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Show 10 FAITH AND CREDULITY. <br><br> cord there is perfect harmony," and that each of the facts which they claim happened "tallies exactly with every other contemporaneous incident related to it in the remotest degree"? <br> And then (2) let us take the tests given by Mr. Greenleaf by which we may detect a false witness-tests approved by the common sense of the world-and inquire if the methods of a false witness are not the methods used by Smith in this new revelation. <br> "A false witness," he says, "will not willingly detail any circumstances in which his testimony will be open to contradiction, nor multiply them when there is danger of his being detected by a comparison of them with other accounts equally circumstantial He will rather deal in general statements and broad assertions. And if he finds it necessary for his purpose to employ names and particular circumstances in his story, he will endeavor to invent such as shall be out of the reach of all opposing proof, and will be the most forward and minute in details where he knows that any danger of contradiction is least to be apprehended." <br><br> FAITH AND CREDULITY. 11 <br><br> The "three witnesses," Cowdery, Whitmer, and Harris, who only testified to the fact of the existence of engraved plates, have impeached their own testimony by declaring it was not true. <br> The imposture was detected while the Book of Mormon was being printed, by the printers pretending to lose some leaves of the translation, which Smith could not duplicate. <br> When Smith, to satisfy the doubting Martin Harris, gave to him what he (Smith) stated was a fac-simile of one of the plates, Harris laid it before the scholarly Professor Anthon. Anthon said of it: "It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets, Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses, flourishes, etc." <br> And Mr. Anthon then says of his interview with Harris: "I began to regard it as part of a scheme to cheat the farmer out of his money, and I communicated my suspicions to him, warning him to beware of rogues." <br> [Continues on next page.] <br><br> |