in the army prayed, and that the deliverance was felt at the time to be an answer to their prayers; what remains but to accept their statement? We, who are Christians as well as they, can feel no hesitation on the score that pagan writers attribute the occurrence to another cause, to magic or to false gods. Surely we may accept the evidence of the latter to the fact, without taking their hypothetical explanation of it. And we may give our own explanation to it for our own edification, in accordance with what we believe to be divine truth, without being obliged to go on to use it in argument for the conversion of unbelievers. It may be a miracle, though not one of evidence, but of confirmation, encouragement, mercy, for the sake of Christians.

125. Nor does it concern us much to answer the objection that there is nothing strictly miraculous in such an occurrence, because sudden thunder-clouds after drought are not unfrequent; for in addition to other answers which have been made to such a remark in other parts of this Essay, I would answer, Grant me such miracles ordinarily in the early Church, and I will ask no other; grant that upon prayer benefits are vouchsafed, deliverances are effected, unhoped-for St. Theophilus, St. Clement, Origen, St. Cyprian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, p. 277. W. Lowth, however, refers to a passage in St. Cyprian, ad Demetrian. Routh, t. i. p. 153. It really seems unreasonable to demand that every Father should write about everything.

success obtained, sickness cured, tempests laid, pestilences put to flight, famines remedied, judgments inflicted, and there will be no need of inquiring into the causes, whether supernatural or natural, to which they are to be referred. They may or they may not, in this or that case, follow or surpass the laws of nature, and they may surpass them plainly or doubtfully, but the common sense of mankind will call them miraculous; for by a miracle, whatever be its formal definition, is popularly meant an event which impresses upon the mind the immediate presence of the Moral Governor of the world. He may sometimes act through nature, sometimes beyond or against it, but those who admit the fact of such interferences will have little difficulty in admitting also their strictly miraculous character, if the circumstances of the case require it, and those who deny miracles to the early Church will be equally strenuous against allowing her the grace of such intimate influence (if we may so speak upon the course of Divine Providence, as

h Moyle is obliged to allow so much as this, saying of the defeat of the Philistines by a storm on Samuel's prayers, "This fact, though it cannot properly, in the strict and genuine sense of the word, be called a miracle, yet well deserves a place in the lower form of miracles, because it was preternatural, and not performed by the ordinary concurrence of second causes, but by the immediate hand of God." p. 286. Vid. Benedict. xiv. de Can. Sanct. iv. part i. II, who instances the hail-stones in Joshua's battle as 'præter naturam." Vid. infr. n. 143, 193.

66

is here in question, even though it be not miracu

lous.

126. On the whole then we may conclude that the facts of this memorable occurrence are as the early Christian writers state them; that Christian soldiers did ask, and did receive, in a great distress, rain for their own supply, and lightning against their enemies; whether through miracle or not we cannot say for certain, but more probably not through miracle in the philosophical sense of the word. All we know, and all we need know is, that "He made darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about Him, with dark water and thick clouds to cover Him; the Lord thundered out of heaven, and the Highest gave His thunder; hail-stones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows, and scattered them; He sent forth lightnings, and destroyed them."

SECTION II.

THE CHANGE OF WATER INTO OIL AT THE PRAYER

127.

OF ST. NARCISSUS OF JERUSALEM.

N

ARCISSUS, Bishop of Jerusalem, when oil failed for the lamps on the vigil of Easter, sent the persons who had the care of them to the neighbouring well for water. When they brought it, he prayed over it, and it was changed into oil Narcissus was made Bishop about A.D. 180, at the age of eighty-four; he was at a Council on the question of Easter 195, and lived through some years of the third century, dying at the extraordinary age of a hundred and sixteen, or more.

128. It is favourable to the truth of this account, that the instrument of the miracle was an aged, and, as also was the case, a very holy man. It may be added that he was born in the first century, before St. John's death, and was in some sense an Apostolical Father, as Jortin observes.

129. But there are certain remarkable circumstances connected with him, which, as persons regard them,

i Euseb. Hist. vi. 9.

will be viewed in contrary lights, as making the miracle more or as less probable. Eusebius informs us that Narcissus was for some years the victim of a malignant calumny. Three men, disliking his strictness and the discipline he exercised, accused him of some great crime, with an imprecation on themselves if they spoke falsely; the first that he might perish by fire, the second that he might be smitten with disease, and the third that he might lose his eyesight. Narcissus fled from his Church, and lived many years in the wild parts of the country, as a solitary. At length the first of his three accusers was burned in his house, with all his family; the second was covered from head to foot with the disease which he had named; and the third confessed his crime, but, overcome with shame and remorse, lost his eyes by weeping. Narcissus was restored, and died in possession of his see.

130. Now it may be said that the extraordinary nature of this history only increases the improbability of the miracle. It reads like a made story; there is a completeness about it; and there is an extravagance in the notion of the loss of sight by weeping. Yet the same thing happened to St. Francis. "His eyes," says Butler, "seemed two fountains of tears, which were almost continually falling from them, insomuch that at length he almost lost his sight." He was seared with red-hot iron from the ear to the eye-brow,