_Third_. The fact that two of the Witnesses, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, returned to the Church after long years of separation from it--the former eleven, the latter thirty-three years--is another evidence against the theory of collusion among the witnesses. Surely had they been parties to a wicked scheme of deception in their youth, after separating themselves from it for years, they would not return to it in old age. This suggestion is strengthened when it is remembered that the religious organization which may be said to have come into existence as a consequence of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon--the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--neither did nor could hold out to them any worldly advantage as a reward for their returning to the body religious. When Oliver Cowdery returned to the Church, in 1848, the great body of the Latter-day Saints were enroute for the west. They were a people scattered and peeled. They were but recently expatriated from their country. They were exiled for conscience sake from a country that boasts of its guarantees of religious freedom. They were wandering in the wilderness, in a solitary way--hungry and thirsty, their souls fainting in them, and they had as yet no certain abiding place. Surely a people thus situated was not a people to come to for worldly advantage. Yet such was the condition of the Church when Oliver Cowdery once more cast his fortune with theirs, humbly confessing all his errors that he might have fellowship with them. When Martin Harris returned to the Church in 1870, the condition of the Saints had improved somewhat when compared with what the conditions were when Oliver Cowdery returned, but even then the Saints were under the ban of the world's displeasure; as of old, they were the people everywhere spoken against; while throughout the United States, of which the lands the Saints had redeemed from desert wastes was now an integral part, there was arising that storm of vexation which subsequently crystalized into congressional enactments which not only menaced but disturbed the peace of the Saints. To become once more connected with such a people surely promised no worldly advantage; and besides, when Martin Harris returned to the Church the sands of his life had so well nigh run their course--he was then eighty-seven years of age--that worldly considerations could have but little or no effect upon his actions. Thus the return of these men to the Church, the circumstances considered under which they returned, is certainly strong evidence against the theory of collusion or deception among these Witnesses.