amples include the early church, the early British church, the medieval church, the Puritans, the Moravians, the early Methodists. The range might have been immensely extended. The Bollandist

collection alone, of the lives of the saints, has been computed to relate about 25,000 miracles. And the inference from this observation I think would be that an exalted feeling of the personal action of God in the world, and perhaps of other supernatural beings as well, favours, nay often generates, a belief in miracles, just as a perception of natural law checks it. Mr. Lecky, from a wider review, has come to a similar conclusion in a more general form.2 Obviously this view helps to explain several of the classes of wonderful stories which we have had to consider. The tendency in question would help to gain credit for exaggerations, and bias men in favour of reports of miracles. It may also, in company with general religious excitement, have promoted cases of false perception, visions, voices, dreams, and the like. Indeed, these latter are at all times more common than some persons may suppose. Neander3 quotes Origen and Tertullian to the effect that visions either in sleep or waking were in their days the most common causes of conversion. I believe that I have

1 Lecky's' History of Rationalism,' vol. i.

2 Lecky's History of European Civilisation,' p. 370 and onwards; 'History of Rationalism,' chap. ii.

" Neander's 'Church History,' English Trans., vol. i. p. 102.

somewhere read the same of South India at the present day. There are, I should think, in England itself few clergymen who have had much to do with the poor who have not had stories of visions related to them. Such, at least, has been my own experience. Further, it may reasonably be supposed that at such times remarkable acts of God's providence do occur, especially in answer to prayer, or to meet some emergency. We can hardly deny this, if we believe in God's moral government of the world. And that government I am at present assuming. I make no doubt that the Almighty does use the course of nature as an instrument for the ends of that government. The question before us is, Does he ever break through that order for those ends? No doubt some of the special providences which I am admitting would seem to be such interferences in the eyes of excited believers. We inquire, Are there also events which have that appearance in the judgment of observant and impartial persons? Now, if we turn again to the narratives just given, the wonderful cures and bodily effects will be seen to be the most plausible cases of such interference. There is here less room for delusion of the mind and the senses than in many alleged miracles. Such delusion will produce wonders, as we know from the tricks of a clever conjuror. But here, as Paley has justly pointed out, is a permanent effect, which it

could not produce. It is, I think, needful to suppose some unknown, or at least ill-understood, powers of nature to explain these cases. I will presently give examples so well attested as to the facts, and yet so extraordinary, as to seem to require this supposition. But as some of the things which I am about to say may seem incredible, and as there may be in the minds of some a natural prejudice against such suppositions as that which I am going to advocate, let me, by way of preface, cite some instances in which men of science have been led to reject wonderful accounts, when well attested, merely because they were inexplicable, and yet all has subsequently proved to be true. Mr. Robert Chambers, in a little pamphlet, entitled 'Testimony: its Posture in the Scientific World,' collected several such instances. A committee of the French Academy last century rejected three nearly contemporary accounts of the fall of meteoric stones. The Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London received with contemptuous incredulity an account of an amputation performed without pain upon a mesmerised patient. Hallam and Mr. Rogers were even treated with rudeness for venturing to describe in England mesmeric phenomena which they had witnessed in France. Gibbon thought that no one could believe in the tongueless speech of the African confessors, save those who also believed in their orthodoxy. A

Mr

strange story was told in France last century about three balls of fire being seen at the points of the cross on a church when thunder was near. The scientific

world rejected the account, but Franklin's discovery that lightning was due to electricity explained the matter. Other examples might be added. I ask, Have we not to learn from such cases diffidence in rejecting an account merely because, in the present state of science, it cannot be explained? Should we not be ready to admit at least as an alternative to the supposition of its falsehood the other supposition of which I have spoken?

The learning and the piety, the genius and the persecutions, of the Port Royalists have given a deep interest to their history. Among its incidents are many miracles, and one especially as well attested as any in ecclesiastical history. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck1 is able to refer to a long list of authoritiesBesogne, Clemencet, Gilbert, Perrier, Pascal, 'Necrologie,' 'Manuel de Port Royal,' 'Histoire du Miracle de la Sainte Épine,' 'Mémoires de Fontaine,' 'Notes de Nicole aux Le tres Provinciales,' Racine 'Histoire Port Royal,' Choiseul 'Mémoires sur la Religion,' 'Attestation des Grands Vicaires de Paris.' I shall quote only a few to whom I have myself referred, but they will, I think, be sufficient to show the strength of the case.

''Port Royal: Its Saints,' by Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, p. 68.

She was afflicted fistula lachrymalis It became of the size nose became carious, The left eye became

The story is briefly this. Marguerite Perrier, niece to the celebrated Blaise Pascal, was placed at the convent of Port Royal with her eldest sister for her education in the year 1653. for three years and a-half with a in the corner of the left eye. of a nut. The bones of the and perforated to the palate. less in size, and the sense of smell was lost. A very offensive discharge came from the sore. The child was under the care of M. Dalencé, an able surgeon, who had proposed, as a last desperate attempt at remedy, to cauterise the fistula. The consent of her father had been asked, and he was indeed intending to be present. At this crisis, a thorn, said to have been part of the crown of Christ in his passion, was sent to Port Royal, and exhibited to the nuns and other inmates on March 24, 1656. The wound of Marguerite was touched with this thorn, and within. a quarter of an hour all signs of her disease had disappeared.

I find this story in the histories of Du Fosse, Fontaine, and Clemencet. The two former were contemporary, and Du Fosse knew the young lady intimately. She was then eleven years old, and lived, according to Fontaine, until the year 1733. Clemencet is a writer of later date, of the early part