at the
writer strikes out a line for himself, and puts forth his strength. His
argument may be described generally as a plea for reason against
imagination and the broad impressions of custom. Experience, such
experience as we have of the world and human life, has, in all ages,
been really the mould of human thought, and with large exceptions, the
main unconscious guide and controller of human belief; and in our own
times it has been formally and scientifically recognised as such, and
made the exclusive foundation of all possible philosophy. A philosophy
of mere experience is not tolerant of miracles; its doctrines exclude
them; but, what is of even greater force than its doctrines, the subtle
and penetrating atmosphere of feeling and intellectual habits which
accompanies it is essentially uncongenial and hostile to them. It is
against the undue influence of such results of experience--an influence
openly acting in distinct ideas and arguments, but of which the greater
portion operates blindly, insensibly, and out of sight--that Mr. Mozley
makes a stand on behalf of reason, to which it belongs in the last
resort to judge of the lessons of experience. Reason, as it cannot
create experience, so it cannot take its place and be its substitute;
but what reason can do is to say within what limits experience is
paramount as a teacher; and reason abdicates its functions if it
declines to do so, for it was given us to work upon and turn to account
the unmeaning and brute materials which experience gives us in the
rough. The antecedent objection against miracles is, he says, one of
experience, but not one of reason. And experience, flowing over its
boundaries tyrannically and effacing its limits, is as dangerous to
truth and knowledge as reason once was, when it owned no check in
nature, and used no test but itself.

Mr. Mozley begins by stating clearly the necessity for coming to a
decision on the question of miracles. It cannot remain one of the open
questions, at least of religion. There is, as has been said, a
disposition to pass by it, and to construct a religion without
miracles. The thing is conceivable. We can take what are as a matter of
fact the moral results of Christianity, and of that singular power with
which it has presided over the improvement of mankind, and alloying and
qualifying them with other elements, not on the face of the matter its
products, yet in many cases indirectly connected with its working, form