pierce] ORIGIN OF THE " BOOK OF MORMON" 679
possession and use of these stones was what constituted seers in ancient or former times, and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book. . . . Again, he told me that when I got those plates of which he had spoken, — for the time that they should be ob- tained was not yet fulfilled, — I should not show them to any person ; neither the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim ; only to those to whom I should be commanded to show .them. If I did, I should be destroyed. While he was conversing with me about the plates, the vision was opened to my mind, that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it. — Times and Seasons, Vol. in, p. 729.
These are Smith's own words. But, while the vision trans- pired September 21, 1823, and he went directly to the hillside situate between the townships of Manchester and Palmyra, and discovered therein the gold plates lying in a stone box, he was not permitted by the angel to take the plates into his possession until the lapse of the full period of four years, viz., until Septem- ber 22, 1827. During these four years he was preparing himself for his future work, having married Miss Emma Hale, January 18, 1827, as one of the final steps of such preparation. Having received the plates from the angel, he was now enabled to set to work as prophet, seer, and interpreter, with his Urim and Thum- mim breastplate, to translate the symbols to his clerk, Oliver Cowdery, who prepares the manuscript from which the Book of Mormon is to be printed.
But no eye save his own may behold the golden leaves of this mystic book ; they are kept locked in a trunk, and the trunk and Smith are screened from all inspection behind a curtain dur- ing the hours of inspiration and dictation. How this was arranged in the res angusta domi of the populous Smith family, now enlarged by the addition of another wife for another son, we are not told. It was known in the community that all the Smiths dwelt together in a common log-house, not very large, and con- taining not more than two rooms with a loft. Surely, never was heavenly revelation accompanied by greater earthly deprivation.
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