“Many of us Mormonites today, whether pious believers or critically objective students of history, are closer in mental outlook to the position of [1834 anti-Mormon writer Eber D.] Howe than to that of the Prophet Joseph and his early followers … Would we rant and rave, walk penniless to Missouri, witch a trove with a hazel rod, or join a [financially] communistic society? Do we really want to know what was in and around that stone-box/hole on 22 September 1823?”

Benson Whittle, Whittle Untitled Review (1987), 119; see D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1998), 319-320.