rs, allowing that it now comes naturally from the rock,
are disposed to hold that it was in its origin miraculous, as was the
virtue of the pool of Bethsaida.

This point must be settled of course before the virtue of the oil can be
ascribed to the sanctity of St. Walburga; for myself, I neither have,
nor ever have had, the means of going into the question; but I will take
the opportunity of its having come before me, to make one or two
remarks, supplemental of what I have said on other occasions.

1. I frankly confess that the present advance of science tends to make
it probable that various facts take place, and have taken place, in the
order of nature, which hitherto have been considered by Catholics as
simply supernatural.

2. Though I readily make this admission, it must not be supposed in
consequence that I am disposed to grant at once, that every event was
natural in point of fact, which _might_ have taken place by the laws of
nature; for it is obvious, no Catholic can bind the Almighty to act only
in one and the same way, or to the observance always of His own laws. An
event which is possible in the way of nature, is certainly possible too
to Divine Power without the sequence of natural cause and effect at all.
A conflagration, to take a parallel, may be the work of an incendiary,
or the result of a flash of lightning; nor would a jury think it safe to
find a man guilty of arson, if a dangerous thunderstorm was raging at
the very time when the fire broke out. In like manner, upon the
hypothesis that a miraculous dispensation is in operation, a recovery
from diseases to which medical science is equal, may nevertheless in
matter of fact have taken place, not by natural means, but by a
supernatural interposition. That the Lawgiver always acts through His
own laws, is an assumption, of which I never saw proof. In a given case,
then, the possibility of assigning a human cause for an event does not
_ipso facto_ prove that it is not miraculous.

3. So far, however, is plain, that, till some _experimentum crucis_ can
be found, such as to be decisive against the natural cause or the
supernatural, an occurrence of this kind will as little convince an
unbeliever that there has been a divine interference in the case, as it
will drive the Catholic to admit that there has been no interference at
all.

4. Still there is this gain accruing to the Catholic cause from the
larger views we now possess of the operation of natur