When Joseph Smith read the expose of his polygamy in the pages of theNauvoo Expositor, published by a man whom he had respected and revered, he must have felt a shattering of his own grandiose and wholly unrealistic image of himself and his role in history. He reacted with rage and destroyed the press, though he was not normally a destructive man. He was a builder of temples and cities and kingdoms — most of all, a constructor of continuing fantasy. William Law attacked this fantasy with his simple, almost gentle exposition of reality. A man called Law had called him to account, as his parents
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