prophecies of the holy Prophets. * * * * And it came to pass that I beheld the remnant of the seed of my brethren, and also the Book of the Lamb of God, which had proceeded forth from the mouth of the Jew, that it came forth from the Gentiles, unto the remnant of the seed of my brethren. And after it had come forth unto them, I beheld other Books, which came forth by the power of the Lamb, from the Gentiles, unto them, unto the convincing of the Gentiles, and the remnant of the seed of my brethren, and also the Jews, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth, that the records of the Prophets and of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb [the Bible] are true. And the angel spake unto me, saying. These last records which thou hast seen among the Gentiles, shall establish the truth of the first, which are of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb, and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them; and shall make known unto all kindreds, tongues and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved."—I. Nephi xiii.

PART I.

The Value of the Book of Mormon as a witness for the authenticity and integrity of the Bible, and the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

NEW WITNESSES FOR GOD.

II.

THE BOOK OF MORMON.

CHAPTER I.

THE BIBLE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

"The Bible in the Nineteenth Century" will yet form an interesting subject for a volume. The writer of it will recount the attacks made upon the sacred volume by unbelievers, and the defense of it by faithful Christian and Jewish scholars. He will also be under the necessity of writing the history of the betrayals of the Holy Scriptures by pretended friends; and he will say such betrayals were more mischievous than the attacks of avowed enemies. He will balance the harm done by the attacks and the betrayals, against the good accomplished by the defenses, and give the net result of gain or loss. Which will preponderate? The nineteenth century was prolific in both assaults and defenses; and much valuable material was collected from unexpected quarters for the defense of the Scriptures; but for all that it is doubtful if in what is recognized as the Christian world the faith of the Christians in the Bible, as the veritable word of God, was as sound and absolute at the close of the nineteenth century as it was at the commencement of it. This is not saying that what is regarded as old fashioned faith in the Bible has been entirely banished, or totally eclipsed. There are those, and many of them, thank God, who still revere the Bible as the word of God, and therefore hold it true, and take it as a lamp to their feet, as a guide to their path. But there has arisen within Christendom itself—and chiefly within the nineteenth century—a class of Bible scholars who have done much mischief to faith in the Bible; who make it part of their boast that in their study of the Bible they have dropped the theological attitude towards it, viz., the preconception that the Bible is the word of God, on which conception men were wont to reason: God is a God of absolute truth; the Bible is the word of God; therefore the Bible is absolutely true. This position they now abandon and take up what they are pleased to call the "literary attitude or method." That is, they approach the Bible without any preconception whatsoever. They take up the collection of books forming the Bible as they would take up any other body of literature; as they would English, French, or German literature. "This method," says one high in authority in the new school of critics, "assumes nothing. It leaves the conclusion of the questions whether the Bible came from God, in what sense it came from God, how far and to what extent it came from God, all to be determined by examination of the book itself. This I call the literary method."^[1] "This method," says another, "leads to the investigation of the origin, authorship, and meaning of the several books of the Bible, and the credibility of the history which it contains."^[2] Concerning in what those of the Literary school are agreed, and in what their method results, as to the Old Testament, I quote the following:

They are generally agreed in thinking that the book of Genesis is composed of three or four or more documents woven together by some ancient editor in one continuous narrative. They are generally agreed in thinking that the book of the Covenant,^[3] with the Ten Commandments at its forefront, is the oldest book in the Bible; that the history in which that book of the Covenant is embedded was written long subsequent to the time of Moses. They are generally agreed in thinking that the Book of Deuteronomy, embodying a later prophet's conception of Mosaic principles, was not written or uttered by Moses himself in its present form, but some centuries after the death of Moses. They are generally agreed in thinking that the book of Leviticus was written long subsequent to the time of Moses, and so far from embodying the principles of the Mosaic code embodies much that is in spirit adverse if not antagonistic to the simple principles of Mosaism. They are generally agreed in considering that we have in the books of Kings and Chronicles history and belles lettres so woven together that it is not always possible to tell what is to be regarded as belles lettres and what is to be regarded as history. They are generally agreed in the opinion that Job, while it treats of history about the days of Moses, or even anterior thereto, was written later than the time of Solomon; that very little of the Hebrew Psalter was composed by David; that most of it was composed in the time of the exile or subsequent thereto; that Solomon's song was not written by Solomon, and is the drama of a pure woman's love, not a spiritual allegory; that the book of Isaiah was written certainly by two authors and perhaps more, the later book being written one hundred years at least after the earlier and by a prophet now unknown; that the book of Jonah belongs to the series of moral instruction through fiction, and that the book of Daniel conveys moral instruction by means of, to use Dean Farrar's phraseology, one of these "splendid specimens of the lofty moral fiction which was always common among the Jews after the exile."^[4]

Another recognized authority in the same field of learning in summing up the results of the so-called "higher criticism," says:

It has thus far done an inestimable service in the removal of the traditional theories from the sacred books, so that they may be studied in their real structure and character. . . . . The higher criticism shows us the process by which the sacred books were produced, that the most of them were composed by unknown authors, that they have passed through the hands of a considerable number of unknown editors who have brought together the older material without removing discrepancies, inconsistencies and errors. In this process of editing, arranging, addition,