Show UNWITTING WITNESSES IV As to the requirement of an established priesthood the remark applies Lp plies of course to the second as well as to the first colony of settlers on american soil the history given in the book of mornia a of the social and religious status of the Jared ites 14 very meagre and fragmentary this is necessarily the ewe case as in that volume the annals of fourteen centuries are comprised within the space of pages and some same incidental references refer encee still there is lelent evidence even in this abridged register to meet the marquis requirement the american mound and temple builders were moved by a powerful religious motive inA ivd it was this potent devotional feeling that influenced jared Jare dand and his brother and friends to move away from the association and influence of the impious tower builders wl and migrate to another country A service seral of pious dedication of themselves to god go i was their first act on landing that I 1 t deep in interest teresi in sacred matte matters was perpetuated is certain from the ake numerous allusions to religion throughout the history that there was on an organized ecclesiastical order of both true and false worship among the Jared ites is shown from the record for there frequently came prophets in the land crying repentance unto them it is also shown that they had among them wicked and secret combinations copied from olden times even from the time of cain the character and aims of these wicked institutions consisted of secret plans oaths and conspiracies to commit murder to obtain kingdoms and great glory see book of mormon pa page go ath chapter of ether that these institutions were of a priestly or sacre character is plain from the fact that such offices are mentioned often aud and one a high priest was a regicide in the latter decline of the nation gilead a warlike war like and ambitious king usurped the the throne of corlan corian humr and it came to paw pass that his high priest murdered him as he sat upon the throne book of mormon page besides these evidences of an organized priesthood there are references to idolatry being practiced a practice inseparable from such an established order but when we come to speak of the Nep hites the evidences upon this point will be still more conclusive the charge of fraud made by uninformed and prejudiced persons upon the book of mormon record is lacking in reasonableness it is sixty years since joseph smith was engaged in translating the plates all the discoveries tending to prove the antiquity works and civilization of the native americans and which have electrified the scientific world have been published since that date the works published by bancroft max muller humboldt and others written previous to that date do not contain amounts accounts of those discoveries those writers treated of the probable origin classes manners languages etc of the present tribes of but there was nothing sent out to the world before 1827 the dau date that the prophet received the plates that could have furnished him the data which his translation contains and if there had been ma materials in literary form from which a fictitious fabric could have been formed he was in noway qualified for such a work joseph was neither educated por of a romantic trend of mind he ha was waa only twenty two when he was waa en engaged upon his hia inspired commission tap to this period he be was a humble farm laborer living in an obscure village far away from libraries and centers of literature the notion that this work is a romance or fabrication of imposture is foolish and absurd all the elements of fraud and all incentives to impose on anyone are absent sent both in publishing the book 0 of f mormon and in the subsequent career of the translator like the savior and the apostles of old at 2 the very commencement of his divinely appointed career he entered the deep waters of tribulation fifty times save one he was called before prosecuting tribunals and fifty times save one he was acquitted and when he was apon his way to the fatal goal at carthage he remarked to his friends ao 40 to his friends am going like a lamb iamb to the slaughter but I 1 am as calm as aa a summer summers morning I 1 Is 0 this the deportment is this the language of an impostor no on ne e devoid of prophetic and supernatural gifts could have written the book of mormon or matter which harmonizes so completely with the li present resent aspect of the indian races and the ancient ruins that cover the face of the cou country he must have been acquainted with not only all that had been discovered up to 1827 but also with all the startling reveal ments made A since muller declares that philology is the chief handmaid of cal science and that it has can contributed tri buted more than any other agent to the success of ethnological researches the remark was made with special reference ta the antiquities of the old dorid 1 but it is just as true of the new lan guage by which is meant the means mean adopted by individuals and communities muni ties of individuals to express their thoughts feelings desires or information is not an arbitrary and inflexible provision or structure which like a stone monuments monument remains without inherent power to bend or change itself languages are am liable to continual change As the human features alter by growth and development of the frame so also does the language of a people change by the circumstances and vicissitudes that attend their career if the career of tee tb race Is progressive gres sive and leads to prosperity their language will accompany their growth and improvement and assume the features of refinement nemen beauty and ea elegance eg ance but if the course of a people to is retrogress lT ve and declining their language will loose its healthy vig vi garite orits orn amente amentO va and dignity and become degenerate also these obvious truths should be regarded while studying and tracing to their source the native american dialects what the spoken language of the Jared ites was cannot now be determined its last accents were lost when the lips of closed in death it fruitless labor to attempt to find in existing indian tongues any traces of words 8 spoken by that most ancient people we must confine investigations for philological concordances concord ances with the book of mormon to the discoveries of the most primitive relies relics of engravings grav ings sculptures hieroglyphics pictography pictographs and other written symbols the colony had become modernized with respect to the nations of greater antiquity they did not speak or write according to the then ancient style nephi the probable introducer of the second branch of the semitic family of languages into america used what was called reformed egyptian book of mormon p he and the sab subsequent sequent historians understood re hebrew rew also and would have used it in ela engraving graving their metallic leaves but the reformed egyptian was briefer and occupied less space it to is true that the prophet moslah mosiah copied the jaredine Jar edite records and he wrote in hip native tongue but it must be remembered that like the modern prophet prop liet he translated the record by the arim and tum mim milo avast A vast amount and variety of engraved and ial matter have been brought to light in america during the last rift fifty years some of the characters and which have the appearance of the greatest antiquity show great skill and refined taste in the artist while specimens of later date and to which 95 i aej the general name of piato graphs is applied are clumsy and rade and show lack of culture and filkill W this is accounted for on the principle above alluded to that literature Utera ture and the fine fin e arts decline with the increase of national and racial degeneracy some of the pictographic work can be consistently attributed to the ancestors of existing indian indian tribes a as this rude style of writing hansend has end les Yar variety lety 11 A book was published recently in london by remy bemy and benchly en titled A journey to salt lake 1 apt lpt ty in which appears the following 41 I 1 the rooks around salt lake axe are covered with sculptures which remind one of those of egypt some of the human figures are life size incised in blue granite the height oi of some of them would suggest that some disturbance of the surrounding country had taken place since the work was done as they are thirty feet above the present level of the ground beneath thern them vol ii 11 p another writer describing engraved relies relics found in peru and chill chili speaks thus these represent men some of which are thirty feet high animals chiefly dogs and lamas plants and and inanimate objects one block of granite 12 feet square near macaya known by the name oi 01 la piedra awara del leon is leaded with very ancient sculptures the most important group represents a struggle tween between a man a purna puma at pm pin sodos sodom it is no longer animate objects but gemmet geometrical I 1 cal figures such buell as circles or parallelograms that are met with in the province of tam paca confide considerable e surfaces are covered not only with figures of men and animals most of them of remarkable execution but also with characters which appear to be written vertical vertically the lines are from 12 to 18 feet high and each character is several inches in depth between mendoza and la punta chill is a large pillar on which are letters they represent chinese or egyptian characters opre pre his am p in the argentine Rd republic public prof Lab erani discovered inscriptions of objects of various combinations animate and inanimate geometrical figures with lines hues of dots occur ing at intervals in different orders and arrangements and repeated thus showing a complete system of written language purely oriental in character ameghino Ame ghino says 1 I con st ler these inscriptions to indicate a complete system of writing made up partly of figures and symbolical cha characters perpetuated far from the district where it first came into existence it is certain that in the century the peruvians were acquainted with no system of writing for the ordinary purposes of life they used strings of varying length on which were knotted a certain number of threads the color of these threads their number and distances from each other had a significance sometimes historical and sometimes mathematical philologist claim that the root and inflection of words proclaim their parentage and origin A cloud of witnesses testify that indubitable features of the language manner or of sculpture and writing peculiar to egypt and countries of still greater antiquity exist in america and that these symbols belong to times coeval with the most ancient inhabitants of these countries the book of mormon testifies that america was first colonized by representatives of those races at the date of building the great reat tower the book of mormon is sustained and proven to be a true historical record by scientists but they are uni unintentional t intentional witnesses which adds weight and conclusiveness to their unwitting confirmations the poet sang of sermons in stones and good in everything surely these stones are preaching most eloquent and impressive discourses and it may be there is good in the stolid prejudices against the book of mormon and its obscurity ity for if its contents were better and more extensively known perhaps the learned ones once might not lasorso labor so effectively to th establish its truth and divinity J H KELSON ab be continued |