Lessons Learned from the Lost Manuscript

Latter-day Saints are familiar with the story of Martin Harris’s loss of the first 116 manuscript pages containing the translation of the Book of Lehi. For starters, “Martin’s various travels in the winter of 1828 to authenticate the character transcript (between Palmyra, Harmony, Albany, Philadelphia, and New York City) and his subsequent journeys that Spring to act as Joseph’s scribe would likely have taken about eight weeks in just travel time alone.”

Artist: Lewis A. Ramsey c/o Doctrine & Covenants Central

Unseasonably warm weather that winter meant that he “sacrificed much of his winter and nearly his entire spring to assist with the translation,” time during which he normally would have been “overseeing the work of harrowing, plowing, planting, and otherwise preparing his ground to ensure the fall yield of the flax, beans, pumpkins, corn, and other grains on which his livelihood depended.”

More importantly to his strained relationship with his wife, Martin was missing “the May 8 wedding of his daughter Lucy Jr. to Flanders Dyke in Palmyra.”[1]

So, after two months of work, from about April 12 to June 14, 1828, Bushman notes, “uncertainty still beset Martin.” “He could not forget his wife’s skepticism or the hostile queries of Palmyra’s tavern crowd. Was Joseph making a fool of him? Was he the classic dupe to be cheated of his money and farm when the fraud was complete?” (Martin’s $50 gift to Joseph in December 1827, which enabled him to move to Harmony, was equivalent to roughly $2,500 today.[2])

Martin asked again to see the plates as “a further witness of their actual existence and that he might be better able to give a reason for the hope that was in him.”[3] When Joseph responded “no,” Martin “pressured [him] repeatedly for permission to take the manuscript home to ‘read to his friends that peradventure he might convince them of the truth.’”

Notwithstanding the Lord’s clear answer that Martin “must not take” the manuscript pages, he begged Joseph twice more. Finally, Joseph asked a third time. Permission was granted, on the condition Martin show the pages “only to five people: his wife, his brother Preserved, and his father, mother, and wife’s sister.” Joseph even had him solemnly covenant he would not show them to anyone else.[4]

Even so Joseph knew in his heart that yielding to his friend’s pressure was wrong. When Martin left, Moroni appeared, rebuked Joseph for “wearying” the Lord on Martin’s behalf and took back the Urim and Thummim and the plates.[5]

Bradley describes in detail “the crime” that followed and the various theories about what happened.[6] Joseph was devastated. “O, my God, my God,” he lamented. “All is lost! all is lost! What shall I do? I have sinned. It is I who tempted the wrath of God by asking him for that which I had no right to ask, as I was differently instructed by the angel. . . . And how shall I appear before the Lord? Of what rebuke am I not worthy from the angel of the Most High?”[7]

In a wonderful book, School of the Prophet, Church historian Richard Bennett observes that “the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ was a deliberate process of continuing revelation and continuous personal development.”[8] There can hardly be one without the other.

For example, one of the first things the Savior said to Joseph in answer to his first vocal prayer was, “Joseph my Son thy sins are forgiven thee, go thy way walk in my statutes and keep my commandments.”[9] Moroni repeatedly tutored young Joseph in the principles of obedience and repentance when he fell short.

Now, 22-year-old Joseph, as his mother observed, “was more distressed than the rest [of the Smith family] for he knew definitely and by sorrowful experience the consequence of the what would seem to others to be a very trifling neglect of duty.”[10]

“In this moment of awful anguish,” Joseph reveals a glimpse of his character “and the extent to which he had been taught” by the Lord. “A lesser man would likely have turned on Martin Harris and soundly berated him for his mistaken judgment,” Bennett observes. “But in that heated moment of despair, Joseph rose to his calling, taking full responsibility for the entire matter.”[11]

After returning to Harmony, Joseph “ commenced humbling [him]self in mighty prayer before the Lord.” “I poured out my soul in supplication to him that if possible I might obtain mercy at [the Lord’s] hands and be forgiven of all that I had done which was contrary to his will.”[12]

As he was thus praying, Moroni “stood before him.” By “becoming responsible” for Martin’s actions, Moroni said, Joseph must “of necessity suffer the consequence’s of his indiscretion.” But “if you are sufficiently humble and penitent,” Moroni promised, Joseph could receive the plates again “on the 22 of September.”

Moroni handed Joseph back the Urim and Thummim. Through them, Joseph inquired of the Lord and received what later became Section 3 of the Doctrine and Covenants:

[B]ehold how oft you have transgressed them Laws of God & have gone on in the Persuasions of men [7] for behold you should not have feared men more then God although men set at naught the councils of God & dispise his words [8] yet you should have been faithful & he would have extended his arm & supported you against all the firey darts of the advisary & he would have been with you in evry time of trouble [10].. . . But remember God is merciful therefore repent of that which thou hast done & he will only cause thee to be afflicted for a season & thou art still chosen & will & will again be called to the work.[13]

Encouraged by God’s emissary, as the Lord through His Spirit ceaselessly encourages us, Joseph “continued” his “supplications to God without cessation.” True to his promise, Moroni returned the plates on September 22, 1828.[14]

The Lord tutors Joseph in the first principles of the gospel. Joseph’s experience with the lost manuscript pages shows how, as Brother Bennett lays out, the Lord “carefully and thoroughly taught” His prophet “the first principles and ordinances of the gospel between 1820 and 1830.”[15]

Just as he gained “faith unto healing” through his mighty years-long struggle with his typhoid-induced leg infection[16] and “faith unto knowledge” of the existence and nature of God, the Father and the Son, through his first visions, the Lord taught Joseph “faith unto repentance” (Alma 34:15-17) during the years of tutoring leading up to and including the receipt and translation of the Book of Mormon.[17]

Looking at Joseph’s revelatory experiences through his eyes helps us better understand and appreciate the fullness of the gospel restored through him, including the role of temple ordinances and doctrines in the gospel.

The role of temple ordinances, President Jeffrey R. Holland reminded us during the rededication of the Toronto Temple, involves not just learning about the doctrine taught through, or formally receiving, temple ordinances. Temple ordinances and temple worship empower us to apply the principles and laws we covenant to obey in the temple in order to receive the transformative “power of godliness” (D&C 84:20-21), God’s power to do and be better, to “grow up in” Christ (D&C 109:15).

“I hope we have remembered,” President Holland said, “that it is what we do when we are outside the temple that testifies we understand what we learned and promised inside the temple.” We need, he reminded us, “to live outside that holy house the way they feel inside it.”[18]

[1] Bradley, Lost 116 Pages, 58.Martin’s wife, Lucy, took advantage of Martin’s absence to arrange for the recording of deeds for 80 acres of Martin’s farm, which he had signed three years earlier as his dowry to her. “Her sudden recording of these deeds to give them full legal efficacy immediately after Martin missed their daughter’s wedding communicates her intentions as clearly as any words could have. Upon her husband’s failure to show up for the wedding, Lucy acted to give herself financial independence from Martin. She was taking an initial step toward separation.” Ibid. 59. [2] Richard E. Bennett, School of the Prophet: Joseph Smith Learns the First Principles, 1820-1830, (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2010), 45. According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $50 in 1827 is worth $2,588.36 in 2025. https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1827?amount=50. [3] Bushman, 66. [4] Darkness to Light, 93 & note 62; Bushman, 66. See also Joseph Smith’s Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion from the Joseph Smith Papers, “Doctrine and Covenants 3: Revelation, July 1828,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/church-historians-press/jsp-revelations/dc-003-1828_07_01_000?lang=eng. [5] Darkness to Light, 96-97; Bushman, 68; Bradley, Lost 116 Pages, 61. [6] Bradley, Lost 116 Pages, 60-61. [7] Bennett, 47. See Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, Page [6], bk. 7, p. [6], bk. 7, JSP, accessed March 26, 2025, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/86.   [8] Bennett, 2. [9] Bushman, 39. [10] Lucy Mack Smith, History, page [6], bk. 7, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/86. [11] Bennett, 47. [12] Lucy Mack Smith, History, pages [8-9]. [13] “Doctrine and Covenants 3: Revelation, July 1828.” [14] Lucy Mack Smith, History, page [11]. [15] Bennett, 6. [16] Bushman, 20-22. The Saints editors note that four years prior to their move from Vermont to New York, “Joseph Jr. had undergone an operation to remove an infection in his leg. Since then he had walked with a crutch. Although his leg was starting to feel sturdy again, Joseph Jr. had a painful limp.” Saints, vol. 1, 5. See Church History Topics, “Joseph Smith’s Leg Surgery,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/joseph-smiths-leg-surgery?lang=eng. [17] Bennett, 10. [18] Ryan Jensen, “President Holland says individuals owe ancestors time and work in temples at rededication of Toronto’s house of the Lord,” Church News, March 23, 2025, https://www.thechurchnews.com/temples/2025/03/23/president-jeffrey-holland-rededicate-toronto-ontario-temple/?utm_campaign=Church%20News%20-%20English&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9y9szDM1vq8PyuOc2d4m2c48mn9s50kbs5-v081EIKvvn60vcboQp32ZV_f_GezSCN0lrEcgPepkhb5g6aW-M-gLpbew&_hsmi=353580654&utm_content=353580654&utm_source=hs_email (“‘We talk about going through the temple as if the experience were to go in one door and out the other,’ he said. ‘The point isn’t “going through” anything. It is to have the temple come into us. It is when we leave the house of the Lord that it matters. We are all trying to be good inside it, but we have to make sure we are trying to be good when we are outside it.’”).