35 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



are not limited to Church of England Protestantism they 

 are not even limited to Christianity. Though less refined, 

 they are certainly not less strong in the heart of the Meth- 

 odist and the Tyrolese peasant than in the heart of Mr. 

 Mozley. Indeed, those feelings belong to the primal 

 powers of man's nature. A "skeptic" may have them. 

 They find vent, in the battle-cry of the Moslem. They 

 take hue and form in the hunting-grounds of the Red 

 Indian; and raise all of them, as they raise the Christian, 

 upon a wave of victory, above the terrors of the grave. 



The character, then, of a miracle, as distinguished from 

 a special providence, is that the former furnishes proof, 

 while in the case of the latter we have only surmise. Dis- 

 solve the element of doubt, and the alleged fact passes 

 from the one class of the preternatural into the other. In 

 other words, if a special providence could be proved to be 

 a special providence, it would cease to be a special provi- 

 dence and become a miracle. There is not the least 

 cloudiness about Mr. Mozley's meaning here. A special 

 providence is a doubtful miracle. Why, then, not call it 

 so? The term employed by Mr. Mozley conveys no 

 negative suggestion, whereas the negation of certainty is 

 the peculiar characteristic of the thing intended to be ex- 

 pressed. There is an apparent unwillingness on the part 

 of the lecturer to call a special providence what his own 

 definition makes it to be. Instead of speaking of it as a 

 doubtful miracle, he calls it "an invisible miracle." He 

 speaks of the point of contact of supernatural power with 

 the chain of causation being so high up as to be wholly, or 

 in part, out of sight, whereas the essence of a special provi- 

 dence is the uncertainty whether there is any contact at all, 

 either high or low. By the use of an incorrect term, how- 

 ever, a grave danger is avoided. For the idea of doubt, if 

 kept systematically before the mind, would soon be fatal to 

 the special providence, considered as a means of edifica- 

 tion. The term employed, on the contrary, invites and 

 encourages the trust which is necessary to supplement the 

 evidence. 



This inner trust, though at first rejected by Mr. Mozley 

 in favor of external proof, is subsequently called upon to 

 do momentous duty in regard to miracles. Whenever the 

 evidence of the miraculous seems incommensurate with the 

 i'act which it has to establish, or rather when the fact is so 



