THE MYTH OF THE
"MANUSCRIPT FOUND,"

OR THE
ABSURDITIES OF THE

"SPAULDING STORY."

ELEVENTH BOOK OF
THE FAITH-PROMOTING SERIES

BY ELDER GEORGE REYNOLDS

Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of young Latter-day Saints.

JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR OFFICE,
Salt Lake City, Utah.
1883.

Preface

The previous numbers of the FAITH-PROMOTING SERIES have consisted largely of the personal narratives of men of God living in these days, in which it has been shown how the Lord preserves, protects, guides, inspires and directs His servants in this dispensation, and reveals His word and will to them after the manner and by like methods to those by which He manifested himself to the righteous in the ages of the past, demonstrating His unchangeableness and the validity of our claim that we are His acknowledged people. With feelings of intense joy, deep devotion and profound gratitude to Him, the previous numbers of this Series have been read by thousands of Latter day Saints. This little volume takes a somewhat new departure. It treats of a book—a divine record, the true story of its discovery and translation, and of the falsehoods that have been invented, nourished and sown broadcast throughout Christendom to blind men's eyes to its real import. For the Book of Mormon being true then Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and "Mormonism" is the everlasting gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; but if it were a forgery, as our enemies assert, then would all our hopes be vain and our faith worthless.

The so-called "Spaulding story" has been for many years past the last refuge of those who have undertaken to prove that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be. All other hypothesis have long since been committed to limbo as too silly, too outrageous or too inconsistent even for a gullable anti-"Mormon" public. In this short treatise we have endeavored to prove the utter untenability of this theory. We have shown that the upholders of this myth are not only at variance with each other, but that all their assertions are inconsistent with the well-known facts associated with its discovery; and when we proceed further to examine the internal evidence of the book we very soon discover that the conglomeration of conjectures, guesses, suppositions, etc., of which this "Spaulding story" is formed is "as unstable as water" and utterly unworthy of belief.

The individual testimonies of the three witnesses gathered from many authentic sources are an important feature of this little work. With true Latter-day Saints they must inevitably be a source of joy and consolation, and none who are honest, be they "Mormons" or not, can rise from the perusal of their simple statements without realizing a marked effect therefrom. They bear the impress of truth, sincerity and genuineness in every paragraph.

In conclusion we dedicate these pages to God, to His people and to all who love the right, trusting that their mission will not be without effect in the spread of His righteousness and the dissemination of His truth.

G. R.

SALT LAKE CITY,

August 7th, 1883.

CONTENTS.

The History of the Manuscript

The Originator of the "Spaulding Story

The Bogus Affidavit

Mrs. Dickenson's Speculations

What the Book of Mormon Really is

Utter Disagreement of the Two Histories

Joseph Smith's Early Life

Joseph's Account of the Discovery of the Plates

Time Occupied in Translating the Book of Mormon

The Three Witnesses

Oliver Cowdery

David Whitmer

Martin Harris

Internal Evidences of the Book of Mormon

The Prophecies of the Book of Mormon

Appendix

CHAPTER I.

THE HISTORY OF THE MANUSCRIPT.

Time and again, at recurring intervals of unequal length, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is assailed with a rehash of the notorious "Spaulding story," which from frequent repetition has become as familiar in the mouths of many of the Saints as household words. True, the story in its details is not always identical, it is altered, re-arranged, or "cooked" to suit the necessities of the story teller, but in its essential particulars it remains the same. Its burden is that a certain "reverend" gentleman of Conneaut, Ohio, named Solomon Spaulding, in the early part of the present century, wrote a historical romance which he entitled the "Manuscript Found," that in some unexplained and unexplainable way, but generally imagined to have been through Sidney Rigdon, the youthful Joseph Smith obtained access to this manuscript and from its scanty pages elaborated the Book of Mormon, which he afterwards palmed upon the world as a divine revelation.

This is the substance of the "Spaulding story." It is a frantic effort to prove the Book of Mormon a forgery and a fraud, for it is very evident that if the Book of Mormon is not of God then the whole superstructure of "Mormonism" is of necessity a gross imposture, the cruelest of religious deception that for many centuries has misled humanity. All other theories advanced to prove this record false having long since failed, the "Spaulding story" is the last and only resort of those who oppose the divine mission of Joseph Smith, and though many a time refuted and proved an impossibility, yet, it is that or nothing; and the malignant hatred of the wicked not permitting the Book of Mormon to stand