fic
men having no opportunity of testing the facts themselves, and being
well satisfied if any fact is confirmed by the testimony of two or three
philosophers--and this testimony often contradictory, and always
fallible, as the discordant results of their experiments prove. But here
you have a great multitude of experimentists, in every city and village
of the land, of every variety of intellect and education, prosecuting
the same course of experiments, and all arriving at the same results.
They do not all confess the _same_ sins, but they all felt the power of
_some_ sin, and felt miserable in their guilt. And however they may
differ in their external circumstances, their inward constitution, or in
their views of the outward part of religion, there is no difference
among them about the great facts of their religious experience. They all
believed the faithful saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners, cried to God for mercy through him, and received peace of
mind, grace to live a new life, and to delight in the worship of God. Do
you know any science which has been prosecuted by one-hundredth part of
this number of inquirers? Which has been confirmed by one-thousandth
part of this number of experimenters? Or any experiment tried with such
uniform and unfailing success as this, "_Whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be saved?_"[384] Why then do you hesitate to
admit the correctness of these facts? Is it because you perceive they
lead to results which you dislike?

They do lead to results. They are effects and tell us of a cause. They
are powerful effects, and proclaim a powerful cause. They are moral and
spiritual effects, and assure us of the existence of a moral and
spiritual agent who has caused them. They are holy effects, and convince
your sinful soul that they are produced by a holy being. But they are
also benevolent, life-giving, blessed effects, and proclaim that God is
love. The Lord, the Spirit, is as plainly declared in the facts of
religious experience, as the Creator is in the creation of the universe;
and it were as rank Atheism to attribute these orderly and blessed
results to chance or to evil passions, as to attribute the Cosmos to
blind fate, or to the beasts that perish. He is as much an enemy to his
happiness who denies the one, as a foe to his reason who rejects the
other. Dear reader, why should you not believe in,

6. _The only science which can make you happy?_ w