“It was among an ignorant and credulous people of this kind, capable of believing in the necromantic virtues of a big stone held in a hat, and of treasure descending perpetually under the spades of the searchers by enchantment, a people already prepared for any bold superstition by previous indulgence in a variety of religious extravagances, that Joseph Smith found his early coadjutors and his first converts.”

Charles Marshall, Frazer’s Magazine – February 1873, “The Original Prophet” (London, England: Longmans, Green, and Co., January to June 1873), 230.