Of course it was! It is equally true to say of a man who objects to an aëroplane smashing in the top of his studio that it is the resistance of an old organization to a new development. But such a phrase in no way explains the business; and when the Catholic begins to examine the particular case of St. Thomas, he finds a great many things to wonder at and to think about, upon which his less European opponents are helpless and silent. I say “helpless” because in their attitude they give up trying to explain. They record these things, but they are bewildered by them. They can explain St. Thomas’ particular action simply enough: too simply. He was (they say) a man living in the past. But when they are asked to explain the vast consequences that followed his martyrdom, they have to fall back upon the most inhuman and impossible hypotheses; that “the masses were ignorant”—that is as compared with other periods in human history (what, more ignorant than today?) that “the Papacy engineered an outburst of popular enthusiasm.” As though the Papacy were a secret society like modern Freemasonry, with some hidden machinery for “engineering” such things. As though the type of enthusiasm produced by the martyrdom was the wretched mechanical thing produced now by caucus or newspaper “engineering!” As though nothing _besides_ such interferences was there to arouse the whole populace of Europe to such a pitch! As to the miracles which undoubtedly took place at St. Thomas’ tomb, the historian who hates or ignores the Faith had (and has) three ways of denying them. The first is to say nothing about them. It is the easiest way of telling a lie. The second is to say that they were the result of a vast conspiracy which the priests directed and the feeble acquiescence of the maim, the halt and the blind supported. The third (and for the moment most popular) is to give them modern journalistic names, sham Latin and Greek confused, which, it is hoped, will get rid of the miraculous character; notably do such people talk of “auto-suggestion.” Now the Catholic approaching this wonderful story, when he has read all the original documents, understands it easily enough from within.