MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 47 



suggest and illustrate to him a power higher than JNature, 

 a &quot; personal will ; &quot; and they commend the person in whom 

 this power is vested as a messenger from on high. With 

 out these credentials such a messenger would have no right 

 to demand belief, even though his assertion regarding his 

 divine mission were backed by a holy life. Nor is it by 

 miracles alone that the order of Nature is, or may be, dis 

 turbed. The material universe is also the arena of &quot; spe 

 cial providences.&quot; Under these two heads Mr. Mozley dis 

 turbs the total preternatural. One form of the preternatural 

 may shade into the other, as one color passes into another 

 in the rainbow ; but while the line which divides the spe 

 cially providential from the miraculous cannot be sharply 

 drawn, their distinction broadly expressed is this, that 

 while a special providence can only excite surmise more 

 or less probable, it is &quot; the nature of a miracle to give 

 proof, as distinguished from mere surmise of divine de- 

 sign.&quot; m 



Mr. Mozley adduces various illustrations of what he re 

 gards to be special providences as distinguished from mira 

 cles. &quot; The death of Arius,&quot; he says, &quot; was not miraculous, 

 because the coincidence of the death of a heresiarch taking 

 place when it was peculiarly advantageous to the orthodox 

 faith .... was not such as to compel the inference of ex 

 traordinary Divine agency ; but it was a special providence, 

 because it carried a reasonable appearance of it. The mir 

 acle of the Thundering Legion was a special providence, 

 but not a miracle, for the same reason, because the coinci 

 dence of an instantaneous fall of rain in answer to prayer 

 carried some appearance, but not proof, of preternatural 

 agency.&quot; The eminent lecturer s remarks on this head 

 brought to my recollection certain narratives published in 

 Methodist magazines, which I used to read with avidity 

 when a boy. The title of these chapters, if I remember 

 right, was &quot; The Providence of God asserted,&quot; and in them 



