4. Five years ago last December, Mr. John Mawson, Sheriff of Newcastle-on-Tyne, was killed on the Town Moor by a terrible explosion of nitro-glycerine. I had been acquainted with him more than five-and-twenty years. He joined the church at Newcastle, of which I was a minister, and remained my friend to the last. He had his doubts on certain points of theology, but he never lost his faith in the great principles of Christianity. When I was over from America once, I spent some time in his company, and we had frequent conversations on religion. "It seems to me," said he, "that we ought to put some trust in our _hearts_. My head has often tempted me to doubt; but my heart has always clung to God and immortality. It does so still; and I believe it is right. Indeed, I have no doubt of it." I remembered his words. They led me to study the moral and spiritual instincts of my nature more thoroughly than I had done before. They led me to study the subject of instinct and natural affection generally. _My_ instincts, like the instincts of my friend, had always clung to God and a future life, and to the principles of religion and virtue, even when reason hesitated and doubted most. I had never given up my belief in any of the great doctrines of Christianity without a painful struggle. But I had been led to think it my duty, when there was a conflict between my head and my heart, to take part with my head. My heart, for instance, would say, "Pray;" but reason, or something in the garb of reason, would say, "Don't. If what you desire is good, God will give it you, whether you pray for it or not; and if it be evil, He will withhold it, pray as you may. Prayer may move a man like yourself; but it cannot move God." And I hearkened to the seeming reason, and gave up prayer. My heart said, "There is a personal, conscious, all-perfect God." My head, or my infidel philosophy said, "There cannot be such a God. A God all-powerful could prevent evil. A God all-good _would_ prevent it. God cannot therefore be a conscious, personal, all-perfect being. He must be a blind, unconscious power; the sum total of natural tendencies, working according to the eternal properties of things, without the possibility of change; and hence the existence of evil, and the prevalence of eternal, unalterable law." And here again my head was permitted to prevail, and my heart, in spite of all its remonstrances, was compelled to give way. And with a personal, conscious, all-perfect God, went the richest treasures of the human heart,--trust in a Fatherly Providence; the hope of a blessed immortality, and faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and justice, and all assurance of human progress and a good time coming.