good and evil, happiness and misery, to which the wisest and the
greatest minds have found no issue, subject to be degraded by low
passions and tempted to great extremes of evil, and himself weak,
impulsive, and vacillating, there seems the most urgent need for
divine communication. It may be said that these are conflicts and
problems which God has left man to decide and solve for himself by his
own reason. But when we consider how slow this process is, and how
imperfect even now, after the experience of ages, we seem to need some
intervention that shall stimulate the human mind, and impel it forward
with greater rapidity. Farther, it would appear only right that an
intelligent and accountable being, placed in a world like this, should
have some explanation of his origin and destiny given him at first,
and that, if he should perchance go astray, a helping hand should be
extended to him.

Practically it is an historical fact that all the great impulses given
to humanity have been by men claiming divine guidance or inspiration,
and professing to bring light and truth from the unseen world. It
would be too much to say that all these prophets and reformers have
been inspired of heaven; but scarcely too much to say that they have
either received a message of God, or have been permitted to transmit
to our world messages for weal or woe from powers without in
subordination to him. Farther, we shall have reason in the sequel to
see that in far back prehistoric times there must have been impulses
given to mankind, and revelations made to them, as potent as those
which have acted in later historic periods. In Holy Scripture the Word
of God is represented as "enlightening every man;[3]" and with
reference to our present subject we are told that "by faith we
understand that the ages of the world were constituted by the Word of
God, so that the visible things were not made of those which
appear."[4] In other words, that the will of God has been active and
operative as the sole cause throughout all ages of the world's
creation and history, and that the visible universe is not a mere
product of its own phenomena. We may call this faith, if we please, an
intuition or instinct, a God-given gift, or a product of our own
thought acting on evidence afforded by the outer world; but in any
case it seems to be the sole possible solution of the mystery of
origins.

These points being premised, we are in a position to inquire as to the
tea