[Footnote 1: Valuable contributions to this study are Lamb's "Golden Bible" and a pamphlet by Lamoni Call classifying two thousand corrections in the inspired grammar of the first edition of the Book of Mormon.]
[Footnote 2: The best effort along this line is Riley's "The Founder of Mormonism." To me the conclusions are very unsatisfactory, because so many material considerations were overlooked by that author.]
In 1834, four years after its first appearance, an effort was made to show that the Book of Mormon was a plagiarism from an unpublished novel of Solomon Spaulding. For a long time this seemed the accepted theory of all non-Mormons. In the past fifteen years, apparently following in the lead of President Fairchild of Oberlin College,[3] all but two of the numerous writers upon the subject have asserted that the theory of the Spaulding manuscript origin of the Book of Mormon must be abandoned, and Mormons assert that only fools and knaves still profess belief in it.[4] With these last conclusions I am compelled to disagree.
[Footnote 3: President Fairchild, in the New York Observer for February 5, 1885, that being immediately after his discovery of the Oberlin Manuscript, says: "The theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon in the traditional manuscript of Solomon Spaulding will probably have to be relinquished. * * * Mr. Rice, myself, and others compared it with the Book of Mormon, and could detect no resemblance between the two in general or detail. * * * Some other explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon must be found, if an explanation is required." (Reproduced in Whitney's "History of Utah," 56. Talmage's "Articles of Faith," 278.)
Ten years later Mr. Fairchild is not so brash in assuming the Oberlin Manuscript to be the only Spaulding Manuscript, and he certifies only that the Oberlin Manuscript "is not the original of the Book of Mormon." (Letter dated Oct. 17, 1895, published in vol. lx., Millennial Star, p. 697, Nov. 3, 1898. Talmage's "Articles of Faith," 279.)
Fairchild's Latest Statement.—In 1900 President Fairchild wrote the Rev. J. D. Nutting as follows:
"With regard to the manuscript of Mr. Spaulding now in the library of Oberlin College, I have never stated, and know of no one who can state, that it is the only manuscript which Spaulding wrote, or that it is certainly the one which has been supposed to be the original of the Book of Mormon. The discovery of this MS. does not prove that there may not have been another, which became the basis of the Book of Mormon. The use which has been made of statements emanating from me as implying the contrary of the above is entirely unwarranted.
"JAMES H. FAIRCHILD">[
[Footnote 4: The Deseret News editorially says this on July 19, 1900: "The discovery of the manuscript written by Mr. Spaulding, and its deposit in the library at Oberlin College, O., * * * has so completely demolished the theory once relied upon by superficial minds that the Book of Mormon was concocted from that manuscript, that it has been entirely abandoned by all opponents of Mormonism except the densely ignorant or unscrupulously dishonest."
And this on May 14, 1901: