— by fimile Zola's crisp remark:156 "That two and two make four may have become trite — but nevertheless they do make four. It is less foolish and less mad to say so than to believe, for example, in the miracles of Lourdes." That God is one, and that He alone is to be served with religious veneration, is no doubt an old revelation. It is nevertheless a true revelation. And he who takes it as such can never believe that miracles are wrought at Lourdes. Of course, as R. H. Benson puts it,157 "those who believe in God and His Son and the Mother of God on quite other grounds," may declare that "Lourdes is enough." But this is not to make the miracles carry the doctrine, but the doctrine the miracles, in accordance with J. H. Newman's proposition that it is all a matter of point of view, of pre- suppositions.158 To those, on the other hand, who believe in God and His Son, as they have revealed themselves in the pages of Holy Scripture, but not in a Mother of God, standing between us and God and His Son, and usurping their place in our hearts and worship, Lourdes very dis- tinctly is not enough. It would require something very different from what happens at Lourdes to make them see the express finger of God there. It is not He who rules there so much as that incoherent goddess who has an- nounced herself to her worshippers with as fine a disregard of the ordinary laws of grammar and intelligible speech as of the fundamental principles of Christianity, in the re- markable words, "I am the Immaculate Conception," as if one should say, "I am the procession of the equinoxes," or "I am the middle of next week." "The whole place," says Benson,159 "is alive with Mary." That is the very reason why we are sure that the marvels which occur there are not the direct acts of God, but are of the same order as the similar ones which have occurred at many similar shrines, of many names, in many lands, serving many gods. How close all these lie to one another is singularly illustrated by what we are told of a daughter shrine of
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Lourdes's own, in that Near East which is the meeting- place of peoples and religions. At least, we read:160 "The sanctuary of Feri Keuii at Constantinople, dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, is a place of pilgrimage and a source of miraculous cures for Christians, Jews, and Mussulmans. Its silver-wedding was celebrated recently with an assem- blage of people of the religions which live in the Turkish Empire." What Lourdes has to offer is the common prop- erty of the whole world, and may be had by men of all religions, calling upon their several gods.161
IRVINGITE GIFTS
IRVINGITE GIFTS
Pretensions by any class of men to the possession and use of miraculous powers as a permanent endowment are, within the limits of the Christian church, a specialty of Roman Catholicism. Denial of these pretensions is part of the protest by virtue of which we bear the name of Protestants. "In point of interpretation, the history of Protestantism," as an Edinburgh reviewer, writing in trying conditions in 1831, justly puts it,1 "is a uniform disclaimer of any promise in the Scriptures that miraculous powers should be continued in the Church." In point of fact (we may slightly modify his next sentence to declare), the claim to the possession and exercise of powers of this description by individuals has always been received in Protestant circles with a suspicion which experience has only too completely justified.
Protestantism, to be sure, has happily been no stranger to enthusiasm; and enthusiasm with a lower-case "e" un- fortunately easily runs into that Enthusiasm with a capital "E" which is the fertile seed-bed of fanaticism. Indi- viduals have constantly arisen so filled with the sense of God in their own souls, and so overwhelmed by the wonders of grace which they have witnessed, that they see the im- mediate hand of God in every occurrence which strikes them as remarkable, and walk through the world clothed in a nimbus of miracle. To them it seems a small thing that the God who has so marvellously healed their sick souls should equally marvellously heal their sick bodies ; that the God who speaks so unmistakably in their spirits should speak equally unmistakably through their lips. Especially in times of wide-spread oppression, when whole communi-
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