Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible. Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are granted peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often come regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be living. There have, indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation. So valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of expedients have been utilized to beget unusual mental states. A certain tribe of Indians, for example, in the southwest of our country are accustomed at set times to send their religious leaders into the desert to find and partake of a peculiar plant which has an opiate or narcotic effect. In the belief of the Indians this plant opens the door to visions. The visions, as reported by those who have recovered from the influence of the narcotic, are not of any considerable value. Similar attempts have been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples, the hypnosis sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament passages especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary mental condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures, however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences. Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate, or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures came out of attempts to realize in conduct the moral will of God. When we think of the surroundings even of the early church; when we reflect upon the force of suggestion for uncritical minds; when we consider the sway of superstition at all periods during the Hebrew revealing movement, the wonder is that the Scriptures lay such stress as they do upon the type of vision which arises from faithfulness in doing the revealed will.