pierce] ORIGIN OF THE * 4 BOOK OF MORMON" 69 1
wonderful a revelation to the wicked world, notwithstanding his illiteracy, should yet lay Himself open in later editions to such a multiplicity of " corrections" ?
Let us see if we can explain why the word " which," for exam- ple, was used seven hundred times instead of the word who. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument only, the Book of Mormon to have been written by an impostor, of illiterate mind, yet who had an ear attuned to " revival Bible-readings," such as the new settlements in western New York were familiar with in the first quarter of this century. What would be more natural to such an impostor than ignorance of the fact that, in the days when King James* version was made, the word " which " was commonly used as referring to persons, but that after the lapse of more than two hundred years the word had in actual usage come to be univer- sally employed as referring only to things. If such a person should undertake to originate a work like the first Book of Mormon, to be in sound, irrespective of sense, as like the sonor- ous English of the seventeenth century as possible, how easily would he fall into the trap set by that innocent-looking little word " which." More than seven hundred winches in the Book of Mormon, by actual count of Mr Lamoni Call, of Bountiful, Utah! If the prophet and his councilors had only known that the pro- noun " which " in King James' time was good English when referring to persons, but that it is not good English now, nor was it good English in 1829, they would have been spared the pains of the invention of the Urim and Thummim stone, by the opera- tion of which their God has been made to masquerade as an idiot.
Joseph and the Mormon authorities have not left themselves any loop-hole for escape ; for it must be remembered that Joseph had nothing to do with the three thousand mistakes which his original Book of Mormon contained, and that the God of the Mormons so arranged it that Joseph could not make a mistake ! Accordingly, every correction made by the latest edition is an indictment of the omnipotence and omniscience of the God of
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