a circumstance which illustrates the uncertainty of human means to preserve important documents, and justifies the angel-guardianship of a record as sacred as are the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. IV. _On the Loss of one Hundred and Sixteen Pages of Manuscript, Being the Translation of the First Part of Mormon's Abridgment of the Nephite Records._ Another incident connected with the probability of Joseph Smith's story concerning the Book of Mormon, and which, like the circumstance of the Prophet's returning the plates to the angel, meets with ridicule--is the loss of the 116 pages of manuscript, through the unfaithfulness of Martin Harris, a subject detailed at length in chapter v. This incident lost to Joseph Smith, for a time, the gift of translation, and also possession of the plates and Urim and Thummim; but through sincere repentance, he was received again into the favor of the Lord, and resumed his work. On being permitted to resume the translation, however, the Prophet was informed through divine communication that those who had stolen the manuscript from Harris designed to hold it until he should translate again that part which had fallen into their hands. If the Prophet's second translation should be like the first, then it was the intention of the conspirators to change the manuscript in their possession, and claim that the translation was not obtained by divine aid, else the second would be like the first; but since it would by this trick be proved to be different, the claim of divine inspiration in the translation of the book must fall to the ground, and Joseph Smith's pretension to being a Seer and Prophet of God would fall with it; and thus the work God designed to accomplish through him would be destroyed. The Lord revealed this plot to Joseph Smith, and warned him not to translate again Moroni's abridgment of the Book of Lehi--which comprised so much of the manuscript as had been entrusted to Harris. [27] On the contrary, he was commanded to translate what are called in the Book of Mormon the "Smaller Plates of Nephi," and let that stand in the place of the translation of the Book of Lehi which Harris had lost. A word of explanation here: Two sets of plates were kept for a time by the first Nephi and his successors. One set might be called the secular, the other the sacred record of the Nephite people. They, however, called them the "Smaller" and "Larger" Plates of Nephi. On the former was recorded the ministry of the prophets, the word of the Lord to them, and much of their teaching and preaching; on the latter, the reigns of the kings, their wars and contentions, and the secular affairs of the people generally. Still, even on the "Smaller Plates of Nephi" there was a reasonably succinct account of the principal events of Nephite history, from the time Lehi left Jerusalem until four hundred years had passed away.