3. _Religion of the Lamanites:_ The religion of Lamanites is more difficult to determine than their government. It is chiefly the absence of religion and of its influence that must be spoken of. Taught to believe that the traditions of their fathers respecting God, the promised Messiah, and the belief in a future life were untrue; persuaded to believe that their fathers had been induced to leave fatherland, and their rich possessions therein because of the dreams of the visionary Lehi; firm in their conviction that the elder sons of Lehi had been defrauded of their right to govern the colony by the younger son, Nephi, and that through the force of the religious influence he learned to wield by following the spiritual example (to them, perhaps, the trickery) of his father--it was in the spirit of hatred of religion that the Lamanites waged wars upon the Nephites, to subvert religion and free men from its influence. But the Lamanites were true to human instincts. They freed themselves, as they supposed, from one superstition, only to plunge into others that were really contemptible--the superstition of idolatry; for they were an idolatrous people. This remark, however, must be understood in a general sense, and as applying to the Lamanites proper previous to the coming of Messiah--of the followers, and the descendants of the followers, of the elder brothers of the first Nephi, Laman and Lemuel. After the coming of Messiah, when in the third century, A. D., the old distinctions of Nephite and Lamanite were revived, after the long period of peace and righteousness following the advent of Christ, they had no reference to race or family distinctions, as they had when first employed; but were strictly party distinctions; used, when adopted again in the period named, to indicate the Church or religious party, and the anti-religious party, respectively.