More interesting, however, is the attitude of most of the book toward Christ, notwithstanding its presumably pre-Christian character. Throughout the book, prophets and preachers speak of Christ, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and foretell with striking clarity his death and resurrection. The Christian doctrines of the Resurrection, Baptism, faith in the Atonement, and the like are the common articles of belief of the Nephite prophets and their people. It is as if the author could not imagine Hebraic messianic hope in any other terms than Christian. Throughout the book there is no usage of the messianic term “Son of Man,” although this is the one that Christ usually identified with himself in his own ministry. The expectations of the Nephites are those of nineteenth-century Protestants rather than of biblical Hebrews. Indeed, in some of the scenes of prophecy and preaching, the *Book of Mormon* reaches something like greatness in portraying the tension of hope, the inner soaring of the spirit, of the common man who embraced revival Christianity. It was his hopes, his aspirations, and his exaltation of soul that the Book of Mormon projected back into his Nephites. Such, for example, is the case of those who were converted by King Benjamin’s exhortation when “the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which King Benjamin had spoken unto them” (Mosiah 4:3), and of those whom Alma describes who “were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love,” adding, “And I say unto you that they are saved” (Alma 5:9).

Those who are saved are always saved in Christ, and the only difference between what a Nephite prophet and a New York revivalist says is that the former usually adds “who will come” or “who is to come” after the name of Christ. Thus Alma could say in 83 B.C.:

And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of hearts, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now

Have ye walked, keeping yourselves blameless before God? Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble? That your garments have been cleansed and made white through the blood of Christ, who will come to redeem his people form their sins [Alma 5:26-27; my italics]

There is one instance when one suspects that the tension and excitement of the revivalistic present tense actually got away form the author and that he hurried to regain himself and to keep form exposing himself before his scribe. When Abinadi is preaching in a prophetic passage, he declares: “And now if Christ has not come into the world, speaking of things to come as through the had already come, there could have been no redemption” (Mosiah 16:6).

Yet if this anachronism of feeling and reference is evidence of later origin to the critic, it was not so to the early converts. In fact, in catching and committing to print the hopes and exaltation of the revival meeting and in doing so without the distractions of emotional excess, while at the same time answering many of the most important theological problems which troubled the people of the region, the Book of Mormon was admirably suited to become what it did in fact become, the scriptures of an American church.