New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3)

by B. H. Roberts

The next day, July 10th, 1875, he died.

Footnotes

[1]. See Stevenson's account of Harris' return to the Church, Millennial Star, vol. 44, pp. 78, 86, 87.

[2]. Deseret News (weekly) for July 28, 1875.

CHAPTER XIX.

DIRECT EXTERNAL EVIDENCES—REFLECTIONS UPON THE TESTIMONIES OF THE THREE WITNESSES.

The direct evidence of the truth of the Book of Mormon found in the testimony of the Three Witnesses is now before the reader. The trying circumstances under which the Witnesses persisted in maintaining the truth of that testimony is also known. Neither separation from Joseph Smith as a companion and associate, nor excommunication from the body religious, brought into existence as a sequence, one may say, of the coming forth of the Nephite Record, affected them as Witnesses. In the Church and while out of it they steadfastly maintained what they first published to the world respecting the Book of Mormon. The plates existed, they saw them, and the engravings upon them. An angel of God appeared before them, and laid the records before their eyes. The record was translated by the gift and power of God; for his voice had declared it unto them, hence they knew it. No evidence exists that they ever denied that testimony. They never attempted to resolve the appearance of the angel, the exhibition of the plates, or hearing the voice of God into hallucination of the mind; nor did they ever attempt to refer this really great event to some jugglery on the part of Joseph Smith. They never allowed even the possibility of their being mistaken in the matter. They saw; they heard; the splendor of God shone about them; they felt his presence. Joseph Smith could never have produced such a scene as that which they beheld. They were not deluded. The several incidents making up this great revelation were too palpable to the strongest senses of the mind to admit of any doubt as to their reality. The great revelation was not given in a dream or vision of the night. There was no mysticism about it. Nothing unseemly or occult. It was a simple, straightforward fact that had taken place before their eyes. The visitation of the angel was in the broad light of day. Moreover it occurred after such religious exercises as were worthy to attend upon such an event, viz.: after morning devotional exercises common to all really Christian families of that period—the reading of a scripture lesson, singing a hymn, and prayer; and after arriving at the scene of the revelation, devout prayer again by the Prophet and each of the then-to-be Witnesses. The revelation then followed under the circumstances already detailed, which circumstances were of such a nature that the Witnesses could not be mistaken. There exists no possibility of resolving their testimony into delusion or mistake. Either they spoke the truth in their published Testimony to the world, or they were wilful, conscious liars, bent upon a wicked scheme of deception relative to a subject—religion—which, as it is the most sacred, so should it also be the furthest removed from the practice of deceptions.

Since, then, the possibility of mistake or delusion, is eliminated from the revelation to the Three Witnesses, let us consider the likelihood of conscious, intentional fraud; a deliberately planned deception, through the collusion of Joseph Smith and the Three Witnesses, by which the Book of Mormon was to be palmed off upon mankind as a volume of ancient scripture, and a new Church organization brought into existence.

First. It must occur to every unbiased reflector upon the subject that every circumstance is against the likelihood of collusion. The very youthfulness of the men, the Prophet and the Three Witnesses, is against such a hypothesis. Joseph Smith, at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon, was about twenty-five years old; Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were also of that age, all having been born in the year 1805-6. Martin Harris was older, it is true, having been born in the year 1783; but he, as an exception to the youthfulness of the group, will not affect the argument based on this score of youthfulness, as his influence with the rest held no proportion to the difference of age between himself with the other members of the group. Indeed, though the oldest, he was the least influential of the number; and withal so simple-minded in his honesty, that the world, if it knew him, would acquit him of guile, and regard him as a wholly impossible factor in practicing such a monumental delusion upon mankind as foisting the Book of Mormon upon the world as a revelation from God would have been had not the book been true.