MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 355 



of contrary flexure" to be determined? It must lie some- 

 where between the magicians and Moses, for within this 

 space the power passed from the diabolical to the Divine. 

 But how to mark the point of passage how, out of a purely 

 ^quantitative difference in the visible manifestation of power, 

 we are to infer a total inversion of quality it is extremely 

 'difficult to see. Moses, we are informed, produced a large 

 reptile; Jannes and Jambres produced a small one. I do 

 not possess the intellectual faculty which would enable me 

 to infer, from those data, either the goodness of the one or 

 the badness of the other; and in the highest recorded man- 

 ifestations of the 'miraculous I am equally at a loss. Let 

 us not play fast and loose with the miraculous; either it is 

 :a demonstration of goodness in all cases or in none. If 

 Mr. Mozley accepts Christ's goodness as transcendent, be- 

 cause He did such works as no other man did, he ought, 

 logically speaking, to accept the works of those who, in 

 His name, had cast out devils, as demonstrating a proper-, 

 tionate goodness on their part. But it is people of this 

 class who are consigned to everlasting fire prepared for the 

 devil and his angels. Such zeal as that of Mr. Mozley for 

 miracles tends, I fear, to eat his religion up. The logical 

 threatens to stifle the spiritual. The truly religious soul 

 needs no miraculous proof of the goodness of Christ. The 

 words addressed to Matthew at the receipt of custom re- 

 quired no miracle to produce obedience. It was T)y no 

 stroke of the supernatural that Jesus caused those sent to 

 seize Him to go backward and fall to the ground. It was 

 the sublime and holy effluence from within, which needed i 

 no prodigy to commend it to the reverence even of hisy 

 foes. 



As regards the function of miracles in the founding of a 

 religion, Mr. Mozley institutes a comparison between the re- 

 ligion of Christ and that of Mohammed; and he derides the 

 latter as " irrational " because it does not profess to adduce 

 miracles in proof of its supernatural origin. But the religion 

 of Mohammed, notwithstanding this drawback, has thriven 

 in the world, and at one time it held sway over larger 

 populations than Christianity itself. The spread and in- 

 fluence of Christianity are, however, brought forward by 

 Mr. Mozley as " a permanent, enormous, and incalculable 

 practical result" of Christian miracles; and he makes use 

 of this result to strengthen his plea for the miraculous. 



