One other objection remains: does God act uselessly? And of what possible use is this miracle? What is the benefit of wonderfully preserving from utter destruction, through so many centuries, a small portion of blood, and of causing it to soften or liquefy fifteen or twenty times a year, when brought, even if reverently, close to the head of the martyr from whose veins it flowed? What good does this do? Is it not so trifling and insignificant a thing as to be almost ridiculous, and entirely unworthy of the majesty of God?
Who shall presume to say that it is unworthy of God—of that God without whose knowledge and permission not a hair can fall from our heads—of that Saviour who mixed clay with the spittle of his mouth, and therewith touched the eyes of the blind man, that sight might be restored to them? It is not for us to decide what is becoming or unbecoming for God to do.
Who shall say that it is useless? Has not the faith of a simple-minded people been confirmed and strengthened by it, to such a degree that the truths of divine revelation and the obligations of man before God are to them verities as strong, as clear, and as real in their daily life as is the sunlight that beams down on their fair land? How many sinners have been led, through it, to repentance and amendment of life? How often have the indifferent been stirred up
to avoid evil and to do good, and the good animated to greater fervor and earnestness in deeds of piety and virtue? And, after all, are not these the grand purposes of all God’s dealings with men?
Nor is this miracle—for such we call it, although the church has never spoken authoritatively on the point—alien from doctrine. Wrought in honor of a sainted and martyred bishop, it is a perpetual testimony to the truth of the doctrines he preached, and of the church which glories in him as one of her exemplary and venerated ministers; it is a confirmation of the homage and veneration she pays to him because he chose rather to sacrifice his life than to deny the Saviour who had redeemed and illumined him. Wrought within her fold, it is a permanent evidence that she is in fact and in spirit the same now as in the early days of persecution—the ever true and faithful church of Christ.
It is a confirmation, likewise, of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead—that special doctrine which the apostles put forth so prominently in the beginning of their preaching; which was ever present to the minds of the early Christians, cheering and strengthening them when this world was dark around them; which formed the frequent theme of their pastoral instructions and their mutual exhortations, and became the prevailing subject of their household and their sacred ornamentation in their homes and in their oratories, and over their tombs in the catacombs; which gave a special tone to their faith, their hope, and their charity and love of God, and was, as it were, the very lifeblood of their Christianity.
Nowadays, outside the church, how faint, comparatively, has belief in this doctrine become, or, rather,
has it not died out almost completely from the thoughts and the hearts of men? Within the church, the solemn rites of Christian sepulture, burying the dead in consecrated ground, tells us of it. The preservation and the veneration of the relics of saints and martyrs teach it still more strongly. Does not tangible evidence, as it were, come to it anew from heaven by this constant and perpetual miracle, showing that the bodies of the sainted dead are in the custody of him who made them, and who has promised that he will raise them up again in glory?
Finally, this miracle seems to us especially adapted to our own age, when over-much knowledge is making men mad. Men are so lifted up by their progress, especially in natural sciences, that they have come to feel that they can dispense with God and substitute NATURE in his stead, with her multifarious and unchangeable laws. They boast that, under the light of their newly-acquired knowledge, everything is already, or will soon be, susceptible of natural explanation. As for miracles—direct interventions of God in the affairs of the world, reversing or suspending, in special cases, these ordinary laws of nature—they scout the idea. All past accounts of miracles, no matter when or by whom recorded, they hold to be either accounts of natural events warped and distorted by excited and unrestrained imaginations, or else the pure fictions of superstition and credulity. They are sure that, in the first case, had there been present witnesses of sufficient knowledge and caution—such knowledge and caution as they possess—the accounts of those events would have come down to us in a far simpler garb, and unclothed with this miraculous robing. They are equally sure that, in the other case, education,
especially in the physical sciences, would have forbidden the creation of those numberless fictions.