Our position is this: While there was this universal apostasy, while the Church of Christ as an organization was destroyed, and replaced by the churches of men, yet just as when the sun goes down, there still remains light in the sky--so, too, notwithstanding this apostasy from the Church, there still were left fragments of truth among the children of men, and some measure of truth thank God, through his mercy, has always remained with man, not only with Christians but with all God's children. He has not left himself in any of the ages of the world without his witnesses, and he has sanctified all generations of men with some measure of the truth; therefore, when we proclaim this apostasy from the Christian religion and the destruction of the Church of Christ, it does not follow that we hold that all truth, that all virtue, had departed from the world, or that God had absolutely withdrawn from his creation. Not so. The light of truth burned in the bosom of good men; but it does not follow that because these fragments of truth remained there was necessarily the organized Church of Christ and divine authority in the world. These fragments of the truth could remain in the so-called Christian parts of the world, as we now know them to exist in what is called the heathen world. Relative to the reforms you claim that your churches have fostered and the progress of mankind which Christians have chiefly promoted, you are aware, gentlemen, that there is a certain class of thinkers among you--I mean in the Christian world, not among "Mormons"--you are aware that there is a school of thinkers among men who will tell you to your teeth, and they will come very nearly proving the truth of it, that such progress in civilization, in science, in arts, as the world has made in past ages, has not been made _because_ of your churches, but _in spite_ of them. They hold that your organizations have been found quite as often against the progress of truth as standing in support of it. Taking the whole time range into account, from the close of the second to the opening of the nineteenth century, it would puzzle you to meet their evidence and argument. It is claimed that the brevity of our Address not only leaves much to be desired, but that it is "positively misleading." First, our reviewers claim that the address is misleading on the subject of revelation. Still these reviewers are able to quote from the Address as follows: "The theology of our Church is the theology taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles, the theology of Scripture and reason. It not only acknowledges the sacredness of ancient Scripture, and the binding force of divinely inspired acts and utterances in ages past; but also declares that God now speaks to man in this final gospel dispensation." That seems quite explicit to me. But, commenting upon the passage, the reviewers say: