The demand for diversity of style in the various parts of the translation of the Book of Mormon is urged too strongly. It is sometimes represented, even by believers in the Book of Mormon, that the volume contains the compiled writings of a long line of inspired scribes extending through a thousand years, written not only at different times but under varying conditions, and that unity of style under such circumstances is not to be expected, and did it occur it would be fatal to the claims made for the Book of Mormon! Now, as a matter of fact, there is great unity of style in the translation of the Book of Mormon which any one can verify who will read it; and properly so, I insist; for the reason that general unity of style is not incompatible with the theory of the work's construction and translation. First of all this long line of inspired writers that should give to us diversity of style in their writings is reduced really to a very small matter when the facts in the case are considered. We have already seen, in chapter IX, that all told there are but eleven writers in the Book of Mormon. The work of nine of these runs through only 400 years of Nephite history--from the time Lehi's colony left Jerusalem to the time when the Nephites, under Mosiah I., joined the people of Mulek, some 200 years B. C. Then we have the works of no Nephite writer until we come to Mormon, who makes his abridgment of the Nephite records in the closing years of the 4th century A. D. So that 600 years of the 1,000 through which the long line of Nephite writers is supposed to run is lifted bodily from the "time range." I say we have no Nephite writings between the works of the first group of nine Nephite writers (600-200 B. C.) to the writings of Mormon (400 A. D.) I should say, we have no such writings except where here and there Mormon, in his abridgment, makes a direct quotation from some intervening writer between those two periods. Such quotations, however, are neither numerous nor long, and in many instances one is left in doubt as to whether supposed quotations are verbatim or merely the substance of the original documents given by Mormon. What has led to confusion in these matters is that the books of "Mosiah," "Alma," "Helaman," "III Nephi," etc., are not really the books of these men whose names respectively they bear, but are Mormon's abridgment of those books to which abridgment he has given the name of the book he abridged. Then, again, of these eleven writers we have already shown (chapter IX) that the first group of nine writers supplied but 157 pages of the book. Of these Nephi writes 127 1/2 pages; and his brother, Jacob, 21 1/2; making in all 149 of the 157; leaving but 8 pages for the other seven writers; and as Enos, who follows Jacob, writes 2 1/2 pages of the remaining 8, there is left but 5 1/2 pages for the remaining six writers. It should be kept in mind, too, that the whole nine