When examined for internal evidences the Book of Mormon, by its anachronisms, by its veiled allusions to such things as the anti-Masonic frenzy of the late 1820’s in western New York, assumes the aspect of a work written not before 521 B.C. but after 1827 A.D. Smith’s career, his description of the origin of the Book of Mormon and the contents of the work all history. A secret conspiratorial air about the visions, the unusual meetings, the secret orders from Moroni (which if violated meant death), buried secret instructions—all these, for example, certainly belong to the era of Gothic tales, of secret societies, and of the Anti-Masonic Movement as they were transmuted in the imagination of a young boy.