ludicrous events, of wars and church schisms, imaginable, under the pontificate of our first immersed king, and the last one in our notable history.

Alma being warned by the Lord to flee his country, he gathers a large concourse of people, and they all start into the wilderness, and travel eight days where they pitch their tents, and afterwards build buildings. The sojourners with Alma endeavor to make him accept the royal sceptre, but he piously declines, and establishes a pontificate and builds a church, p. 203. Alma consecrates divers priests, and they were all just men, and they built a city and called it Helam; but in the midst of their prosperity and devotions, an army of the Lamanites appeared upon their borders, and they all fled, and finally arrived at the land of Zarahemla, under king Mosiah. The king receives the pilgrims with great kindness, and Alma is continued his high priest. He is authorized by the king to establish churches and ordain priests over them. Seven churches are forthwith built and dedicated to the Christian religion, in which, faith, repentance and baptism is preached by king Mosiah's priests, in its primitive purity. Alma has a son who has at this time arrived at manhood, (we should infer from this that he was not a Catholic Pontiff,) who persecutes the Christians, "to their great annoyance. But the Lord would not suffer his chosen Christian Jews to be persecuted; and therefore, in the full tide of his wicked career, he is converted, not very unlike that of Paul the Apostle, according to our narator, p. 213. The miracle of young Alma's conversion is described in the following language. An angel appeared unto Alma and said, "Go thy way, and seek to destroy the church no more, that their prayers may be answered""And now ́Alma, and those that were with him, fell again to the earth, for great was their astonishment" &c. And it came to pass, after they had fasted and prayed for the space of two

days and two nights, the limbs of Alma receive their strength; and he stood up and began to speak," &c. and said, "I have repented of my sins, and have been redeemed of the Lord; behold I am born of the spirit."

Mosiah's sons are zealous Christians, all of them; they decline, severally, the regal honors, and choose the humble station of missionaries. They consequently all embark with a view of christianizing the heathen. Mosiah suggests the propriety of abolishing the office of king among them, because his sons had all refused, and that if any other should be crowned over them, the rightful heir might return and claim the crown as his legal patrimony, which would create contention, &c. among the people, p. 217.— King Mosiah's sons are represented as being extremely humble and devout, they are willing to abandon all for the cause of Christ-home, country, and their princely fortunes-and go missionating. But the eagle eye of the king looks upon his sons with suspicion, or the author of the Golden Bible is under the necessity of bringing up this kind of reasoning, in order to frame a pretence to change his government to one which will appear to the ignorant reader as much like the Jewish polity as possible. The reign of the Judges is next instituted, as answering the author best. Previously, however, we are presented with the following tirade of nonsense. Mosiah causes all records to be revised" therefore, he took the records which were engraved upon the plates of brass, and also the plates of Nephi; and all the things which he had kept and preserved according to the commandments of God, and after having translated and caused to be written upon the plates of gold which had been found by the people of Limhi, which was delivered to him by the hand of Limhi: and this he done because of the great anxiety of the people, for they were desirous beyond measure to know concerning those people

which had been destroyed. And now he translated them by the means of two stones, which was fastened into the two rims of a bow. Now, things were prepared from the beginning, and were handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages; and they have been kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord, that he should discover to every creature which should possess the land, the iniquities and the abominations of his people and whosoever has these things, is called seer, after the manner of old times."

We were told by Lehi that the plates should not perish, nor be dimmed by time; but our king has found it necessary, not only to revise, but to transcribe them; so much for Mormon promises.

Mosiah, after a long period, is enabled to translate the gold plates, by means of a pair of goggles, which he must have had in his possession from the time he was made king, because he says they had been kept with the plates from the beginning. It is certainly very remarkable that he should have kept in his possession a pile of gold plates, known to have been found by Limhi, for thirty years, with every facility for reading them, and yet never bestowed one leisure moment to examine their contents.

After the gold plates were examined, and were found to contain a full and complete history of a people who came from Asia, and which God had preserved at the time of the destruction of the tower of Babel, and navigated in a miraculous manner to this continent at that time, but now, or at the pretended period of our history, were totally extinct; he expresses great satisfaction at arriving to such important information!! In connection, we are promised a detailed account of these Babelites, by giving a translation of the plates in full. In the Book of Ether, which is placed

at the end of the Book of Mormon, we shall see the wonderful translation, and make our remarks.

Mosiah reigned thirty-three years being sixty-three years old, and he dies-making the whole time since Lehi's departure from Jerusalem, five hundred and nine years, p. 221. Thus endeth the reign of the Mormon kings. Alma, of renowned conversion to the doctrines of the New Testiment about an hundred years before it was published, is constituted Judge over the people of Zarahemla, and is also high priest over the church of Christ. He was the exclusive law-giver and umpire in all matters, both civil and ecclesiastical, and the most absolute monarch of which we have ever heard or read.

CHAPTER VI.

A new era has now commenced; Judge Alma, the high priest, is an engraver, as a matter of course, and is represented as keeping his own record: he tells us that in the first year of his reign a man was brought before him who had been preaching and bearing down against the church, persuading the people that ministers ought to become popular, and that they ought not to labor, but ought to be supperted-"and he also testified unto the people that all mankind would be saved at the last day," p. 221.

The name of our ancient Universalist is called Nehor, and is represented as quite successful in gaining proselytės. Gideon, an orthodox Nephite priest, meets Nehor, and a warm debate on Christianity ensues between them-they

are represented as able combatants-but the Universalist finally gets angry, and he draws his sword upon pious Gidcon and kills him, which was the occasion of his being arraigned before his honor, Judge Alma. The declaration includes two counts—one of being guilty of priestcraft, and he other for attempting to enforce it by the sword. The murder of good old Gideon, was not set forth in the declaraation, and therefore we suppose it was no crime to commit lomicide in that early day, although it be a priest who is he victim. Nehor is, however, sentenced to die, as an xample to those who might be guilty of the high crime of priestcraft, thereafter. But the sequel informs us that the gnominious death of Nehor, served no purpose in preventng priestcraft,and from that period the Nephites were greatly nnoyed by impostors and preachers of the Devil.

The Book of Alma contains 204 pages and reaches down o the sixty-ninth year of the Judges, and is principally ta¡en up in giving accounts of mighty wars and great geneals. The civil, the military, and the ecclesiastial authoriy, were usually vested in the same individual; representing hem as conducting the government much after the Mosaic polity. The miserable manner in which the story is told, renders it extremely irksome to the reader; but the knight errantry of Don Quixote bears no parallel, nor does the history of the Peloponnesian wars speak of such generals, nor of such brave achievements, as the book of Alma.Besides, in the sixty-nine years, many large cities were founded and built, fortifications were erected, military costumes of great splendor were manufactured and worn.— Their implements of war consisted of swords, spears, scimitars, javelins, bows and arrows, slings, &c. We can see no propriety in the omission by the author of the use of guns and amunition. We think it would have been as credible as most of the events of the narrative, and would have been matter for Mormon credulity and admiration.