352 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
are not limited to Church of England Protestantism they 
are not even limited to Christianity. Though less refined, 
they are certainly not less strong in the heart of the Meth- 
odist and the Tyrolese peasant than in the heart of Mr. 
Mozley. Indeed, those feelings belong to the primal 
powers of man's nature. A " skeptic" may have them. 
They find vent in the battle-cry of the Moslem. They 
take hue and form in the hunting-grounds of the Red 
Indian; and raise all of them, as they raise the Christian, 
upon a wave of victory, above the terrors of the grave. 
The character, then, of a miracle, as distinguished from 
a special providence, is that the former furnishes proof, 
while in the case of the latter we have only surmise. Dis- 
solve the element of doubt, and the alleged fact passes 
from the one class of the preternatural into the other. In 
other words, if a special providence could be proved to be 
a special providence, it would cease to be a special provi- 
dence and become a miracle. There is not the least 
cloudiness about Mr. Mozley's meaning here. A special 
providence is a doubtful miracle. Why, then, not call it 
so? The term employed by Mr. Mozley conveys no 
negative suggestion, whereas the negation of certainty is 
the peculiar characteristic of the thing intended to be ex- 
pressed. There is an apparent unwillingness on the part 
of the lecturer to call a special providence what his own 
definition makes it to be. Instead of speaking of it as a 
doubtful miracle, he calls it "an invisible miracle." He 
speaks of the point of contact of supernatural power with 
the chain of causation being so high up as to be wholly, or 
in part, out of sight, whereas the essence of a special provi- 
dence is the uncertainty whether there is any contact at all, 
either high or low. By the use of an incorrect term, how- 
ever, a grave danger is avoided. For the idea of doubt, if 
kept systematically before the mind, would soon be fatal to 
the special providence, considered as a means of edifica- 
tion. The term employed, on the contrary, invites and 
encourages the trust which is necessary to supplement the 
evidence. 
This inner trust, though at first rejected by Mr. Mdzley 
in favor of external proof, is subsequently called upon to 
do momentous duty in regard to miracles. Whenever the 
evidence of the miraculous seems incommensurate with the 
fact which it has to establish, or rather when the fact is so 
