A Well Warranted Conviction.--How much of fact and how much of fiction, are here interwoven, matters not for the purpose of this argument. It was the poet's belief that such things could be, a belief shared by myriads of Christian men and women, and confirmed by a multiplicity of experiences. Columbus and "The Voice."--In another poem--"Columbus"--Lowell sets forth the same idea, that of whisperings or suggestions from beyond the "veil" hiding the spirit world from this world of flesh and blood. The great mariner is supposed to be standing on the deck of his ocean-tossed vessel, soliloquizing over the situation surrounding him: A yet undiscovered country ahead, a mutinous and grumbling crew behind, threatening to put him in irons and turn the ship's prow toward Spain, if sight of the promised shore of India--for which Columus set sail--came not with the break of dawn. A world of care weighs him down, a sense of solitude and utter loneliness, but his soul hears "the voice that errs not," and is patient and trustful to the hour of complete triumph. [3] Nephi and the Spirit.--That it was indeed "the voice that errs not" which inspired Columbus, upholding and urging him on to the consummation of the great enterprise he had undertaken, we have sacred and indisputable evidence. Long before Columbus crossed the ocean, an American prophet and seer, Nephi by name, looking down the vista of twenty centuries, forecast the career of that man of destiny, telling how "the Spirit of God" would impel him to cross "the many waters" to this "promised land;" and how the same Spirit, moving upon others, would induce them to follow in the wake of the mighty explorer. That prophet beheld in vision the war for American Independence, the successful struggle of the oppressed colonies against the mother country, and the founding here of a free government, a heaven-favored nation, destined to foster and give protection to the growing work of God in after days. And this revealing Spirit--so Nephi affirms--was more than an inward monitor: "I spake unto him as a man speaketh, for I beheld that he was in the form of man; yet, nevertheless, I knew that it was the Spirit of the Lord! and he spake unto me as a man speaketh with another." [4] The Holy Ghost.--Evidently it was the Holy Ghost who communed with Nephi, though he is here spoken of as "the Spirit of God, and 'the Spirit of the Lord." "The Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit," [5] and though not in a tabernacle like the Father or the Son, he is nevertheless in human form, and Nephi beheld him and conversed with him.