elude the keen eyesight of the hundreds close around, who intently watch it and scan every motion of the clergyman. Where could the second reliquary lie hidden until needed? Could he lay down the first one and hide it away, and draw forth the second one and exhibit it to the people, without some such movement of his hands and arms as must inevitably be seen? Can it be that never once in these four thousand times did any eye detect the act of substitution? Many of the chaplains and canons who officiate are aged men. Can their feeble or half-paralyzed arms do frequently, regularly, and always with perfect success, what the most expert and practised prestigitator would shrink from attempting? The thing is utterly impossible.
If it were possible and actually done, it would not answer the requirements of the case. In such a substitution, the liquefaction would always appear to be instantaneous—as instantaneous as the adroit substitution. But the real process of liquefaction is seldom so instantaneous. It is often gradual, occupying an appreciable, sometimes a long time. It may often be followed by the eye in the various stages from solidity to perfect fluidity.
Moreover, no substitution can account for the subsequent hardenings, or the alternations of hardenings and liquefactions, especially when these occur, as they sometimes do, while the reliquary remains untouched, mounted on its stand on the altar, in the sight of all, or during a procession in the streets when it is borne aloft, equally untouched, in its open frame, and is equally visible to all.
The idea of a substitution of reliquaries can only be entertained by one who is utterly ignorant of the circumstances of the liquefaction.
We set it aside. If nothing else can be said, the miracle must stand.
The publicity of all the movements of the officiating clergyman who holds the reliquary, and the unceasing inspection of the reliquary by so many observers on every side, are equally peremptory in excluding the supposition that the liquefaction may possibly be produced by inserting, during the exposition, some new ingredient into the ampulla, which, uniting with the hard substance already there, will give a third substance of a liquid character. How could this be done so many thousand times; and always under the eyes of a crowd of most attentive and watchful observers, without a single one of them ever, in a single instance, detecting this new substance while held in reserve for the proper moment, or noticing the act of inserting it, as this precedes the liquefaction? And what shall we say of those numerous cases in which the blood, having liquefied, becomes hard again, and, after a time, liquefies again? Is there an adroit withdrawal of this new ingredient from the ampulla in order that the liquid may harden again, and is there a fresh application of it, each time, for every renewal of the liquefaction, during the day? And what if these changes occur while the reliquary is not in the hands of the clergyman at all, but has been placed and remains all the while on its stand on the altar, or is borne aloft in its open frame during a procession? Does this wondrous ingredient of wondrous power wondrously manage, of itself, and without the aid of human hands, to find its way to and into the ampulla, or to withdraw from it, as often as needed?
The drollest attempt at a solution, in this line, which we remember to have met, was one put forward, with
the usual air of positive assertion, in a bitter anti-Catholic magazine, published years ago in the United States, which undertook to impugn this miracle. Hot water, the writer maintained, was stealthily introduced into the hollow metal stem or handle below the reliquary; the heat from which might pass, by conduction, through the intervening substances, and at last reach the substance itself within the ampulla and cause it to melt.
The stem aforesaid is just three inches and one-eighth in length, and seven-eighths of an inch in external diameter. Allowing the metal of which it is formed to be one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness—less it can scarcely be—and that the hollow extends the entire length—on which point we avow our ignorance—the cavity of the stem would hold about one-fifth of a gill—rather too small a quantity for the purpose in view.
Moreover, the opening or mouth of the hollow stem is at its lower extremity. Now, inasmuch as even hot water is subject to the laws of gravity and will fall downwards, we submit that for the hot water to remain in the stem or cylinder with its lower extremity quite open, for even ten minutes, would be as truly a miracle as the liquefaction itself is claimed to be. Even allowing some invisible plug to be used to close that opening and to prevent the water from falling down, would not the first and most powerful effect of the heat of the water be manifested in the thin metallic sides of the stem itself, scorching and blistering the hands of the priest that held it?