Formerly Rome, now Babylon false and guilty;
Through whom there are so many tears and sighs;
O mistress of deceit; O prison of anger,
Where the good perish, and the bad are cherished and engendered,
Hell of the living! It will be a great miracle
If Christ is not angry with thee at last.”
So recently as the beginning of the year 1847, the virgin Mary was said to have appeared to two shepherds, in the district of Grenoble. The so-called miracle was blazed forth far and wide, and an engraved representation of the appearance was widely distributed. Nor was this all: it was said that the virgin sat on a stone during the interview, and that, on this being broken, after she was gone, there was found in the interior an image of our Lord! But what are the facts that have been discovered since? That the priests employed a lady to personate the virgin; and that the figure in the stone was traced by a French officer, who, with a companion, placed it on that spot for a joke; as, in Italy, objects of modern manufacture are buried, and then dug up, to be passed off on the unwary as really antique! In such instances, however, money is frequently made; while the French officers had no mercenary intentions.
We close these exposures with a pretended miracle of the Greek church. At the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, there is annually a ceremony to which multitudes are attracted. It is pretended by the Greek priests, that, on a particular day, a sacred fire proceeds from the sepulchre: the pilgrims, therefore, congregated at Jerusalem, attend there to light theirs; these are then extinguished, and carefully preserved, to be added to the garment dipped in the Jordan when they are buried. All, however, await the arrival of the Turkish governor; for, “till he arrives, the miracle is not certainly to take place.”
To quote from some travellers who were present at the ceremony, during the year 1846, we are informed that “it was a very remarkable scene. The large area of the church was densely crowded; but, around the sepulchre, a space of about four feet wide was kept clear by a double line of Turkish soldiers. At short intervals of time, a number of infatuated and highly-excited men and boys entered in, and, rushed round and round with desperate energy, screaming and hallooing like so many maniacs. Some stood upright on a friend’s shoulders, who ran with the rest till an unlucky stumble threw both to the ground. One old man was particularly conspicuous; he generally headed the rest, and seemed to be fitter for a strait-waistcoat than to be the leader of a religious procession. He danced, shouted, and threw himself into all sorts of postures. At last he mounted on another frantic devotee, and urged him to his utmost speed: they continued their mad course till he was thrown down violently against two of the soldiers; they seized him by the hair of his head, and hauled him out of the church. In a few minutes, however, he returned and was more outrageous than before. Thus, for two hours, the church was a scene of noise, confusion, and frantic excitement. At two o’clock the governor arrived, and quietly took his seat. The racing pilgrims were driven off the course, and, shortly after, a procession of priests, headed by the patriarch, and followed by a motley group of ragged fellows, bearing shabby banners, walked slowly round three times, chanting some prayers. The patriarch was a grey-headed old man, with a cunning expression of countenance; his very look seemed to say, ‘I am about to act a lie—what fools are you to believe it!’ There is a circular hole in the side of the little chapel built over the sepulchre; close to it a man was posted, protected by the soldiers. He was a rich pilgrim, probably an Armenian, who had paid handsomely for the privilege of being the first to light his tapers by the holy fire. The old patriarch, having divested himself of most of his fine trappings, entered alone into the sanctuary. In a minute after, he pushed through the hole a quantity of flaming cotton, dipped in spirits of wine; the favoured pilgrim eagerly lighted a bunch of tapers by it, and, escorted by the soldiers, hurried out of the church. The excitement was now at its height; a scene followed which baffles description. There was a tremendous rush towards the flame, still held out by the patriarch, and each strove who should light his taper the earliest. Those who could not get up to head-quarters were obliged to procure a light from the more fortunate, and in three minutes the church and adjoining chapels were in a blaze. Thousands of wax-candles and flambeaux were glittering over the space; some had forty or fifty long thin tapers bound together, which were intended as valuable presents for friends at home. It was, for the time, like Bedlam let loose: some were kneeling in ecstatic adoration, others screaming, dancing, and jumping; the more zealous put the flame into their mouths, or applied it to their faces or naked breasts. It is asserted that the holy fire does not burn or hurt any one, but Mr. Dalton noticed that few kept it long enough near to give it a fair trial. In ten minutes every taper was extinguished, and the pilgrims dispersed, carrying away the precious relics.”[N]
In former parts of this volume, it has been shown that surprising effects are frequently produced for the amusement of others, or from the love of gain and celebrity, so common to fallen man. And, doubtless, wherever true piety does not operate—the piety which is displayed in supreme love to God, and pure and expansive benevolence to man—there will be some manifestation of the “spirit” that worketh in “the children of disobedience.” While “he that doeth righteousness is righteous, he that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning,” 1 John iii. 7, 8.