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to be lost to the knowledge of the multitude. Now this relic has not yet been two years at Hippo-Regius, and accounts of many of the miracles performed by it have not been written, as is most certainly known to us, yet the number of those which have been published, up to the time this is written, amounts ta about seventy. At Calama, however, where these relics have been longer, and more of the miracles were recorded, they incomparably exceed this number."(1)

      Augustine goes on to say that, to his knowledge, many very remarkable miracles were performed by the relics of the same martyr also at Uzali, a district near to Utica, and of one of these, which had recently taken place when he himself was there, he gives an account. Then, before closing his list with the narrative of a miracle which took place at Hippo, in his own church, in his own presence, and in the sight of the whole congregation, he resumes his reply to the opening question:—"Many miracles, therefore," he says, "are also performed now, the same God who worked those of which we read, performing these by whom he wills and as he wills; but these miracles neither become similarly known, nor, that they may not slip out of mind, are they stamped, as it were like gravel, into memory, by frequent reading. For even in places where care is taken, as is now the case amongst us, that accounts of those who receive benefit should be publicly read, those who are present hear them only once, and many are not present at all, so that those who were present do not, after a few days, remember what they heard, and scarcely a single person is met with who repeats what he has heard to one whom he may have known to have been absent"(1)

      So far from casting doubt upon the miracles which he narrates, the "Preface" of Augustine is clearly intended to establish them. These "signs of divine power similar to those of old," are not less real and important, but merely less known, because the eyes of the world are not directed to them, and they have not the advantage of being everywhere published abroad by means of canonical scriptures constantly read to the people and acknowledged as authoritative. Dr. Mozleys statement is quite unwarranted, and it seems to us gratuitously injurious to St. Augustine. This Father of the Church and Bishop must have had as little good faith as good sense, if he did what such a statement implies. In order to demonstate the truth of his assertion that miracles were still performed in his day, Dr. Mozley represents Augustine as deliberately producing a long list of instances of which "he cannot even be said to guarantee the truth," and the more important cases in which "evidently represent no more than mere report, and report of a very vague kind." We have furnished the reader with the materials for forming an opinion on these points. The judgment of Dr. Mozley may with equal justice be applied to the authors of the synoptic Gospels. They certainly do not guarantee the truth of the miracles they relate in any more precise way than Augustine. Like him, they merely narrate them as facts, and he as evidently believes what he states as they do. Indeed, as regards comparative fulness of testimony, the advantage is altogether on the side of the miracles reported by St. Augustine. These miracles occurred within two years of the time at which he wrote, and were at once recorded with the names of the subjects and of the places at which they occurred; most of them were performed in his own diocese, and several of them in his own presence; some, of which he apparently did not feel sure, he personally investigated; he states his knowledge of others, and he narrates the whole of them with the most direct and simple affirmation of the facts, without a single word indicating hesitation, or directly or indirectly attributing the narrative to mere report. Moreover, he not only advances these miracles deliberately and in writing, in support of his positive assertion that miracles were still performed, but these accounts of them had in the first instance been written that they might be publicly read in his own church for the edification of Christians, almost on the very spot where they are stated to have occurred. We need scarcely say that we do not advance these reasons in order to argue the reality of the miracles themselves, but simply to maintain that, so far from his giving the account of them as mere report, or not even professing to vouch for their truth, St. Augustine both believed them himself, and asked others to believe them as facts, and that they are as unhesitatingly affirmed as any related in the Gospels.

      We shall not attempt any further detailed reference to the myriads of miracles with which the annals of the Church teem up to very recent times. The fact is too well known to require evidence. The saints in the Calendar are legion. It has been computed that the number of those whose lives are given in the Bollandist Collection(1) amounts to upwards of 25,000, although, the saints being arranged according to the Calendar, the unfinished work only reaches the twenty-fourth of October. When it is considered that all those upon whom the honour of canonization is conferred have worked miracles, many of them, indeed, almost daily performing such wonders, some idea may be formed of the number of miracles which have occurred in unbroken succession from Apostolic days, and have been believed and recognized by the Church. Vast numbers of these miracles are in all respects similar to those narrated in the Gospels, and they comprise hundreds of cases of restoration of the dead to life. If it be necessary to point out instances in comparatively recent times, we may mention the miracles of this kind liberally ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi, in the 13th century, and to his namesake St. Francis Xavier, in the 16th, as pretty well known to all, although we might refer to much more recent miracles authenticated by the Church. At the present day such phenomena have almost disappeared, and, indeed, with the exception of an occasional winking picture, periodical liquefaction of blood, or apparition of the Virgin, confined to the still ignorant and benighted corners of the earth, miracles are extinct.

      CHAPTER VI. MIRACLES IN RELATION TO IGNORANCE AND SUPERSTITION

       Table of Contents

      We have maintained that the miracles which are reported after apostolic days, instead of presenting the enormous distinction which Dr. Mozley asserts, are precisely of the same types in all material points as the earlier miracles. Setting aside miracles of a trivial and unworthy character, there remains a countless number cast in the same mould as those of the Gospels—miraculous cure of diseases, expulsion of demons, transformation of elements, supernatural nourishment, resurrection of dead—of many of which we have quoted instances. Dr. Mozley anticipates an objection and says: "It will be urged, perhaps, that a large portion even of the Gospel miracles are of the class here mentioned as ambiguous; cures, visions, expulsions of evil spirits; but this observation does not affect the character of the Gospel miracles as a body, because we judge of the body or whole from its highest specimen, not from its lowest." He takes his stand upon, "e.g. our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension."(1) Now, without discussing the principle laid down here, it is evident that the great distinction between the Gospel and other miracles is thus narrowed to a very small compass. It is admitted that the mass of the Gospel miracles are of a class characterized as ambiguous, because "the current miracles of human history" are also chiefly of the same type, and the distinctive character is derived avowedly only from a few high specimens, such as the Resurrection. We have already referred to the fact that in the synoptic Gospels there is only one case, reported by the third Gospel alone, in which Jesus is said to have raised the dead. St. Augustine alone, however, chronicles several cases in which life was restored to the dead. Post-apostolic miracles, therefore, are far from lacking this ennobling type. Observe that Dr. Mozley is here not so much discussing the reality of the subsequent miracles of the Church, as contrasting them and other reputed miracles with those of the Gospel, and from this point of view it is impossible to maintain that the Gospels have a monopoly of the highest class of miracles. Such miracles are met with long before the dawn of Christianity, and continued to occur long after apostolic times.

      Much stress is laid upon the form of the Gospel miracles; but as we have already shown, it is the actual resurrection of the dead, for instance, which is the miracle, and this is not affected by the more or less dramatic manner in which it is said to have been effected, or in which the narrative of the event is composed. Literary skill, and the judicious management of details, may make or mar the form of any miracle. The narrative of the restoration of the dead child to life by Elisha might have been more impressive, had the writer omitted the circumstance that the child sneezed seven times before opening his eyes, and Dr. Mozley would probably have considered the miracle greater had the prophet merely said to the child, "Arise!" instead of stretching himself on the body; but setting aside human cravings for the picturesque and artistic, the essence of the miracle

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