Jacob, who had brought up his son Enos "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," when he saw his own decease approaching, gave him the plates and left him successor in office over the people of Nephi.
The Book of Enos is short, as is also the two following books of Jarom and Omni, containing little except an account of the transmission of the plates from one generation to another till the time of king Benjamin, about 320 years after the flight of Lehi from Jerusalem. During the latter part of this period, many wars took place between the people of Nephi and the Lamanites; so that Mosiah, then king, was warned to emigrate into a new region, or district of the wilderness—into a land called Zarahemla. After reaching there they discovered that the people of Zarahemla were also Jews who came from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon, and that they were also brought by the hand of the Lord across the great waters. The Lamanites at this period are described as "a wild, ferocious, and blood-thirsty people, wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girded about their loins, and their heads shaven, and their skill was in the bow and the scimitar and the axe. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat."
But I must stop. I fear the reader is already wearied with these foolish vagaries of the imagination, which the Mormon prophet palms off upon his followers as the revelation of the Most High. To redeem our pledge in giving an analysis of the Book of Mormon, we shall be obliged to occupy another chapter with these details. If the reader cannot make up his mind to follow us, he can skip over the next chapter.
CHAPTER XXVII.
ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF MORMON CONTINUED.
The question has been frequently asked, why the sect whose history we have been attempting to sketch, are called Mormons? The answer to this question will be readily suggested to any one who has patience to wade through Mr. Spaulding's historical romance. From the account that we have already given of the Book of Mormon we are led to see the mode by which it is pretended that the records of one generation of the Nephites were transmitted to another, and how the history of each preceding age was preserved. These records were engraven upon plates, and the plates, handed down from one prophet to another, or from one king to another, or from one judge to another—the Lord always having raised up some one to receive these plates, when the person in whose hands they had been previously placed was about to die. Mormon, who lived about four hundred years after the coming of Christ, while yet a child received a command in relation to these sacred deposites. The metallic plates which contained the record of all the generations of his fathers, from the flight of Lehi from Jerusalem to his own time, ultimately came into his hands. From these plates he made an abriged record, which, taken together, in connection with the record of his own times, constitutes the Book of Mormon. Thus we see why the book bears this title. For Mormon was a sort of Ezra, who compiled the entire sacred canon contained in this volume. He lived at a very eventful period, when almost all his people had fallen into a fearful apostacy, and he lived to see them all destroyed, except twenty-four persons. Himself and these sole survivors of his race were afterwards cut off with a single exception. His son Moroni, one of the survivors, lived to tell the mournful tale, and deposite the plates under the hill where Jo Smith found them. Mormon took his name from a place where the first American church was founded, of which we shall hear directly, and where the first candidates for admission into the church were baptized, some two hundred years before the commencement of the Christian era. He was very distinguished in his way, and quite worthy to be the founder of this new sect, who have brought to light his records, and rescued from oblivion such a bundle of marvels, as no one ever heard the like before.
I am sorry to say I must ask you to follow me through a labyrinth of history, if I carry out the plan of furnishing an analysis of the Book of Mormon.
We have already traced the history of the Lamanites and Nephites down to the period of King Benjamin, between three and four hundred years from the period of Lehi's flight from Jerusalem. The father of Benjamin was Mosiah, who was warned of the Lord to migrate to Zarahemla with all his people, that he and they might not be destroyed by the Lamanites. Zarahemla was subsequently the scene of much that is interesting in this history. It now became the dwelling place of the Nephites. Benjamin was the king of the land. He was a sort of David. He not only fought nobly, but took great pains to establish true religion among the people. He assembled them together, and addressed to them powerful exhortations, preaching to them "repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ." The people were so much affected that they fell to the earth—were converted, and became firm believers in Christ. Benjamin then thoroughly instructed them in the doctrines of Christianity, and finally died about four hundred and seventy six years after Lehi's flight. His son, Mosiah, reigned in his stead, who was no less eminent in kingly power and righteousness than his father. All these facts are given us in what is termed the Book of Mosiah, which contains thirteen chapters.