My conscious life will still be mine alone, which no one else in the universe can directly share, not even God himself. No one else feels my feelings or has my sensations. * * * * "And this is the position which has already been argued for in a preceding chapter. In other words, God does not create us by an arbitrary choice of his, so that our nature as human selves is merely secondary and derivative. _This nature of ours is an ultimate fact of reality._ It is implicated in the deepest constitution of the universe, in the nature of God himself. _Reality is a confederacy of free beings;_ and no one of these is ultimately responsible for the others, since each alike is essential to the whole with which reality is identified." From all this, then, it appears that the doctrine of a plurality of divine intelligences existing in the universe, as taught by our prophet, is receiving confirmation by the works and the philosophizing of some of the foremost learned men of our country, and, for that matter, of the world. Perhaps you will be putting to me the question: What of all this? Why discuss questions of this character? What spiritual or moral force may one gather from a contemplation of such themes? Well, in the first place, to Latter-day Saints, those who have faith in the dispensation of the fulness of times and in the Prophet Joseph Smith--does it mean nothing to you to find the inspirations of God in this man confirmed by the conclusions of plodding philosophers who come trailing in seventy-five years after the words of the prophet have gone forth to the world? After he has been denounced as charlatan, as false prophet and deceiver, for advancing the truths we have been considering--does it mean nothing to you to find that the truths which he stood for are permeating the philosophies of men and are receiving the sanction and approval of the learned? It means much to me; it gives confirmation to my faith; and I rejoice in the triumph that the truth is achieving. Then to all, whether Latter-day Saints or not, it seems to me that to have fixed in the mind, in the consciousness, the thought of the reality of things--the reality of God, the reality of the divine in man, the consciousness that this spirit within us is of a divine nature, and that it is capable of attaining to something really good and great--to something really worth while--to goodness, power and glory, to have that thought present to consciousness, as we go about the duties of life--to feel that "for a wise and glorious purpose God has placed us here on earth," and has merely "withheld the recollection of our former friends and birth"--to be conscious of all this, I say, is to gather strength for the battle of life. To feel that we, in the essence of us, are one with God, and that he envelopes us closely about by spiritual influences that we can call to our assistances--to