Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Volume 2 of 2)Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Volume 2 of 2)
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saint churches
The great preponderance of the evidence is against the allegation
that the second manuscript was ever in the trunk at Sabine's. Mrs.
McKinstry's evidence does not establish the identity of Spaulding's
rewritten "Manuscript Found" and the trunk manuscript. Such assertion
of identity is contradicted by that more satisfactory evidence to be
hereafter reviewed, and which shows that the rewritten manuscript
was stolen from the printing office before Spaulding's death; that
the latter suspected Rigdon of being the thief; the possession by
Rigdon of some such manuscript, and which, on one occasion, he
said had been written by Spaulding; Rigdon's advance knowledge of
the forthcoming Book of Mormon and his sudden conversion after its
appearance, and coupled with a very plain connection between Rigdon and
Smith through Parley P. Pratt as intermediary. These conclusions and
much of the evidence upon which they are based will contradict Mrs.
McKinstry's statement, if she meant by it to assert that the Sabine
trunk manuscript contained the names "Mormon," "Moroni," "Lamanite,"
and "Nephi," which names, it will be shown, occur in and only in the
rewritten manuscript and the Book of Mormon.
In determining what weight to give to Mrs. McKinstry's statement as to
the contents of the trunk manuscript, several important facts must be
kept in mind. Mrs. McKinstry made this statement in 1880, when she was
seventy-four years of age. Her father died in October, 1816, very soon
after she and the trunk went to Sabine's at Hartwick, Onondaga County,
N.Y., and there she "many times" had it in her hand. At the earliest
date this must have been in the fore part of 1817, and she tells us
that she was about eleven years old at this time. If, in 1817, she
was eleven years old, then, in 1812, when she, with her parents, left
Conneaut for Pittsburg, she could not have exceeded six years of age.
At the age of seventy-four Mrs. McKinstry testified that when she was
eleven years old she looked through, but did not read, a manuscript,
yet saw the names she heard her father read at Conneaut, between 1810
and 1812, when she was from four to six years old. That this woman, at
seventy-four, should remember strange names, casually repeated in her
presence, before her sixth year, and those names wholly unrelated to
anything of direct consequence to her child life, is a feat of memory
too extraordinary to give her uncorroborated statement any weight, as
against valid contradictory conclusions drawn from established facts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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