354 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



moral goodness being one of these. But at this precise 

 point, where they are really of use, Mr. Mozley excludes 

 the affections and demands a miracle as a certificate of 

 character. He will not accept any other evidence of the 

 perfect goodness of Christ. " No outward life and 

 conduct/' he says, "however irreproachable, could prove 

 His perfect sinlessness, because goodness depends upon the 

 inward motive, and the perfection of the inward motive is 

 not proved by the outward act." But surely the miracle 

 is an outward act, and to pass from it to the inner motive 

 imposes a greater strain upon logic than that involved in 

 our ordinary methods of estimating men. There is, at 

 least, moral congruity between the outward goodness and 

 the inner life, but there is no such congruity between the 

 miracle and the life within. The test of moral goodness 

 laid down by Mr. Mozley is not the test of John, who says, 

 "He that doeth righteousness is righteous;" nor is it the 

 test of Jesus: " By their fruits ye shall know them: do men 

 gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" But it is the 

 test of another: " If thou be the Son of God, command 

 that these stones be made bread." For my own part, I 

 prefer the attitude of Fichte to that of Mr. Mozley. " The 

 Jesus of John," says this noble and mighty thinker, 

 "knows no other God than the True God, in whom we all 

 are, and live, and may be blessed, and out of whom there 

 is only Death and Nothingness. And," continues Fichte, 

 " he appeals, and rightly appeals, in support of this truth, 

 not to reasoning, but to 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 goodness, 

 while on the other side it does not. How is this " point 



