[11]. Mormon viii: 17.
[12]. There is some justification for such a view as this, if we have in mind the idea of God making a full and perfect revelation to man. When God gives a revelation it necessarily has to be such an one as man can comprehend, and in terms with which he is familiar—in man's language; and as man's language is inadequate to express truth in its perfection, it follows that any revelation which God deigns to give to the children of men will fall somewhat below the perfect truth, hence the Apostle of the Gentiles declared, notwithstanding the existence of revelations in the scriptures which were extant in Paul's time, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; we see [as] through a glass, darkly." This condition arises not out of any lack of power on the part of God to make a perfect revelation of truth, but out of man's inability to comprehend such a revelation; and hence God graciously condescends to meet man's somewhat narrow limitations by giving such a revelation of truth in the scriptures, as man by faith and diligence may comprehend.
[13]. "The Age of Reason," Paine, p. 19.
[14]. Ibid, p. 25.
[15]. "The Age of Reason," Part II, p. 98.
That Joseph Smith appreciated how inadequate human language is to express divine thought is evident from the following prayer of his, uttered when writing to his friend, W. W. Phelps: "Oh Lord God, deliver us in due time from the little, narrow prison, almost, as it were, total darkness of paper, pen and ink—and a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language."—History of the Church, Vol. I, pp. 227-8.
[16]. Ibid p. 252.
[17]. The lecture was published in the "St. Louis Globe-Democrat," of Sunday, March 19, 1905.
[18]. Dr. Abbott delivered these lectures in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, during the winter of 1896.
[19]. This is also true of the translation of the Book of Mormon. Some of its passages rise to heights of sublimity, and then again descending to levels that are commonplace and labored.