he questions which
naturally suggest themselves are,--To what extent can we rationally
attach credit to it? And, if true, what is the explanation of phenomena
apparently so incredible?

As to the first, the admission of a distinguished contemporary
historian, noted for his skeptical tendencies, in regard to the evidence
for these alleged miracles, is noteworthy. It is in these words:--"Many
of them were immediately proved on the spot before judges of
unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction,
in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the
world; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the
civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose
favor the miracles were supposed to have been wrought, ever able
distinctly to refute or detect them."[41]

Similar is the admission of another celebrated author, at least as
skeptical as Hume, and writing at the very time, and on the very spot
where these marvellous events were occurring. Diderot, speaking of the
St.-Medard manifestations, says,--"We have of these pretended miracles a
vast collection, which may brave the most determined incredulity. Its
author, Carre de Montgeron, is a magistrate, a man of gravity, who up to
that time had been a professed materialist,--on insufficient grounds,
it is true, but yet a man who certainly had no expectation of making his
fortune by becoming a Jansenist. An eye-witness of the facts he relates,
and of which he had an opportunity of judging dispassionately and
disinterestedly, his testimony is indorsed by that of a thousand others.
All relate what they have seen; and their depositions have every
possible mark of authenticity; the originals being recorded and
preserved in the public archives."[42]

Even in the very denunciations of opponents we find corroboratory
evidence of the main facts in question. Witness the terms in which the
Bishop of Bethleem declaims against the scenes of St. Medard:--"What! we
find ecclesiastics, priests, in the midst of numerous assemblies
composed of persons of every rank and of both sexes, doffing their
cassocks, habiting themselves in shirt and trousers, the better to be
able to act the part of executioners, casting on the ground young girls,
dragging them face-downward along the earth, and then discharging on
their bodies innumerable blows, till they themselves, the dealers of
these blows, are reduced to such a state of exh