22 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



such works as no other man did, he ought, logically 

 speaking, to accept the works of those who, in His name, 

 had cast out devils, as demonstrating a proportionate good- 

 ness on their part. But it is people of this class who are 

 consigned to everlasting fire prepared for the devil and 

 his angels. Such zeal as that of Mr. Mozley for miracles 

 tends, I fear, to eat his religion up. The logical threatens 

 to stifle the spiritual. The truly religious soul needs no 

 miraculous proof of the goodness of Christ. The words 

 addressed to Matthew at the receipt of custom required 

 no miracle to produce obedience. It was by no stroke of 

 the supernatural that Jesus caused those sent to seize Him 

 to go backward and fall to the ground. It was the sub- 

 lime and holy effluence from within, which needed no 

 prodigy to command it to the reverence even of his foes. 

 As regards the function of miracles in the founding of 

 a religion, Mr. Mozley institutes a comparison between the 

 religion of Christ and that of Mahomet; and he derides 

 the latter as "irrational" because it does not profess to 

 adduce miracles in proof of its supernatural origin. But 

 the religion of Mahomet, notwithstanding this drawback, 

 has thriven in the world, and at one time it held sway 

 over larger populations than Christianity itself. The 

 spread and influence of Christianity are, however, brought 

 forward by Mr. Mozley as "a permanent, enormous, and 

 incalculable practical result" of Christian miracles; and he 

 makes use of this result to strengthen his plea for the 

 miraculous. His logical warrant for this proceeding is 

 not clear. It is the method of science, when a phe- 

 nomenon presents itself, toward the production of which 

 several elements may contribute, to exclude them one 

 by one, so as to arrive at length at the truly effective 



