20 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



' 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 conceded and I do not see how Mr. 

 Mozley can avoid the concession it destroys the neces- 

 sity 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 gen- 

 eral level of the ocean. Turn the matter as you will, 

 no other warrant will be found for the all-important 

 conclusion that Christ's miracles demonstrate Divine 

 power, than an argument which has been stigmatised 

 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 miracles; and his intellectual plight is 

 therefore worse. He accepts . these miracles on testi- 

 mony. 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 de- 

 rived 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 our experience of human nature? It appears, 

 then, that those said to have seen the miracles, based 

 their inferences from what they saw on the argu- 



