INTERNAL EVIDENCES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON.
We will now consider for a short time a few of the internal evidences
of the genuineness of the Book of Mormon, or the proofs in itself that
it is what it claims to be, a record of God's dealings with the former
inhabitants of this continent.
Among the more prominent internal evidences of its genuineness may be
mentioned:
1st. Its historical consistency.
2nd. The entire absence of all anachronisms, or confusion in its
chronology, and of conflicting statements with regard to history,
doctrine or prophecy.
3rd. The purity of its doctrines, and their entire harmony with the
teachings of our Savior and His inspired servants as recorded in the
Bible.
4th. Its already fulfilled prophecies.
5th. Its harmony with the traditions of the Indian races.
6th. Its entire accord with scientific truth; none of its geographical,
astronomical or other statements being contrary to what is positively
known in these sciences.
There is nothing in the entire historical narrative of the Book of
Mormon that is inconsistent with the dealings of the Almighty with
mankind, or conflicting with history as far as the history which has
been handed down to us in other records deals with events referred to
in the Book of Mormon. On the other hand, the whole scheme of human
salvation, as developed in the dealings of the Lord with the Jaredites,
Nephites and Lamanites, gives us the most exalted ideas of His love
for His mortal children and His condescension towards the erring sons
and daughters of Adam. Even if the Book of Mormon were not true, it
deserves to be so, from the sublimity of the ideas that it conveys
with regard to God's providences and His ways and methods of leading,
directing and preserving His children. No nobler monument to the glory,
the mercy and the long-suffering of our Heavenly Father than this
wonderful book was ever presented for the consideration of mankind.
It requires a great deal more credulity to believe it possible that
any author, ignorant or learned, be he Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon or
Solomon Spaulding, could, without the inspiration of the Almighty,
bring forth such a work as the Book of Mormon, than to believe that it
is a revelation from the Almighty.
Hengstenberg, in his work on the Pentateuch, says:
"It is the unavoidable fate of a spurious historical work of any length
to be involved in contradictions." This is obviously true. No thinking
person will deny that it would be one of the most difficult of all
literary feats to compose a historical work extending over thousands of
years and dealing with hundreds of individuals without introducing some
blunders as to time, place or circumstance, or permitting egregious
contradictions to pass unnoticed. But the Book of Mormon is entirely
free from all blunders of such a kind. This alone stamps it as of
more than human origin. For more than fifty years, the bigoted and
skeptical have been endeavoring to find errors, inconsistencies or
impossibilities within its contents. But in this they have utterly
failed. Not one of all their pretended discoveries of errors has stood
the test of investigation. It has been found, without exception, that
in such cases the objector has either dishonestly garbled the text,
put an impossible construction on good, plain English, or presented
his own private interpretation of the words of the book instead of the
words themselves. The writer of this having perused the Book of Mormon
many times, confidently asserts that there is no conflict of dates,
no contradiction of details, no discordant doctrine, no historical
inconsistency, from the commencement of the first Book of Nephi to the
end of Moroni. All is a plain, simple narrative, occasionally somewhat
unpolished in its style, and here and there at variance with the strict
rules of grammar, but throughout maintaining its unities and harmonies,
and bearing upon its face indelible marks of its divine origin.
We now come to the doctrinal portions of the work:
It is readily admitted on all hands that no sectarian preacher like Mr.
Spaulding would write doctrines, such as the Book of Mormon contains,
these doctrines being at variance with the creed that he professed;
and, indeed, in many respects different to those of every creed then
extant upon the face of the earth. The Book of Mormon, be it human or
divine, is a new revelation on religious matters to this generation,
and its entire accord with the revelations of the Almighty contained in
the Bible is a proof so strong of its divinity that none have been able
to gainsay it. It is utterly ridiculous to imagine that Joseph Smith,
unlettered as he was, could have written a work in such entire harmony
with the holy scriptures and entering into many new particulars, as it
frequently does, with regard to doctrines only slightly touched upon in
the Old or New Testaments: it not only harmonizes with the scriptures,
but it explains them, makes clear the meaning of many an obscure
passage, and while it never conflicts with, it often develops, truths
of the utmost importance to humanity.
How wonderful a miracle!--much greater than the discovery of the
records in the hill Cumorah--that an uneducated youth, (and neither
friend nor foe claims he was educated), could produce a work pregnant
with principles connected with the most vital interests of the human
family, and treating on subjects that concern man's temporal and
eternal welfare, which cannot be refuted by all the learned of the
world. Would not this be much more wonderful, calling for a much
greater strain on our credulity than to believe that God had again
spoken and brought to light this long-hidden treasure? And if it be
inconsistent to believe that neither Joseph Smith nor Solomon Spaulding
was the author of the religious portions of the Book of Mormon, wherein
is it more consistent to ascribe the authorship to Sidney Rigdon? He
was as utterly ignorant of many of the doctrines and principles made
plain in the Book of Mormon as was Solomon Spaulding or any other
uninspired priest of fifty or more years ago. There was no system
of philosophy, ethics or religion then known to mankind from which
he could have drawn the inspiration to write many of the doctrinal
precepts in the Book of Mormon.
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.