ion is
not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial
cause why apostolic preaching could no longer produce apostolic results
"lies in the missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of
working miracles." He then asks, "Why should our age be so completely
destitute of them?" This question he answers at great length, and one of
his main contentions is that in early apostolic times illiterate men had
to convert the learned of the world, whereas in modern times the case
is reversed, learned men being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence
that "in the early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they
are not."

This statement and argument refer, as we have seen, directly to Xavier
by name, and to the period covered by his activity and that of the other
great missionaries of his time. That the Jesuit order and the Church at
large thought this work of Acosta trustworthy is proved by the fact
that it was published at Salamanca a few years after it was written,
and republished afterward with ecclesiastical sanction in France.(291)
Nothing shows better than the sequel how completely the evolution of
miraculous accounts depends upon the intellectual atmosphere of any land
and time, and how independent it is of fact.

(291)The work of Joseph Acosta is in the Cornell University Library,
its title being as follows: De Natura Novi Orbis libri duo et De
Promulgatione Evangelii apud Barbaros, sive De Procuranda Indorum
Salute, libri sex, autore Jesepho Acosta, presbytero Societis Jesu. I.
H. S. Salmanticas, apud Guillelmum Foquel, MDLXXXIX. For the passages
cited directly contradicting the working of miracles by Xavier and his
associates, see lib. ii, cap. ix, of which the title runs, Cur
Miracula in Conversione gentium non fiant nunc, ut olim, a Christi
praedicatoribus, especially pp. 242-245; also lib. ii, cap. viii, pp.
237 et seq. For a passage which shows that Xavier was not then at all
credited with "the miraculous gift of tongues," see lib. i, cap. vii,
p. 173. Since writing the above, my attention has been called to the
alleged miraculous preservation of Xavier's body claimed in sundry
letters contemporary with its disinterment at San Chan and reinterment
at Goa. There is no reason why this preservation in itself need be
doubted, and no reason why it should be counted miraculous. Such
exceptional preservation of bodies has been common enough in all ages,
and, alas for the