original records which they may compare with translations. So with this Book of Nephi that comes to us in an abridged form. It is not the original book of Nephi; it is Mormon's abridgement of that book. He has condensed it, and in doing so has doubtless given us less perfect accounts of Christ's mission to the Nephites than would be found in the original Book of Nephi, the real Fifth Gospel. That is to say, we have not all the surrounding circumstances or all the utterances of the Savior, or of the men it represents as speaking. Then we have not even Mormon's original abridgement of Nephi's book, but the Prophet Joseph's translation of Mormon's abridgement, and that, it is admitted, in his imperfect English. So that the whole Five Gospels are fragmentary and tainted with imperfections and limitations as all things are that pass through human hands; but containing, nevertheless, God's precious truths; and some of these are found in the Fifth Gospel as well as in the four Hebrew Gospels; and to me the truths of the Fifth or Nephite Gospel are as precious and important as are those of the Four Gospels. IV. Mormon Views of America. FOREWORD. The Book of Mormon teaches that the two American continents are a promised land, consecrated to righteousness and to liberty, and especially dedicated to the seed of the Patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob, of Bible fame, and to the Gentile races, who shall in the last days be gathered to the land as well as the descendants of Joseph. When the Jaredite colony was directed to take its departure from the valley of the Euphrates, the Lord promised to go before them and direct them to "land which is choice above all the land of the earth." After beginning the journey the Lord would not permit them to stop short of that land of promise; "but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people; and he [the Lord] had sworn unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time hence forth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. . . . . Behold this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it, shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ." This colony of Jaredites was brought to the north continent of the Western hemisphere--to North America. So, too, when the Lord was leading from Jerusalem the colony of Lehi he promised them that inasmuch as they would keep his commandments he would lead them to a land of promise, "to a land which he had prepared for them, a land which is choice above all other lands." After arriving upon this land of promise, (and their colony landed in South America), the Prophet Lehi said to his sons: