hout having a drink. All the men in Jefferson could not stop him. Now
look here,' says I, 'there is my week's wages, and I can go past, and
thank God I don't feel the least like drinking, for the Lord Jesus has
saved me from it. If you call that a notion, it is a mighty powerful
notion, and it is a notion that has put clothes on my children's backs,
and plenty of good food on my table, and songs of praise to the Lord in
my mouth. _That's a fact, stranger._ Glory be to God for it. And I would
recommend you to come to prayer-meeting with me, and maybe you would get
religion too. A great many people are getting religion now.'"

His last remark is certainly very true. There are so many, and of such
various characters and grades of life, and in so many places, that every
reader can easily find several Tom Smiths of his own acquaintance, whose
conversions display all the essential facts of this case, and prove
that:

5. The facts of religious experience _are better attested, and more
unobjectionable_ than those of any other science.

Unless they can be shown to be unreasonable or impossible, we are bound
to receive them, when presented by the experimentists who have
discovered them, though personally we may not have any such experience;
just as we believe the chemists, or the astronomers who relate their
discoveries which personally we have not observed. But the facts of
religion are _by no means unreasonable_. They can not be shown to
contradict any known law of the human mind. It is true they are
mysterious. But so are the facts of physical science--heat, light,
electricity, gravitation. Of either, we may be quite certain that such
phenomena exist, and utterly ignorant of the mode of their operation. It
were as utterly unphilosophical to deny that Almighty God could impart
nervous energy to the languid limbs of your sick neighbor, because you
are ignorant of its origin and means of transmission, as to deny that
God could impart spiritual electricity to his paralyzed soul, because
you are ignorant of the mode in which he bestows it. And ignorance is
all that you can plead in this case. You must just admit that having
tried an experiment which you have not, your religious friend has a
right to know more than you.

Moreover, the facts of religion are presented for belief upon _the most
abundant and reliable testimony_. In physical science you must rely on
the testimony of a very few observers--the great bulk even of scienti