Joseph Smith and Ebenezer Scrooge
“And
behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to
bear record of [God].”
(Moses
6:63)
In the year 1843, a
young man published a novella he had written in celebration of his favorite
season; he called it A Christmas Carol.
This was not, by any means, his first publication. Charles Dickens,
31-years-old at the time, was already a highly successful author. But something
about this Christmas tale caught the imagination of Victorian England and
solidified his place in literary history. Nearly two hundred years later, the
story is still inextricably linked to the holiday season; there is no one in
the Western world who does not know the name Ebenezer Scrooge.
The story itself is
not overly complex. A wicked man – Scrooge – is confronted by the ghost of his
dead business partner, who chastens him and sends him on a spiritual journey
(pun intended) in hopes that he will change his ways. Such moralistic tales
were not uncommon, so the theme of repentance is unremarkable.
What is remarkable is that Charles Dickens
wrote a novella about a man receiving four Spiritual visitations at almost the exact same time that
Joseph Smith was writing the same story. The tale of Joseph Smith’s first
encounters with the angel Moroni (found in our Pearl of Great Price under the
title Joseph Smith – History) differs
from Dickens’s in significant ways. But the ways in which they are similar
testify to the existence of God and to the active role He plays in our mortal
sphere.
The most significant
difference between the stories is, of course, that Joseph Smith’s account is
purported to have truly occurred, while Dickens’s is clearly a work of fiction.
However, the emphasis that our Savior Himself put upon story-telling during His
earthly ministry (most notably with the use of parables) suggests that we ought
not to dismiss a story simply because it is fiction. A made-up story and an untrue story are completely separate
things; some of the greatest truths have been communicated to us in the way of
myths and legends for centuries. With that in mind, let us give careful
consideration to the two tales of Spiritual intervention which we see here.
First, let us consider
the similarities. Ebenezer Scrooge and Joseph Smith were each paid a visit by a
man long-dead. For Scrooge it was his partner, Jacob Marley; for Joseph, it was
a stranger, the Nephite Moroni. It is important to note that Moroni was
(according to LDS doctrine) a resurrected being, a spirit reunited with its
body. Marley, we assume, was merely an incorporeal ghost – however, Marley and
the other ghosts have some tangibility: Marley is capable of sitting down (Dickens
19), the Ghost of Christmas Past can grab Scrooge and pull him to the window
(34), and Scrooge catches “the spectral hand” of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to
Come (110). For this reason, I will be referring to all of the non-mortal
visitors as Spirits (with a capital “s”), recognizing that the name means
something more than a simple ghost.
As I was saying, both
Scrooge and Joseph were visited by a Spirit who had a personal message for him.
For each man, this was only the first of what would turn out to be four visits
– Scrooge being visited by a different Spirit each time, while Joseph’s visits
were always conducted by Moroni. In each case, the Spiritual visits left the
mortals feeling exhausted and drained of energy. Joseph says that on the
morning after his third encounter with the angel Moroni, “my strength entirely
failed me, and I fell helpless on the ground, and for a time was quite
unconscious of anything” (JS-H 1:48). Compare that statement to Dickens’s
description of Scrooge, after his evening spent with the Ghost of Christmas
Past: “He was conscious of being exhausted, and over-come by an irresistible
drowsiness, and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He . . . had barely time
to reel to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep” (Dickens 53). Each of these
accounts independently testifies to the physically exhausting nature of
encounters with immortal beings.
Another similarity may
be found in the descriptions each writer provides for the Spirits themselves.
Joseph’s depiction of the angel Moroni is quite detailed:
He had on a loose robe of most exquisite
whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen; nor do I
believe that any earthly thing could be made to appear so exceedingly white and
brilliant. His hands were naked, and his arms also, a little about the wrist;
so, also, were his feet naked, as were his legs, a little above the ankles. His
head and neck were also bare. I could discover that he had no other clothing on
but this robe, as it was open, so that I could see into his bosom. . . . The
room was exceedingly bright, but not so very much as immediately around his
person. (JS-H 1:31)
No single Spirit from A Christmas Carol exactly matches this
description. But there are fragments here and there – so similar they seem to be
an echo of Joseph’s account. Moroni’s bright countenance is seen mirrored by
Charles Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Past:
It wore a tunic of the purest white; and
round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. .
. . But the strangest thing about it was that from the crown of its head there
sprung a bright, clear jet of light, by which all this was visible. (Dickens
32)
Perhaps even more eerie is Dickens’s description of the clothing worn
by the Ghost of Christmas Present. He explains that the Spirit wore a simple
robe: “This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capacious breast was
bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by an artifice. Its feet,
observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare” (58). The
similarities in these depictions – from the brightness of the personage to the
bareness of his feet – are too close to be dismissed as coincidence. If Joseph
Smith’s account is to be taken as fact, then Charles Dickens’s book has more
truth than fantasy can account for.
In fact, there is a
passage in A Christmas Carol which
almost reads as a reference to Joseph’s visit from Moroni. During Marley’s
visit, as Scrooge grows more and more uncomfortable with the chastening he’s
receiving, he cries out, “Speak comfort to me, Jacob!” To which Marley replies, “I have none to give . . . . It comes from
other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other
kinds of men” (Dickens 22). Could Moroni be one of these “other ministers”?
Could Joseph, the boy prophet, be one of those “other kinds of men”?
The content of the
messages given to these two men is vastly different; Joseph is given
commandments about a new mission upon which he must embark, while Scrooge is
forced to reexamine his life and turn his whole philosophy around. However,
their responses to the messages are very much the same. Both of them are
bewildered by the first visit, softening their hearts slowly over the course of
the evening; until eventually each of them is determined to follow the guidance
given and change his life entirely.
Joseph – already
predisposed to obey God – still requires all four visits before he’s ready to
act. After the first visit, he says, “I lay musing on the singularity of the
scene, and marveling greatly at what had been told to me by this extraordinary
messenger” (JS-H 1:44); after the second, he says, “so deep were the
impressions made on my mind, that sleep had fled from my eyes, and I lay
overwhelmed in astonishment at what I had both seen and heard” (JS-H 1:46). It
isn’t until after the fourth visit from Moroni that Joseph finally goes to the
Hill Cumorah to retrieve the ancient plates he was called to translate.
Scrooge’s development
over the course of the visits is more dramatic, if only because his heart had
so much more softening it needed to go through. When he first is approached by
Marley’s Spirit, he is utterly disbelieving, claiming that the vision is a trick
of his senses caused by food poisoning. “There’s more of gravy than of grave
about you, whatever you are!” he says (Dickens 20). When the second visitor,
the Ghost of Christmas Past, beckons for Scrooge to come with him out the
window, Scrooge is still hesitant, arguing, “I am a mortal . . . and liable to
fall” (34). By the time he gets to the next Spirit, he has humbled
significantly: “Spirit, conduct me where you will. . . . If you have aught to
teach me, let me profit by it” (59). When he meets up with the final Spirit,
his heart has completely changed: “I fear you [Spirit] more than any specter I
have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live
to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear your company and do it
with a thankful heart” (90). When he returns to the world of ordinary mortals,
Scrooge goes immediately to work making up for a lifetime of selfishness.
This
is where we find the most important truth in these stories – whether real or
mythical. That truth is found as an answer to Scrooge’s bewildered question
(Dickens 20): “Why do spirits walk the Earth, and why do they come to me?” The
answer, the truth, is that God lives and is active in the lives of His
children; that He sends immortal messengers to give guidance and warning; and
that we, on Earth, may experience the transforming power of His grace, that we
may shout with Scrooge, “I am not the man I was” (110).
The reality of redemption is the
only truth that matters. Without it, all else is void. Charles Dickens’s
seasonal novella A Christmas Carol bears
record of that truth – and that, perhaps, is the reason why no man who reads
the book ever forgets the journey.
