MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 21 



to which he flatly denies rationality. His reasoning, in 

 fact, cuts two ways if it destroys our trust in the order 

 of nature, it far more effectually abolishes the basis 

 on which Mr. Mozley seeks to found the Christian re- 

 ligion. 



Over this argument from experience, which at bottom 

 is his argument, Mr. Mozley rides rough-shod. There 

 is a dash of scorn in the energy with which he tramples 

 on it. Probably some previous writer had made too 

 much of it, and thus invited his powerful assault. 

 Finding the difficulty of belief in miracles to rise from 

 their being in contradiction to the order of nature, he 

 sets himself to examine the grounds of our belief in 

 that order. With a vigour of logic rarely equalled, and 

 with a confidence in its conclusions never surpassed, he 

 disposes of this belief in a manner calculated to startle 

 those who, without due examination, had come to the 

 conclusion that the order of nature was secure. 



What we mean, he says, by our belief in the order 

 of nature, is the belief that the future will be like the 

 past. There is not, according to Mr. Mozley, the slight- 

 est rational basis for this belief. 



* That any cause in nature is more permanent than its 

 existing and known effects, extending further, and about to 

 produce other and more instances besides what it has pro- 

 duced already, we have no evidence. Let us imagine/ he 

 continues, 'the occurrence of a particular physical pheno- 

 menon for the first time. Upon that single occurrence we 

 should have but the very faintest expectation of another. 

 If it did occur again, once or twice, so far from counting on 

 another occurrence, a cessation would occur as the most 

 natural event to us. But let it continue one hundred times, 

 and we should find no hesitation in inviting persons from a 

 distance to see it ; and if it occurred every day for years, its 

 occurrence would be a certainty to us, its cessation a 



