The priceless character of the Book of Mormon lies in its sacredness as a compilation of Holy Scripture, telling primarily of the dealings of God with the ancient peoples of the West, of the Divine purpose in their isolation on a previously unknown continent, the teaching and practise of the Gospel with all its essential laws and ordinances enjoined through revelation entirely apart from the Biblical Scriptures, and particularly of the solemn testimony of a great nation relating to the atoning death and literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Savior of the race. The avowed purpose of Jehovah, in leading Lehi and his colony from Jerusalem and conducting them across the great waters to the American shores, was to separate unto Himself a body of Israelites who would be cleansed from false tradition and the defiling precepts of men respecting the appointed mission of Christ in the flesh. As Moses was led into the desert and later into the mountain top, as Elijah was impelled to seek the cavern's solitude, that each might the better hear the Divine voice--so a nation was sequestered in the New World that they might learn the word of revealed truth in its simplicity and plainness. In the mind of God it had been decreed that the life, death, and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son be attested by other witnesses than Galilee, Samaria and Judea. While Lehi and his people were journeying through the deserts of Arabia, the Lord revealed by vision and the visitation of angels unto the prophet and again unto Nephi that, six hundred years later, the Son of the Eternal Father would be born of the Virgin of Nazareth, that He was to be the Redeemer of the world, that a prophet would go before Him crying repentance unto the people and baptizing them in Jordan, and that twelve Apostles would attend the Savior and continue to teach and administer after the Lord's death and resurrection. The doctrine of the coming Christ and the necessity of repentance and baptism had been preached by prophets throughout the six centuries of preparation. At the time of our Lord's birth at Bethlehem, the predicted signs of the glad event were witnessed in America, and prominent among these was the absence of darkness between two days. The tragedy on Calvary was signalized in the West, as the prophets had foretold, by great disturbances of the earth, and by the continuation of darkness between two nights. The more righteous part of the people had been preserved from destruction; and to a multitude of these, assembled about the Temple, the crucified and resurrected Lord appeared, with the solemn accompaniment of the Father's proclamation from the heavens: "Behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name: hear ye Him." (3 Nephi, chap. 11).