Excerpt from An Account of Some Well Authenticated Miracles: With an Introduction

The articles which have appeared in the October and November numbers of the Nineteenth Century, on the subject of miracles, have suggested to the writer that out of the innumerable miracles in the Catholic Church, which are considered as well authenticated, a few might be selected, the accounts of which would also show the kind of evidence by which they are supported.

The Scriptures and. The Church have always insisted upon miracles, as one of the proofs of the Almighty's power, and as tests of their own credibility.

A miracle assumes that all the operations of nature are com pletely, immediately, and continually under the power of God. Thus, take the miracle of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea. It is quite clear that, not in a general way but directly, every minute particle of water which composed that vast mass was separately and immediately under the control of the Almighty's will. It is the same with every miracle; it is an influence exercised by the power of the Creator over the atoms, which are thus obedient to the Divine command: and this is not less true if we admit, as we are pressed to do, and as in many cases there is no objection to our admitting, that even miracles are produced by the exercise, through His hand, of the existing powers of nature - as in the above miracle: the wind which droveup the waters of the Red Sea was an existing force of nature. We, therefore, conclude that the same influence pervades all nature, not only when miracles are being wrought, but for ever, and at all times, controlling these atoms. It would seem, indeed, that with God there is no such thing as a miracle-every change which He effects is but the exercise of that control over the powers of nature to produce such a result as He decrees whilst with man all these operations are miraculous; and were we not accustomed to the marvels of nature we should call them all quite as miracu lous as the wonders which we read of in Scripture. If man had never seen a flower, the transmutation out of the elements from the seed and earth into its marvellous beauty would strike him as miraculous; and the transmutation out of the elements, of every blade of grass which springs from the earth, would have the same effect upon his mind.

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