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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 toread ; 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. T'o deny them would 
