It is not only that these attempts of Scientific Theology are unsuccessful, they entail, as experience painfully shows, a serious danger. Pride is the ordinary companion of science, and what pride equal to the pride of the science which dares to believe that it has penetrated the secrets of God's action and of man's destiny! Scientific Theology has had the greatest share in religious persecutions; its doctors have had to defend not only their faith but their system, not only God's work but their own work and this simultaneously. Those whose systems were the most logical have generally been the most tyrannical; history in this respect fully confirms what independently of history might fairly be presumed; namely, that supposing the faith equal, "Christian ignorance" is far more naturally and readily inclined to moderation and charity than Theological science. But it is not only the scientific Theologians whose ambition and efforts have led them to mount beyond the sphere of human science; others there are who fall in a different manner into the same error and the same peril. {150} The Mystic Theologians ask for light as to the relations of God to man, not from dialectics and reasoning, but from sentiment and inspiration. They admit between God and man a direct and mysterious communication, which, in certain cases and upon certain conditions, conveys to the human being divine revelations of a character personal and individual. With this torch in the hand they approach the questions which concern grace, prayer, and the destiny awarded by Providence to each creature, and flatter themselves that they are able to raise the veil by which the solution of such questions is hidden.