There are, however, two special and standing miracles to which Romanists are fully committed, and which in the judgment prob- ably of nine tenths of the educated men in Christendom are bare- faced impostures. The Church of Rome by its highest dignitaries and representatives asserted and still continues to assert that the house in which the Virgin Mary dwelt in Nazareth was, when that city fell into the hands of the infidels, transported by angels and deposited at Loretto, a village a few miles from Ancona in Italy. The first step in this transportation occurred in 1291 from Nazareth to Dalmatia ; the second in 1294 to the neighbourhood of Recanati ; and the third in 1295 to its present location. The house is thirty feet long, fifteen wide, and eighteen high, and is built of wood and brick. It is now greatly adorned, having a silver door and a silver grating, and stands in the midst of a large church erected over and around it. Its shrine was enriched with offerings of priceless value, and is regarded as the Mecca of Italy ; the number of pilgrims amounting sometimes to two hundred thousand in a single year. The annual income of the house, apart from presents, is stated to be thirty thousand dollars.1 The orig- inal house is said to be a facsimile of hundreds of others in the neighborhood of Ancona. It is obvious that such a frail building could not, without a miracle, have been preserved thirteen hun- dred years ; another miracle would be required to identify it after so long a period ; another stupendous miracle to account for its transportation to Dalmatia ; and two more nearly as great to ex- plain its reaching its present location. The only conceivable de- sign of all these miracles, must be to sustain the doctrines and authority of the Romish Church, and to pour money into its treas- ury. Both these objects they have accomplished to a wonderful degree. No man who is not prepared to accept all these mira- cles without a particle of evidence, can rationally believe in the Church of Rome.
The other standing miracle for which the Romish Church is responsible before the whole world, is the annual liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples. The tradition concerning him is, that he was thrown by his heathen persecutors into a heated oven, where he remained three days uninjured. He was afterwards exposed to wild beasts, who became as lambs in his
suffering, by making her a partaker of the torments of Christ's passion. Christ accordingly appeared to her and took the crown of thorns and placed it on her head. (Cumming, pp. 665-675.) Such are some of the miracles on which Rome rests her claims to be the only true Church and the infallible teacher of man.
1 Conversations-Lexicon, 7th edit. Leipzig, 1827, art. "Loretto."
458 PART III. Ch. XIX. — THE LAW.
presence. He was finally beheaded, A. D. 305. A woman is said to have caught and preserved a portion of his blood. This with other of his remains was carried to Naples, being iden- tified as usual by a miracle, as it is said, " Neapolitani beatum Januarium revelatione commoti sustulerunt.', The blood, pre- served with great care in the cathedral, is contained in two crystal vials, a larger and smaller one. In its ordinary state it is a hard substance, sometimes represented as filling the vial, and sometimes as appearing in a hard round lump. The blood of other saints is said to liquefy on the anniversaries of their martyrdom, but the blood of Januarius becomes liquid whenever the vial containing it is brought near to the skull of the saint, which is still preserved. It turns readily when good is impending, and refuses to change when evil is at hand. It thus serves the purpose of an oracle. It is annually produced and exhibited to crowds of devotees gathered in the cathedral on the first Sunday of May, and also on the nineteenth day of September and twentieth of December, and at other times on extraordinary emergencies. To this miracle the Church of Rome is fully committed as it is exhibited every year under the eyes of the pope and the highest dignitaries of the Church. There is not a particle of evidence for the facts above stated concerning this saint, which may not be pleaded for any one of the thousands of stories of fairies and witches with which the histories of all nations abound, except the liquefaction of the blood. As to that, however, it is to be said that there is no evi- dence that the substance contained in the vial is blood ; or if blood, that it is human blood ; or if human, that it is the blood of Jan- uarius ; or if his, that the cause of the liquefaction is bringing the vial into prdximity to the saint's cranium. All that the people are allowed to see, the change of a dark-red solid substance into a fluid, any chemist could effect at five minutes' notice. It is true, as Dr. Newman admits, that these miracles do not so much prove the truth of the Church, as the Church proves the truth of the miracles. Then what are they worth.
Relics.
Relics are the remains of sacred persons and things, which are not only to be cherished as memorials, but to which " cultus " or a certain degree of religious worship is due, and which are imbued with supernatural power. They heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, soundness to the maimed, and even, at times, life to the dead. Of these the Catholic world is