MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 35? 
things. But does the fact that man has never raised the 
dead prove that he can never raise the dead? "Assuredly 
not," must be Mr. Mozley's reply; "for this would be 
pushing experience beyond the limit it has now reached 
which I pronounce unlawful/' Then a period may come 
when man will be able to raise the dead. If this be con- 
ceded and I do not see how Mr. Mozley can avoid the con- 
cession it destroys the necessity of inferring Christ's 
divinity from His miracles. He. it may be contended, 
antedated the humanity of the future; as a mighty tidal 
wave leaves high upon the beach a mark which by and by 
becomes the general level of the ocean. Turn the matter as 
you will, no other warrant will be found for the all-impor- 
tant conclusion that Christ's miracles demonstrate divine 
power, than an argument which has been stigmatized 
by Mr. Mozley as a " rope of sand" the argument from 
experience. 
The learned Bampton lecturer would be in this position, 
even had he seen with his own eyes every miracle recorded 
in the New Testament. But he has not seen these mira- 
cles; and his intellectual plight is therefore worse. He 
accepts these miracles on testimony. Why does he believe 
that testimony? How does he know that it is not 
delusion; how is he 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 attestation of that which 
they know to be untrue? Does not the entire value of the 
testimony of the apostles depend ultimately upon onr ex- 
perience of human nature? It appears, then, that those 
said to have seen the miracles based their inferences from 
what they saw on the argument 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 effectually abolishes the basis on which Mr. 
Mozley seeks to found the Christian religion. 
