The Historical Proofs of Christianity [pp. 223-247]

THE PRINCETON RE VIE W.
the story that the eyes of a priest of Nantes who doubted them
fell from their sockets. "In remembrance," says Mr. Froude,
"of his old sporting days, the archbishop would mend the
broken wings and legs of hawks which had suffered from herons."
"Dead lambs, pigs, and geese were restored to life, to silence
Sadducees who doubted the resurrection." The biographers of
Xavier relate that, having washed the sores of a poor invalid, he
drank the water, and the sores were forthwith healed. Even St.
Bernard, preaching on a summer day in a church where the people were annoyed by flies, excommunicates these winged insects,
and in the morning they are found to be all dead, and are swept
out in heaps. It would be unjust to say that trivial, ludicrous,
or disgusting circumstances belong to all ecclesiastical miracles.
But such features are so common that they affix a corresponding
character to the set of wonders, taken as a whole, to which they
pertain.
That the miracles of the Bible have a dignity and beauty
peculiar to themselves is acknowledged by disbelievers; for instance, by the author of "Supernatural Religion." If any of
them are thought to bear a different look, they are exceptions.
"Hence," observes Cardinal Newman, "the Scripture accounts
of Eve's temptation by the serpent, of the speaking of Balaam's
ass, of Jonah and the whale, and of the devils sent into the herd
of swine, are by themselves more or less improbable, being unequal in dignity to the rest." "They are then supported,"
adds the same author, "by the system in which they are found,
as being a few out of a multitude, and, therefore, but exceptions
(and, as we suppose, but apparent exceptions) to the general
rule." When the miracles of Scripture are looked at as a body,
they are seen to be of an elevated character. They are at a
wide remove in this respect from the common run of pagan
and ecclesiastical miracles. The contrast is like that of a genuine
coin with a clumsy counterfeit.
8. The evidential value of the miracles of the Gospel is not
weakened, even if it be admitted that miraculous events may
have occasionally occurred in later ages.
The restoration of the sick is commonly through no visible
or demonstrable interference with natural law. Yet no one
should be charged with credulity for holding that in certain
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