MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 17 



moral goodness, the quantity of the miraculous comes 

 into play. Had Christ, for example, limited himself to 

 the conversion of water into wine, He would have fallen 

 short of the performance of Jannes and Jambres ; for it 

 is a smaller thing to convert one liquid into another 

 than to convert a dead rod into a living serpent. But 

 Jannes and Jambres, we are informed, were not good. 

 Hence, if Mr. Mozley's test be a true one, a point must 

 exist, on the one side of which miraculous power demon- 

 strates goodness, while on the other side it does not. 

 How is this 'point of contrary flexure' to be deter- 

 mined ? It must lie somewhere 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 manifestations 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, because 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 proportionate goodness on their part. 

 But it is people of this class who are consigned to ever- 

 lasting 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 mira- 



