20 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



pronounce unlawful.' Then a, period may come when 

 man will be able to raise the dead. If this be conceded 

 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-important conclusion that Christ's miracles demon- 

 strate Divine power, than an argument which has been 

 stigmatised 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 miracles ; 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 experience 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 quad- 

 rupled by this double insertion of a principle of belief, 



