MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 19 



the result unchanged, we infer that miracles are not 

 the effective cause. This important experiment Ma- 

 hometanism has made for us. It has lived and spread 

 without miracles; and to assert, in the face of this, 

 that Christianity has spread because of miracles, is, I 

 submit, opposed both to the spirit of science and the 

 common sense of mankind. 



The incongruity of inferring moral goodness from 

 miraculous power has been dwelt upon above; in an- 

 other particular also the strain put by Mr. Mozley upon 

 miracles is, I think, more than they can bear. In con- 

 sistency with his principles, it is difficult to see how he 

 is to draw from the miracles of Christ any certain con- 

 clusion as to His Divine natwe. He dwells very 

 forcibly on what he calls ' the argument from experi- 

 ence,' in the demolition of which he takes obvious de- 

 light. He* destroys the argument, and repeats it, for 

 the mere pleasure of again and again knocking the 

 breath out of it. Experience, he urges, can only deal 

 with the past; and the moment we attempt to project 

 experience a hairVbreadth beyond the point it has at 

 any moment reached, we are condemned by reason. It 

 appears to me that when he infers from Christ's mira- 

 cles a Divine and altogether superhuman energy, Mr. 

 Mozley places himself precisely under this condemna- 

 tion. For what is his logical ground for concluding 

 that the miracles of the New Testament illustrate Di- 

 vine power? May they not be the result of expanded 

 human power? A miracle he defines as something im- 

 possible to man. But how does he know that the mira- 

 cles of the New Testament are impossible to man? 

 Seek as he may, he has absolutely no reason to adduce 

 save this that man has never hitherto accomplished 

 nidi things. But does the fact that man 7ms never 

 raised the dead prove that he can never raise the dead? 



