MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 35? 



things. But does the fact that man has never raised the 

 dead prove that he can never raise the dead? "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 con- 

 ceded and I do not see how Mr. Mozley can avoid the con- 

 cession it destroys the necessity 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 general level of the ocean. Turn the matter as 

 you will, no other warrant will be found for the all-impor- 

 tant conclusion that Christ's miracles demonstrate divine 

 power, than an argument which has been stigmatized 

 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 mira- 

 cles; and his intellectual plight is therefore worse. He 

 accepts these miracles on testimony. 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 derived 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 ex- 

 perience of human nature? It appears, then, that those 

 said to have seen the miracles based their inferences from 

 what they saw on the argument 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. 



