MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 47 



suggest and illustrate to him a power higher than Nature, 

 a " personal will ; " and they commend the person in whom 

 this power is vested as a messenger from on high. With- 

 out these credentials such a messenger would have no right 

 to demand belief, even though his assertion regarding his 

 divine mission were backed by a holy life. Nor is it by 

 miracles alone that the order of Nature is, or may be, dis- 

 turbed. The material universe is also the arena of " spe- 

 cial providences." Under these two heads Mr. Mozley dis- 

 turbs the total preternatural. One form of the preternatural 

 may shade into the other, as one color passes into another 

 in the rainbow ; but while the line which divides the spe- 

 cially providential from the miraculous cannot be sharply 

 drawn, their distinction broadly expressed is this, that 

 while a special providence can only excite surmise more 

 or less probable, it is " the nature of a miracle to give 

 proof, as distinguished from mere surmise of divine de- 

 sign." ^ 



Mr. Mozley adduces various illustrations of what he re- 

 gards to be special providences as distinguished from mira- 

 cles. " The death of Arius," he says, " was not miraculous, 

 because the coincidence of the death of a heresiarch taking- 

 place when it was peculiarly advantageous to the orthodox 

 faith .... was not such as to compel the inference of ex- 

 traordinary Divine agency ; but it was a special providence, 

 because it carried a reasonable appearance of it. The mir- 

 acle of the Thundering Legion was a special providence, 

 but not a miracle, for the same reason, because the coinci- 

 dence of an instantaneous fall of rain in answer to prayer 

 carried some appearance, but not proof, of preternatural 

 agency." The eminent lecturer's remarks on this head 

 brought to my recollection certain narratives published in 

 Methodist magazines, which I used to read with avidity 

 when a boy. The title of these chapters, if I remember 

 right, was " The Providence of God asserted," and in them 



