MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 25 



It is not dehision; how is lie sure that it is not even 

 fraud ? He will answer that the writing bears the marks 

 of sobriety and truth; and that in many cases the bearers 

 of this message to mankind sealed it with their blood. 

 Granted with all my heart; but whence the value of all 

 this? Is it not solely derived from the fact that men, 

 as we know them, do not sacrifice their lives in the attesta- 

 tion of that which they know to be untrue ? Does not the 

 entire value of the testimony of the Apostles depend ulti- 

 mately upon our experience of human nature ? It ap- 

 pears, then, that those said to have seen the miracles 

 based their inferences from what they saw on the argu- 

 ment from experience; and that Mr. Mozley bases his 

 belief in their testimony on the same argument. The 

 weakness of his conclusion is quadrupled by this double 

 insertion of a principle of belief, 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 effect- 

 ually abolishes the basis on which Mr. Mozley seeks to 

 found the Christian religion. 



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 vigor 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, with- 



SCIENCE YI 2 



