MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 33 



question her of her voiceless ' testimony ' they knew 

 nothing. In all cases between man and man, their 

 judgment was to be relied on; but in all cases between 

 man and nature, they were blind leaders of the blind.* 

 Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be no great 

 result if miracles were only accepted by the ignorant 

 and superstitious, 'because it is easy to satisfy those 

 who do not enquire.' But he does consider it * a 

 great result ' that they have been accepted by the edu- 

 cated. In what sense educated? Like those states- 

 men, jurists, and church dignitaries whose education 

 was unable to save them from the frightful errors 

 glanced at above? Not even in this sense; for the 

 great mass of Mr. Mozley's educated people had no 

 legal training, and must have been absolutely defence- 

 less against delusions which could set even that train- 

 ing at naught. Like nine-tenths of our clergy at the 

 present day, they were versed in the literature of 

 Greece, Rome, and Judea; but as regards a knowledge 

 of nature, which is here the one thing needful, they 

 were ' noble savages/ and nothing more. In the case 

 of miracles, then, it behoves us to* understand the 

 weight of the negative, before we assign a value to the 

 positive; to comprehend the depositions of nature, 

 before we attempt to measure, with them, the evidence 

 of men. We have only to open our eyes to see what 

 honest and even intellectual men and women are capa- 



* 'In 1664 two women were hung in Suffolk, under a sentence 

 of Sir Matthew Rale, who took the opportunity of declaring that 

 the reality of witchcraft was unquestionable; "for first, the 

 Scriptures had affirmed so much ; and secondly, the wisdom of all 

 nations had provided laws against such persons, which is an argu- 

 ment of their confidence of such a crime." Sir Thomas Browne, 

 who was a great physician as well as a great writer, was called as a 

 wit ness, and swore " t lint ho was clearly of opinion that the persons 

 were bewitched." ' Lecky's History of Rationalism, vol. i. p. 120. 



