the search after misery, and all from some notion that she is assimilating her condition to the voluntary self-abasement of the Word. Alas, for the world! which is simply forgetful that God is great in all He does, great in His sufferings, and that He makes Saints and holy men in their degree partakers of that greatness. (“Discourses to Mixed Congregations,” p. 313.) RELICS AND MIRACLES. (I.) I SUPPOSE there is nothing which prejudices us more in the minds of Protestants of all classes than our belief in the miracles wrought by the relics and the prayers of the Saints. They inspect our churches, or they attend to our devotions, or they hear our sermons, or they open our books, or they read paragraphs in the newspapers, and it is one and the same story-relics and miracles. Such a belief, such a claim, they consider a self-evident absurdity; they are too indignant even to laugh; they toss the book from them in the fulness of anger and contempt, and they think it superfluous to make one remark in order to convict us of audacious imposture, and to fix upon us the brand of indelible shame. I shall show, then, that this strong feeling arises simply from their assumption of a First Principle, which ought to be proved, if they would be honest reasoners, before it is used to our disadvantage. You observe, we are now upon a certain question of con troversy, in which the argument is not directly about fact. . . We accuse our enemies of untruth in most cases; we do not accuse them, on the whole, of untruth here. I know it is very difficult for prejudice such as theirs to open its mouth at all without some misstatement or exaggeration; still, on the whole, they do bear true, not false witness, in the matter of miracles. We do certainly abound, we are exuberant, we overflow, with stories which cause our enemies, from no fault of ours, the keenest irritation, and kindle in them the most lively resentment against us. Certainly the Catholic Church, from east to west, from north to south, is, according to our conceptions, hung with miracles. The store of relics is inexhaustible; they are multiplied through all lands, and each particle of each has in it at least a dormant, perhaps an energetic virtue, of supernatural operation.1 At Rome there is the true cross, the crib of Bethlehem, and the chair of St. Peter; portions of the crown of thorns are kept at Paris; the holy coat is shown at Trèves; the winding-sheet at Turin; at Monza, the iron crown is formed out of a Nail of the Cross; and another Nail is claimed for the Duomo of Milan; and 1 1 [The following verses, written eighteen years before this passage, may, perhaps, be fitly introduced here :— RELICS OF SAINTS. The Fathers are in dust, yet live to God: And hence we learn with reverence to esteem pieces of our Lady's habit are to be seen in the Escurial. The Agnus Dei, blessed medals, the scapular, the cord of St. Francis, all are the medium of Divine manifestations and graces. Crucifixes have bowed the head to the suppliant, and Madonnas have bent their eyes upon assembled crowds. St. Januarius's blood liquefies periodically at Naples, and St. Winifred's well is the scene of wonders even in our unbelieving country. Women are marked with the sacred stigmata, blood has flowed on Fridays from their five wounds, and their heads are crowned with a circle of lacerations. Relics are ever touching the sick, the diseased, the wounded; sometimes with no result at all, at other times with marked and undeniable efficacy. Who has not heard of the abundant favours gained by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and of the marvellous consequences which have attended the invocation of St. Antony of Padua ? These phenomena are sometimes reported of Saints in their lifetime, as well as after their death, especially if they were evangelists or martyrs. The wild beasts crouched before their victims in the Roman amphitheatre; the axe-man was unable to sever St. Cecilia's head from her body; and St. Peter elicited a spring of water for his jailer's baptism in the Mamertine. St. Francis Xavier turned salt water into fresh for five hundred travellers; St. Raymond was transported over the sea on his cloak; St. Andrew shone brightly in the dark; St. Scholastica gained by her prayers a pouring rain; St. Paul was fed by ravens and St. Frances saw her guardian Angel. I need not continue the catalogue; here what one party urges, the other admits; they join issue over a fact; that fact is the claim of miracles on the part of the Catholic Church; it is the Protestants' charge, and it is our glory. Observe, then, we affirm that the Supreme Being has wrought miracles on earth since the time of the Apostles. Protestants deny it. Why do we affirm? Why do they deny? We affirm it on a First Principle; they deny it on a First Principle; and on either side the First Principle is made to be decisive of the question. . . Both they and we start with the miracles of the Apostles,' and then their First Principle, or presumption against our miracles, is, “What God did once, He is not likely to do again;" while our First Principle, or presumption for our miracles, is this: "What God did once, He is likely to do again." They say, "It cannot be supposed He will work many miracles;" we, "It cannot be supposed that He will work few.” . . The two parties, you see, start with contradictory principles, and they determine the particular miracles which are the subject of dispute by their respective principles, without looking to such testimony as may be brought in their favour. They do not say, "St. Francis, or St. Antony, or St. Philip Neri, did no miracles, for the evidence for them is worth nothing;" or "because what looked like a miracle was not a miracle;" no, but they say, "It is impossible they should have wrought miracles." Bring before the Protestant the largest mass of evidence and testimony in proof of the miraculous liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood at Naples, let him be urged by witnesses of the highest character, chemists of the first fame, circumstances the most favourable for the detection of imposture, coincidences and confirmations the most close, and minute, and indirect, he will not believe it; his First Principle blocks belief... He laughs at the very idea of miracles or supernatural acts, as occurring at this present day, he 'I am arguing with Protestants; if unbelievers are supposed, then they generally use Hume's celebrated argument, which still is a presumption of First Principle, viz. it is impossible to fancy the order of nature interrupted [as to which see p. 139]. laughs at the notion of evidence for them; one is just as likely as another, they are all false. Why? Because of his First Principle: there are no miracles since the Apostles. . . (11.) Now, on the other hand, let us take our own side of the question, and consider how we ourselves stand, relatively to the charge made against us. Catholics, then, hold the mystery of the Incarnation; and the Incarnation is the most stupendous event which ever can take place on earth; and after it, and henceforth, I do not see how we can scruple at any miracle on the mere ground of its being unlikely to happen. No miracle can be so great as that which took place in the Holy House at Nazareth; it is indefinitely more difficult to believe than all the miracles of the Breviary, of the Martyrology, of Saints' lives, of legends, of local traditions, put together; and there is the grossest inconsistency, on the very face of the matter, for any one so to strain out the gnat, and to swallow the camel, as to profess what is inconceivable, yet to protest against what is surely within the limits of intelligible hypothesis. If, through divine grace, we once are able to accept the solemn truth that the Supreme Being was born of a mortal woman, what is there to be imagined which can offend us on the ground of its marvellousness? Thus, you see, it happens that, though First Principles are commonly assumed, not proved, ours in this case admits, if not of proof, yet of recommendation, by means of that fundamental truth which Protestants profess as well as we. When we start with assuming that miracles are are not unlikely, we are putting forth a position which lies im |