185 years ago today - Feb 7, 1831

The MILLENIAL HARBINGER publishes Alexander Campbell's critique of the Book of Mormon: "There never was a book more evidently written by one set of fingers, nor more certainly conceived in one cranium since the first book appeared in human language, than this same book." "It is as certainly Smith's fabrication as Satan is the father of lies. . . ." Campbell finds signs of Joseph's culture scattered through the book including Masonry and republican government, characteristic Yankee phrases, and opinions on many of the theological controversies of the time: "infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment. . . .every error and almost every truth discussed in N. York for the last ten years." Still more revealing to Campbell were the grammatical errors, which he called "Smithisms."