Smith succeeded in interesting one Harris to act as his amanuensis in his interpretation of these books of Mormon.  The future prophet sat behind a screen with the supposed gold plates in his hat.  He dictated through the stones Urim and Thummim.  With a keen imagination and natural aptitude for the strikingly dramatic, he was able to present formally his ritual, tabernacle, holy of holies, priesthood and tithings, constitution and councils, blood atonement, anointment, twelve apostles, miracles, his spiritual manifestations and revelations, all in reminiscence of the religious tenets of many lands.

Such religious movements rise and fall at periodic intervals.  Sometimes they are never heard of outside the small communities of their birth; at other times they arise to temporary nation-wide importance, but they are unlucky either in leadership or environment and so perish.  The Mormon Church, however, was fortunate in all respects.  Smith was in no manner a successful leader, but he made a good prophet.  He was strong physically, was a great wrestler, and had an abundance of good nature; he was personally popular with the type of citizen with whom he was thrown.  He could impress the ignorant mind with the reality of his revelations and the potency of his claims.  He could impress the more intelligent, but half unscrupulous, half fanatical minds of the leaders with the power of his idea and the opportunities offered for leadership.

Two men of the latter type were Parley P. Pratt and Sidney Rigdon.  The former was of the narrow, strong, fanatic type; the latter had the cool constructive brain that gave point, direction, and consistency to the Mormon system of theology.  Had it not been for such leaders and others like them, it is quite probable that the Smith movement would have been lost like hundreds of others.  That Smith himself lasted so long as the head of the Church, with the powers and perquisites of that position, can be explained by the fact that, either by accident or shrewd design, his position before the unintelligent masses had been made impregnable.  If it was not true that Joseph Smith had received the golden plates from an angel and had translated them—­again with the assistance of an angel—­and had received from heaven the revelations vouchsafed from time to time for the explicit guidance of the Church in moral, temporal, and spiritual matters, then there was no Book of Mormon, no new revelation, no Mormon Church.  The dethronement of Smith meant that there could be no successor to Smith, for there would be nothing to which to succeed.  The whole church structure must crumble with him.