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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, on themes like these, of a more than judicial calmness.'
[To the argument regarding the quantity of the miraculous, introduced at page 17, Mr. Mozley has done me the honour of publishing a Reply in the seventh volume of the 'Contemporary Review.' — J. T.]
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[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 compliance with his prayers, changes should occur in the order of the universe, was more easy of belief in the ancient world than it can be now. In the very magnitude which it assigns to natural phenomena, science has augmented the distance between them and man, and increased the popular belief in their orderly progression.
As a natural consequence the demand for evidence is more exacting than it used to be, whenever it is affirmed that the order of nature has been disturbed. Let us take as an illustration the miracle by which the victory of Joshua over the Amorites was rendered complete. In this case the sun is reported to have stood still for 'about a whole day' upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon. An Englishman of average education at the present day would naturally demand a greater amount of evidence to prove that this occurrence took place, than would have satisfied an Israelite in the age succeeding that of Joshua. For to the one, the miracle probably consisted in the stoppage of a fiery ball less than a yard in diameter, while to the other it would be the stoppage of an orb fourteen hundred thousand times the earth in size. And even accepting the interpretation that Joshua dealt with what was apparent merely, but that what really occurred was the suspension of the earth's rotation, I think the right to exercise a greater reserve in accepting the miracle, and to demand stronger evidence in support of it than that which would have satisfied an ancient Israelite, will still be conceded to a man of science.