368 FRA OMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



my admiration of his genius, and my respect for his char- 

 acter. Though barely known to him personally, his recent 

 death affected me as that of a friend. With regard to the 

 style of his book, I heartily subscribe to the description 

 with which the Times winds up its able and appreciative 

 review. " It is marked throughout with the most serious 

 and earnest conviction, but is without a single word from 

 first to last of asperity or insinuation against opponents; 

 and this not from any deficiency of feeling as to the impor- 

 tance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely 

 maintained self-control, and from an overruling, ever- 

 prasent sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a more 

 than judicial calmness." 



[To the argument regarding the quantity of the mirac- 

 ulous, introduced at page 355, Mr. Mozley has done me 

 the honor of publishing a reply in the seventh volume of 

 the Contemporary Review. J. T.] 



ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES. 



AMONG the scraps of manuscript, written at the time 

 when Mr. Mozley 's work occupied my attention, I find the 

 following reflections: 



With regard to the influence of modern science which 

 Mr. Mozley rates so low, one obvious effect of it is to 

 enhance the magnitude of many of the recorded miracles, 

 and to increase proportionably the difficulties of belief. 

 The ancients knew but little of the vastness of the universe. 

 The Rev. Mr. Kirkman, for example, has shown what 

 inadequate notions the Jews entertained regarding the 

 "firmament of heaven;" and Sir George Airy refers to the 

 case of a Greek philosopher who was persecuted for 

 hazarding the assertion, then deemed monstrous, that the 

 sun might be as large as the whole country of Greece. The 

 concerns of a universe, regarded from this point of view, 

 were much more commensurate with man and his concerns 

 than those of the universe which science now reveals to us; 

 and hence that to suit man's purposes, or that in com- 

 pliance with his prayers, changes should occur in the order 

 of the univerjse, was more easy of belief in the ancient 

 world that it can be now. In the very magnitude which it 



