What Joseph left behind

Some kind of an inspired super-devil might have gotten away with some of the things he did, but no blundering, dreaming, undisciplined, shallow, and opportunistic fakir could have left behind what Joseph Smith did, both in men's hearts and on paper. ("No, Ma'am, That's Not History", Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass)

Book of Mormon not a product of its time

Critics may be permitted at this late date to try their hand at winning friends and influencing people by telling the Mormons of today that they are just ordinary folk with an ordinary church. But to say that such was also the case in the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young is neither honest nor sporting. The genial and forced camaraderie of some of the present-day critics of Mormonism is that of the man who finds it easier to pick your pocket by affectionately locking arms with you than by hitting you over the head. The new humane approach is simply an obvious maneuver to rob the Church of a glorious history and to play down every remarkable circumstance of its origin. When it reaches the point of being told that while the Book of Mormon may seem very strange to us, to the contemporaries of Joseph Smith it "would scarcely seem fanciful, possibly not even novel," it is high time to protest. For even the most superficial acquaintance with the literature will show that the Book of Mormon was as baffling, scandalizing, and hated a book in the first week of its appearance as it has ever been since. The idea that the Book of Mormon was simply a product of its time may be a necessary fiction to explain it, but it is fiction nonetheless. If they may be trusted in nothing else, the voluminous writings of the anti-Mormons stand as monumental evidence for one fact: that Mormonism and the Book of Mormon were in no way a product of the society in which they arose. ("The Prophetic Book of Mormon", The Prophetic Book of Mormon)

The double standard of anti-Mormon Christians

For your readers, Mormonism is what you [the anti-Mormon writer] say it is. It is to establish the thesis that you have been at such pains with your personal buildup. Once entrenched as an official guide, you can take the readers where you please. It is not the thing you are showing them from then on, but your interpretation of the thing. It has been the practice of religious polemic in every age to attack not what the opposition practice and preach but our impression of what they practice and preach. "Blasphemy!" was the heading of the first published report on the Book of Mormon, and Alexander Campbell sincerely believed it was blasphemy. The early anti-Christian writers were just as sincere. Blasphemy had been from the beginning the stock charge against Jesus and the apostles, just as it is the favorite word of anti-Mormon writers. Didn't Jesus recommend publicly that those who "offended" should be glad to have a millstone hung about their necks and be cast into the sea? Blood atonement! Didn't he instruct his followers to hate-yes, hate-their own mothers and fathers and children? Horrible, horrible! To hate their own lives? A cult of suicide, no less! And then to have innocent babes and venerable ancients damned eternally for no other sin than not having had the ridiculous dunking that so shocked Ann Eliza; and to proclaim that an offender should cut off his own hand or pluck out his own eye-a cult of self-mutilation! And didn't the founder spend his time in private "conversations" with women, including women of ill-repute? And weren't his followers the dregs of society, who admitted that respectable people avoided them? Didn't they preach the shocking doctrine of a physical resurrection?--even doctors of the Church like Origen and Jerome squirm uncomfortably. Their notorious "love feasts"--too indecent to write about--show they meant it literally when they called each other "brother" and "sister" and then proceeded to intermarry in a cult of incest. ("Sounding Brass", Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass)