ited to Christianity. Though less
refined, they are certainly not less strong in the heart of the
Methodist and the Tyrolese peasant than in the heart of Mr. Mozley.
Indeed, those feelings belong to the primal powers of man's nature. A
'sceptic' may have them. They find vent in the battle-cry of the
Moslem. They take hue and form in the hunting-grounds of the Red
Indian; and raise all of them, as they raise the Christian, upon a
wave of victory, above the terrors of the grave.

The character, then, of a miracle, as distinguished from a special
providence, is that the former furnishes _proof_, while in the case of
the latter we have only surmise. Dissolve the element of doubt, and
the alleged fact passes from the one class of 'the preternatural into
the other. In other words, if a special providence could be proved to
be a special providence, it would cease to be a special providence and
become a miracle. There is not the least cloudiness about Mr.
Mozley's meaning here. A special providence is a doubtful miracle.
Why, then, not call it so? The term employed by Mr. Mozley conveys no
negative suggestion, whereas the negation of certainty is the peculiar
characteristic of the thing intended to be expressed. There is an
apparent unwillingness on the part of the lecturer to call a special
providence what his own definition makes it to be. Instead of
speaking of it as a doubtful miracle, he calls it 'an invisible
miracle.' He speaks of the point of contact of supernatural power with
the chain of causation being so high up as to be wholly, or in part,
out of sight, whereas the essence of a special providence is the
uncertainty whether there is any contact at all, either high or low.
By the use of an incorrect term, however, a grave danger is avoided.
For the idea of doubt, if kept systematically before the mind, would
soon be fatal to the special providence, considered as a means of
edification. The term employed, on the contrary, invites and
encourages the trust which is necessary to supplement the evidence.

This inner trust, though at first rejected by Mr. Mozley in favour of
external proof, is subsequently called upon to do momentous duty in
regard to miracles. Whenever the evidence of the miraculous seems
incommensurate with the fact which it has to establish, or rather
when the fact is so amazing that hardly any evidence is sufficient to
establish it, Mr. Mozley invokes 'the affections.' They must urge the