themselves are not fond of trouble; a book of hard thinking cannot be a book of easy reading; nor is it a book for people to go to who only want available arguments, or to see a question apparently settled in a convenient way.  But we think it is a book for people who wish to see a great subject handled on a scale which befits it and with a perception of its real elements.  It is a book which will have attractions for those who like to see a powerful mind applying itself without shrinking or holding back, without trick or reserve or show of any kind, as a wrestler closes body to body with his antagonist, to the strength of an adverse and powerful argument.  A stern self-constraint excludes everything exclamatory, all glimpses and disclosures of what merely affects the writer, all advantages from an appeal, disguised and indirect perhaps, to the opinion of his own side.  But though the work is not rhetorical, it is not the less eloquent; but it is eloquence arising from a keen insight at once into what is real and what is great, and from a singular power of luminous, noble, and expressive statement.  There is no excitement about its close subtle trains of reasoning; and there is no affectation,—­and therefore no affectation of impartiality.  The writer has his conclusions, and he does not pretend to hold a balance between them and their opposites.  But in the presence of such a subject he never loses sight of its greatness, its difficulty, its eventfulness; and these thoughts make him throughout his undertaking circumspect, considerate, and calm.

The point of view from which the subject of miracles is looked at in these Lectures is thus stated in the preface.  It is plain that two great questions arise—­first, Are miracles possible? next, If they are, can any in fact be proved?  These two branches of the inquiry involve different classes of considerations.  The first is purely philosophical, and stops the inquiry at once if it can be settled in the negative.  The other calls in also the aid of history and criticism.  Both questions have been followed out of late with great keenness and interest, but it is the first which at present assumes an importance which it never had before, with its tremendous negative answer, revolutionising not only the past, but the whole future of mankind; and it is to the first that Mr. Mozley’s work is mainly addressed.

The difficulty which attaches to miracles in the period of thought through which we are now passing is one which is concerned not with their evidence, but with their intrinsic credibility.  There has arisen in a certain class of minds an apparent perception of the impossibility of suspensions of physical law.  This is one peculiarity of the time; another is a disposition to maintain the disbelief of miracles upon a religious basis, and in a connection with a declared belief in the Christian revelation.

The following Lectures, therefore, are addressed mainly to the fundamental question of