"The conversation alluded to in Brother Bently's letter of 1841 was in my presence as well as in his, and my recollection of it led me some two or three years ago, to interrogate Brother Bently touching his recollections of it, which accorded with mine in every particular except the year in which it occurred, he placing it in the summer of 1827, I, in the summer of 1826, Rigdon at the same time observing that in the plates dug up in New York there was an account not only of the aborigines of this country, but also it was stated that the Christian religion had been preached in this country during the first century just as we were preaching it on the Western Reserve." ALEXANDER CAMPBELL AND THE BOOK OF MORMON IN 1831. This is Mr. Schroeder's strongest "evidence," and must be met at its full height and value. In 1831, in this same _Millennial Harbinger,_ Vol. II, beginning at p. 86, is an exhaustive review and analysis of the Book of Mormon, and the most powerful critique of it ever published. It is by the Reverend Alexander Campbell. After giving an analysis of each book, in the Book of Mormon, from Nephi I to Moroni, the last book in it, he then starts an investigation of its "internal evidences," and in the first subdivision he begins in this language: "Smith, its real author, as ignorant and impudent a knave as ever wrote a book, betrays the cloven foot in basing his whole book upon a false fact." Then he proceeds. On the "internal evidence" he uses the following language: "The book proposes to be written at intervals and by different persons, during the long period of 1020 years, and yet for uniformity of style, there never was a book more evidently written by one set of fingers, nor more certainly conceived in one cranium since the first book appeared in human language, than this same book. If I could swear to any man's voice, face, or person, assuming different names, I could swear that this book was written by one man. And as Joseph Smith is a very ignorant man and is called the 'author' on the title page, I cannot doubt for a single moment but that he is sole 'author' and 'proprietor' of it." Mr. Campbell also considers the testimony of the three witnesses, and of the eight witnesses, and denounces them. He is acquainted with the whole subject. He knows that it was claimed for the record that it was engraved on gold plates; that they were found buried in a stone box in New York; that an account is given in the record of the gospel having been preached in America in the first Christian century--for all these things are subjects of his criticism. He criticises nearly every important doctrine and historical event in the book. He revels in his criticism, and near the conclusion of the whole says: