20 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



being thus rendered perfectly compatible with the most 

 astounding objective error. 



There are questions in judging of which the affections 

 or sympathies are often our best guides, the estimation of 

 moral goodness being one of these. But at this precise 

 point, where they are really of use, Mr. Mozley excludes 

 the affections and demands a miracle as a certificate of 

 character. He will not accept any other evidence of the 

 perfect goodness of Christ. "No outward life and con- 

 duct," he says, "however irreproachable, could prove His 

 perfect sinlessness, because goodness depends upon the 

 inward motive, and the perfection of the inward motive 

 is not proved by the outward act. ' ' But surely the mira- 

 cle is an outward act, and to pass from it to the inner 

 motive imposes a greater strain upon logic than that in- 

 volved in our ordinary methods of estimating men. There 

 is, at least, moral congruity between the outward goodness 

 and the inner life, but there is no such congruity between 

 the miracle and the life within. The test of moral good- 

 ness laid down by Mr. Mozley is not the test of John, 

 who says, "He that doeth righteousness is righteous"; 

 nor is it the test of Jesus: "By their fruits ye shall 

 know them: do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 

 thistles?" But it is the test of another: "If thou be the 

 Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." 

 For my own part, I prefer the attitude of Fichte to that of 

 Mr. Mozley. "The Jesus of John," says this noble and 

 mighty thinker, "knows no other God than the True God, 

 in whom we all are, and live, and may be blessed, and 

 out of whom there is only Death and Nothingness. 

 And," continues Fichte, "he appeals, and rightly ap- 

 peals, in support of this truth, not to reasoning, but to 



