MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES. 07 



stand in this relation, and the work we have accomplished 

 is the proper commentary on the methods we have pursued. 

 Before these methods were adopted the unbridled imagi- 

 nation roamed through Nature, putting in the place of 

 law the figments of superstitious dread. For thousands of 

 years witchcraft, and magic, and miracles, and special provi- 

 dences, and Mr. Mozley's " distinctive reason of man," had 

 the world to themselves. They made worse than nothing 

 of it — loorse, I say, because they let and hindered those 

 who might have made something of it. Hence it is that 

 during a single lifetime of this era of " unintelligent im- 

 pulse," the progress in natural knowledge is all but infinite 

 as compared with that of the ages which preceded ours. 



The believers in magic and miracles of a couple of 

 centuries ago had all the strength of Mr. Mozley's present 

 logic on their side. They had done for themselves what 

 he rejoices in having so effectually done for us — cleared the 

 ground of the belief in the order of Nature, and declared 

 magic, miracles, and witchcraft, to be matters for ordinary 

 evidence to decide. "The principle of miracles" thus 

 " befriended " had free scope, and we know the result. 

 Lacking that rock-barrier of natural knowledge which we, 

 laymen of England, now possess, keen jurists and cultivated 

 men were hurried on to deeds, the bare recital of which 

 makes the blood run cold. Skilled in all the rules of human 

 evidence, and versed in all the arts of cross-examination, 

 these men, nevertheless, went systematically astray, and 

 committed the deadliest wrongs against humanity. And 

 why ? Because they could not put Nature into the witness- 

 box, and question her ; of her voiceless " testimony " they 

 knew nothing. In all cases between man and man, their 

 judgment was to be relied on ; but in all cases between 

 man and Nature they were blind leaders of the blind. 1 



1 " In 1664 two women were bung in Suffolk, under a sentence of Sir 

 Matthew Hale, who took the opportunity of declaring that the reality of 



