The Book of Mormon was before the world; the Church circulated
the work as freely as possible. The true account of its origin
was rejected by the general public, who thus, assumed the
responsibility of explaining in some plausible way the source of
the record. Among the many false theories propounded, perhaps
the most famous is the so-called Spaulding story. Solomon
Spaulding, a clergyman of Amity, Pennsylvania, died in 1816. He
wrote a romance to which no name other than "Manuscript Story"
was given, and which, but for the unauthorized use of the
writer's name and the misrepresentation of his motives, would
never have been published. Twenty years after the author's
death, one Hurlburt, an apostate "Mormon," announced that he had
recognized a resemblance between the "Manuscript Story" and the
Book of Mormon, and expressed a belief that the work brought
forward by Joseph Smith was nothing but the Spaulding romance
revised and amplified. The apparent credibility of the statement
was increased by various signed declarations to the effect that
the two were alike, though no extracts for comparison were
presented. But the "Manuscript Story" was lost for a time, and
in the absence of proof to the contrary, reports of the
parallelism between the two works multiplied. By a fortunate
circumstance, in 1884, President James H. Fairchild, of Oberlin
College, and a literary friend of his--a Mr. Rice--while
examining a heterogeneous collection of old papers which had been
purchased by the gentleman last named, found the original
manuscript of the "Story."

After a careful perusal and comparison with the Book of Mormon,
President Fairchild declared in an article published in the New
York _Observer_, February 5, 1885: