MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 353 
amazing that hardly any evidence is sufficient to establish 
it, Mr. Mozley invokes " the affections." They must urge 
the reason to accept the conclusion, from which unaided it 
recoils. The affections and emotions are eminently the 
court of appeal in matters of real religion, which is an 
affair of the heart; but they are not, I submit, the court in 
which to weigh allegations regarding the credibility of phys- 
ical facts. These must be judged by the dry light of the 
intellect alone, appeals to the affections being reserved for 
cases where moral elevation, and not historic conviction, is 
the aim. It is, moreover, because the result, in the case 
under consideration, is deemed desirable that the affections 
are called upon to back it. If undesirable, they would, with 
equal right, be called upon to act the other way. Even to 
the disciplined scientific mind this would be a dangerous 
doctrine. A favorite theory the desire to establish or 
avoid a certain result can so warp the mind as to destroy 
its powers of estimating facts. I have known men to work 
for years under a fascination of this kind, unable to ex- 
tricate themselves from its fatal influence. They had 
certain data, but not, as it happened, enough. By a proc- 
ess exactly analogous to that invoked by Mr. Mozley, they 
supplemented the data, and went wrong. From that hour 
their intellects were so blinded to the perception of adverse 
phenomena that they never readied truth. If, then, to 
the disciplined scientific mind, this incongruous mixture 
of proof and trust be fraught with danger, what must it be 
to the indiscriminate audience which Mr. Mozley addresses? 
In calling upon this agency he acts the part of Franken- 
stein. It is a monster thus evoked that we see stalking 
abroad, in the degrading spiritualistic phenomena of the 
present day. Again, I say, where the aim is to elevate the 
mind, to quicken the moral sense, to kindle the fire of 
religion in the soul, let the affections by all means be 
invoked; but they must not be permitted to color our 
reports, or to influence our acceptance of reports of occur- 
rences in external nature. Testimony as to natural facts 
is worthless when wrapped in this atmosphere of the 
affections; the most earnest subjective truth being thus 
rendered perfectly compatible with the most astounding 
objective error. 
There are questions in judging of which the affections 
or sympathies are often our best guides, the estimation of 
