[S]peaking of the time when the Book of Mormon would be revealed, the first Nephi, living in the sixth century B. C., is represented as saying:

"The Lord God will proceed to bring forth the words of the book. * * * But behold, it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall say unto him to whom he shall deliver the book, Take these words which are not sealed and deliver them to the learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee. And the learned shall say, Bring hither the book and I will read them: and now because of the glory of the world, and to get gain will they say this, and not for the glory of God. And the man shall say, I cannot bring the book, for it is sealed. Then shall the learned say, I cannot read it. Wherefore it shall come to pass, that the Lord God will deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is not learned, and the man that is not learned shall say, I am not learned. Then shall the Lord God say unto him, The learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them, and I am able to do mine own work; wherefore thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee."—II Nephi, xxvii, 14-20 .

That this remarkable prophecy has been fulfilled is proven by the following circumstances: Between December 1827 and February 1828, Joseph Smith copied a number of the characters from the plates with their translation, and in the said month of February, delivered them to Martin Harris, who started with them to the city of New York. For what took place there, I give Martin Harris' own account:

"I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Anthon, a gentleman, celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic, and he said that they were the true characters. He gave me a certificate, certifying to the people of Palmyra, that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct. I took the certificate and put it into my pocket, and was just leaving the house, when Mr. Anthon called me back, and asked me how the young man found out that there were gold plates in the place where he found them. I answered that an angel of God had revealed it unto him. He then said unto me, Let me see that certificate. I accordingly took it out of my pocket and gave it to him, when he took it and tore it to pieces, saying that there was no such thing now as ministering of angels, and that if I would bring the plates to him, he would translate them. I informed him that part of the plates were sealed, and that I was forbidden to bring them; he replied, "I cannot read a sealed book." I left him and went to Dr. Mitchell, who sanctioned what Professor Anthon had said respecting both the characters and the translation."—Pearl of Great Price.

We have also the testimony of Professor Anthon, himself, that Martin Harris called upon him with such characters in his possession. He says:

"Many years ago, the precise date I do not recollect, a plain-looking countryman called upon me with a letter from Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, requesting me to examine and give my opinion upon a certain paper, marked with various characters, which the doctor confessed he could not decipher, and which the bearer of the note was very anxious to have explained. A very brief examination convinced me that it was a mere hoax, and a very clumsy one, too. The characters were arranged in columns, like the Chinese mode of writing, and presented the most singular medley that I ever beheld. Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters, more or less distorted, either through unskillfulness or from actual design, were intermingled with sundry delineations of half moons, stars and other natural objects, and the whole ended in a rude representation of the Mexican Zodiac."—The Church Record, Vol. 1, No. 22.

The silence of Professor Anthon respecting the certificate he gave to Martin Harris and then afterwards destroyed, together with his reference to the characters presented to him as a "hoax," is easily accounted for from the fact that he became an avowed enemy to the Book of Mormon. But a perusal of the following taken from the "Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon," by Orson Pratt, footnote, pp. 296-7, will convince the reader that Professor Anthon unwittingly placed upon record a very strong proof that the characters presented to him by Martin Harris were genuine characters, such as were employed by the ancient Mexicans in their writings, and thus one who sought to destroy the work of God has been made to give a strong testimony in its favor:

Professor Anthon no doubt thought that this statement would militate against the Book of Mormon; but we consider it a great acquisition of evidence, confirmatory of the truth of that book when compared with the discoveries of the glyphs and characters among the ancient ruins of America. The celebrated antiquarian, Professor Rafinesque, in speaking of the glyphs discovered on the ruins of a stone city in Mexico, says: "The glyphs of Otolum are written from top to bottom, like the Chinese, or from side to side, indifferently, like the Egyptian, and the Domotic Libyan. Although the most common way of writing the groups is in rows, and each group separated, yet we find some formed, as it were, in oblong squares or tablets, like those of Egypt."—Atlantic Journal for 1832, by Professor Rafinesque.

Two years after the Book of Mormon appeared in print, Professor Rafinesque, in his Atlantic Journal for 1832, gave the public a fac-simile of American glyphs, found in Mexico. They are arranged in columns being forty-six in number. These the learned professor denominates "the elements of the glyphs of Otolum," and he supposes that by the combination of these elements, words and sentences were formed, constituting the written language of the ancient nations of this vast continent. By an inspection of the fac-simile of these forty-six elementary glyphs, we find all the particulars which Professor ascribes to the characters, which he says "a plain-looking countryman" presented to him. The "Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters," inverted and in different positions, "with sundry delineations of half-moons," planets, suns, "and other natural objects," are found among these forty-six elements. This "plain-looking countryman," according to Professor Anthon's testimony, got some three or four years the start of Professor Rafinesque, and presented him with the genuine elementary glyphs years before the Atlantic Journal made them public; and what is still more remarkable, "the characters," Professor Anthon says, "were arranged in columns, like the Chinese mode of writing," which exactly corresponds with what Professor Rafinesque testifies, as just quoted, in relation to the glyphs of Otolum. We see nothing in Professor Anthon's statement that proves the characters presented to him to be a "hoax," as he terms it; unless, indeed, he considers their exact resemblance to the glyphs of Otolum, and their being arranged in the right kind of columns, is a "hoax." But as Joseph Smith was an unlearned young man living in the country, where he had not access to the writings and discoveries of antiquarians, he would be entirely incapable of forging the true and genuine glyphs of ancient America; therefore we consider this testimony of Professor Anthon, coming as it does from an avowed enemy of the Book of Mormon to be a great collateral evidence in its favor.

-B. H. Roberts
(Source: Contributor, vol. 10 (November 1888-October 1889), Vol. X. December, 1888. No. 2. 48.)