Mormon History
Martin Harris Unanswered Questions - 1878
The Salt Lake Daily Tribune – November 10, 1878
SUNDAY CATECHISM.
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Examination of Martin Harris, One of the
Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.
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Did you not go into the gold plate - golden
bible business as a money making speculation?
Did you not tell your wife, on one occasion when she remonstrated with you,
"That what if it was a lie, if she would let you alone you would make money of
it?"
Was you not so much interested in the book as a speculation, that one one
occasion when through the advice of his wife and her relations, J. Smith was
about to give up the book you said, "That you had started in in the business and
that he had to go through with it?
Did you not mortgage your farm to pay for the printing and peddle the books to
pay yourself back?
Was not the first book of plates only a history of the Aborigines of America,
and was not the plan changed into a Bible to found a new religion upon, after
the 116 pages of manuscript were destroyed by your wife?
Are you not called that "wicked man, Martin Harris," in one of the revelations,
when the 116 pages of manuscript was lost? Was this because you had lost them,
or because the "Lord" supposed you had lied about losing them?
Did not President Anthon, of New York, tell you that the words you showed him
were taken from an old Mexican Calendar, and that some one wanted to swindle
you?
Is not the account of what transpired on that occasion given in the history of
Joseph Smith, and repeated in Orson Pratt's "Remarkable Visions," untrue in
every particular?
Did you not "tease" Joseph Smith to ask the Lord to be one of the witnesses to
the Book of Mormon, and did you not get the office because you "teased" for it?
Did you have to satnd a Church trial in Kirtland on charges preferred by Sidney
Rigdon, that you had told A. O. Russell, Esq., that Joseph Smith did not know
what was contained in the Book of Mormon, before he had translated the plates,
but that you knew what was in it before it was translated?
Did you not in Salt Lake City in the year 1870 tell more than one person, that
the "story of the stone box being found in the hill," was a fiction, and there
were a good many more fictions connected with it?
Were you not soon after arriving in Utah, shipped away to Cache Valley to
prevent your telling tales out of school?
When you left the Church in Missouri in 1838, did not Joseph Smith, say that it
was beneath the dignity of a gentleman to notice such a person as you, and yet
you were his chief witness, and partner in the Book of Mormon? How is this?
Oliver Cowdery, come into court.
INQUIRER.