31 



But we have capabilities and wants which the material uni- 

 verse and our fellow-men cannot fully meet or develope. Thus 

 we have seen that from the beginning of human history, we 

 have evidence that men, by a universal intuition, have aspired 

 after fellowship with their Maker, not the attainment of 

 mere abstract knowledge, but a true communion of thought, 

 emotion, and action ; and that they have so far found what 

 they sought, as to persevere in the practice till now, when 

 religion is more prevalent and more powerful than ever 

 before. The Creator, who has made the eye for light, the 

 atmosphere for breath, and the lungs for breathing ; who has 

 given us discernment, and spread the universe before us as an 

 open book for us to read ; and who has so made and ordered all 

 our bodily members as to suit the conditions in which He 

 has placed us, cannot have given higher faculties than sensa- 

 tion and intellect, to leave them without a possibility of exer- 

 cise, by failing to respond to the faculty which He has given 

 for no other purpose, but as a means of access to Himself, 

 and the attainment of knowledge concerning His modes of 

 operation, in cases which supply no other data from which 

 to start our cogitations. 



This prepared us to look for direct and unquestionable 

 fellowship with the Creator, nor were we disappointed. We 

 have records of such fellowship from the beginning of human 

 existence ; and, as though on purpose to remove the pos- 

 sibility of doubt or mistake both as to the fact and to the 

 nature of the intercourse, He has connected the most perfect 

 display of His moral glory and of His condescension to man 

 with the government of a nation, in which He maintained His 

 own law by an effectual administration all the way through, 

 showing that He who was king in Israel was the ruler of the 

 world, by employing the substance, forces, and life thereof 

 as His instruments of government. By the same effectual 

 rule he has preserved this people distinct from all others, so 

 that, although for eighteen centuries they have been without 

 a country, and scattered as aliens over the face of the earth, 

 yet they are nowhere absorbed, but retain their identity still ; 

 but, wherever they go, they carry with them as their Magna 

 Charta the records of that divine government which extended 

 through 1,400 years, although they testify to the disobedience 

 and rebellion of their fathers, and declare that their continued 

 unbelief and sin are the cause of their own present alienation ; 

 and as -these records were more scrupulously made, are more 

 complete, have been more carefully preserved, and enter more 

 fully into the national life than those of any other people, so 

 they possess the greatest historic value. To deny them would 



