IMPROVEMENT ERA.

VOL. IX.

OCTOBER, 1906.

No. 12

INTERNAL EVIDENCES OF THE TRUTH OF THE BOOK OF MORMON.

BY H. L. MULLINER.

[A year ago the General Board, Y. M. M. I. A., offered one year's scholarship in any one of the three Church schools located in Salt Lake City, Provo and Logan, to the young man between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, and a member of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, who should write the best essay on the "Internal Evidences of the Truth of the Book of Mormon." In response to this offer there were fifteen essays received; and it is the unanimous opinion of the committee appointed by the General Board to judge of the merits of these essays, that the following essay by H. L. Mulliner of Iona, Idaho, is the best among them, and that he has fairly won in the contest. We return thanks to the young men who responded, and only regret that we cannot send them all to school.

H. L. Mulliner, whose portrait is presented in this month's ERA, was born in Lehi, Utah, and is the son of Joseph and Emily Woodard Mulliner. At the age of two years his parents moved to Idaho, and settled upon a farm, where the young man resided until he was eighteen. The family consists of six children, one boy older, and four girls younger than himself. His father was bishop of the Iona ward for several years after its organization, and later acted as counselor to the President of the Bingham Stake. He was a representative from Bingham County in 1896, to the State Legislature, and was elected to the Senate, in 1898. Through sickness he was incapacitated for work or business of any kind in the spring of 1900, at which time his son, H. L. Mulliner, was attending the Ricks' Academy, Rexburg. He had only been there some three or four months when, owing to the

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sickness of his father he was immediately compelled to discontinue school. September, 1901, he attended the Latter-day Saints University, Salt Lake City, where he took a business course during that year; the following year he was enabled to attend, through the kindness of Elder C. W. Penrose, who permitted him to do odd labors for his board, and through President J. H. Paul, who provided him a position in the bookkeeping department which netted him enough to pay his tuition and incidental expenses. Leaving school, he was employed by E. H. Dyer & Co., who were erecting the sugar factory at Iona, and later obtained a position with a mercantile company, at Idaho Falls. which position he resigned, in March, 1904, to fill a mission to the Northern States. Returning from his mission on the 3rd of April, 1906, he again obtained employment with the same firm, as bookkeeper. During his absence on a mission, he labored twelve months in Indiana, eight months as traveling elder, and four months as president of the conference. A most important work which he did while there was prevailing upon the people of Robinson, Green Co., to unite with the elders in building a church. They made him the chairman of the committee, composed of citizens, to attend to the construction of the building which, with the lot on which it stands, was afterward deeded to the Latter-day Saints. He then labored in Chicago for thirteen months, the greater part of the time as secretary of the mission, and had charge of the proof-reading of an edition of ten thousand copies of the Book of Mormon, which was published while he was laboring there. The ERA congratulates him upon winning in the contest, and wishes him success in his studies. He has chosen to attend the L. D. S. University.-EDITORS.]

Evidence has been produced practically establishing the fact that the Book of Mormon is not such a book as an impostor could have made if he would. It is the purpose of this paper to show that it is not such a book as an impostor would have made if he could.

The Book of Mormon avows itself a revelation in the strictest and highest sense. It does not claim to have been written in this day, as its author was moved upon by the Holy Spirit, but testifies to having been so written anciently upon the plates of metal, in which tangible form it was given to a modern translator by an angel, acting under the immediate direction of the Lord. The concluding chapter promises also that to the honest and faithful, God will make manifest the truth of it "by the power of the Holy Ghost." No other book making such highly miraculous pretentions and promises has ever been given to man. If these professions were false, the "author" knew it, and was therefore a conscious impostor. What purpose could an impostor have had in making such a book?

No time in history has been less favorable to new revelation than the first half of the last century. The eighteenth century, prolific in religious imposture, and literary forgeries, had taught the world bitter lessons. Early in the nineteenth the impositions of Joanna Southcott, Richard Brothers, Hans Rosenfeld, and William Huntington, all of whom laid claim to direct revelation, were exploded, leaving the people in no mood to tolerate another avowed revelator, however modest his claims. The members of the Catholic church, then, as always, accepted nothing extrinsic. The protestant world, hopelessly divided on the principles of the Bible, believed in its exclusiveness with remarkable unity and fervor. As a result of these combined influences, the people were ready to take for granted, without investigation, that every reputed new revelation was an imposition.

The reception accorded the Book of Mormon, then, was what might have been expected. The opposition was proportionate to its pretentions. It encountered unprecedented bitterness, and at no time has had the slightest favor with the multitude. Even in more recent years, with increasing investigation and slightly more tolerance, in the American localities where the book sells most readily, it is shown by actual report that the missionaries dispose of fewer than four books each during a whole year, selling them at exact cost. By ascribing to God what he might have retained to advantage, the author, if false, perpetrated an impious forgery, clipped his own wings, and, commercially speaking, committed a signal blunder. Had he claimed that a hidden manuscript-history of ancient America had been discovered by any other than supernatural means, a moderate circulation of the published work might have followed, but to give to it a divine origin was fatal to its popularity. It was useless that proof of its divinity accompanied its claims. First of all, its coming was said to be unscriptural; and, if both reasonable and scriptural, entirely unnecessary. The book was an unwelcome superfluity, involving, as the world thought, neither obligation nor profit to anyone.

*It is difficult to think of any one thing that Joseph could have done, that would meet with more opposition from all the Christian world, without exception, than the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon.-William Halls, in the ERA for August, 1905.

That a conscious deceiver would antagonize this formidable array of prejudices with a previous knowledge of their existence seems incredible; that he would have opposed them advisedly without motive, unthinkable. If, then, we accept for consideration the hypothesis that our "author" was a forger, we have but two possible explanations for this seeming irrationality. Either he did not foresee, or seeing, was willing to forego immediate popularity for some advantage that the stamp of divine authorship upon the book would give him over a few who might accept it as being divine.

That the "author" knew beforehand of the exact unfavorable conditions related above is shown by the following quotations from the Book of Mormon itself:

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For it shall come to pass at that day, that the churches which are built up shall contend one with another, and their priests shall contend one with another, and they shall teach with their learning, and they say unto the people, Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work. * * If they shall say, there is a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, believe it not; for this day he is not a God of miracles; he hath done his work.*

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And your churches, yea even every one have become polluted. And because of pride, etc., they [the members of the church] have all gone astray, save it be a few who are the humble followers of Christ. They [the Nephites] shall write the things that shall be done among them, and they who have dwindled in unbelief [all save it be a few] shall not have them, for they shall seek to destroy the things of God.

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And it shall come in a day when it shall be said that miracles are done away, and it shall come even as one who shall speak from the dead. And it shall come in a day when the blood of the Saints shall cry unto the Lord; * Yea, it shall come in a day when the power of God shall be denied. For behold, at that day shall he [Satan] rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good.†

The popular belief that the canon of scripture was full, and that more revelation was superfluous, was among the greatest difficulties the Book of Mormon encountered. With this the "author" has shown his familiarity by a number of incidental statements. Here are a few:

† Page 566: 36; 118: 14; 112: 17; 565: 26; 565: 27; 118; 20.