But the question is asked, "Why bring these matters up at all?" "I seriously question the expediency of any theory, beyond the facts that are definitely known and attested, to explain the details of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon," says one _Era_ correspondent. So say we all. I wish Messrs. Whitmer and Harris, and those who have worked out theories based upon their statements, had left the whole matter where the Prophet Joseph left it; but this they failed to do. Then opponents took up the question, and insisted that the theory of translation, hitherto commonly accepted, requires us to charge all the faults in diction and errors in grammar to the Lord; and also urge that we have no right, under this theory of translation, to change a single word of the translation, and some Latter-day Saints take the same view. The correspondent last quoted also says: "It is enough for me to know that the Book of Mormon was translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, by the gift and power of God, through the means of the Urim and Thummim." The present writer might join in that simple, bigoted refrain, and say--"for me, too." But what of those for whom it is not enough? What of the many young men in the Church who hear the objections urged by the opponents of the Book of Mormon, based upon the hitherto popular conception of the manner in which the translation was accomplished--what of them? What of the earnest inquirers, in the world, whose knowledge of languages, and of translation, teaches them that the hitherto popular conception of the translation of the Book of Mormon is an absurdity, not to say an impossibility--what of them? What of the elders in the mission field who are constantly coming in contact with these questions involved in the manner of translating the Book of Mormon, and are asking--as they have been asking for years--for some rational explanation of these matters--what of them? It is not enough, in the presence of the controversies that have arisen out of Messrs. Whitmer and Harris's unfortunate partial explanations, to say that the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and that is enough for one to know.