routed, retreated to their own lands, and there was continued peace throughout the continent for three years.
During this period of peace, Alma and his fellow priesthood preached God's holy word in the power and demonstration of the Spirit, and with much success. Great prosperity came to the Church throughout all the lands of the Nephites. At this happy time “there was no inequality among them, the Lord did pour out His Spirit on all the face of the land,” as Alma supposed, to prepare the hearts of His people for the coming of Christ. With this object full in view, he labored and rejoiced, preached, blessed and prophesied, never tiring in his energies, and feeling sorrowful only because of the hard-heartedness and spiritual blindness of some of the people. In one most glorious event he had unspeakable joy: The companions of his youth, the sons of king Mosiah, returned from a fourteen years' mission among the Lamanites, during which time, after many sore trials and great tribulation, they, by the grace of the Father, had brought many thousands of that benighted race to a knowledge of the principles of the everlasting Gospel.
Alma was traveling south on one of his missionary journeys from the land of Zarahemla to the land of Manti, when he met Ammon and his brethren coming from the land of Nephi. On hearing the story of their mission, he at once returned home with them to Zarahemla. Here the condition of affairs among the Lamanites, was rehearsed to the chief judge, who laid the whole subject before the people, so that whatever was done in relation to the Christian Lamanites, might be done by common consent. The Nephites decided to give the land of Jershon (which lay south of the land Bountiful) to these people for an inheritance. With this cheering news Ammon, accompanied by Alma, returned into the southern wilder-
