A Paper I Wrote for School

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.