ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES 43 



able and willing to do so and so ? I am not prepared to 

 deny your competence. To the human mind belongs the 

 faculty of enlarging and diminishing, of distorting and 

 combining, indefinitely the objects revealed by the senses. 

 It can imagine a mouse as large as an elephant, an ele- 

 phant as large as a mountain, and a mountain as high as 

 the stars. It can separate congruities and unite incongru- 

 ities. We see a fish and we see a woman; we can drop 

 one half of each, and unite in idea the other two halves 

 to a mermaid. We see a horse and we see a man; we are 

 able to drop one half of each, and unite the other two 

 halves to a centaur. Thus also the pictorial representa- 

 tions of the Deity, the bodies and wings of cherubs and 

 seraphs, the hoofs, horns, and tail of the Evil One, the 

 joys of the blessed, and the torments of the damned, have 

 been elaborated from materials furnished to the imagina- 

 tion by the senses. It behooves you and me to take care 

 that our notions of the Power which rules the universe 

 are not mere fanciful or ignorant enlargements of human 

 power. The capabilities of what you call your reason are 

 not denied. By the exercise of the faculty here adverted 

 to, you can picture to yourself a Being able and willing 

 to do any and every conceivable thing. You are right 

 in saying that in opposition to this Power science is of no 

 avail — ^that it is "a weapon of air." The man of science, 

 however, while accepting the figure, would probably re- 

 verse its application, thinking it is not science which is 

 here the thing of air, but that unsubstantial pageant of the 

 imagination to which the solidity of science is opposed. 



