by the natives of the country, and would have fallen a victim to them but for Pocahontas, the daughter of their chief, who saved him. On his return to England he published an account of his travels in the following works—"A History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Soles," folio; "New England's Trials," 4to; "Travels in Europe," &c. He also published a map of Virginia. He died at London in 1631.—W. J. P.
SMITH, John, an English divine, son of the Rev. William Smith of Lowther Rectory, Westmoreland, was born in 1659. He was educated at a school in Appleby and at St. John's college, Cambridge, where he took his master's degree in 1681. He subsequently became a prebend of Durham, and took the degree of D.D. at Cambridge. He collected together a considerable quantity of information for compiling a history of Durham, and furnished Gibson with much of the material for his article on the bishopric of Durham in Camden's Britannica. He was also at the time of his death, in 1715, preparing an edition of the works of Bede, which was completed by his son George Smith, who afterwards became a nonjuror, and took orders among the nonjurors as titular bishop of Durham. George Smith died in 1756.—F.
SMITH, John Pye, an eminent biblical scholar, was born at Sheffield, on the 15th May, 1774. On the completion of his apprenticeship to his father, who was a bookseller, and when divine truth had reached his soul, he entered the dissenting academy at Rotherham, and made amazing progress in his studies. At the age of twenty-seven he became resident classical tutor at Homerton academy, and a few years afterwards he was ordained pastor over a congregational church assembling at old Gravel pits in the vicinity of the college. His labours in this double sphere were incessant for fifty years till his death. In 1804 appeared his "Letters to Belsham," and in 1806 he formally undertook the duties of theological professor in the academy. His principal work, the "Scripture Testimony to the Messiah," appeared in 1818-21, and has gone through several editions. It is a masterly and erudite discussion of all the more important passages bearing on the Godhead of the Saviour, and indicates extraordinary candour and research. His other great work was his congregational lecture "On the Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science." It appeared in 1839, and produced a great sensation, and it also has gone through various editions. Its theory is patiently elaborated and supported by a vast array of facts and criticisms. Dr. Pye Smith also published in 1813 "On the Nature, Value, and Efficacy of the Death of Christ," of which a fourth edition appeared in 1859. The treatise displays all its author's characteristics—patient and severe thought, extensive and varied scholarship, profound and ardent piety. We have not space to mention Dr. Pye Smith's numerous minor publications, such as those in controversy with Robert Haldane on inspiration, or Professor Lee on church establishments, nor his many and excellent contributions to the Eclectic Review. Yale college, America, conferred upon him the degree of D.D. in 1807, and Marischal college, Aberdeen, gave him that of LL.D. in 1835. He was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society in 1840, After he had completed his fifty years of unwearying and hearty service, his friends presented him, on the 8th of January, 1851, with a testimonial of £2000—the sum after his death to form divinity scholarships bearing his name in the new college, St. John's Woods. He bequeathed his library and large collection of fossils to the same institution. On the 5th of next February he died, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. He had not lived in vain. Four years after his death appeared "First Lines of Theology," an able and interesting syllabus prepared for the use of his students. Dr. Pye Smith was a man utterly unselfish, and was also characterized by a noble simplicity of nature. He was lost, however, to his friends for the greater part of his life by deafness and domestic infelicity. He was also an ardent patriot, and in early life he edited the Sheffield Iris during the period of Mr. Montgomery's imprisonment. His mental power was great, though not distinguished by brilliancy or profundity, and his learning was prodigious. His arrangements are always lucid, and his style quiet and perspicuous. His knowledge of science in its various spheres was extraordinary; few men indeed have mastered so successfully so great a number of subjects. His industry was unrivalled, and he ever acted from the highest christian motives as a servant of the one Great Master.—(Life, by Rev. John Medway; Biographical and Critical Sketch, by Dr. Eadie, prefixed to the fifth edition of the "Scripture Testimony," 1859.)—J. E.
SMITH, Joseph, who has been called the "American Mahomet," was the originator of the monstrous caricature of Christianity known as Mormonism. His career offers a commentary on the civilization of the nineteenth century by no means flattering to human vanity. Appealing to and encouraging the materialism and sensualism which constitute the main difficulties of the christian life, Joseph Smith succeeded in the course of fourteen years in gathering together a band of many thousand followers, with whom he established an extensive settlement and constructed a considerable city. When he died, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, his spurious religion was preached and accepted not only in all parts of North America, but in England, and in various countries of continental Europe. This impostor was born at Sharon in Windsor county, in the state of Vermont, on the 23rd December, 1805. His father at one time owned a small farm; but being unsuccessful he led a shifty, disreputable life, neglecting honest labour for the thriftless search after gold mines. Joseph, it is said, accompanied his father on expeditions in which the divining rod and magic crystal were brought into requisition by these Dousterswivels of real life. Doubtless the boy thus acquired a half belief in the supernatural, which, under the influence of his mother, became mixed up with certain impressions derived from the Bible. None of the family appears to have belonged to any church or christian community, and their distaste for the simple teaching of the gospel seems to have been strengthened by exhibitions of sectarian violence and animosity that took place at some of the revivals which they witnessed. Divisions in the church of Christ and the hypocrisy of christians are two arguments which Smith frequently used in his advocacy of Mormonism. Though his scheme was not matured nor launched into the world till 1830, it is pretended that the prophet had visions ten years previously when he was at the age of fifteen. Then he was instructed, according to his own statement, by a messenger from heaven, to attach himself to no church, but to wait for further revelations. After this beatific vision Joseph relapsed into the mundane vices of drunkenness and libertinage; but in 1823 he again resorted to the dark grove where he had been formerly illuminated, and received mysterious communications concerning a golden book buried centuries ago by the last of the Nephites—a race of men descended from the Israelites of old, who had emigrated from Jerusalem to America before the christian era, bringing with them the pure oracles of God. Imaginary directions were given where to find the golden book, consisting of metal plates graven all over with strange characters, and fastened together by a ring. Joseph pretended that he duly dug for and found this mysterious treasure in a stone box on the hill Cumorah, and together with it the Urim and Thummim, or a "huge pair of spectacles," by the assistance of which he, an uneducated man, was enabled to translate the new revelation. The utter unscrupulousness with which this blasphemous imposture was advanced, carried conviction with it to a certain class of minds. The scheme of his strange evangel Smith had somehow picked up from a dull romance, entitled The Manuscript Found, and written about 1812 by Mr. Solomon Spaulding, a clergyman whose mind was full of the notion then in vogue that the Red Indians are descendants of the ten lost tribes. This idea was fostered by speculations on the ancient tumuli existing in the neighbourhood of New Salem, the place where Mr. Spaulding wrote his novel. The manuscript came into the possession of a printer at Pittsburg. one of whose compositors was Sidney Rigdon, a zealous follower of the Mormonite prophet. A connection between the two men, however, prior to the earlier visions of the prophet, has not yet been satisfactorily made out. The notice of the golden plates was doubtless derived from the glyphs of the ancient Mexicans, the discovery of which has often furnished newspapers with paragraphs. Smith may possibly have seen some of these plates, but that he ever possessed any is doubtful, since he never exhibited anything of the kind, except to the eight witnesses whom he contrived to juggle into the belief that they had seen the golden book. With the art of a common conjuror he made a great mystery of his Book of Mormon, keeping behind a curtain while he translated the mystic characters, and passing to persons outside slips of paper containing the interpretation. When he found that the imposture had a chance of success he employed one Oliver Cowdery, whether a dupe or a confederate does not appear, to be his amanuensis. The first converts to the new creed were Smith's parents and brothers, and the members of a family named Whitmer. These are the eight wit-
