NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 7 



Xavier, one day needing money, asked Vellio, one of his friends, 

 to let him have some. Vellio gave him the key of a safe contain- 

 ing thirty thousand gold pieces. Xavier took three hundred and 

 returned the key to Vellio, telling him what he had taken. At 

 this Vellio reproached Xavier for not taking more, saying that 

 he had expected to give him half of all that the strong-box con- 

 tained. Xavier, touched by this generosity, told Vellio that the 

 time of his death should be made known to him, that he might 

 have time to repent of any sins and prepare for eternity. But 

 twenty-six years later, Vitelleschi, in his Life of Xavier, telling 

 the story, says that Vellio on opening the safe found that all his 

 money remained as he had left it, and that none at all had disap- 

 peared ; in fact, that there had been a miraculous restoration. On 

 his blaming Xavier for not taking the money, Xavier declares to 

 Vellio that not only should he be apprised of the moment of his 

 death, but that he should always have all the money he needed. 

 Still later biographers improved the account further, declaring 

 that Xavier promised Vellio that the strong-box should always 

 contain money sufficient for his needs. 



In 1682, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death, ap- 

 peared his biography by Father Bouhours ; and this became a 

 classic. In it miracles of all kinds were enormously multiplied, 

 and many new ones given. Miracles few and small in Tursellinus 

 are many and great in Bouhours, and among the new ones is a 

 miraculous draught of fishes. It must be remembered that Bou- 

 hours, writing ninety years after Tursellinus, could hardly have 

 had access to any really new sources ; Xavier had been dead one 

 hundred and thirty years, and of course all the natives upon 

 whom he had wrought his miracles, and their children and grand- 

 children, were gone. It can not then be claimed that Bouhours 

 had the advantage of any new witnesses, nor could he have had 

 anything new in the way of contemporary writings ; for, as we 

 have seen, the missionaries of Xavier's time wrote nothing regard- 

 ing his miracles, and certainly the ignorant natives of India and 

 Japan did not commit any account of his miracles to writing. 

 Nevertheless, the miracles of healing given in Bouhours were 

 more numerous and brilliant than ever. But there was far more 

 than this. Although during the lifetime of Xavier there is, 

 neither in his own writings nor in any contemporary account 

 the least indication of resurrections from the dead, we find that 

 shortly after his death stories of resurrections wrought by him 

 during his lifetime began to appear. A simple statement of the 

 growth of these may throw some light on the evolution of mirac- 

 ulous accounts generally. At first it was affirmed that some peo- 

 ple at Cape Comorin said that he resuscitated one person ; then it 

 was said that there were two persons ; then in various authors, 



