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 physical 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 favourite theory--the desire to establish or
avoid a certain n 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 extricate themselves from its
fatal influence. They had certain data, but not, as it happened,
enough. By a process 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 reached 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
Frankenstein. 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
colour our reports, or to influence our acceptance of reports of
occurrences 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 moral goodness being one
of these. But at this precise point, where they are really of use,
Mr. Mozley excludes the affections and