When the historian of future days shall review the history of the growth of science, and shall judge men by the record that they have left behind them, he will place Joseph Smith as the greatest philosopher of science of the nineteenth century, and possibly of the twentieth. Then will men reverently speak of that mighty mind and clear vision, which, inspired by the God of heaven, saw, as in an open book, the truths which men have later developed, through ceaseless labor and countless vigils. Then shall the thinkers of the future speak of him as Joseph, the clearsighted. Knowledge, concentrated into wisdom, is the end of existence. To those who live according to God's law, knowledge will come easily. It will continue to come to his people, until it shall be the most intelligent among the nations. The Lord has said it. "How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri River in its decreed course, or turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints."[A] [Footnote A: Doctrine and Covenants, 121:33.] APPENDIX. Chapter XXI. A VOICE FROM THE SOIL. I. "--the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness."--_Isaiah, xxvii:_ 10. It is a fact, which has impressed itself upon all readers of history, that countries which have been the homes of the most powerful and cultured nations, are now great stretches of the veriest desert. No country teaches this truth better than the extensive valley of the Mesopotamia which looms giant-like in the dawn of history. Upon its plains and highlands, the great nations of antiquity acted the tragedies of their existence; like the schoolboys' snowman, they rose, with vast proportions, in a day, and fell ere the setting of the next sun. In this district, advanced and retreated with wonderful precision, as it appears to us so many ages removed from the time of action, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians and the Assyrians; here the Medes and Persians achieved the victories that made them famous, and here came all the great generals of old to crown their successes. A hundred populous cities clustered, in the lower part of the valley, around Babylon the great, the most marvelous city of any past age; a hundred cities were in the upper half, with Nineveh, also magnificent and great, as their center. From Mesopotamia come evidences of art--painting, sculpture, music, literature and architecture--the indication of a higher civilization. Still, today, even the sites of many of the great cities are lost, and Mesopotamia is a stretch of barren land.