We shall not attempt any further detailed reference to the myriads of miracles with which the annals of the Church teem up to very recent times. The fact is too well known to require evidence. The saints in the Calendar are legion. It has been computed that the number of those whose lives are given in the Bollandist Collection(1) amounts to upwards of 25,000, although, the saints being arranged according to the Calendar, the unfinished work only reaches the twenty-fourth of October. When it is considered that all those upon whom the honour of canonization is conferred have worked miracles, many of them, indeed, almost daily performing such wonders, some idea may be formed of the number of miracles which have occurred in unbroken succession from Apostolic days, and have been believed and recognized by the Church. Vast numbers of these miracles are in all respects similar to those narrated in the Gospels, and they comprise hundreds of cases of restoration of the dead to life. If it be necessary to point out instances in comparatively recent times, we may mention the miracles of this kind liberally ascribed to St Francis of Assisi, in the 13th century, and to his namesake St. Francis Xavier, in the 16th, as pretty well known to all, although we might refer to much more recent miracles authenticated by the Church. At the present day such phenomena have almost disappeared, and, indeed, with the exception of an occasional winking picture, periodical liquefaction of blood, or apparition of the Virgin, confined to the still ignorant and benighted corners of the earth, miracles are extinct. {188} CHAPTER VI. MIRACLES IN RELATION TO IGNORANCE AND SUPERSTITION We have maintained that the miracles which are reported after apostolic days, instead of presenting the enormous distinction which Dr. Mozley asserts, are precisely of the same types in all material points as the earlier miracles. Setting aside miracles of a trivial and unworthy character, there remains a countless number cast in the same mould as those of the Gospels,--miraculous cure of diseases, expulsion of demons, transformation of elements, supernatural nourishment, resurrection of dead--of many of which we have quoted instances. Dr. Mozley anticipates an objection and says: "It will be urged, perhaps, that a large portion even of the Gospel miracles are of the class here mentioned as ambiguous; cures, visions, expulsions of evil spirits; but this observation does not affect the character of the Gospel miracles as a body, because we judge of the body or whole from its highest specimen, not from its lowest." He takes his stand upon, "e.g. our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension."(1) Now, without discussing the principle laid down here, it is evident that the great distinction between the Gospel and other miracles is thus narrowed to a very small compass. It is admitted that the mass of the Gospel miracles are of a class characterized as ambiguous, because "the current {189}