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