MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 23 



nature with the ground of reason, befriending in exact 

 proportion as it has done this the principle of miracles.' 

 For ' this belief not having itself a foundation in reason, 

 the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained 

 that miracles, as opposed to the order of nature, are 

 opposed to reason.' When we regard this belief in con- 

 nection with science, 'in which connection it receives a 

 more imposing name, and is called the inductive prin- 

 ciple,' the result is the same. ' The inductive principle 

 is only this unreasoning impulse applied to a scientifically 



ascertained fact Science has led up to the fact ; 



but there it stops, and for converting this fact into a 

 law, a totally unscientific principle comes into play, the 

 same as that which generalises the commonest observa- 

 tion of nature.' 



The eloquent pleader of the cause of miracles passes 

 over without a word the results of scientific investiga- 

 tion, as proving anything rational regarding the prin- 

 ciples or method by which such results have been 

 achieved. Here, as elsewhere, he declines the test, ' By 

 their fruits shall ye know them.' Perhaps our best way 

 of proceeding will be to give one or two examples of the 

 mode in which men of science apply the unintelligent 

 impulse with which Mr. Mozley credits them, and which 

 shall show, by illustration, the surreptitious method 

 whereby they climb from the region of facts to that of 

 laws. 



Before the sixteenth century it was known that 

 water rises in a pump ; the effect being then explained 

 by the maxim that ' Nature abhors a vacuum.' It wan 

 not known that there was any limit to the height to 

 which the water would ascend, until, on one occasion, 

 the gardeners of Florence, while attempting to raise 

 water to a very great elevation, found that the column 

 ceased at a height of thirty-two feet. Beyond this all 



