1
At length, the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the Breastplate.
2
On the twenty-second day of September 1827, having gone as usual at the end of another year to the place where they were deposited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up to me with this charge:
3
That I should be responsible for them; that if I should let them go carelessly, or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off;
4
But that if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them, until he, the messenger, should call for them, they should be protected.
5
¶ I soon found out the reason why I had received such strict charges to keep them safe, and why it was that the messenger had said that when I had done what was required at my hand, he would call for them.
6
For no sooner was it known that I had them, then the most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me.
7
Every stratagem that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose.
8
The persecution became more bitter and severe than before, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get them from me, if possible.
9
But by the wisdom of God, they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished by them what was required at my hand.
10
When, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I delivered them up to him;
11
And he has them in his charge until this day, being the second day of May 1838.
12
¶ The excitement, however, still continued, and rumor with her thousand tongues was all the time employed in circulating falsehoods about my father’s family, and about myself.
13
If I were to relate a thousandth part of them, it would fill up volumes.
14
The persecution, however, became so intolerable that I was under the necessity of leaving Manchester, and going with my wife to Susquehanna county, in the state of Pennsylvania.
15
In December, while preparing to start, being very poor, and the persecution so heavy upon us that there was no probability that we would ever be otherwise,
16
We found a friend in a gentleman by the name of Martin Harris, who became convinced of the vision, or of my visionary abilities, came to us and gave me fifty dollars to bear my expenses and assist us on our journey.
17
Mr. Harris was a resident of Palmyra township, Wayne county, in the state of New York, and a farmer of respectability.
18
By this timely aid was I enabled to reach the place of my destination in Pennsylvania; and immediately after my arrival there I commenced copying the characters off the plates.
19
I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived at the house of my wife’s father, in the month of December, and the February following.
20
And because of his faith, and this righteous deed, the Lord appeared unto him in a vision and shewed unto him his marvelous work which he was about to do.
21
And he immediately came to Susquehanna and said the Lord had shown him that he must go to New York City with some of the characters.
22
We proceeded to copy some of them sometime in the month of February, and he took his Journey to the Eastern Cities;
23
And to the Learned saying: Read this I pray thee, and the learned said I cannot but if he would bring the plates, they would read it.
24
But the Lord had forbidden it and he returned to me and gave them to me to translate, and I said I cannot for I am not learned.
25
But the Lord had prepared spectacles for to read the book therefore I commenced translating the characters.
26
And thus, the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled which is written in the twenty-ninth chapter concerning the book.
27
For what took place relative to him and the characters, I refer to his own account of the circumstances, as he related them to me after his return.