ves. Besides these, there were two infant sons of Lehi born during the journey through the wilderness, Jacob and Joseph. In America they found “beasts in the forest of every kind, both the cow, and the ox, and the ass, and the horse, and the goat.” Soon after his arrival in America Lehi died, and dissensions speedily ensued between Nephi and his elder brothers Laman and Lemuel; and, separating from them, Nephi moved into the wilderness accompanied by Sam and Zoram and their families, the boys Jacob and Joseph, and such of the women and children as took his side. Laman and Lemuel and the “sons of Ishmael” and their families, as a punishment for rebelling against Nephi, whom the Lord had appointed to be their ruler, were cursed by the Lord, and they and all their posterity condemned to have dark skins and to “become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, which did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.” This was the origin of the American Indians, who are consequently believed by the Mormons to be of Jewish race. Nephi died about 50 years after his arrival in America, and his people continued to be called Nephites and to be governed by kings bearing the name of Nephi for many generations. The record of their history was continued on golden plates by Jacob the brother of Nephi, Enos the son of Jacob, Jarom the son of Enos, Omni the son of Jarom, and finally by Mormon, whose name is given to a single book, as well as to the whole volume, and who, “many hundred years after the coming of Christ,” transmitted to his son Moroni the plates containing the writings of the authors already mentioned, together with those of Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Nephi the Second, and Nephi the Third. These books consist almost wholly of a narrative of transactions in North and South America, chiefly of wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites or red men, and of revolutions in the land of Zarahemla, which was near the isthmus of Darien, where there was an exceeding great city. At length, in the days of Nephi the Second, a terrible earthquake announced the crucifixion of Christ at Jerusalem, and three days afterward the Lord himself descended out of heaven into the chief city of the Nephites, in sight of all the people, whom he exhibited his wounded side and the prints of the nails in his hands and feet. He remained among them 40 days, instructing them in Christianity and instituting Christian churches. The Christians of America, unlike their brethren in the old world, immediately adopted the Christian era for their chronological computations; and according to the record, in the four following centuries the wars between them and the heathen Lamanites continued to rage, with great destruction of the Christians, whose populous and civilized cities, which were very numerous throughout North America, were gradually captured and destroyed. In the year 384 the Christians made their final stand on the hill Cumorah, in western New York, where in a great battle 230,000 of them were slain. Moroni, one of the survivors, after wandering a fugitive till A. D. 420, sealed up the golden plates on which all these things were written, and hid them in the hill where they were found by Joseph Smith. One of the books in the collection, the book of Ether, gives an account of an earlier settlement of America than that of Lehi, by a colony from the tower of Babel, soon after the deluge, which was led by Jared, and in time became a great nation, which was destroyed for its sins before the arrival of the colony from Jerusalem. — The religious teachings of the “Book of Mormon” relate in great part to doctrinal questions that were rife in the villages of western New York about 1830. Calvinism, Universalism, Methodism, Millenarianism, Roman Catholicism, and other modern forms of belief, are discussed. Infant baptism is warmly condemned, and polygamy is repeatedly denounced. According to the opponents of Mormonism, from investigations made soon after the appearance of the “Book of Mormon,” the fact is fully established that the real author of the work was So