MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 21 



the inward practical sense of truth in man, not even 

 knowing any other proof than this inward testimony, 'If 

 any man will do the will of Him who sent Me, he shall 

 know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' " 



Accepting Mr. Mozley's test, with which alone I am 

 now dealing, it is evident that, in the demonstration of 

 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 demonstrates good- 

 ness, while on the other side it does not. How is this 

 "point of contrary flexure'' to be determined? 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 demonstra- 

 tion of goodness in all cases or in none. If Mr. Mozley 

 accepts Christ's goodness as transcendent, because He did 



