MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 355 
of contrary flexure" to be determined? It must lie some- 
where between the magicians and Moses, for within this 
space the power passed from the diabolical to the Divine. 
But how to mark the point of passage how, out of a purely 
quantitative difference in the visible manifestation of power, 
we are to infer a total inversion of quality it is extremely- 
difficult to see. Moses, we are informed, produced a large 
reptile; Jannes and Jambres produced a small one. I do 
not possess the intellectual faculty which would enable me 
to infer, from those data, either the -goodness of the one or 
the badness of the other; and in the highest recorded man- 
ifestations of the miraculous I am equally at a loss. Let 
us not play fast and loose with the miraculous; either it is 
a demonstration of goodness in all cases or in none. If 
Mr. Mozley accepts Christ's goodness as transcendent, be- 
cause He did 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 propor- 
tionate goodness 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 re- 
quired 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 sublime and holy effluence from within, which needed 
no prodigy to commend 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 re- 
ligion of Christ and that of Mohammed; 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 Mohammed, notwithstanding this drawback, has thriven 
in the world, and at one time it held sway over larger 
Sopulations than Christianity itself. The spread and in- 
uence 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. 
