“There is more in this power of faith than received philosophy has fathomed. By it one’s eyes are opened, and he seems to penetrate the profoundest mysteries of the universe, even to the essence of the Godhead. We may mark it in all our undertakings. Whatever we attempt, nothing doubting, we are almost sure to accomplish. Let me, as a public speaker, desire to produce a certain effect, and let me have full confidence that I shall succeed, and I am sure not to fail. Let me utter a sentiment, with my whole soul absorbed in it, confident that it is going right to the hearts of my hearers, and it goes there. Whenever I am conscious in what I am saying, of this calm, undoubting faith, I am sure of my audience. I no sooner open my lips than I have them under my control, and I can do with them as I please. When I have felt this faith in what I was about to utter, I have felt before uttering it, its effect upon the assembly, and my whole frame has been sensible of something like an electric shock, and it seemed that my audience and I were connected by a magnetic chain. In conversing with a friend, in whom I have full faith, and to whom I can speak with full confidence, I have felt the same. Our souls seem to be melted into one, to move with one and the same will, and each to be exalted and strengthened by the combined power of both. Then rise we into the upper regions of truth, far above the unaided flight of either. Heaven opens to us, and we behold the hidden things of God. Something the same is felt also when one goes forth in love with nature, and yields to her gentle and hallowing influences. We inhale power with her fragrant odors, become conscious of purer, loftier and holier thoughts and feelings, and form stronger and nobler resolutions.” “All that,” said Mr. Cotton, “is common enough, but it is easily explained by sympathy and imagination.”