In truth, wherever the Catholic religion has been taught and accepted, wherever the Name of Jesus has been loved and venerated, wherever faith in the Unseen has been active and daring, there the Finger of God has sometimes been manifested. And this, of course, was to have been expected. Our Blessed Saviour’s glorious and unfailing promise, that His disciples, with whom He pledged Himself to remain unto the end of the world, should do even “greater works” than He Himself had wrought, was thus, from time to time, as man’s faith merited God Almighty’s intervention, literally and strictly fulfilled. SPIRITUAL POWERS AND PROPERTIES OF THE CHURCH. “When a man holds up to my conscious eye the page of futurity; or when, at the mandate of a mortal, I clearly perceive Nature to listen and to suspend her laws, I rationally conclude that such a man is indeed employed by God. These miraculous and prophetical tests, produced by the ancient seer to the Israelites, appealed to by Christ in His own sacred cause, and made over by Him to His ministers for ever in the work of conversion, have been a means to guide the enquiring soul to that Authority divinely-commissioned to teach the World. This power to deliver the dictates of the Holy Spirit, this society of continued apostles, or in other words, the Holy Catholic Church in every age, has proved by the evidence of actual miracles her possession of this gift presented to her by her Divine Founder.” CHAPTER III. SPIRITUAL POWERS AND PROPERTIES OF THE CHURCH. It is allowed on all hands by Catholic Christians that liberty has been sometimes permitted to the devil or his angels to enter into the bodies of men (just as of old Satan was allowed to try the patriarch Job), and to obtain such an absolute command over their powers and faculties as to incapacitate them, more or less, for any of the common duties of life. On this point, those who accept the Written Word of God as a portion, and a very important portion, of His Divine Revelation to mankind, through Christ, can have no doubt. In the New Testament, numerous instances of possession by evil spirits are recorded. The case of the daughter of the woman of Canaan, who cried out to our Blessed Saviour, “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, Thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil,”[35] and obtained from Him the gracious and merciful reply, “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt,” is familiar to all. So likewise is that of the man with an unclean spirit, recorded in the first chapter of the Gospel according to S. Mark. Here the spirit acknowledging that Christ was the “Holy One of God,” received the rebuke of Jesus Christ. “And when the unclean spirit had torn” the man suffering, “and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth He even the unclean spirits, and they do obey Him.”