Download The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 71 Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Excerpt from The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 71: May 6, 1909 The life of the Book of Mormon is thus seen to hang suspended, as it were, upon the use of a compromising word, a single reference with a distinct modern coloring only, or we might say, the careless slip of a pen. But blunders of this character (so easily made in a spurious work simulating the character of the Book of Mormon) are not found in it. Multitudes of instances of the kind just noticed, and every one of them affording an' Opportunity for dis grace and ruin, swarm about the pathway of any man, unlearned or learned, who dares attempt the task of writing by his own power the history of an ancient people without having a scrap of their authentic history for a guide. Let us now imagine Joseph Smith, a young man, unlearned, un schooled, wholly untrained for writing a book of any kind, not to mention the unusual difficulties and dangers connected with a work like the Book of Mormon, attempting to compose the latter as a religious romance, or a purposed fraud. His knowledge of all ancient matters amounts practically to nothing. (how defiant it was for him to choose the field of which he knew the least for his operations 1) There are limits, or boundaries between the ancient and the modern which he cannot pass, and still retain for a moment the confidence of his fellow-men as an inspired translator of ancient records. We see him reach the line between safety on the one side and discredit and disgrace on the other. This line of separation is sometimes almost invisible, and as he reaches it the impetus of his progress seems sufficient to bear him onward to ruin as a word or two will do the work; but he pauses at the proper point, always pauses there, and some people try to explain his course, or account for his preservation, on one contradictory theory or another, ever failing to perceive that if Joseph Smith were such a man as his opponents claim, he would doubtless have plunged headlong into the first one of these pitfalls that lay hidden from him but so directly in his way. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
