Excerpt from The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 72: July 28, 1910

The Book of Mormon was published in the spring of 1829. At that time very little was known of the archaeology of the country. None of the books on the subject which we now have were then written. Half of the American continent was an unexplored wilderness. Brief accounts of the ruins of Peru and Mexico had reached the world through Humboldt and others, but no system atic study of them had been made and no one knew whether the style of their architecture resembled that of Egypt, Greece or Hindustan. In those days it was the prevailing opinion that America had never been peopled by any other race than the red man. That the American races had never known domestic animals such as the elephant, horse, ox, sheep and swine. That they were unfamiliar with iron and steel. That outside of Mexico they had never known a written language.

In the face of these beliefs one can see how ridiculous it seemed for Joseph Smith to announce that he had published a history of ancient America, and to begin with the statement that the ancient people were white. That among their domestic animals they counted the elephant, horse, ox, sheep and swine. That they were familiar with iron and steel. That they had a written language. These and many other statements of the book seemed strangely out of place in those days. A man to make them must have been a fool, or possessed of an assurance that they were true. And this was the fact, for no man lived who had a more abiding faith in the divinity of the book than did Joseph Smith. If the world consider him an imposter the wonder is that it noticed him at all. A fiction or falsehood does not long endure. Occasionally things appear which to all human appearances seem false but which will, not down. Christianity was an instance of this kind; the Book of Mormon is another. Looking back now without pre judice it is difficult to explain the reception the world accorded the new book. Instead of indifference and ridicule, it met pre judice and anger, the reception the world always accords a new truth.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.