telligible play of parts toward reasonable determined end.

This leads to the grand cosmic fact-In nature nothing exists in vain, or purposeless. We can no more destroy an atom, than we can annihilate a world. There is a basis, a reason, a purpose, for all. Sin-the result of voluntary departure from right doing, is not less awful, as a painful deprivation, than moral purity is glorious as a realization. Amid wildest storms, reason has a foreboding, and hears whispers, that sooner or later wisdom and goodness will prevail. Even the systematically bad, who on perverse principle act despitefully against all goodness, believe in the glory and excellence of virtue. By the candle held in the skeleton hand of poverty, men read the mysteries of their heart; while unnoticed and obscure in their retreat of study, are men whom kings may be proud to call their subjects; and these, specially, great in the sanctity of spiritual attainment, and in forestalments of science, delight in that intellectual, emotional, sensitive faculty which accepts marvels, stands in awe of sacred visions, discerns remarkable coincidences, verifies predictions, believes in supernatural guidings, and looks for revelations of the unknown.

A sceptic may exclaim that providence and the spirit of the age are not to be regarded as miracles, and may explain all that seems supernatural to ignorant, superstitious or excitable people; but the man of solemn, serious, impartial investigation, knows that if the world. exists and is governed by God, every event, even the most natural, is essentially supernatural. Probably every man living can testify-"The spirit is more pene

trative than logical, and gathers more than it can garner. I have been conscious of an unseen evil presence, and not unseldom felt the nearness of some mighty good." There are two extremes, credulity and scepticism. He who is credulous may rest generally on the power of God; but "God," as the Port Royal logicians say, "does not do all that He is able to do." He who is sceptical may say, truth and error are alike; some miracles are doubtless delusions; why not all? But, as the same logicians say, "We cannot guide ourselves by commonplaces in regard to all occurrences." S. Chrysostom speaks as if there were no miracles in his day. S. Augustine, in the twenty-second book of the "City of God," and in the ninth book of his "Confessions,” speaks of sundry miracles, which he believed to be real; of one especially, at Milan, in the following words:-"Miraculum, quod Mediolani factum est cum illic essemus, quando illuminatus est cœcas, ad multorum notitiam potiut pervenire: quia et grandis est civitas, et ibi tunc erat Imperator, et immenso populo teste res gesta est, concurrente ad corpora martyrum Gervasii et Protasii." The same S. Augustine mentions other miracles. Pascal accepted a miracle wrought in his own day, and wrote a defence thereof. Bengel, the sound-minded, sagacious, learned commentator, relates that a girl, paralyzed for twenty years, was suddenly healed by the power of faith. Of course, these may be partially explained as the result of mental and emotional excitement; but there is something left that no natural explanation makes fully clear; a something that proclaims a secret work. Our Lord, at a most solemn time, called upon His disciples to believe Him "for the very works' sake." Now, by the works,

He could hardly mean anything else but what we call His miracles, for He uses the word "works," which is the special name given to His miracles in the Gospel of S. John; and, indeed, the word is so interpreted even by modern commentators, as Kuinoel, for instance, who are far removed from credulity. Then our Lord added, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto My Father." Now, whatever may be the exact meaning of this divine promise; yet no one, surely, who believes that our Lord is the Prophet of the world, can be considered as superstitious if he is not unready to hope that, at any period in the history of the Church, God may work special miracles by the hands of believers. The promise of the text is most general, confined to no time or country: "He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do." When and where, and on what occasion, before whom and for what particular object, our Lord has not in the text told us; the day may show it, when God's hand. shall be revealed as in fire and with bright light. We are, indeed, being continually told by writers, who deal much in vague assertions, and write as if they alone were thinkers, and had a right to lecture all mankind, "that the ages of faith are past, and cannot be recalled, that to believe in miracles is simply silly and childish, that faith in hell is fast going," though, perhaps, such mythologies may be useful for art and imagination, for the painter and the poet. Reading such statements, we become-shame upon us-ashamed of the gospel of Christ. There is, we think, an atmosphere of scepticism

all around us; we mistake the breath of a certain number of men for the air of the whole world, and the spirit of a few for the spirit of the age. We begin to doubt and doubt still more, till we are tempted at times to think of "heaven as gas, God a force, the second world a grave:" but such scepticism cannot undo the past, nor blot out the Gospel history of Christ, nor the lives of Augustine, Francis of Sales, Archbishop Leighton, All Saints; neither is the present helpless against it, for it cannot destroy the fact that if we compare the Christian Church of the last century with its present state, there has been a great awakening; missions wonderfully extended, Church worship marvellously enlivened, industry of the clergy everywhere increased, our very faults and follies signs of zeal, the number of communicants multiplied, the very look of the land changed by spires and towers innumerable. Do these things look as if faith were dead or dying? Are not such tokens, if not miraculous like the raising of Lazarus, yet akin to the miraculous, at least more than natural? Let us rouse ourselves by such facts, and set them against the assertions of sceptical men, and encourage ourselves by the indications of a present God, looking back also to the days of old, the generations that are past. Surely the gift of Prophecy, the Incarnation of Christ, many of His miracles, His Resurrection, the descent of the Holy Ghost, can only be explained as supernatural. Further, it is not wholly natural for men of inherent heavenliness and grace to proclaim the handiwork of God in scenes where human nature has been most debased by social corruption. Moreover, where the light of virtue is most darkened, and the

degradation of our nature is most conspicuous, are unerring indications of truths not yet discovered, of mutual achievements yet to be wrought, of a process soon to be perfected, of a miracle-power in man coming to him from without. Insight of this led Newton and Copernicus to their scientific triumphs. They imagined not less than they thought, and ascending the heights of each, by experience and study, became singularly practical and useful.

The maintenance of ordinary uniformity in nature, without which we could not duly order our life, and our science would be of little use through uncertainty, will not allow unusual and special miracles to become common, or by frequency cease to be miracles. "Novit Deus quomodo ipsa miracula sua debeat commendare, novit agere ne vilescant" (S. Augustine, "Serm." 286). To set a new seal with new miraculous inscription for every one who requireth it, were to make rarities cheap, turn miracle into nature, and empty it of wonder. This can be proved Is it less a miracle for the sun to move than to stand? Certainly not, to stand seems somewhat more natural. Is it a greater miracle for one man to rise from the grave, than for all manner of living things, day by day, to live and thrive by means of the dead? Certainly not. The usual, rightly regarded, is not less marvellous than the unusual; indeed, is it not more wonderful being usual? Every event standing alone is miraculous, surely the multitude magnifies the marvel? In a miracle God. shows Himself for a moment, that we may know He is with us every moment. If, however, we want new things for ourselves, and every man, a Herod, say to Christ, "Do a wonder before me also:" not a word will be said