious autobiographies of the period. The famed revivalist, Charles Grandison Finney, for example, who was living in Adams, New York, in 1821, stole into the woods to pray privately for forgiveness and afterwards in his law office had a vision of the Savior. “It seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Later in life, he decided the vision was “a mental state,” but at the time, he said, “It seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man. It seemed to me a reality, that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him.” Finney was not alone in thinking he had seen a heavenly being; many others, some on their way to careers as preachers and reformers like Finney, had such stories to tell. With additional effort, more visionary pamphlets of the type studied here would doubtless be uncovered.

The interest in visionary writings goes back in Anglo-American culture to a time when even the most educated segments of the population thought that supernatural wonders appeared in the heavens, and visions of angels and devils were open even to simple peasants. Then as the Enlightenment developed momentum in the early eighteenth century, writers at the upper levels of society cast doubt on all the wonders of late Renaissance culture—magic, dreams, and visions—labeling them all superstition.

Belief in supernatural miracles of any kind was left for credulous and ignorant common people. A 1793 parody of the visionary accounts offered the common elitist judgment that “a great part of mankind, in every age, are pleased with the marvellous. Stories of witchcraft, fairies, hobgobblins, revelations, visions, and trances always excitce [sic] the attention of the superstitious, gain belief, and afford them unspeakable pleasure.” In the parodist’s story, a visionary is caught in many foolish mistakes by “a man of discernment and knowledge,” implying that discerning people would never believe such reports. In that rationalist atmosphere, an educated man like Finney could not believe even his own visionary experience and, to protect his credibility, had to call it “a mental state.”

But the Enlightenment could not dam all the currents of belief flowing from the seventeenth into the nineteenth century… A Dream, or Vision, by Samuel Ingalls, of Dunham, in the Province of Lower Canada, on the Night of Sept. 2, 1809 was typical of the apocalyptic visions. Standing on the bank of the White River in Vermont in 1809, a mile upstream from the Connecticut River and so within a few miles of the farm where Joseph Smith was born, Ingalls “heard a rushing noise in the air; and instantly casting my eyes upward, there appeared to my view three carriages of polished gold, (in the form of the top of a chaise without wheels) passing through the air in a direct line abreast, and steering toward the South.”

One carriage contained three women, the second three men, and the third “three Angels as I supposed by their having wings suspended from their shoulders.” The angels sang a hymn from which Ingalls recalled one line: “Prepare to give me room, ye nations, I am coming!” Ingalls saw the angels descend over the town of Hartford on the west bank of the Connecticut River where they paused to talk.

They condemned to immediate destruction a “wicked club, who are laying plots to deceive the nations” and announced that God would spare the world for 140 years. Then they disappeared, and Ingalls’s vision ended. The author drew no moral, claimed no authority for himself, issued no explicit warning. For an apocalyptic people, the message was clear: Evil was abroad in the land, God surveyed it all, and the end was near…

The attitude of warning characterizes virtually all of the pamphlets, save for a few that seem merely agog at the fabulous marvels reported. The apocalyptic visions were embedded in the familiar biblical story of the coming end of the world and the judgment awaiting unrepentant sinners.

A second category of visionary stories, the heavenly journey visions, comprising another nine of the thirty-two pamphlets, send a warning to readers based on the promise of heaven and the threat of hell. In their journeys into the afterlife, these visionaries saw actual acquaintances either in bliss or suffering and brought the news back to their earthly acquaintances. Often an angel or guide accompanied the visionaries as they were lifted from the earth and entered heaven. Commonly, Satan raged at them as they proceeded on their heavenly journey, but the traveler passed by unharmed just beyond the devil’s reach. The obvious message to readers is to stay out of Satan’s grasp.

One author of a heavenly journey pamphlet, Sarah Alley of Beekman Town, New York, a twenty-year-old single woman, fell into a swoon for four or five hours while sitting by the fire in her father’s house and was transported to the world beyond. Accompanied by an angel, she came first to a burning lake where an “abundance of people who appeared to be in the utmost anxiety, distress, and unutterable misery” sat one above the other, “the flames of fire passing up between them.” A great devil tried to lay hold on her but was tethered by a chain. A man she knew well urged her “to go and warn his family and friends to do better than he had done” before it was too late. Her guide then conducted her to a place of happiness “where I saw Christ and the holy angels around him, and abundance of people clothed in white robes,” though she could not recognize any of them.

Returning to consciousness and finding several people around her, Alley “pressingly advised them to take warning by her.” Then she fainted again, and her guide took her directly to heaven, where this time she did recognize many of the inhabitants:

“They appeared to be sitting, and in a situation of perfect peace and happiness, God sitting above them, and my guide telling me which he was, though he did not converse with me. I also saw Christ, who seemed a little before the rest, of whom I begged entrance into that peaceful situation.”

Christ said no; she must return and warn people, a charge repeated by a person she knew well who “pressingly desired me to warn his friends and relations to change their way of walking.” After more such admonitions, “they seemingly all joyfully bid me farewell, and my guide conducted me back to my body.”

Sarah Alley’s experience, like that of all the apocalyptic and heavenly journey visionaries, changed her into a witness. While intensely personal, often involving the visionary’s own conversion, a revelation of heaven carried a responsibility to tell everyone. Sarah Alley was admonished over and over to warn her friends….

The impulse to speak ultimately created or, perhaps more accurately, perpetuated visionary culture. To make the voice of warning heard, visionaries, or sometimes their friends, called printers to their aid. The published narratives linked the visionaries to many others—the circle of friends who helped with the printing, a band of small-town printers who knew the market, and a wider audience who read the accounts with varying degrees of belief and skepticism. This conglomerate of visionaries, friends, printers, and readers made up the visionary culture that enabled Solomon Chamberlin and Hyrum Smith to recognize their spiritual kinship.

Solomon Chamberlin’s attraction to the Smiths is easy to understand. Not only was Joseph Jr. a visionary, but his father was also. Furthermore, Joseph Sr.’s dreams were similar to some of the visions in the pamphlets. Recorded by Lucy Smith in her Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, Joseph Smith Sr.’s dreams sound like the visions of Caleb Pool. Joseph Sr. saw wild beasts, desolate landscapes, ominous buildings, and antagonistic crowds, all symbolizing the spiritual condition of the world. These scenes would not have surprised readers of visionary pamphlets. Running through Joseph Sr.’s dreams was the familiar sense of moral decay and danger and the implied warning to turn to God now.

We are most interested, however, in Joseph Smith Jr.’s place in the visionary culture. How did his revelations compare to the stories in the pamphlets? Of all the pamphlets, the one most like any of Joseph’s revelations was The Religious Experience of Norris Stearns, Written by Divine Command, Shewing the Marvellous Dealings of God to His Soul, and the Miraculous Manner in which He Was Delivered from the Jaws of Death and Hell; and His Soul Set at Liberty,—Likewise His Appointment to the Ministry; and Commision from on High, to Preach the Gospel to Every Creature, published in 1815.

In its entirety, Stearns’s narrative is a shapeless, picaresque story of a marginal young man’s wanderings about New England and New York, punctuated by occasional visions and premonitions. Though Stearns’s life was quite different from Joseph’s, here and there Stearns’s account strikes a familiar note, as in a few sentences in the preface.

“The public are here presented with a book written by an illiterate youth, who has been highly favoured of God, and shown many things, which he is now commanded to write. He earnestly solicits the candid attention of every reader, that it may not stand (as the useless Parenthesis) among the other books of the world; for it is written in obedience to the Divine Command, as a Testimony to show his Calling. Care has been taken, that nothing should be written, but by the immediate command of the Lord; whose Servant and Prophet I am.”

The religious predicament of the Smith family is also echoed in Stearns’s description of his father’s faith: “My Father was once a praying man, and belonged to the Baptist Church in Leyden; but not having faith in ceremonial ordinances, and dead forms of religion, he withdrew from their meetings, and was soon given up to the buffetings of Satan, that his soul might be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus.” Most of the story sounds nothing like Joseph Smith’s, but one striking passage resonates with the 1839 account of the First Vision. Stearns had a vision early in his life, when he was still laboring through heavy doubts about religion:

“At length, as I lay apparently upon the brink of eternal woe, seeing nothing but death before me, suddenly there came a sweet flow of the love of God to my soul, which gradually increased. At the same time, there appeared a small gleam of light in the room, above the brightness of the sun, then at his meridian, which grew brighter and brighter: As this light and love increased, my sins began to separate, and the Mountain removed towards the east. At length, being in an ecstacy of joy, I turned to the other side of the bed, (whether in the body or out I cannot tell, God knoweth) there I saw two spirits, which I knew at the first sight. But if I had the tongue of an Angel I could not describe their glory, for they brought the joys of heaven with them.

“One was God, my Maker, almost in bodily shape like a man. His face was, as it were a flame of Fire, and his body, as it had been a Pillar and a Cloud. In looking steadfastly to discern features, I could see none, but a small glimpse would appear in some other place. Below him stood Jesus Christ my Redeemer, in perfect shape like a man—His face was not ablaze, but had the countenance of fire, being bright and shining. His Father’s will appeared to be his! All was condescension, peace, and love!!”

Nothing after these passages parallels Joseph Smith’s experience. Stearns was actually beset by skepticism and was driven to believe in the divine by visions whose reality he initially doubted. After the vision related here, he wandered aimlessly from one job to another, dabbling in preaching, seeking a vocation, and forever stumbling up against the supernatural. He broke off the pamphlet in the middle, before his life’s work was resolved and even before his own beliefs were crystallized.

What are we to make of Stearns’s account? Although his life never came into focus and his visions went nowhere, we still are interested in his relationship to the Restoration and Joseph Smith. Were Stearns’s visions a premonition of what was to come or in some way a preparation for a later revelation of God? Chamberlin’s visions readied him to believe visions and to accept the Book of Mormon without the doubts that impeded most Americans. Did the visionary culture open the minds of others? Can we imagine little gleams of light breaking through the clouds everywhere, as a preliminary to the fullness of the Restoration? Or were the visions mere delusions, manufactured by the visionaries’ own feverish imaginations or by Satan?

Unfortunately, we have no way to judge the authenticity of these visionary accounts: Some present fabulous, cumbersome stories that sound like the fantasies of troubled souls, straining one’s credulity. Others, like the heavenly journey of Sarah Alley, may have sobered readers and turned them to God. Why not concede to Sarah a measure of divine inspiration?

Inspired or not, Stearns’s pamphlet and the writings of the other vernacular visionaries dispel the idea that revelations were unknown until the First Vision opened the heavens in 1820. In the experience of the visionary writers, the heavens were anything but sealed, for the writers saw angels, bizarre beasts, and sacred mountains or looked into heaven and hell and saw and heard Christ and the devil. We can imagine this flow of religious stories trickling through rural villages and possibly washing over the Smiths. It is unlikely that we will ever know if any single pamphlet save Chamberlin’s reached them, and we cannot conclude that the similarities of tone and style mean that Joseph imitated Norris Stearns or anyone else…

[Any] stylistic similarities only highlight, however, the differences between Joseph and the host of now forgotten visionaries. Putting him alongside Norris Stearns forces on us the question of why their lives took such divergent paths. Stearns proclaimed himself a prophet, but he did not go on to organize a church. His writings did not become scripture or attract believers. Nor did the writings of any of the other thirty-one pamphleteers. People did not flock to hear the visionaries’ teachings or pull up roots to gather with fellow believers. Followers of Joseph Smith did all of these things and more. They reoriented their entire lives to comply with his revelations. The differences are so great that we can scarcely even say Joseph was the most successful of the visionaries; taking his life as a whole, he was of another species.

Focusing on the differences rather than the similarities, we see the limited force of the visionary writings. The narratives of dreams and miraculous appearances did not imply the construction of any institutional forms; they did not propose doctrine; they did not proclaim commandments. They were apocalyptic warnings, visions of worldly wickedness and onrushing doom. In a sense, they were titillations of the religious sensibilities that imposed no obligations beyond a general revulsion against sin and responsiveness to divine purpose. The visionary writings were a later version of the Puritan preoccupation with wonders. They inspired awe at the presence of invisible powers made visible but were an occasion to marvel rather than to act.

Joseph Smith’s revelations by contrast radically redirected people’s lives. His writings became authoritative statements of doctrine and the divine will. They implied an ecclesiastical polity and a reorganization of society. Out of a few verses in the Doctrine and Covenants, a new economic order emerged. Moved by the revelations, people went on missions to distant places, migrated to Missouri, paid tithing, underwent life-threatening persecutions, built cities. The revelations formed a new society created in the name of God.

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