f England acknowledges the
awful fact in her official declaration of degeneracy, as set forth in
the "_Homily Against Peril of Idolatry_," in these words:

"So that laity and clergy, learned and unlearned, all ages,
sects, and degrees of men, women, and children of whole
Christendom--an horrible and most dreadful thing to think--have
been at once drowned in abominable idolatry; of all other vices
most detested of God, and most damnable to man; and that by the
space of eight hundred years and more."[1517]

Let it not be concluded that through the night of the universal
apostasy, long and dark as it was, God had forgotten the world. Mankind
had not been left wholly to itself. The Spirit of God was operative so
far as the unbelief of men permitted. John the apostle, and the Three
Nephite disciples,[1518] were ministering among men, though unknown. But
through the centuries of spiritual darkness men lived and died without
the administration of a contemporary apostle, prophet, elder, bishop,
priest, teacher, or deacon. Whatever of the form of Godliness existed in
the churches of human establishment was destitute of divine power. The
time foreseen by the inspired apostle had fully come--mankind in general
refused to endure sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, did they
heap to themselves teachers, after their own lusts, and verily had they
turned away their ears from the truth to follow after fables.[1519] The
first quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the cumulative
fulfilment of the conditions predicted through the prophet Amos:
"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in
the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing
the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from
the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word
of the Lord, and shall not find it."[1520]

Throughout the period of apostasy the windows of heaven had been shut
toward the world, so as to preclude all direct revelation from God, and
particularly any personal ministration or theophany of the Christ.
Mankind had ceased to know God; and had invested the utterances of
prophets and apostles of old, who had known Him, with a pall of mystery
and fancy, so that the True and the Living God was no longer believed to
exist; but in His place the sectaries had tried to conceive of an
incomprehensible being, devoid of "body, parts, or passio