The grossest delusions only show, by their very extravagance, the indestructibleness of the religious principle in the human soul, and how it clings and ever must cling to the idea of some Divine revelation, some lifting of the vail, as the etymology of the word imports, which hangs so densely over man and nature. There is a more inexplicable phenomenon than Mormonism or any false religion. It is the disposition manifested in some parts of the philosophical, and even professedly religious world, to depreciate, if not directly to deny the supernatural--to put as far away as possible, or to receive as the last allowable explanation of any difficulty, the thought of any direct communication from Heaven to earth. It is on this principle some would even interpret, not only present phenomena, but also all that during countless ages have left their mark upon our globe. On this principle another class would unspiritualize as far as they could, even the acknowledged Scriptures. But why should it be so? Why this strange delight in believing in the omnipotence and unchangeableness of a blind and unrelenting nature? What comfort has it for the soul, or what enlargement even for the intellect? What happiness in the thought of being bound in such an adamantine chain, even if we are compelled to admit its stern reality! It may be, peradventure, that philosophy here is in the right, but, if we may employ the paradox, her reverence for nature must certainly seem most unnatural. Nature, even our nature, longs for some Divine or supernatural communications. For this "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until now." The wonder, then, is not that there have been in the world so many mythical accounts of Divine intercourse, but that there has been so little of the reality. Why does not God speak to us here? Why has "_He made darkness his pavilion round about him?_" Why "cometh He not out" more frequently "from the _hiding-place of his power?_" Why has He ever been called--by Homer, and Hesiod, and Orpheus, as well as in the Bible--"_The Dweller in the cloud?_" Why does not our Father's voice oftener break the fearful stillness of nature, and give us that evidence of His existence, His government, and His providence, without which nature is but a gloomy prison-house, while life is but a smothered effort to escape from its terrible immutability, and breathe the freedom of a spiritual and supernatural atmosphere? Is it said that He is always speaking--that the Great Cause of causes is always exhibiting itself in its effects? But what comfort in this? It speaketh not to us--it manifests no knowledge of our present thought, of our present individual wants. The voice that is alike _in_ all things, and comes alike _to_ all things, we can not distinguish from nature herself. The true ground for marvel, then, is not that men are led astray by false prophets, but that such vast multitudes should be so utterly immersed in nature and