Rationalism, vol. i. p. 120.]

Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be no great result if miracles were
only accepted by the ignorant and superstitious, 'because it is easy
to satisfy those who do not enquire.' But he does consider it 'a
great result' that they have been accepted by the educated. In what
sense educated? Like those statesmen, jurists, and church dignitaries
whose education was unable to save them from the frightful errors
glanced at above? Not even in this sense; for the great mass of Mr.
Mozley's educated people had no legal training, and must have been
absolutely defenceless against delusions which could set even that
training at naught. Like nine-tenths of our clergy at the present
day, they were versed in the literature of Greece, Rome, and Judea;
but as regards a knowledge of nature, which is here the one thing
needful, they were 'noble savages,' and nothing more. In the case of
miracles, then, it behoves us to understand the weight of the
negative, before we assign a value to the positive; to comprehend the
depositions of nature, before we attempt to measure, with them, the
evidence of men. We have only to open our eyes to see what honest and
even intellectual men and women are capable of, as to judging
evidence, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and in
latitude fifty-two degrees north. The experience thus gained ought, I
imagine, to influence our opinion regarding the testimony of people
inhabiting a sunnier clime, with a richer imagination, and without a
particle of that restraint which the discoveries of physical science
have imposed upon mankind.

*****

Having thus submitted Mr. Mozley's views to the examination which they
challenged at the hands of a student of nature, I am unwilling to quit
his book without expressing my admiration of his genius, and my
respect for his character. 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 importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely
maintained self-control, and from an over-ruling, ever-present sense
of the duty,