Nephi is now commanded by the Lord, to repair to the top of a mountain, where he sees a vision, in which he is informed that he must build a ship, and where he can find ore from which to manufacture tools. We are now presented with our hero in a new character,—that of a shipbuilder. So that in his youth he is a scholar, a historian, a worker of metals, a ship-carpenter, a prophet and a priest. It now seems that ore and tools are necessary, in order to construct a ship; but to make plates of brass, neither ore, tools, nor metals were essential. Six pages are next occupied in giving an account of quarrels between Nephi and his brethren. But Nephi, in the mean time, builds a ship contrary to the opinions of his brothers, and the rational inference is, that he makes his own tools out of ore, and builds the ship without assistance from any one. It requires some little stretch of credulity, to believe that Nephi done all the above work, such as making iron from ore, and converting it into steel, and then making the tools necessary to build a ship, without tools with which to do it. The manner in which he built the ship, he accounts for in the following language:—"Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner of men, &c. but I did build it after the manner which the Lord did teach me." p. 47.—How long he was in accomplishing this great work, we cannot learn; but if all was done by a miracle, as the author intimates, we can see no necessity for any interference on the part of Nephi, but give to him the glory who accomplished the work.
The patriarch Noah, had special directions for building the ark, the kind of wood, &c., and he built it after the model given him, and he had many years in which to accomplish it. And we have good reason to believe that the work was done in the same manner as other ships were built, and that he employed workmen to aid him in it. Ne-
