DR. NEWMAN ON MIRACLES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 208, 30 March 1877, Page 7

DR. NEWMAN ON MIRACLES.

" Mieacles to the Catholic are facts of history and biography, and nothing else ; and they are to be regarded and dealt with as other facts ; and as natural facts under circumstances do not startle Protestants, so supernatural, under circumstances, do not startle the Catholic. They may or may not have taken place in particular cases ; he may be unable to determine which ; he may have no evidence ; he may suspend his judgment ; but he will say, .t is very possible j" he never will say "I cannot believe it. ouch, then, is the answer I would make to those who urge against us the multitude of miracles recorded in our Saints' Lives. We think them true in the sense in which Protestants think the details of English history true. ... If, indeed, miracles never can occur, then, indeed, impute the narratives to fraud ; but, till you prove they are not likely, we shall consider the histories which have come down to us true on the whole, though in particular cases they may be exaggerated or unfounded. Where, indeed, they can certainly be proved to be false, there we shall be bound to do our best to get rid of them ; but till that is clear, we shall be liberal enough to allow others to use their private judgment in their favor, as we use ours in their disparagement. For myself, lest I appear to be in any wa> shrinking from a determinate judgment on the claims of those miracles and relics, which Protestants are so startled at, and to be hiding particular questions in what is vague and general, I will avow distinctly that, putting out of the question the hypothesis of unknown laws of nature (that is, of the professed miracle being not miraculous), I think it impossible to withstand the evidence which is brought for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in the Roman States. I see no reason to doubt the material of the Lombard Crown at Monza ; and I do not see why the Holy Coat at Treves may not have been what it professes to be. I firmly believe that portions of the true Cross are at Rome, and elsewhere, that the crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also. I believe that at Rome, too, lies St. Stephen, that St. Matthew lies at Salerno, and St. Andrew at Araalfi. I firmly believe that the relics of the saints are doing innumerable miracles and graces daily, and that it needs only for a Catholic to show devotion to any saint in order to receive special benefits from his intercession. I firmly believe that the saints in their lifetime have before now raised the dead to life, crossed the sea without vessels, multiplied grain and bread, cured incurable diseases, and superseded the operation of the laws of the universe in a multitude of ways. Many men, when they hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncracy, or to imbecility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanaticism, or to hypocrisy. They have a right to say so, if they will ; and we have a right to ask them why they do not say it of those who bow down before the Mystery of mysteries, the Divine Incarnation. If they do not believe this, they are not Protestants ; if they do, let them grant that He who has done the greater may do the less."