Cumorah's Pageant

Mount Sinai of Mormonism is the Hill Cumorah, a red-clay glacial hump near Palmyra in western New York. On Hill Cumorah, in September 1827, the Angel Moroni handed down the Word to a strapping, 21-year-old farmer-visionary named Joseph Smith, in the form of a book written on golden plates and a Urim and Thummim (stones fastened in silver bows) which enabled him to translate it. The result of Seer Smith's labors was the Book of Mormon, which ever since has been the treasured gospel of the sect he founded, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Prophet Smith was without honor in his own county. His neighbors, hearing of his discovery, were more anxious to get the gold than the gospel. When Joseph Smith explained he had returned his treasure to Moroni, mobs dug up most of Hill Cumorah without finding the plates--which have since been as elusive as the Holy Grail. Irate, they drove Prophet Smith out of New York.

But the Mormons never forgot their holy places. Finally they managed to buy back from unbelievers the farms of Joseph Smith, Martin Harris (who mortgaged his house to pay for the first printing* of the Book of Mormon) and Hill Cumorah itself. Five years ago Mormons erected a granite shaft on Hill Cumorah, topped it with a large statue of Moroni. On the slopes of the hill each summer they put on a pageant.

Last week on Cumorah's hillside the pageant was twice repeated to audiences that totaled 35,000. They jam-packed the fields at the foot of the hill with their cars. In the prelude they saw a re-enactment of Moroni's first appearance to Joseph Smith. With trumpeters on the hilltop and incidental music from Wagner and Victor Herbert, the pageant then unfolded the

Book of Mormon's story of the lost tribes of Israel.

Givers of the pageant were the 167 Mormon missionaries to the Eastern States, in Palmyra for their annual conference. Mormon evangelists are young men and maids especially chosen by their bishops. They support themselves while proselyting, and generally serve a two-year period. Some missionaries are themselves converts. One such at Cumorah was blond, square-set Hollywood bit player Burnett Ferguson, who plans a return to acting when his evangelistic stint is done. Missionary Ferguson, whose last cinema appearance was in Dawn Patrol, had a fiery role last week as the prophet Abinadi, was burnt at the stake.

Mornings and afternoons the missionaries met at the Sacred Grove, where towheaded Joe Smith had his first vision in 1820. Between sessions they could stroll down the lane to a low. white frame farmhouse. Like ten thousand other farm houses in the U. S. it had a sign TOURISTS. Its distinction is that there for $1 a tourist may sleep in the very bedroom where, according to the sober belief of 750.000 respectable people, an angel of God first appeared to a divinely chosen prophet.

*One of Prophet Smith's early dictums set the penalty of instant death for anyone who sold the book for under $1.25.

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