well as Catholic. For example, in the beginning of his career, during a
journey in Europe with an ambassador, one of the servants in fording a
stream got into deep water and was in danger of drowning. Xavier tells
us that the ambassador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finally
struggled out of the stream. But within sixty years after his death, at
his canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified
into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in
glowing colours. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the
safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that it was Xavier
who prayed, and finally, by the later writers, Xavier is represented as
lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act.

(290) This statement was denied with much explosive emphasis by a writer
in the Catholic World for September and October, 1891, but he brought
no FACT to support this denial. I may perhaps be allowed to remind the
reverend writer that since the days of Pascal, whose eminence in the
Church he will hardly dispute, the bare assertion even of a Jesuit
father against established facts needs some support other than mere
scurrility.

Still another claim to miracle is based upon his arriving at Lisbon
and finding his great colleague, Simon Rodriguez, ill of fever. Xavier
informs us in a very simple way that Rodriguez was so overjoyed to see
him that the fever did not return. This is entirely similar to the cure
which Martin Luther wrought upon Melanchthon. Melanchthon had broken
down and was supposed to be dying, when his joy at the long-delayed
visit of Luther brought him to his feet again, after which he lived for
many years.

Again, it is related that Xavier, finding a poor native woman very
ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of the Church, and she
recovered.

Two or three occurrences like these form the whole basis for the
miraculous account, so far as Xavier's own writings are concerned.

Of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word there is in these letters
of his no mention. Though he writes of his doings with especial detail,
taking evident pains to note everything which he thought a sign of
Divine encouragement, he says nothing of his performing miracles,
and evidently knows nothing of them. This is clearly not due to his
unwillingness to make known any token of Divine favour. As we have seen,
he is very prompt to report any