Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/756

 pierce] ORIGIN OF THE " BOOK OF MORMON" 685

mind's eye sees the manuscript, over which he had so labored, once more before him ; and he adds, reflectively : " We had a great deal of trouble with it. It was not punctuated at all. They did not know anything about punctuation, and we had to do that ourselves."

Did Elder George Reynolds know what a providential witness for the truth this old printer was, in this testimony, delivered fifty-one years after the events described ? His were the nimble fingers that set all the type of the entire book ; and no changes from the manuscript were made, " because they would not allow us to " ; although he adds, as if remembering all the sins of orthog- raphy upon its head, and wishing, like a good printer, to charge them to " copy," " there might have been one or two words that I changed the spelling of, but no more." And, then, he produces his own unbound copy of his work, done fifty-one years before, to show that he had kept his eye upon the changes that " they " had afterward made, noting in particular the change on the title- page, wherein " author and proprietor" had disappeared to make way for the new claim, " Translated by Joseph Smith Jun."

With this evidence (volunteered by the defense) well in mind, showing beyond a doubt that the Book of Mormon, as printed in Palmyra in 1830, is a true copy of the manuscript furnished the printer, let us see, from the same evidence, the exact way in which this manuscript was produced. We will call the same witness again, Elder George Reynolds, page 71 of Myth of the Manuscript Found, wherein, under the heading : " Time Occupied in Translating the Book of Mormon," he says :

Objection has been made to the divinity of the Book of Mormon on the ground that the account given in the publications of the Church of the time occupied in the work of translation is far too short for the accomplishment of such a labor, and consequently it must have been copied or transcribed from some work written in the English language, most probably from Spalding's c Manuscript Found.' But at the outset it must be recollected that the translation was accomplished by no common method, by no ordinary means. It was done by divine aid.

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