| 152 hearing him go through the principle of baptism for the remission of sins I went forward and was baptized by his hands."
Again he writes.-
"August [same year] my wife was baptized together with John Murdock and many others by S. Rigdon."
The above dates and events are so thoroughly in accord with the statements of Joseph Smith above quoted that we feel safe in presenting the sketch of Rigdon's life by Joseph as historically correct.
The reputation of Sidney Rigdon will hardly justify one in believing him guilty of such deceit as his enemies accuse him of during his successful career as a minister in Northern Ohio. A. S. Hayden, one of his fellow ministers in the Christian or Disciple Church during those times, who subsequently bitterly opposed the faith which he (Rigdon) afterwards espoused, said of Rigdon:-
"Whatever may be justly said of him after he had surrendered himself a victim and a leader of the Mormon delusion, it would scarcely be just to deny sincerity and candor to him, previous to the time when his bright star became permanently eclipsed under that dark cloud."-"History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve," p. 192.
The following extract from the journal of Lyman Wight, who was at the time identified with the new movement under Sidney Rigdon, Alexander Campbell, and Walter Scott, confirms the account of Joseph Smith in two important particulars; viz.: as to who was responsible for the teaching and practice of the principle of "all things common" at Kirtland, Ohio, and in regard to the date of the arrival at Mentor and Kirtland of the missionaries. He writes:-
"I now began to look at the doctrine of the apostles pretty closely, and especially that part contained in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where they had all things common. In consideration of this doctrine I went to Kirtland, about twenty miles, to see Bro. I. Morley and-Billings, after some conversation on the subject we entered
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