To tide over this difficulty, persons unacquainted with the contents of the Book of Mormon (which unfortunately the greater portion of mankind are) have suggested that Solomon Spaulding wrote the historical portion (an impossibility, as we have heretofore shown) and that Joseph Smith or somebody else added the religious portion. To those who have read the Book of Mormon, this hypothesis is supremely ridiculous.
An objector to the Bible might, with equal consistency, assert that somebody wrote the historical portion of the Old and New Testaments, and somebody else, after the historical portion was all written, introduced the religious teachings. One is as impossible as the other. Every one who knows anything of the Book of Mormon knows that the narrative of events grows out of and is inseparably connected with the religious idea. The book opens with the statement that Lehi was a prophet, bearing Jehovah's unwelcome message of destruction to the inhabitants of the sin-seared city of Jerusalem. They rejected and persecuted him. By divine command he fled with his family into the wilderness and was led by that same inspiration to the American continent. The reason why the Lord thus delivered him was, that he might raise up to Himself a people that would serve Him. He covenanted to give Lehi and his posterity this most precious land as their inheritance if they kept His commandments. How they fulfilled His law, how they prospered when obedient, how they suffered when disobedient, is the burden of the story of the writers of the Book of Mormon. It is the main idea to which all others are incidental, the controlling thought around which all others concentrate; it is the life of the whole record, the golden thread running through all its pages, which gives consistency to all its parts. A man might just as well attempt to write the gospel of St. Matthew and leave out all references to the Lord Jesus Christ, as write the Book of Mormon without its religious theory and teachings.
The creature who invented the idea of the dual authorship of this book must have imagined that the doctrinal portion was dropped in by lumps or clumsily inserted between different historical epochs. It is true there are places where liberal extracts from the Bible are quoted, and if these were all, there might be some semblance of consistency in the supposition. But it is not so, the doctrinal and historical portions are, as a general thing, so intermingled and blended that neither could be withdrawn without destroying the sense of the other. If it were possible to conceive of the amalgamation of two separate documents—one religious and the other historical—it would be much easier to believe that the doctrinal portions were written first and that the historical ideas were afterwards filled in; for, as before mentioned, the historical narrative is but secondary and tributary to the religious idea. But this would not support the theory of the Spauldingites; it would, in fact, entirely upset all their arguments for the reason that they claim that the "Manuscript Found," a historical romance of an idolatrous people, be it remembered, was written by Spaulding not later than 1812, while the Book of Mormon was not published by Joseph Smith until 1830, consequently such an arrangement would be fatal to their hypothesis.
We next glance at the prophecies of the Book of Mormon, a number of which are already fulfilled. These are among the most irrefutable evidences of the divinity of the work; the facts are patent to all the world, they are within the reach of all mankind. Ever since the year 1830, men have had the opportunity of testing the contents of the Book of Mormon, as it has not been hidden in a corner, but has been published in all the dominant languages of Christendom. To say that many of its prophecies have not been fulfilled is to deny history. And it cannot be asserted that these prophecies are happy guesses, as, at the time when the Book of Mormon was published, they appeared most improbable, none more so than those which foretell the results that would follow its own publication. For it must be remembered that when it was published there was no Church of Jesus Christ organized upon the earth, and there was no remote probability of the then non-existent church producing the results in itself and to the world that the Book of Mormon declares should follow its establishment, which have been fulfilled, year by year, from the time of its publication to the present. If the Book of Mormon be not true, then these prophecies originated with Joseph Smith, and, as they have been fulfilled, he was a true prophet; further, as they were declared in the name of the Lord and the Lord has recognized them by permitting their fulfillment in so many wondrous ways and by such direct manifestations of His divine power, therefore the conclusion is inevitable that the Lord owned and acknowledged Joseph Smith as His servant. On the other hand, if they did not originate with Joseph Smith, then the record is genuine, for the prophecies are true, and they were uttered by the men to whom they are ascribed. If so, Joseph's account of his discovery of the plates is true and he was a seer and a revelator, especially called of God to lay the foundation of the mighty work of the last days.
Those who are so strongly opposed to "Mormonism" can accept whichever horn of the dilemma they choose. But to our mind the first supposition is utterly untenable, as it is impossible for us to conceive that God, who hatch a lie, would choose for His servant a man who made such a science of falsehood; or that the Divine One would add the seal of His approbation to a forgery and an imposture, such as the Book of Mormon would be under these circumstances. To believe such a thing, would be as consistent as to believe that if there were prophecies contained in "Gulliver's Travels" the Lord would move heaven and earth to bring about their fulfillment; for if the Book of Mormon be not what it claims, then it is as much a romance as the celebrated work of Dean Swift, and one is as worthy of credence as the other.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PROPHECIES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON.
Let us now consider a few of the fulfilled prophecies of the Book of Mormon. On page 581 it is stated: "And behold ye [the translator] may be privileged that ye may shew the plates unto those who shall assist to bring forth this work; and unto three shall they be shewn by the power of God; wherefore they shall know of a surety that these things are true. And in the mouth of three witnesses shall these things be established; and the testimony of three and this work shall stand as a testimony against the world at the last day" ( Ether v. 2-4.)
In the above we have the statement that three witnesses are to be raised up by the power of God to testify to the truth and genuineness of the book. At the commencement of the Book of Mormon we have the testimony of these three witnesses—Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris—to the fulfillment of the above prophecy. They declare that an angel of God came down from heaven, who brought the plates and laid them before their eyes. "Ah, but," says our opponent, "what an easy matter it would be for an impostor like Joseph Smith to conspire with three other men to fulfill the prophecy?" Such a thing is quite supposable to ignorant persons unacquainted with the matter, but very improbable under the circumstances as already shown. Or Joseph Smith might even have deceived three men had he shown them the plates himself; but not all the impostors in the world could bring an angel down from heaven, or cause the Lord to declare with His own voice that the plates were translated by His gift and power. In this is the utter impossibility. As we have before shown these three men under all circumstances have borne one continuous, undeviating testimony that they saw the angel and heard the voice, and that their testimony in the Book of Mormon is true. No amount of sophistry can persuade the sincere investigator into these matters that Joseph Smith had sufficient cunning and dexterity, even if he had appliances, to deceive these three men into the belief that they had actually seen an angel descend from heaven and present them the plates for their examination. This is altogether too great a stretch for the imagination of an ordinarily sane person.
It is more difficult to select isolated passages from the prophecies of the Book of Mormon than from those of the Bible; for as a general thing they are so intimately associated with the context that their force, power and meaning are surprisingly weakened when quoted alone. Among the prophecies of Mormon's record that are partially fulfilled or are now in process of fulfillment may be mentioned those relating to—