But suppose that a person making claims to be the Creator of all things, or to be a messenger from him, should attest his claim by shaking the earth, or tearing up a mountain, or turning back the floods of the ocean, it would be impossible for any man to witness these miracles without believing that the Author of all things thus attested his own presence or the authority of his messenger. We have shown that, in the very organization of mind, one of the intuitive truths would necessarily force such a belief on all sane minds.
One other method would be as effective. Should this person predict events so improbable and so beyond all human intelligence as to be equivalent to an equal interruption of experience as to the laws of mind, as time developed the fulfillment of these predictions, the same belief would be induced in the authority of the person thus supernaturally endowed.
In the first case, the evidence would be immediate and most powerful in its inception. In the latter case, the power of the evidence would increase with time.
Miracles and prophecy, then, are the only methods that we can conceive of that would, as our minds are now constituted, insure belief in revelations from the Creator.
But if every human being, in order to believe, must have miracles, there would result such an incessant violation of the laws of nature as to destroy them, and thus to destroy all possibility of miracles.
The only possible way, then, is to have miracles occur at certain periods of time, and then have them adequately recorded and preserved.
This method involves the necessity of interpreting written documents. If, then, the Creator has provided such revelations, the question occurs as to how far they may be accessible to all men. Are there revelations from the Creator in such a form that all men can gain access to them and interpret them for themselves, or are they so recorded that only a few can gain the knowledge they impart, while the many are helplessly dependent on the few?
It is with reference to this question that the interpretation of language becomes a subject of vital and infinite interest to every human being. This subject will therefore occupy the remaining portion of this volume.