were so large, they did so little to leaven the world, and this, when the apostles, who were but twelve, effected so much; and he puts aside the excuse, "But they had miracles at command," not with the answer, "So have we;" but in this language; "How long shall we use their miracles as a pretext for our sloth? And what was it then, you say, which made the apostles so great? I answer, This, that they contemned money; that they trampled on vain-glory; that they renounced the world. If they had not done thus, but had been slaves of their passions, though they had raised a thousand dead, they would not merely have profited nothing, but would have been counted as impostors. What miracle did John, who reformed so many cities, of whom yet it is expressly said, that he did no sign? And thou, if thou hadst thy choice, to raise the dead in the name of Christ, or thyself to die for his name, which wouldst thou choose? Would it not be plainly the latter? And yet that were a miracle, and this is but a work. And if one gave thee the choice of turning all grass into gold, or being able to wouldst thou not choose the last? last wouldst thou most effectually This is not my doctrine, but the blessed Paul's: for when he had said, 'Covet earnestly the best gifts,' and then added, ' yet show I unto you a more excellent way;' he did not adduce miracles, but love, as the root of all good things*."

despise all gold as grass, And rightly; for by this draw men to the truth.

• Neander (Kirch. Gesch., v. 4, pp. 255—257,) quotes many like utterances coming from the chief teachers of the Church, even in the midst of the darkness of the ninth century. Thus Odo of Clugny relates of a pious layman, whom some grudged should be set so high, seeing that he wrought no miracles, how that once detecting a thief in the act of robbing him, he not merely dismissed him, but gave him all that which he would wrongfully have taken away, and adds, Certè mihi videtur, quod id magis admiratione dignum sit, quàm si furem rigere in saxi duritiem fecisset. And Neander (v. 5, pp. 477, 606,) gives ample testimonies to the same effect from writers of lives of saints, and from others, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. One of these confesses indeed that it is a long line of miracles which is chiefly

Few points present greater difficulties than the attempt to fix accurately the moment when these miraculous powers departed from the Church, and it entered into its permanent state, with only its miracles of grace and the record of its miracles of power; instead of having actually going forward in the midst of it those miracles of power as well, with which it first asserted itself in the world. This is difficult, because it is difficult to say at what precise moment the Church was no longer in the act of becoming, but contemplated in the mind of God as now actually being; when to the wisdom of God it appeared that he had adequately confirmed the word with signs following, and that these props and strengthenings of the infant plant might safely be removed from the hardier tree*.

That their retrocession was gradual, that this mighty tide of power should have ebbed only by degrees†, this was what

looked for from them (quod maximè nunc exigitur ab iis qui sanctorum vitas describere volunt). There is a beautiful passage on the superior worth of charity in St. Bernard, Serm. 46, c. 8, in Cant.

*This image is Chrysostom's, who draws it out at length (Hom. 42, in Inscript. Act. Apostt.): "As therefore an husbandman, having lately committed a young tree to the bosom of the earth, counts it worthy, being yet tender, of much attention, on every side fencing it round, protecting it with stones and thorns, so that neither it may be torn up by the winds, nor harmed by the cattle, nor injured by any other injury; but when he sees that it is fast rooted and has sprung up on high, he takes away the defences, since now the tree can defend itself from any such wrong; thus has it been in the matter of our faith. When it was newly planted, while it was yet tender, great attention was bestowed on it on every side. But after it was fixed and rooted and sprung up on high, after it had filled all the world, Christ both took away the defences, and for the time to come removed the other strengthenings. Wherefore at the beginning he gave gifts even to the unworthy, for the early time had need of these helps to faith. But now he gives them not even to the worthy, for the strength of faith no longer needs this assistance." Gregory the great (Hom. 29, in Evang.) has very nearly the same image: Hæc [signa] necessaria in exordio Ecclesiæ fuerunt. Ut enim fides cresceret, miraculis fuerat nutrienda: quia et nos cùm arbusta plantamus, tamdiu eis aquam infundimus, quousque ea in terrâ jam convaluisse videamus; et si semel radicem fixerint, in rigando cessamus.

+ Thus Origen (Con. Cels., 1. 2, c. 46,) calls the surviving gifts in the Church vestiges (ïxvn) of former powers; and again 1. 2, c. 8, he speaks of them as ἴχνη καὶ τινά γε μείζονα.

was to be looked for in that spiritual world which, like God's natural world, is free from all harsh and abrupt transitions, in which each line melts imperceptibly into the next. We can conceive the order of retrocession to have been in this way; that divine power which dwelt in all its fulness and intensity in Christ, was first divided among his apostles, who, therefore, individually brought forth fewer and smaller works than he. It was again from them further subdivided among the ever-multiplying numbers of the Church, who, consequently, possessed not these gifts in the same intensity and plenitude as did the twelve. Yet must it always be remembered that these receding gifts were ever helping to form that which should be their own substitute; that if they were waning, that which was to supply their room was ever waxing,—that they only waned as that other waxed; the flower dropped off only as the fruit was being formed. If those wonders of a first creation have left us, yet this was not so, till they could bequeath in their stead the standing wonder of a Church*, itself a wonder, and embracing manifold wonders in its bosomt. For are not the laws of the spiritual world, as they are ever working in the midst of us, a continual wonder? What is the new birth in Baptism, and the communion of Christ's body and blood in the Holy Eucharist, and the life of God in the soul, and a kingdom of heaven in the world, what are these

* Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 1. 22, c. 8): Quisquis adhuc prodigia, uti credat, inquirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, qui mundo credente, non credat.

+ Coleridge, in his Literary Remains, v. 4, p. 260, on this matter expresses himself thus:-"The result of my own meditations is, that the evidence of the Gospel, taken as a total, is as great for the Christians of the nineteenth century as for those of the apostolic age. I should not be startled if I were told it were greater. But it does not follow that this equally holds good of each component part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown to the primitive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some evidence which they enjoyed. Evidences comparatively dim have waxed into noon-day splendour, and the comparative wane of others once effulgent, is more than indemnified by the synopsis TOû Távтos, which we enjoy, and by the standing miracle of a Christendom commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world."

but every one of them wonders* ? wonders in this like the wonders of ordinary nature, as distinguished from those which accompany a new in-coming of power, that they are under a law which we can anticipate; that they conform to an absolute order, the course of which we can understand ;—but not therefore the less divine+. How meanly do we esteem of a Church,

*The wonder of the existence and subsistence of a Church in the world is itself so great, that Augustine says strikingly and with a deep truth, that to believe or not to believe the miracles is only choosing an alternative of wonders. If you do not believe the miracles, you must at least believe this miracle, that the world was converted without miracles. (Si miraculis non creditis, saltem huic miraculo credendum est, mundum sine miraculis fuisse conversum.) Cf. De Civ. Dei, l. 22, c. 8, § 1. And on the relation of the helps to faith, the witnesses of God's presence in the midst of us which we have, and which the early Church had, he says, (Serm. 244, c. 8): Apostoli Christum præsentem videbant: sed toto orbe terrarum diffusam Ecclesiam non videbant: videbant caput et de corpore credebant. Habemus vices nostras: habemus gratiam dispensationis et distributionis nostræ ad credendum certissimis documentis, tempora nobis in unâ fide sunt distributa. Illi videbant caput, et credebant de corpore: nos videmus corpus, et credamus de capite.

+ Gregory the Great (Hom. 29 in Evang.): Sancta quippe Ecclesia quotidie spiritaliter facit quod tunc per Apostolos corporaliter faciebat. Nam sacerdotes ejus cùm per exorcismi gratiam manum credentibus imponunt, et habitare malignos spiritus in eorum mente contradicunt, quid aliud faciunt, nisi dæmonia ejiciunt? Et fideles quique qui jam vitæ veteris secularia verba derelinquunt, sancta autem mysteria insonant, Conditoris sui laudes et potentiam, quantùm prævalent, narrant, quid aliud faciunt, nisi novis linguis loquuntur? Qui dum bonis suis exhortationibus malitiam de alienis cordibus auferunt, serpentes tollunt. Et dum pestiferas suasiones audiunt, sed tamen ad operationem pravam minimè pertrahuntur, mortiferum quidem est quod bibunt, sed non eis nocebit. Qui quoties proximos suos in opere bono infirmari conspiciunt, dum eis totâ virtute concurrunt, et exemplo suæ operationis illorum vitam roborant qui in propriâ actione titubant, quid aliud faciunt, nisi super ægros manus imponunt, ut bene habeant? Quæ nimirum miracula tantò majora sunt, quantò spiritalia, tantò majora sunt, quantò per hæc non corpora sed animæ suscitantur. Corporalia illa miracula ostendunt aliquando sanctitatem, non autem faciunt: hæc verò spiritalia, quæ aguntur in mente, virtutem vitæ non ostendunt, sed faciunt. Illa habere et mali possunt; istis autem perfrui nisi boni non possunt. .. Nolite ergo, fratres carissimi, amare signa quæ possunt cum reprobis haberi communia, sed hæc quæ modò diximus, caritatis atque pietatis miracula amate; quæ tantò securiora sunt, quantò et occulta; et de quibus apud Dominum eo

...

of its marvellous gifts, of the powers of the coming world which are working within it, of its Word, of its Sacraments, when it seems to us a small thing that in it men are new born, raised from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, the eyes of their understanding enlightened, and their ears opened, unless we can also tell of more visible and sensuous wonders. It is as though the heavens should not declare to us the glory of God, nor the firmament shew us his handiwork, except at some single moment such as that when the sun was standing still upon Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon.

While then it does not greatly concern us to know when this power was withdrawn, what does vitally concern us is, that we suffer not these carnal desires after miracles, as if they were necessarily saints who had them, and they but ordinary Christians who were without them, as though the Church were incomplete and spiritually impoverished which could not shew them, to rise up in our hearts, as they are ever ready to rise up in the natural heart of man, to which power is so much dearer than holiness. There is no surer proof than the utterance of feelings such as these, that the true glory of the Church is hidden from our eyes-no sadder sign that some of its outward trappings and ornaments have caught our fancy; and not the fact that it is all glorious within, taken possession of our hearts and minds. It is, indeed, ill with us, for it argues little which we ourselves have known of the miracles of grace, when they seem to us poor and pale, and only the miracles of power have any attraction in our eyes.

major fit retributio, quo apud homines minor est gloria. See too on these greater wonders of the Church AUGUSTINE, Serm. 88, c. 3; and Origen (Con. Cels., 1. 2, c. 48,) finds in them, in these wonders of grace which are ever going forward, the fulfilment of the promise that those who believed should do greater things than Christ himself. (John xiv. 12.) Cf. BERNARD, In Ascen. Dom., Serm. 1.