MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 21 



ment 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. 



Over this argument from experience, which at bot- 

 tom is his argument. Mr. Mozley rides rough-shod. 

 There is a dash of scorn in the energy with which he 

 tramples on it. Probably some previous writer had 

 made too much of it, and thus invited his powerful 

 assault. Finding the difficulty of belief in miracles to 

 rise from their being in contradiction to the order of 

 nature, he sets himself to examine the grounds of our 

 belief in that order. With a vigour of logic rarely 

 equalled, and with a confidence in its conclusions never 

 surpassed, he disposes of this belief in a manner cal- 

 culated to startle those who, without due examination, 

 had come to the conclusion that the order of nature 

 was secure. 



What we mean, he sayp, by our belief in the order 

 of nature, is the belief that the future will be like the 

 past. There is not, according to Mr. Mozley, the 

 slightest rational basis for this belief. 



That any cause in nature is more permanent than its 

 existing and known effects, extending further, and about to 

 produce other and more instances besides what it has pro- 

 duced already, we have no evidence. Let us imagine,' he 

 continues, 'the occurrence of a particular physical pheno- 

 menon for the first time. Upon that single occurrence we 

 should have but the very faintest expectation of another. 

 If it did occur again, once or twice, so far from counting on 



