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
[Footnote 192: Doctrine and Covenants, 63:55 and 65.]
It is needless to add they each received a house, and both stood for
many years, and perhaps even to this day, side by side, and both built
according to the same plans. [193]
[Footnote 193: "Gleanings by the Way," 332.]
CONCLUDING COMMENT.
The case, so far as the production of evidence is concerned, must now
be considered closed. The actors in this fraud are all dead, and upon
the precise question here discussed no new evidence is likely to be
discovered. All the evidence directly affecting either side of the
question has been introduced and reviewed.
When, as here, we are investigating a case dependent upon
circumstantial evidence, we must judge the evidence as a whole. No
one circumstance out of many connected ones ever established the
ultimate fact. The converse of this proposition is equally true. You
cannot show the insufficiency of the evidence by demonstrating that
any one circumstance, if it stood alone, would be equally consistent
with some other theory than the one in support of which it is cited.
The evidentiary circumstances must be viewed as a whole, each in the
light of its relation to all the rest. Thus viewed, the circumstantial
evidence is strong just in proportion as the circumstances related
to, and consistent with, the theory advocated are numerous. In the
argument under consideration the circumstantial facts are so numerous,
and gathered from so many disconnected sources, corroborated by so many
admissions from the accused conspirators and their defenders, that it
is utterly impossible to believe them all to have come into being as a
mere matter of accidental concomitance.
Let us put the defenders of the divinity of Mormonism to a test on this
matter by inviting them to make an equally good case of circumstantial
evidence based upon established fact, all tending to show some other
human origin for the Book of Mormon than that here advocated. Inability
to do so means that such an array of concurring facts cannot be
duplicated in support of any other theory than the one here advocated.
If, as must now be admitted, the concurrence of so very many facts can
best be explained by the conclusions here contended for, then that is a
more believable, a more rational conviction than one which of necessity
requires belief in an assumed and unprovable miracle. That explanation
which takes the least for granted is always the one adopted by the
sanest person. Bearing in mind these truths, let us briefly review a
portion of the most salient features of the argument.
From the uncontradicted evidence of witnesses, practically all of whom
are disinterested and who in most circumstances of great evidentiary
weight are corroborated by authorized church publications, we have
established beyond cavil, and I am sure to the satisfaction of all
thinking minds untainted by mysticism, and whose vision is unobscured,
that the following are thoroughly established facts:
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