[Leonard Arrington]
This morning Davis Bitton brought me a copy of "Book of Mormon Difficulties" by B. H. Roberts. He had obtained two copies from a friend; I did not ask him who the friend was, and he did not tell me. He was able to obtain one copy for me and one for himself. This document was apparently prepared by Roberts in 1921 and represents perhaps 300 pages. The pages are numbered as far as 280 and it looks like about another 100 or 150 pages after that. None of us have heard of the existence of this document until the last few weeks. As far as we are aware, it is not in our vault and we've never heard it mentioned in the vault of the First Presidency or the Joseph Fielding Smith safe. Last fall, about a year ago, Michael Marquardt telephoned to ask if I'd heard of it; I told him no. He said it does exist and he had seen a copy. [Discussion about who has seen it, and who has copies] ... In connection with what we had heard earlier from Michael Marquardt and attributed by him to Brigham Roberts the grandson, this was supposed to have been done near the end of his life and Roberts was about to leave the Church because his testimony had been destroyed as the result of this study. It is very clear that this could not have been the case. [A list of evidences that Roberts retained his testimony of the Book of Mormon] ...
Davis has and he is impressed with two things: 1. B. H.'s absolute honesty in pursuing the difficult questions, with courage and determination. 2. That he came to grips with every aspect of it and did not hesitate in coming to conclusions warranted by the evidence despite what they might do to traditional beliefs. For example: he admits quite candidly that the Book of Mormon could have been the production of one mind. There are in the back of the book some memos, one to Bob [Ben] Roberts from Mark Cannon-no date-and three memos of Michael Marquardt written last fall. Chapter 13 of the book is missing for some reason not explained except that it is mentioned as being missing in the document obtained from Brigham Roberts the grandson. The title of the chapter was "The Messiah in the New World-Quetzoquoatal." The document gives every appearance of being authentic. ...
Richard Roberts, head of the Department of History at Weber [State College] and a grandson of Brigham H. Roberts... told me a number of important and interesting things: 1. That the first wife [Sarah] Louisa [Smith Roberts] did not approve of B. H. taking plural wives, and she was largely alienated from him after he married the second wife. And she brought up her children to be alienated from him. It is his understanding that B. H. did not spend very much time with the first wife and family after the first plural marriage. The first wife more or less left the Church and her children were more or less brought up outside the Church, not only as non-Mormons but in practical respects as anti-Mormons. 2. If this general attitude was not true during the first years of plural marriage, it became definitely true when Roberts married just before [[actually, after]] the [1890] Manifesto Maggie Shipp. ....
The Way, the Truth and the Life, which is probably the single most brilliant work by a Latter-day Saint mind to this day.
The most important lesson indicated by this experience [a discussion with a board member of the Relief Society] is that the Relief Society are not very autonomous, even within their own organization. The brethren are not only directing Relief Society policy but also getting into the actual administration of the organization. ...
[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]
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