the great truth, to which the history of all nations bears witness, that "righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin is a reproach to any people." And this is much, and perhaps the sum-total to be learned from the history of nations. Naturally one is tempted to draw a parallel between this old American nation and various other nations in the old world which paralleled its existence. Surely it is interesting to think that while empires were founding in Assyria and Egypt and Babylon; that while Greece was passing through her heroic ages, in the western world also an enlightened race was building up a national existence and struggling with those problems which through all times and among all people engage the intelligent attention of mankind. Also it would be interesting to note that about the time of the capture of Nineveh, which marked the fall of the Assyrian empire, and but a little before the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, here in our western world an empire which had endured the storms of ages was passing away. Still the main fact to be kept in mind in this work is that such a nation, coeval with the old empires of the eastern world, and with a civilization no less magnificent, existed according to the Book of Mormon in our great northern continent, with its center of civilization in that part of the continent we call Central America. Proof of the existence of such an empire, of such a civilization, and having such a location, will be strong collateral evidence for the truth of the Book of Mormon. II. THE NEPHITES. _Lehi's Colony_. Lehi was one of the many prophets at Jerusalem who predicted the calamities which befell the Jewish nation on the second invasion of Judea by King Nebuchadnezzar, early in the sixth century B. C. [35] Lehi incurred the wrath of that ungodly people and was warned of God in a vision to depart from Jerusalem with his family, and was also promised that inasmuch as he would keep the commandments of God he should be led to a land of promise. [36] From the wilderness where Lehi temporarily dwelt, two expeditions to the fated city were made by his sons: one to obtain a genealogy of his fathers, and the Jewish scriptures (which resulted also in adding one more to the colony in the person of Zoram, a servant of Laban, a keeper of the Jewish records); the second, to induce one Ishmael and his family to join Lehi's colony in their exodus from Jerusalem and journey to the promised land. In both of these expeditions they were successful in achieving their object. The colony now consisted of some eighteen adult persons and a number of children. [37]