Many other persons dismiss this subject by saying that all souls, like all objects in nature and events in history, are parts of an everlasting and universal process, and that speculation is useless and a weariness to the flesh.  That is the easiest way out of the difficulty, but it can be taken only by ignoring the facts.  Are all ideas concerning spiritual ministry delusions?  Then how shall we account for the imagination which is capable of giving birth to such magnificent dreams?  And we may venture to ask also—­Who started this movement in which we are all involved?  How comes it that in this cosmic loom such a wondrous fabric is being woven, if there is no pattern, and no weaver, and will be no one to enjoy the work when it is finished?

Possibly no one is warned against sin, impelled toward virtue, supported in sorrow, led into larger visions of truth; and, possibly, truth and right are also dreams, and the mind itself a delusion; and, possibly, there is nothing but delusion.  Then all study and struggle are useless; let us go to sleep.  But, some one else says, perhaps the phenomena of which you speak are, in one sense, realities but caused by reactions of the soul on itself.  First it imagines that some spiritual leadership is desirable, and then it concludes that that leadership is discernible.  In other words, sorrow, sin, relief, joy, truth, right, are only imaginations born of other imaginations.  If any are satisfied with such reasoning the task of enlightening them is hopeless.

There is another explanation of the sublime, ancient, and world-wide facts which are before us.  It is the answer of Jesus, which is simple, profound, rational, and satisfying.  He told His disciples, when they were grieving that they should see Him no more, that they would always have with them the Spirit of Truth who would convict of sin, show things to come, and lead into all truth.  That Spirit in the Scriptures is called by one of the sweetest and dearest names in the languages of men—­the Comforter.  Some have wrongly imagined that the New Testament teaches that the presence of the Comforter is a new event in human history.  Not so.  The Spirit of Truth inspired and sustained the Apostles and Martyrs as He had sustained the Patriarchs and Prophets and the same Spirit which is represented as descending upon Jesus at His baptism brooded upon the face of the waters when the earth was without form and void.

Jesus teaches that God, as a Spirit, has never been absent from His creation and never out of touch with the spirits of men.  In the beginning He created; later He inspired, supported, taught, comforted; and always and everywhere He is present to sustain, to lead, to comfort, to help, to save, and to bless.  How simple, rational, and satisfying is this interpretation of the phenomena of human history!