and the decision was confirmed on appeal. I shall not pretend that the decision was conclusive, for I believe that there are still Roman Catholics who believe in La Salette; but I fear that the apparition must be pronounced a failure, as having caused more scandal to unbelievers than edification to the faithful, unless the large pecuniary gains it brought to the parties interested may redeem it from the charge of being altogether a failure.

Scarcely had the excitement provoked by the events of La Salette begun to subside, when the supernaturalist party dealt a heavier blow against their opponents by what was called the miracle of Lourdes. In this spot, in Gascony, Bernadotte Soubirous, a poor girl of fourteen, on February 11, 1858, while picking up dry wood, saw a beautiful lady robed in white, with a blue sash, and the vision was afterwards several times repeated. On being asked who she was, the lady answered, I am the Immaculate Conception.' She invited the girl to drink at a fountain. The child, seeing no fountain, scraped away some earth with her hands. A little water filtered through the orifice: it increased gradually in volume, became perfectly clear, and now supplies to the faithful I do not know how many millions of bottles, which are in large demand for the purpose of effecting supernatural cures. The local bishop gave his sanction to the miracle; pilgrimages to the shrine were organized, and pilgrimages are now made easy. It is not, as in former days, when a devout pilgrim had to walk over half Europe with or without peas in his shoes. Railway Companies are only too glad to organize excursion trains, and secure for their line an undue share of the tourist traffic. Only the other day the chairmen of the other Companies were looking with envy at the profits the Midland Great Western Company were deriving from the miracles at Knock.* True, there is a number of incredulous people who

A small village in the county Mayo, where the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and a third personage, supposed to be St. John, are affirmed to have appeared to many persons on the evening of 21st August, 1879, and in the early days of 1880. The scene of the alleged apparitions was the exterior of the southern gable of the sacristy attached to the Roman Catholic chapel of the parish. See The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock, by John Mac Philpin (Dublin: Gill and Son, 1880); in which tract

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object that the witness to the Lourdes miracle is a child subject to hallucinations; and the speech 'I am the Immaculate Conception,' does put a severe strain on one's faith. It is said, however, that the miracles worked by the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes ought to banish all incredulity. But what I complain of is, that when there is an infallible guide he will not interfere to clear our doubts. Why should he leave us in danger of mistaking the utterances of a crazy nun or the ravings of a hysteric child for miraculous communications from the Blessed Virgin; or, conversely, of rejecting a message from heaven?

Perhaps one reason why we must despair of getting at solution of our doubts from this quarter is, that infallibility is said to be subject to an unfortunate limitation. The Pope, though infallible on questions of doctrine, is liable to be deceived by human testimony about a matter of fact. You may remember reading in Burnet of the use made of this distinction in the Jansenist controversy. The adversaries of the Jansenists had obtained a papal condemnation of certain propositions from the work of Jansenius. As devout Catholics, the Jansenists were forced to confess that the doctrines condemned by the Pope were false, but they saved the credit of their master by saying that these propositions had not been asserted by him, at least not in the erroneous sense. Their adversaries, determined not to permit themselves to be thus balked of their triumph, obtained from the Pope a supplemental decree, declaring that the propositions in question were not only erroneous, but that they had been taught by Jansenius. To this the Jansenists replied, 'We acknowledge the Pope to be infallible in questions of doctrine, but the question whether Jansenius taught such and such doctrines is one of fact, and we say that on this the Holy Father has been deceived.'

I own I do not myself see the justice of the distinction, nor how it is rational to give up the infallibility in the one

will be found a full account of the matter, with the depositions of witnesses made before a commission of priests appointed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, and the particulars of many miraculous cures reported by the Roman Catholic priest of Knock as having been effected on blind, crippled, and diseased persons who have visited the chapel, or swallowed particles of mortar taken from the wall.

case and assert it in the other. If this limitation exists, how can any heretic be infallibly condemned? The falsity of his doctrines may be infallibly asserted; but whether he had taught them will admit of controversy. In several doctrinal questions which came before the Privy Council, it was found to be easier by far to ascertain what the doctrine of the Church of England was than whether the impeached clergymen had contravened it. But it is more important to observe that the doctrines of our religion are all assertions of the occurrence of facts. That our Lord died, and was buried, and rose again the third day, are all matters of fact. The question which, it was said, was to have been determined if the Vatican Council had not been prematurely broken up, whether or not the body of the Virgin was miraculously taken up to heaven, is a question of fact. If the Pope is unable to arrive at certainty about things alleged to have taken place in his own lifetime, how can he expect to be more successful about things that happened centuries ago? There is a story about a grave writer who abandoned in despair a contemplated historical work, when he found himself unable to ascertain the real facts of a quarrel which had taken place under his own windows. But yet again, those miracles of modern times, though the question of the reality of their occurrence may be one of fact, are made the foundation of doctrines and practices the reception of which must surely be affected by our acceptance or rejection of the facts. Thus, in the instance last given, if we believe that the Virgin Mary really said to a little girl, I am the Immaculate Conception,' however odd we may think her way of expressing herself, we cannot doubt that she meant to give her approval to the doctrine that she was conceived without sin, and so that the truth of that doctrine must be regarded as miraculously guaranteed.

Shortly after the pilgrimages to Lourdes others were organized to Paray-le-Monial. This had been the scene of the revelations of the blessed Marguerite Marie Alacoque, the foundress of the now popular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is not, like the other two I mentioned, a revelation of our own time, though a great impetus was given to that devotion by the beatification of this nun by

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Pius IX. She lived at the end of the seventeenth century, the time when the strife between the Jesuits and the Jansenists was the hottest. Her revelations were patronized by the Jesuits and condemned by the Jansenists. With the late Pope the Jesuits were all-powerful. This poor nun was subject to what we heretics would call hysteric delusions, in the course of which she saw many visions in which, as always happens, the ideas of her waking hours were reproduced. All that has been said metaphorically about our Lord's human heart was materialized by her, and referred to that physical portion of our Lord's human frame. As a specimen, I mention one of the most celebrated of her visions, in which she saw our Lord's heart in His bosom burning as in a furnace, and her own heart placed as a small atom of fire in that furnace. You cannot pass by a Roman Catholic pictureshop without observing what vogue the adoration of the material heart of our Lord has now gained. It was much opposed by the Jansenists, so that it was not till after a century and a-half that Margaret Mary obtained, under Pius IX., the dignity of beatification, which is next below canonization. It has been objected that this worship of a portion of our Lord's Body is downright Nestorianism. In the course of the Nestorian controversy it was distinctly condemned to make a separation between our Lord's Godhead and His manhood, so as to

This was but common gratitude considering how much good she had to say of them. Her biographer tells us: Notre-Seigneur, en parlant à Marguerite-Marie, lui a maintes fois déclaré qu'il se servirait en particulier des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus pour faire connaître aux hommes tout le prix des trésors renfermés dans son divin Cœur.'

It is curious that her conceptions have close affinity with the contemporary teaching of a Puritan divine, Goodwin, who was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Goodwin published books in which he dwelt much, in rather mystical language, on the point that our Lord's manhood remains still united to His Divinity, and that He still retains His human heart and feelings. De la Colombière, the director of the nun of whom I speak, was for a considerable time in England, attached to the household of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., so that he might easily have become acquainted with Goodwin's writings. It has consequently been imagined that Marguerite Marie derived her ideas through De la Colombière from Goodwin. It appears, however, that it was in 1675 she had a vision directing her to labour for the establishment of the feast of the Sacred Heart, and that her director did not return from England until 1679. Her devotion was not established even in her own convent until 1686.

offer worship to the one not addressed to the other. And here the worship is not even offered to our Lord's entire humanity, but to a part of it. However, the lawfulness of this worship is not what I am discussing now. My object is to show that every one of these alleged revelations has a distinct bearing upon doctrine. Of course, however objectionable this superstitious worship may appear to us, if our Lord has revealed His approval of it, our objections must be dismissed; and so an infallibility which owns itself incompetent to pronounce on the reality of alleged revelations really owns itself incompetent to pronounce on questions of doctrine which these revelations would seriously affect. So much it may well suffice to have said about the hesitations and vacillations of the infallible guide. I had intended to say something about positive errors into which he has fallen, but these I must reserve till the next day.