FOREWORD.
The occasion which gave rise to the following discourse, delivered in the Granite Stake Tabernacle, Sunday evening, May 29th, 1904, is sufficiently explained in the body of the text. The discourse deals only with one of three of Rev. Paden's discourses delivered against the Book of Mormon, and that the third—"Gospels Apocryphal and Real." Of that discourse nothing here need be said, as a full synopsis of it is given in the text of the answer to it. But there may be some curiosity to know something of the other discourses of Mr. Paden's against the III Nephi—the "Fifth Gospel." In the first discourse a general charge of plagiarism from the Bible was made, the claim being that material for the most valuable parts was to be found in the Gospel or Revelation of St. John in the Psalms, and in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. "His general conclusion was," according to the published synopsis of the discourse—furnished by Dr. Paden to the press quoted—"that there was nothing in the book to indicate that it was inspired, except as it was plagiarized from the Bible."
In Dr. Paden's second discourse the charge of plagiarism was emphasized and amplified; and the further charges made that the book lacked in "local color." "We find almost nothing," he said, "which would fit with a tropical climate; in fact the general description would better coincide with Pennsylvania or New York. * * * * The whole attempt to account for the vagaries of Nephite geography, or its seeming disagreement or failure to connect with tropical South America, is an exposition of the weakness of the claim made by the Book of Nephi and the whole Book of Mormon to be a trustworthy document. Indeed the whole history and make-up of the story seems to indicate a determination to put its claims beyond the touch of realistic teaching."
I mention here these points in the discourses of Dr. Paden, in order to direct the reader's attention to the fact that these with other objections urged by this gentleman in the discourses referred to, are considered, in part, in preceding papers of this book, and at length in my treatise on the Book of Mormon in the Young Men's Manual for 1905-6, and will also be found in "New Witnesses for God," Vol. II, soon to issue from the press; and for the reason that they are considered in those works they are not reviewed here.