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S3E22 · Happiness Part 2
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Standard of Truth · Season 3 · Episode 22 · 59:29

Happiness Part 2

The happiness letter got into the church's history because a 19-year-old clerk named Leo Hawkins copied it into an addendum in 1854, taking the text straight out of John C. Bennett's anti-Mormon book.

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The question ·
I've heard in the case of women being sealed to multiple men, they'll be able to choose which one they want to be sealed to, but is this doctrine or just speculation?
Ruth (listener)

Graham asks where to find an old episode, and Ruth asks whether a woman sealed to several husbands will get to choose one in the next life. Gerrit reads the Gospel Topics Essay's answer, that the nature of these relationships is not known and will be sorted out by a loving Heavenly Father, and adds that we spend too much time worrying about things we can't know. Then he finishes the happiness letter story. Willard Richards meant to include only Sidney Rigdon's denial, but after Richards died, young clerks in 1854 copied the letter into an addendum with no author or date, using the text from Bennett's book. Gerrit says the irony is that some scholars now call it authentic because it's in the history, and urges listeners not to let one quote make or break a testimony.

Who comes upJohn C. BennettJoseph SmithNancy RigdonSidney RigdonWillard RichardsGeorge A. SmithLeo HawkinsB. H. RobertsBrigham YoungOrson PrattWilliam Smith
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The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. When we last left you, we talked about the Happiness Letter, Part 1. So we'll get into Happiness Letter, Part 2 here, but we wanted to start off with the Phebe Draper mailbag. This first email comes to us from Graham. Hello, I enjoyed your most recent episode. I have no idea what episode that was.
Gerrit I'm sure they're all great, Graham. Yeah, I enjoyed all of the episodes. Let's just edit it for Graham.
Richard Yeah, that's right. I enjoyed Happiness Letter 1. I'm sure that's what you meant, even though we're recording this before we've dropped Happiness Letter 1. In it, you mentioned a past episode discussing Joseph Smith's alleged statement that people would kill themselves to get into the telestial Kingdom. I'm paraphrasing, of course. Yes, I don't believe that Joseph said it exactly like that. In which episode would I find that discussion? Thank you.
Gerrit Well, you could just go to our readily indexed.
Richard So searchable. Yeah, I mean, so easy to find.
Gerrit Painstakingly. I mean, really the question is, how much time have we not spent indexing the episodes?
Richard Yes, so that is, we actually did go through and we did find it. And that's one of those things and we talk about it. And by we talk about it, I was in the room where Gerrit talked about it.
Gerrit Richard was in the room where it happened.
Richard That's right. So thank you very much, Graham, for that kind email. We have an email here from, this comes to us from Ruth. It's a women and plural marriage question.
Gerrit Oh boy. Why are you reading this question?
Richard Well, it's going to perfectly dovetail into Happiness Letter Part 2 and John C. Bennett. I've listened to a few of your fun and informative podcasts.
Gerrit That's very nice of her.
Richard That is very nice. Yeah.
Gerrit Thank you, Ruth.
Richard I have an ancestor that was an early convert to the church. She received her endowment in the Nauvoo Temple in 1846 and made the trek to Utah. Various husbands passed away and she'd remarried. She is sealed to three men. Another one of my ancestors was the second wife in a plural marriage, so I'm familiar with the idea when it comes to a man being sealed to multiple women. I've heard in the case of women being sealed to multiple men, they'll be able to choose which one they want to be sealed to, but is this doctrine or just speculation? Thanks. Thank you, Ruth.
Gerrit I feel like Richard is continually trying to force me to talk about plural marriage against my will. I tell him, no, we're saving that so we could do it all in one shot. Here I am talking about the Happiness Letter and also let's answer an email. This is a very natural question and it's a really good question. I wish I had the ability to answer it, but I don't. There are some questions that remain questions because they haven't been revealed. And so I understand the concern because look, when we do temple work, legitimately anyone who's been married to more than one person, man or woman, when you're knee-deep in your ancestry from the 1600s, right, and because life expectancy is not exactly ideal, really anywhere in the world in the 1600s, there's a great chance that you have ancestors that have more than one wife or more than one husband, and they're not practicing polygamous in Utah.
Gerrit And so when we find those people in our ancestry, we seal everyone to each other, everyone to everyone. So if in this case, like you said, a woman who's had three husbands, when we find her records, we seal her to all three of those husbands. Now, the question that arises, you're very good question. Well, so who's she going to be married to in the next life? Because she's married to three different men. So who's she going to be with? First of all, let's talk about what the church has actually said about this. And one of the more recent statements the church has made is in the Gospel Topics Essays, the plural marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo, where this essay is designed to help people understand how plural marriage was practiced and also the things that we don't know about it.
Gerrit And in the concluding paragraph of that essay, it says, Members are permitted to perform ordinances on behalf of deceased men and women who married more than once on earth, sealing them to all of the spouses to whom they were legally married. Okay, so there's the statement. That's what we already know that happens. The precise nature of these relationships in the next life is not known, and many family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. Latter-day Saints are encouraged to trust in our wise Heavenly Father, who loves his children and does all things for their growth and salvation. So that's kind of a long way of saying, we don't know.
Gerrit We don't know the precise nature of these relationships in the next life. And in fact, anyone who tells you that they do just has an opinion about it, but they don't actually know. I'm well aware that you can find all kinds of people who have opinions about it. The Church is saying the nature of those ceilings, the precise nature of them is not known. Now, at the same time, I think far too many Latter-day Saints, as we've talked about before, they actually fall on the other side of the ledger. Well, in answer to your question when you say, is it just rumor that she'll get to choose? Well, certainly it's what some people speculate. But if, in fact, the doctrine was that a woman who's sealed to three different men will choose which one she's going to be with in the next life, then the sentence I just read would have been a woman who's sealed to multiple men will get to choose which one she's with in the next life.
Gerrit And that wasn't the sentence. So therefore, I'm not saying it's a terrible speculation, but it's important to recognize it's a speculation. And when it surrounds plural marriage, people lose their faith and lose their testimonies over things that they don't even know to be the case. They lose their testimonies over what they perceive the nature of plural marriages to be in the next life, even when we don't even know what they are. But if it's like this, then I won't have a testimony. Well, we don't even know if it's like that. So, it is one of those difficult topics where you actually have to sit back and say, I'm not a Protestant, okay? The very fact that I believe in marriage in the next life means I am not some run-of-the-mill Protestant Christian who believes God created me out of nothing just so I could come to this earth and glory him by suffering and then probably go to hell, almost certainly go to hell, but if I'm lucky, not go to hell.
Gerrit But don't worry, there's no marriages in the next life, regardless. The only reason we're even asking the question is because Latter-day Saints believe that their relationship to God and therefore their relationship to each other is incredibly different than what other Christians believe. We believe that we are eternal beings that for all intents and purposes always existed and will always exist going forward. That is not what a Christian believes. We believe that marriages can exist in the next life. No Christian believes that. None. They don't believe that marriages of any kind exist. So always I want to stress when we talk about ceiling, which is incredibly sensitive, especially because it's impossible for us not to personify the question with our own life.
Gerrit When we talk about marriage, the first thing we do is we go to our own experience in marriage or having experienced our parents' bad marriage or our grandparents' bad marriage, our friends' marriage or something. We go to experience and that can color how we think about marriage. And yet, it's important to remember, always remember, the only reason someone has a question about who is married to who in the next life is because they have accepted that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Because the moment, the instant, the second that we allow our questions about who is sealed to who to undermine our testimony, we don't even need to worry about it anymore. The question evaporates. Because if Joseph Smith's not a prophet, then there is no marriage in the next life.
Gerrit And so the answer to the question, if Joseph Smith's not a prophet, which of the three men is my grandmother sealed to? The answer is nobody. There's no marriage in the next life. It doesn't exist in the next life, so you don't have to worry about it. And so I really think we should really lean into that final sentence of that Gospel Topics Essay, that we need to trust that God who created this plan for us to be happy is perfect and is going to make sure that we are. So when someone says, well, I couldn't be happy if I, you know, I know that my great grandmother, she loved her third husband far more than she loved the second one, and I just don't think she could be happy if she, I mean, we're trying to figure things out for God. When we're not perfect, we don't have all the information, and frankly, we don't even know what marriage is like in the next life. We have all kinds of speculations. We all have, you know, the nice house and the white picket fence, and I'm pretty sure someone does the yard work for you.
Gerrit There's all kinds of stuff that we speculate, but we don't know anything. We just speculate. And so, is it possible that someone who's been sealed, you know, a woman who's been sealed, the three different men will choose which one she will be within the next life? That sounds entirely possible. One of the reasons why it's possible is because agency is an eternal principle. As I've said before, and I'll likely have to say it again on the podcast because Richard will keep forcing me to talk about this entirely against what my intentions are. We sometimes view ceilings inappropriately. And what do I mean by that? I mean we tend to view ceilings as if they are concrete. We tend to view ceilings as if agency is no longer involved in those ceilings because they're sealed.
Gerrit And that's it. We don't do that with any other ordinance. With initiatories for the dead that we do, with endowments for the dead, with baptisms for the dead, none of us walk out of the temple saying, well, Jim Johnson's a member of the church now in the next life whether he likes it or not. We don't do that. We simply say, I have now provided the way whereby if he decides to accept these ordinances in the next life, that these ordinances can be efficacious for him on the basis of his agency. And yet, for some reason, when it comes to ceilings, because it is so intimate, when we're thinking about our own marriages, then we desperately want to know exactly how it will work out. But the reality is, we don't know. Now, I will say this though, because I think there's also this great fear that people will end up in a marriage they don't want to be in.
Gerrit This is not a fear that Brigham Young had. He didn't have that fear because he believed, whether it was polygamous or monogamous, people would still have to choose each other in the resurrection. So if you're thinking to yourself, I can just kneel on the ball here. I'm just trying to run out the clock. My wife doesn't know I've been cheating on her for the last 20 years. If we can just get to where we both die, we're sealed and I'm golden. Well, first of all, if you've been cheating on her for the last 20 years, you haven't had your marriage sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise. So your sealing is not efficacious to you. Second of all, guess who's going to know that you were cheating on her for the last 20 years in the resurrection when all things are known?
Richard Everyone. I was shouting for the rooftop. I feel like cheating is extreme. What if I procrastinated getting the sprinkler system fixed? I've been busy, you know, I've been pushing it off Saturday after Saturday, pretending that my friend who's going to come and help me, he's been too busy, even though I've never texted him to help.
Gerrit Hypothetically, I think that there's some sense of omission, there's some sense of commission.
Richard But it's not an affair, but I haven't been as dutiful of a husband. I've irritated her. Again, not me, someone else.
Gerrit You keep saying I though. I like how you're trying to relate to our listener base. You're trying to say, you know what, I get you.
Richard I'm a man of the people, Gerrit.
Gerrit If Richard's one thing, he is a man of the people. But Brigham would teach over and over again that men needed to live the life, live in such a way that their wives would choose them in the resurrection. Meaning if you're in a monogamous relationship and you have a bad relationship with your wife, but you somehow kneel on the ball until it's over, she's not forced to be with you. If you think that just because you have some ceiling that was spoken in a temple somewhere that you haven't really been honoring, that she's now forced to be with you, I don't think you understand agency at all. I know that there's no listener who's saying this, but I'm just, this is a hypothetical. And also because Richard was talking about sprinkler systems. In fact, Brigham would teach something that's recorded in Wilfred Woodruff's Journal.
Gerrit This is the 2nd of June, 1857. He's in a conversation, Wilfred is with Brigham. And Brigham says this, that there was no law in heaven or on earth that would compel a woman to stay with a man, either in time or in eternity. Well, that's a pretty categorical statement. It's actually something that we all kind of get. We just forget that we get it. And that is agency is eternal. Agency existed before this life. Agency, and that's much more troubling to us, agency will exist after this life. I mean, if you want to have some fun time speculating, you can ask yourself how it is that Lucifer was so glorified and son of the morning, right?
Gerrit And yet even in that exalted position, fell. I know Angie, my wife and I, we like to think of heaven as being like a kind of like all-inclusive sandals resort that we go and people are just dropping off room service that never shows up on your thighs or on a bill. And it sounds amazing, right? It's just beaches, it's water sports, whatever you want. And that's how we like to think about it is that we finish this life and we are just done. Well, there's considerable evidence in our theology, not in Christian theology, but in standard Christian, but in our theology, that you will always have agency. Always. You will always have the ability to choose. Now, the terrifying part about that is I'm barely making the right choices as it is.
Gerrit I don't want to have to continually make the right choices faced with temptation for the rest of all eternity. But that is apparently how it is that you become like God. By using your agency to always choose to do what's right. Now, I'm pretty far away from that. But as it relates to the question here, if the fear is someone is going to be in a marriage for eternity where they are utterly miserable because it wasn't someone that they really loved, when did we become Protestants? When did we become people who believed that by the happenstance of nature, God was going to punish us for eternity? I think we need to view our Father as absolutely loving. And when we say, it's hard for me to think of how He could be loving if there was someone who was sealed to more than one person, then I think that's something that you have to put your trust in Him.
Gerrit You have to put your trust in the Lord, Jesus Christ, for your sins to be forgiven. You have to put your trust in the fact that God is going to somehow make up for the suffering and sorrows of this world. And you have to put your trust in God that however messy it is in the next life, that it's going to be worked out, it's going to be worked out perfectly, and everyone who is worthy of a celestial kingdom will be exquisitely happy in it. Now, that requires faith. It requires believing that God will do that. God has promised that God will do that. And so, we have to then exercise that faith and just believe. I love Ruth's question because it's such a natural, normal question. And like I said, I don't even have an answer. Ruth's probably at this point like, why do I even listen to the podcast? She was probably saying that long before.
Richard It's a great question, Ruth.
Gerrit Of why do I listen to the podcast?
Richard Keep listening.
Gerrit I'm sure that you're now no longer listening. But I mean, I think that that's an important thing to know. Just as the baseline of the question, is it the doctrine that she will get to choose? Well, the church's doctrine is we don't know what happens. And frankly, when you think about it, we spend almost all of our time when we think about marriages, we spend almost all of our time trying to sort out the ceilings that take place in mortality. Those are the ones we really lose sleep over. So-and-so was married to so-and-so, and then they got divorced, but their ceiling was never canceled. But what about the kids? You know what I mean? That's what we spend most of our time on. And yet, think about how many members of the church there are or ever have been in the world. Think about how many marriages there have been in the history of the world. We're almost breaking 17 million members now, something like that, 17 million.
Gerrit And not all of them are husbands and wives, obviously. There's been at least 14 billion people that have lived on this earth. And we are at the height of the number of members that exist ever at 17 million. Literally, almost every single marriage that will ever be worked out or sealed will be done in the next life. So like I said, we spend a lot of time thinking about the ones that affect us, especially when we're inside the circles of membership, right? Where, well, my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister. But the reality is almost every single marriage that has ever taken place in this world is going to have to be worked out in the next life. And so I'm not just saying, well, you've got to have faith that it will work out in the next life.
Gerrit Literally, almost every single... The Lord spoke to Joseph and said that in order to enter into the highest degree of glory, the celestial kingdom, you had to be in a sealed marriage. And yet, less than one-tenth of one percent of all of the people who have ever lived on earth have ever even had that opportunity, which means almost every single question of marriage is going to be something worked out in the next life. And that's tough when we want the answers now, but it's also the reality. Now, it's a beautiful reality. I don't want to make it sound like it's a negative reality. That we believe that marriages can be for eternity is beautiful. No one else believes that. So I think we gather in what we have. We say, I am so grateful to know this. I don't know exactly how it will work, but I'm so grateful to know that it does. And just trust that our Heavenly Father, who is all good, is going to ensure that however things work out, it won't breach anyone's agency and it won't breach anyone's happiness.
Gerrit And that sounds like it's an impossible thing, but so is a resurrection. So is having your sins taken from you. So is walking on water. So is translating gold plates. We are all about the impossible. That's the best part about being a Christian. We believe because of miracles, and therefore, we just have to trust that there's going to be some in the next life. So I probably spent too much time on that.
Richard No, I think that was great.
Gerrit That was just the right amount of time.
Richard Just the perfect amount of time. And now it's the perfect transition to John C. Bennett.
Gerrit We just finished talking about having a testimony. Let's talk about John C. Bennett. So we were discussing in our previous episode, we were discussing the Happiness Letter. If you don't recall, let me give you a little bit of a refresher. I think just by way of refreshing, if you didn't listen to the last episode, you probably should go listen to the last episode. And you know what? Listen to it several times. Download it, share it. I know Renee has, my mom. Well.
Richard Download it.
Gerrit She hasn't shared it.
Richard No.
Gerrit She makes up for the lack of sharing by downloading it literally dozens of times and then asking me how to get it to play. This is that sentiment. We're talking about this sentiment that you've heard multiple times. It was in church manuals. You heard in general conference that Joseph Smith taught this beautiful truth that happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof. And it goes on. We talked about how the origin of this letter was actually in an antagonistic letter that was written by the great Nauvoo apostate John C. Bennett. And that there were multiple denials that Joseph was the author of that letter. The reason why it was controversial was John C. Bennett claimed that it was a letter that Joseph Smith wrote to Nancy Rigdon to try to persuade her to practice plural marriage.
Gerrit Now, Rigdon would make a public denial of that, saying that that's not the case, and make a denial for his daughter, which we talked about last episode. William Smith would make a denial in the church's newspaper, The Wasp, saying that it wasn't written by Joseph Smith, that wasn't from him. But then the question becomes, well, if all these people are denying, how in the world are we quoting this in general conference? What happened? Well, this took a little bit of sleuthing to try to figure out how does this end up in our history. And when last we left you, we were talking about how Willard Richards of gun-toting fame passed away in 1854. Now, Richards had gone over this portion. So this incident, we actually know when it would have happened, had it happened, because John C. Bennett says that Joseph proposed marriage to Nancy Rigdon at a funeral.
Gerrit We know when that funeral was, that was in April of 1842. And when Willard Richards was preparing to draft Joseph Smith history, when he was preparing to draft it, the history of Joseph Smith is what it was called, he made notes. And when he came to those days in April that would have included Joseph Smith's proposal to Nancy Rigdon, he doesn't make any note of it at all. Except to later in August, when after John C. Bennett has apostatized and is writing his letters, Richards will make a note to see the letter that Sidney Rigdon wrote denying that Joseph was the author. It says, see Sidney Rigdon's letter on account of his daughter, Nancy. It's what he wrote in his notes. Well, as they go through and they are drafting this history, now they're going to be interrupted a little bit because they're going to be driven out of Nauvoo.
Gerrit One of the difficult parts about being a Latter-day Saint is don't expect to see your cherry trees in full fruition because you're going to be driven out. And while Richards has gone through and made initial drafts of the history, when his helper scribe Thomas Bullock comes to that area, he doesn't include anything. He doesn't include the denial letter of Sidney Rigdon and he doesn't include Joseph Smith's so-called Happiness Letter. And that's the way things stand for quite some time. In 1854, after Willard Richards dies, the new church historian is George A. Smith. George A. Smith is Prophet's cousin, much younger, and we're indebted to him for a lot of our history from the Utah period. He does a magnificent job trying to put together the history.
Gerrit But as I stated at the end of last episode, there is a key difference between Willard Richards and George A. Smith. And it's not just the neck beard. It's more than that. It's not just the number of pistols that Willard Richards is smuggling into Carthage Jail. It's that Willard Richards was the private secretary of Joseph Smith for years. Willard Richards was with Joseph on a daily basis for years, especially those last years in Nauvoo. Which means that when Richards is writing about historical events from Joseph Smith's Nauvoo era, a lot of the times, Willard Richards is actually using his own journal and his own diary and his own letters to fill in the gaps of what happened that day. George A. Smith is present for some of those things. I'm not saying he's not in Nauvoo, but he's not the Prophet's private secretary. He's not a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at that time.
Gerrit So while he is there and while he is important, he occupies a different position, one that is not as familiar with Joseph's dealings in Nauvoo as Willard Richards was. I mean, frankly, there's almost no one who's as familiar with Joseph Smith in Nauvoo outside of, you know, William Clayton, who's also one of Joseph's secretaries and the tempo recorder. I mean, he's going to be about as familiar. But in any case, so there's now a necessary change in the way that this history is being copied and recorded. You know how it is when you're taking notes in a class. I mean, there might be some of you taking notes of this podcast right now. And as you look down at your blank page that says, looks like the Lakers are going to lose again, that you...
Richard Why are they having that thought? They're looking at their blank page thinking, hey, Richard likes the Lakers, I bet they're going to lose again. That's what you think that they're thinking?
Gerrit Well, I think by the time they hear this, the Lakers will have been on vacation in Maui for weeks.
Richard Yes, to borrow a term from the TNT broadcast, they've gone fishing.
Gerrit They've gone fishing, yep. They've already made their way out. As we're recording this, they still have a chance.
Richard They do not.
Gerrit Theoretically speaking, from a Christian miracle perspective, they have a chance.
Richard That's correct.
Gerrit Well, maybe you shouldn't call yourself King James, if you want a little bit more Christian help. At any rate, when you take notes, a lot of times you don't jot every single word down because you know what you mean, right? So you might be talking to someone on the phone, and you write down, 730, get there, looking back. Okay, well, that means literally nothing to anyone who grabs your notes. They're like, okay, I know that he was doing something at 730, and he needed to look in the back, right? It doesn't tell you where, it doesn't tell you why, it doesn't tell you how, it doesn't even tell you what day. When you see your own note, you're well aware what it means. Oh yeah, it meant that I needed to go to the church after 730 because that's when the reception was over, and then I needed to look in the back of the pulpit because that's where I'd put the scriptures that I'd found. Whatever it means to you, but it means something different.
Gerrit In some ways, this is how it is for Richards, who's making draft notes of how he plans to write out the history. In his draft notes, he doesn't appear to intend to write out this supposed letter of Joseph Smith at all. So what happens? Well, Richards dies. And those draft notes are used by the new people working in the church history office. Now, the historian's office is going to have to make do on a pretty small budget. All my friends working at the church history department now are thinking, what do you mean they used to have to? But you're going to have to go through on this pretty small budget to get a lot of stuff accomplished. And that means that you're going to have relatively young people as scribes that are going to be brought in to help write the history.
Gerrit Well, when these scribes come to this portion of the history, when they get to this portion of 1842 and they read in Richard's draft notes that they should see Sidney Rigdon's denial, I'm not sure what they think. But here's what actually happens. I had to sleuth this out with the help of some handwriting experts at the church. One of the clerks who's involved in this revision, so this would be probably around 1854, 1855, is a guy by the name of Leo Hawkins. And he is going to actually write a good portion of the text of this period of the history. The way they wrote these church history volumes, this is the most boring thing you've ever heard in your life, isn't it?
Richard Yeah, absolutely.
Gerrit Is this township level?
Richard Oh, no, no, no. Townships are fascinating compared to what we're talking about.
Gerrit This is the worst thing I've ever done.
Richard Well, so, but in fairness to how boring this is, first of all, I love you.
Gerrit They're listening to industry podcasts. Yeah. You knew what this was when you picked it up.
Richard Yeah, seriously. You're the scorpion on the back of the frog. But also, you're referencing a journal article that you wrote here, right?
Gerrit Sure.
Richard So you did a ridiculous deep dive in this. Most of the stuff you talk about, off the top of your head, general garbage, you know, your response. The questions are great. We enjoyed the emails.
Gerrit Sure, sure.
Richard But I mean, like, this is something that you spent hours and days.
Gerrit I spent a lot of time on, yes.
Richard And so this is part of the reason for the deeper dive, is because you have a very good understanding of what's happening here.
Gerrit Right. Well, so previous scribes, let me just say this, just for context. The volumes of the history that they wrote, again, that was called the history of Joseph Smith, and then when it gets to Brigham Young's era, they'll call it history of Brigham Young. And then eventually after they publish it in the church's newspaper, it'll eventually be republished by BH. Roberts in what he will call the history of the church. It's all the same, it's the same document, just so everyone's aware. They named these volumes that they were copying, these giant ledger books that they were copying the history into. The first one was called A1, like the steak sauce. The second one was called B1, and then C1 and on down the line. This particular portion of Joseph Smith's history is in a volume called D1. Now you're thinking, why are they calling it D1? Well, because they make a copy of all of the volumes.
Gerrit Again, for some crazy reason, they're really worried that all of their time, effort and work on a single volume might be stolen or destroyed. And so they're a little paranoid about it. They're making copies of it. And so they make copies of all those volumes, D2, D3, I mean, sorry, D2, C2, right? They make copies of them. So there's these one and two. Anyway, that's as nerdy as we're going to possibly get. I'm about to start talking about dragons, okay? I'm about to talk about whether or not your 16-sided dice could get you through the dungeon. If you will just bear with me a few minutes.
Richard Wait, wait, so the tease is we're going to talk about Dungeons and Dragons? That's the tease?
Gerrit Only if you can hang on till the end. And then we'll never get there. So when they came to the, when these scribes, these young scribes in 1853, 1854, when they came to Richard's draft notes, they, they saw that he had made a note about getting a letter, you know, inserting a letter. And so they left a space in the entry, like, so there's a big blank space on the page, but then they don't actually ever copy anything in. It's just blank. It's not until later when, like I said, this other young scribe, Leo Hawkins, he is going to come to that blank space and he is going to insert at the end of August 27th, which is August 27th is when they're responding to John C. Bennett's antagonistic claims. And this is when the denial was made. The August 27th is where Sydney Rigdon says, Joseph didn't write that, that never happened, right?
Gerrit And Leo Hawkins will write at the end of that entry here, he'll say, see addenda to page three. So then you got to go to the addenda. You go to the addenda, you go to the back and there it is. Copied in its entirety in Leo Hawkins' handwriting is the Happiness Letter. Now here's what's crazy about it. There is no explanation in that addenda page at all about what it is. It doesn't say the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote. It doesn't say here's the date of this letter. It doesn't say Joseph Smith wrote this to Nancy Rigdon. You know, have a gander. It literally is just words on the page without any indication who wrote them, without any indication of what they are. And here's the real kicker. Because there are a couple of variations between what John C. Bennett published in his newspaper claiming this is the letter that Joseph Smith wrote and what he published in his book saying this is what Joseph Smith wrote.
Gerrit You can actually, with a pretty fair certainty, determine that the text that they are copying into this addendum of the history volume, they are actually reading out of John C. Bennett's book History of the Saints. So this guy goes and gets History of the Saints. Again, not the wonderful Glen Rossen programs. This is John C. Bennett's History of the Saints. And they copy that version directly into the history. But again, without saying who wrote it, what it's about. It literally is just words on a page. And that's the way it stands for quite some time. It gets copied around a couple of different times, but then eventually it's going to be published, that part of the history, because they're publishing it serially. Again, not the tasty morning breakfast treat, but a little bit at a time, they're publishing it serially in the Deseret News. They will publish that portion of the history.
Gerrit And I am telling you, go look it up. I mean, is anyone going to look this up?
Richard No, we could put the link in.
Gerrit So we'll put the link in the way Richard always does. It's the December 12, 1855 issue of the Deseret News. Okay, December 12, 1855. And they publish this portion of History of Joseph Smith that covers this entry, this August entry. And I'm telling you, it's the weirdest thing ever. They publish it. It's just words on the page. Unattributed words. So it has all the other things, you know, Joseph, because they put it in first person. Today I went and met with, Emma wrote this letter to Thomas Ford. And then it drops down to a new paragraph and it's just words on a page. It's just happiness is the object and design of ours. It doesn't say Joseph taught. It doesn't say Joseph wrote a letter. It's just words on the page, just completely out of nowhere. And without any attribution, without any explanation, and without even any date. Now you might say, well, but if it was published in the Church News, that shows that, you know, they must have vetted it.
Gerrit Well, Brigham Young actually does a pretty good job vetting a lot of the Church history before it's published. But we know that not all of the Church history gets vetted before it's published, because Brigham Young is angry on several occasions when they publish things that he hadn't had a chance to look at that contain errors in it. And in this case, he doesn't ever seem to review this publication. He's actually out of town when it's published. And then when he gets back in town, it's several serial publications later. So maybe he reviewed it. Maybe he didn't. We don't really know. But that's not a very good argument to say, well, we know that Brigham Young knew that Joseph Smith wrote it because he didn't say anything otherwise when we don't even know that he saw. I mean, it's kind of an argument from the absence of evidence. We're almost to the 16 side of dice. Don't worry. We're almost there. We're getting so close to the...
Richard I think you're misunderstanding what payoffs are.
Gerrit No, no, I understand them. I'm just a historian. So yeah, I've got no frame of reference to make anyone enjoy what I have to say. So here's what happens. That's published in the church's newspaper and kind of for a long time, so no one's quoting it. You don't see it anywhere. And there is a manuscript copy of that letter that is created in the late 1860s. So remember, this is from 1842, and now probably in 1868 or 1869, there is finally a copy of the letter that is copied out of the history of the church, and it's copied onto a piece of paper as if it's the original letter. And in fact, in ages past, there were actually scholars who thought that that letter in the church archives was the original letter that was written by Joseph Smith.
Gerrit We now know that it's not, because not only is the paper that it's written on from the 1860s, but the person who wrote it, their handwriting is John Henry Smith, who only worked in the church historian's office for a couple of years, right? But he titles it. He titled his letter that he wrote the Letter of the Prophet Joseph Smith to Miss Nancy Rigdon. That's what he titled it. He wrote that on the top of the paper. That's actually the first time since John C. Bennett's allegation that anyone in the church connected, said directly, Joseph Smith said this. It was right there in that manuscript, which wasn't ever published. It was just in the church archives. Well, when BH. Roberts is trying to put everything together for the history of the church that we all know, the six volumes there, that nice color coded, right?
Gerrit He is actually going to have to kind of deal with this because it's clear that, you know, he knows, BH. Roberts knows that this comes from John C. Bennett's letter. I mean, from his letter and from his book because he knows his stuff. But he also sees that it's been copied into the history, and he doesn't know the history of how it got copied into the history. And so BH. Roberts provides his own explanation. This is what he writes. It is not positively known what occasioned the writing of this essay, but when it is borne in mind that at this time, the new law of marriage for the church, including plurality of wives under some circumstances, was being introduced by the prophet, it is very likely that the article was written with a view of applying the principles here, expounded to the conditions created by introducing said marriage system. So there you have it. Even Roberts is actually pretty hesitant about it, right? Even he's like, I'm not sure where this letter came from or why it came from, but maybe it had to do with plural marriage.
Gerrit Well, here's what happened in the 20th century. Because it made its way into the history of the church, it started to be readily quoted. Once those volumes were published, J. Golden Kimmel started to quote it all the time. In fact, the funny part is he actually started quoting it without any attribution. Like he started just quoting it like it was his idea, but he didn't curse when he said it, at least not right then. So that's, you know, everyone loves J. Golden Kimmel just because of a curse. And if that's the case, if you really only love him because you thought that he cursed on the stand, have I got some 19th century prophets to introduce to you? Because they all, yeah, I mean, yeah. Anyway. Once it started to be circulated in the history of the church, then people started to use that as a source for their talks. And it started to be quoted, but without ever really understanding the history of it.
Gerrit So it became, especially in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, it was quoted all the time because it really can be a beautiful sentiment. Happiness is the object and design of our creation. I mean, that doesn't that sound beautiful? I mean, you want to believe that's true. It also became very popular with anti-Mormons. And you're thinking, what? Why is an anti-Mormon quoting this beautiful teaching of Joseph? Well, because they don't love it for what it says. They love it for the context that John C. Bennett gave it. This is Joseph Smith desperately trying to persuade Nancy Rigdon to become his poor wife. And frankly, even scholars, both Latter-day Saints scholars and relatively antagonistic to the incredibly antagonistic scholars, they uncritically accepted it as a Joseph Smith document.
Gerrit And you want to know, the greatest irony of all ironies is some of these scholars who accepted as absolutely authoritatively Joseph Smiths say that there can be no doubt that it's definitively from Joseph because it was copied into the history of the Church. And so that's how we know that it's definitively Joseph. When that same scholar, if I were to apply that to legitimately any other thing in the history of the Church that didn't have something to do with plural marriage, they would say, well, you can't believe that. I mean, it's just a lie that they copied in there, right? I mean, that's the cra- it's such, it is such a double standard. If copied into the history of the Church is a story of Joseph Smith raising people from their deathbeds in Nauvoo, well, that's just a lie that they put in there. If copied into the history of the Church is a letter that has something to do with plural marriage, oh yeah, that's 100%, yeah, yeah.
Gerrit Other things, everything else is a lie, but that, 100%, 100%, because it says plural marriage in it. It's a weird thing. They actually do the same thing with plural marriage affidavits, right? If I have an affidavit that says, I saw Joseph Smith raise a child from the dead, this skeptic says, well, obviously that's a lie. They're lying about that. There's no way you actually, right? If I have an affidavit that says, I was a plural wife of Joseph Smith, well, you know, that's 100%, yeah. They don't lie about that. I mean, it's a double standard because they're accepting the things that they want to accept because they see them as being critical of the church. At any rate, you might notice that since more research has been done on this, that while you probably remember hearing this being quoted and you remember seeing it in multiple manuals and you might even still quote it now. In fact, it's Richard's, literally Richard's favorite thing to go to church with me somewhere to have someone quote it.
Gerrit It's one of his favorite things.
Richard I love it so much. Well, as we've mentioned in previous podcasts, you're a dream crusher.
Gerrit I don't run up to the stand and say something unless it's anti-Mormons taking over the testimony.
Richard That's true. Dirkmaat. But what happens is that someone asks you, but the problem is when they ask you, they don't actually want to know whether it's true or not. They just want you to validate the thing that they already want.
Gerrit Right. They want me to tell them that it's even more true than they thought it was.
Richard Yeah, you don't even know how true this is.
Gerrit It's like ridiculous true. It's like super true. It's like true on steroids. Well, so you might notice that you haven't heard it. And I think that that appears to be a relatively deliberate thing. It's been more than a decade that it's been quoted in a church manual or church publication or in general conference. And that's a deliberate thing. Now, that's not to say that definitively it could not have been a teaching from Joseph. It might have been. Maybe it was a true teaching of Joseph for a completely different reason. Maybe it was because Nancy Rigdon was being, she was being persuaded by the evils of John C. Bennett. And this was to try to persuade her the other direction. Maybe it was a letter that Joseph wrote to John C. Bennett to try to tell him to knock it off. That whatever God commands is right, not whatever you command is right.
Gerrit You know what I mean? Maybe it was written by someone else entirely. The point is we don't actually know for a certainty where it comes from. And I'm pretty sure Leo Hawkins, the 19-year-old working in the Church Historian's Office in 1854, doesn't know either. This is an event that had happened 12 years earlier. Leo Hawkins was 7 when it happened. He didn't have any special insight into it. For all I know, he saw the note saying, go find Sidney Rigdon's letter, and he thought the letter, oh, you mean the letter that John C. Bennett said that he wrote about Nancy Rigdon? You know what I mean? For all I know, that's what happened. I honestly don't know. And that's a tough place to be, especially when people want definitive answers. But as a scholar, I have to say, by the criteria that we put forward for whether or not something is a Joseph Smith document, this one is highly problematic.
Gerrit It very well might be something that Joseph wrote, but it's tough to get there when in his life he denies it. The person it's written to denies it. The other church newspaper denies it. And Willard Richards, who would have known the most about it, at least according to one source, it was written in his handwriting, the letter. Well then, why didn't he say that Joseph wrote it? You know, people will say things like, well, maybe they were just trying to hide polygamy, and so that's why they didn't write about it. But that person doesn't know very much about 1854 Utah then, because we're not trying to hide it at all. In 1852, we announced it to the world, and not only are we not trying to hide it, we're sending Orson Pratt to Washington, DC to publish a newspaper called The Seer. Should I do a podcast on The Seer someday?
Richard Oh, absolutely.
Gerrit It's about plural marriage though.
Richard Oh, well then, doubly yes. Is this the Dungeons and Dragons leading thing?
Gerrit Orson Pratt goes to DC and publishes a newspaper. And in this newspaper, Brigham sends him out there to help people understand that polygamy isn't just some weird, crazy thing. He wants them to understand that there's rules surrounding it, that it has biblical precedent. He wants to defend the practice because the saints are being so attacked for the practice of plural marriage. And Orson Pratt, I mean, you ever want to read a defense of plural marriage? Read that issue of the seer. And he even goes so far as to describe exactly how a plural marriage sealing ceremony takes place. And I don't mean like, hey, on the day appointed, they go to the temple and they get sealed. I mean exactly, word for word, how the plural marriage sealing ceremony takes place. To which when Brigham Young finds out that he doesn't, he says, what are you doing publishing this temple ceremony to the world?
Gerrit And Orson Pratt's like, I thought that's what you wanted me to do, to like show that it was, he's like, I wanted you to explain it, I didn't want you to publish the actual words of it. So that's a fun historical document that sounds like I shouldn't be talking about, but we publish it to the world. So it's not hard to find a copy. At any rate, the point, I think, of this entire exercise, aside from hashing out an incredibly laborious talking point that has put everyone to sleep, is sources are complicated. And whenever someone acts like they aren't, it almost always means that they don't really know what that source is. It's easy to say, well, it must be true because it's in the history of the Church. But until I know how it got copied into the history of the Church, well, then maybe I need to kind of pump the brakes a little bit. The reality is, there are all kinds of things that are somewhat inaccurate.
Gerrit They're not deliberate mistakes. It's not like people are trying to deceive people, but we're all human. And all historians, including this one, make mistakes. They make mistakes even when they have the best of intentions. So before you either let a single quote unravel your testimony or make a single quote the one thing that you're going to say every time you ever bear your testimony, just pump the brakes a little bit and say to yourself, you know, that's a great sentiment. But even if Joseph didn't say it, Joseph said a lot of other really amazing things. I don't need that quote to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. The Holy Spirit of God and Joseph Smith's countless other incredible teachings demonstrate that. So thank you for following us on this journey through the dungeon.
Gerrit And we will try to do something a little bit more entertaining next week.
Richard It'll be the same.
Gerrit Okay, we're going to literally do the same thing next week. In fact, we'll just, what have we repeated this?
Richard Yeah, Happiness Part 2, Version 1.
Gerrit You know what?
Richard Version 2.5.
Gerrit Yeah, D2. It'd be really interesting if we were to just replay an entire episode if anyone would notice.
Richard Well, I will tell you, when we did a replay of premium episodes as free content, people did notice and they responded.
Gerrit Was it very positive?
Richard We appreciate all of our emails.
Gerrit We appreciate our input. Thank you so much for listening.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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And by we talk about it, I was in the room where Gerrit talked about it.

RichardBanter

I feel like Richard is continually trying to force me to talk about plural marriage against my will.

GerritBanter

And yet, it's important to remember, always remember, the only reason someone has a question about who is married to who in the next life is because they have accepted that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

GerritInsight

You keep saying I though. I like how you're trying to relate to our listener base.

GerritBanter

Now, the terrifying part about that is I'm barely making the right choices as it is.

GerritBanter

We are all about the impossible. That's the best part about being a Christian.

GerritInsight

Oh, no, no, no. Townships are fascinating compared to what we're talking about.

RichardBanter

And whenever someone acts like they aren't, it almost always means that they don't really know what that source is.

GerritInsight

I don't need that quote to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
A woman sealed to more than one man will get to choose which one she's with in the next life.
The happiness letter must be Joseph's because it's in the History of the Church.
Church historians left the letter out to hide plural marriage.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

The church hasn't said how sealings to more than one spouse will work in the next life. The Gospel Topics Essay asks us to trust a wise and loving Heavenly Father.

Agency is eternal. Brigham Young taught that no law in heaven or earth compels a woman to stay with a man, in time or in eternity.

The only reason we ask who is sealed to whom is that we believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. Without him, there's no marriage in the next life to worry about.

Don't let a single quote unravel a testimony or become its foundation. Joseph said plenty of other remarkable things.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Our readily indexed episodesGraham wants an old episode, and they found it the hard way (1:34).
Richard was in the room where it happenedRichard's contribution to the earlier Telestial kingdom discussion (1:48).
Episodes promised, never madeGerrit says Richard keeps forcing plural marriage on him when they're saving it all for one shot; a podcast on The Seer is floated (3:20, 54:56).
The sprinkler systemRichard's hypothetical, not about him, man-of-the-people omission (14:58).
The audience: Gerrit's mom (and Rachel's mom)Renee downloads episodes dozens of times and then asks how to get them to play (25:38).
Willard Richards' pistolsThe difference between Richards and George A. Smith isn't just the neck beard or the pistols smuggled into Carthage jail (30:01).
Townships"Is this township level?" "Townships are fascinating compared to what we're talking about" (35:46).
The Lakers have gone fishingBy the time listeners hear it, they'll have been in Maui for weeks; maybe don't call yourself King James if you want Christian help (32:06).
The Dungeons and Dragons payoffHang on through the A-1 steak sauce ledger books and we'll get to 16-sided dice; Richard says Gerrit misunderstands payoffs (37:38, 43:40, 58:23).
Serially, not cerealThe history was published serially, "not Captain Crunch," "not the tasty morning breakfast treat" (40:34).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Read the Gospel Topics Essay "Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," especially its last paragraph (5:43).
How the Manuscript History of the Church was drafted in ledger books A-1, B-1, C-1 and D-1, with backup copies (36:38).
Look up the December 12, 1855 Deseret News and see the unattributed letter for yourself (41:44).
Orson Pratt's The Seer and the church's public defense of plural marriage in the 1850s (54:58).
SOT Litner · S3E22.