---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 2
number: 5
published: 1899-03
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: "Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, \"Editor’s Table: The Prompter,\" *Improvement Era* 2, no. 5 (March 1899): 383."
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera25unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera25unse
start_page: 383
end_page: 383
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1899-03)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera25unse
  publication_year: 1899
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1899, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Editor’s Table: The Prompter

<!-- page:383 -->

be. Will the curtain rise on another stage? Reason says perhaps!
Hope whisper yes!"
This is the very ecstacy of agnosticism, the poetry of doubt,
the music of melancholy—half hope, half fear> Poetry? Yes, it
is; it is sad poetry, though; agnostic poetry must be sad, but is
poetry, nevertheless; and it is that which, as we believe, constitutes
its chief attraction for agnostics in general and for Colonel Ingersoll in particular. Strange, is it not, that one should be in love
with doubt—with death? Yet some spirits there are who love to
dwell in darkness—wrapt in the solitude of their own gloom, and
to whom light-stepping Joy yields not so much as a poor fraction
of the pleasure that darkest Melancholy gives them. So with Colonellngersoll ; that same sad "perhaps," which stands beside him
at his brother's grave, or at a friend's dying bed, seems to have a
charm for him which certainty could never produce. There is
something awe-inspiring in uncertainty, in mystery; it is that
which attracts men to agnostic tendencies of thought. But what
a sad commentary on the wisdom which brought into existence
this glorious world of ours if Colonel Ingersoll's statements were
true! "In the drama of life we are all actors, and no one knows
his part. No prompter's voice is heard !
" What an absurd drama
indeed, this life would be if this were true ! Truly, if none knows
his part and there is no prompter, then indeed are we fools on a fool's
errand.
But enough of negative exclamation. We may know our
parts if we but learn them; and if there are moments of doubt
and uncertainty we may hear the Prompter's voice if only we open
our ears to hear and our hearts to understand. Wh}?-, the very
heathen comes to a better conclusion than the agnostic. The wild,
free spirits of Scandinavia, curbing their passions somewhat and
bowing at the shrine of Odin, in the main knew their parts and
wherein they failed Odin prompted them. The still wilder spirits
of Arabia heard their Prompter in the shrill voice of Mohammed,
and in Islam learned their parts. It would be a sad mistake to
suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain this
Mohammedan faith, which so many creatures of the Almighty have
lived by and died by. Time would fail us to speak of Socrates, of
Confucius, of Plato, of Moses, of Christ and the prophets, who all.