-no marvel wrought. If we cry with the priests of old, "Come down from the cross, and we will believe Thee:" Jesus remains unmoved. His stedfast silence to blasphemers now, as then, gives the sublimest picture that artist ever painted. If every time we had an ache, or mourned the loss of relative, prayer wrought all we wished, the will of man would usurp the Throne of God: and human caprice, not law, prevail. What place or motive could be found for faith, self-denial, continuous labour, obedience, discipline? There could be no advance in art or science, we should be as children, and grow up as savages, and the blasphemous thought might come— Animal magnetism, or hypnotism, subordinates the sense ́and intelligence of the medium to the operator's will; so will enunciated in prayer predominates in nature, ay, controls the Almighty. We need not hunt for marvels, astounding reversals of natural law, visions, and spectres 66 Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, We may find the supernatural in the natural any and every day. It is the commonest and grossest blunders of scientific diminutives, to imagine that all in nature is of nature. There are more excellent natures. We ascend the height of argument by means of supernatures. These supernatures are, so to speak, natural manifestations or degrees of the supernatural. When one part of nature guides, suspends, changes, overcomes, elevates another portion; it is a supernature-sets causes in operation and produces combinations which are impossible to the unaided lower nature. Nature never makes a gun, nor pulls the trigger, nor builds a house, nor writes a book, nor frames a ship. Man comes down from his higher nature, and by sovereign act makes these thingsdifferent from all other things, and in that measure preternatural. Men are little supernaturals. There are other supernaturals less than ourselves: all the higher are gradational supernaturals to the lower. In every common event is something not less peremptory and mysterious than that which reveals the miraculous in unusual form. The transcendental mingles everywhere with the usual "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, There is certainly a gradation of supernatures within nature, and these are supernaturals in their respective degrees: "Their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel" (Ezek. i. 16). Not only is every higher thing gradationally supernatural in comparison with that which it excels, creatures even of the same kind are not of equal order. Homer, Shakespeare, Newton, Watt, Stephenson, do the work of gods, if compared with the stunted Eskimo or the wild Australian. Review our argument :-General incredulity is no disproof of miracles in modern times. Since Apostolic days, and the Divine Establishment of the Church by miracle, as there is no waste in the Divine Economy, miracles, specially unveiling Divine Power, have been few. The great marvels, Christ and the Church, are the two abiding marvels. We find an all-pervading presence capable of working miracles; and this supernatural, in ordinary action, is natural. Miracles, in a real sense of the word "miracles," have not ceased: for there is a peculiarity in every life so purposive as, in its order, to be separated from chance; and by its intelligibility divided from fate-unless fate be that which reasons and purposes: but fate and chance are mere words, and do nothing. In reasoning as to "The Spirit of the Age," "In Nature nothing Exists in Vain," " Special Marvels," "Natural Uniformity," "Smaller Supernaturals," we saw unveilings of power for definite purposes. There could not be definite purposes anywhere unless Reason existed at the heart of things. This Reason manifests itself in definite intelligible purposes, as if to show that physical sway is subject to moral rule-a rule conducting all things to some far-off Divine Event. We now read other supernatural signatures. A sacrament is more than an ordinance: a sacrament is of divine institution, an ordinance is by man. A sacrament-rightly administered and duly received-is a channel of special grace: grace not naturally in the elements, but supernaturally conveyed. Here we have a continual miracle: no use of water, nor eating of bread, nor drinking of wine, other than sacramentally, conveys the same grace. "Happy is that man that sits at the table of angels, that puts his hand into the dish with the King of all creatures, and feeds upon the Eternal Son of God, joining things below with things above, heaven with earth, life with death; that mortality might be swallowed up of life" (Jerem. Taylor, "Life of Christ," Part III. sec. v.). "Sacramento divina virtus assistit . . . si enim ad ipsas res visibiles quibus sacramenta tractantur, animum conferamus; quis nesciat eos corrupti biles; sin autem ad id quod per illos igitur, quis non videat non posse corrumpi?" (S. Augustine, "Contra Donatist," lib. iii.). What think we of Apostolic Succession? Every man well instructed and rightly persuaded knows that in Apostolic Succession there is a special grace which sanctifies and separates some men from other men for sacred uses. Apostolical Succession is a fact in history, a succession as certain as that of any earthly dynasty; something independent of kings and revolutions and Acts of Parliament; traced undoubtedly back to the days of Apostles, and of Christ our Lord; believed in by practical laymen, and surely almost, if not quite, a miracle. Indestructible even by the crimes and follies of many ordained according to it. An ordained man is something different from one unordained, however brilliant and intellectual and virtuous the latter may be. Even persons who deny Apostolic Succession to outward, continuous, visible, clerical orders-it is but a modern denial-allow that special grace is given to all who, under the Divine Spirit's influence, are separated to the Ministry of God's Holy Word. True members of Christ's Church stand within something, and possess that which outsiders have not. They enjoy benedictions and beneficences-not of natural disposition or earthly gift-the charities of Heaven. Every Regeneration, every Conversion, is a miracle or-nothing at all. When we minister at the bed-side of dying men, and light from on high makes the face of the departing as the face of an angel, and the heart of him who was without hope to thrill with the felt presence of the power of eternal life, all is natural-yes, supernatural; all is human-yes, Divinely Human: " Ooç TAVтAXOU KEXVὁ Θεῶς πανταχοῦ κεχυ μévos" (Josephus). If we pray, is it not in the hope that God hears and answers prayer? The universal cry of nature is prayer. Who continues to pray, unless he believes that God hears His children's cry, and that there is in it the grace to obtain help? "Ruffinus spake a great thing but it was hugely true'Quis dubitet mundum stare precibus sanctorum?'" (Jerem. Taylor, “ Serm.” vi.)—saintly prayer sustains the world. "Think ye the spires that glow so bright In front of yonder setting sun, Stand by their own unshaken might? No;-where the upholding grace is won, We dare not ask, nor Heaven would tell, But sure from many a hidden dell, From many a rural nook unthought of, there Rises for that proud world the saint's prevailing prayer.” He who says-"Not my will but Thine be done". limits not the prayer to natural use; but requests that in divine use of nature, which is best use of nature, he may be blessed by conformity of the human to the Divine, and that the weakness of man may prevail upon the mightiness of God; "Vult enim Deus rogari, vult cogi, vult quadam importunitate vinci" (S. Gregory, in Ps. vi.). There can be no real prayer apart from the persuasion, that our Father in heaven gives more wonderfully than we can think, and more richly than we ask. Every giving, every withholding, in |