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Book, page 51 / 707 possibility of changing the story about his alleged golden plates so that they would serve as the basis for a new Bible such as was finally produced, and as a means of making him a prophet, cannot be ascertained. That some directing mind gave the final shape to the scheme is shown by the difference between the first accounts of his discovery by means of the stone, and the one provided in his autobiography. We have also evidence that the story of a direct revelation by an angel came some time later than the version which Joe gave first to his acquaintances in Pennsylvania. James T. Cobb of Salt Lake City, who has given much time to investigating matters connected with early Mormon history, received a letter under date of April 23, 1879, from Hiel and Joseph Lewis, sons of the Rev. Nathaniel Lewis, of Harmony, Pennsylvania, and relatives of Joseph's father-in-law, in which they gave the story of the finding of the plates as told in their hearing by Joe to their father, when he was translating them. This statement, in effect, was that he dreamed of an iron box containing gold plates curiously engraved, which he must translate into a book; that twice when he attempted to secure the plates he was knocked down, and when he asked why he could not have them, "he saw a man standing over the spot who, to him, appeared like a Spaniard, having a long beard down over his breast, with his throat cut from ear to ear and the blood streaming down, who told him that he could not get it alone." (He then narrated how he got the box in company with Emma.) In all this narrative there was not one word about visions of God, or of angels, or heavenly revelations; all his information was by that dream and that bleeding ghost. The heavenly visions and messages of angels, etc., contained in the Mormon books were afterthoughts, revised to order." In direct confirmation of this we have the following account of the disclosure of the buried articles as given by Joe's father to Fayette Lapham when the Bible was first published:-- "Soon after joining the church he [Joseph] had a very singular dream.... A very large, tall man appeared to him dressed in an ancient suit of clothes, and the clothes were bloody. This man
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