142 ARCHBISHOP O'BRIEN OX THE 



the rotting flesh was purified, the sorea healed, the wasted parts restored, and the clear hue 

 of health took the jjlace of the erst ghastly colour. The leper was cleansed and whole. 

 How had it been effected ? Without entering into technical explanations, or diffuse state- 

 ments, we can assert as a fact that all disease is an outcome of an abnormal state of the vital 

 functions, and the one end and aim of medical science is to restore, by the medium of drugs 

 and dietary, these functions to their normal condition. Now, all the vital forces were in 

 that leper's body although disarranged. The will of the Master acted on them, intensifying 

 some, and producing, instantaneously, through this sublimation the efiect which drugs 

 slowly accomplish. No law was suspended, abrogated, or contradicted, and yet a stupendous 

 miracle was wrought. The master luind had pressed a key hitherto untouched, and the 

 harmony of the universe was in full accord with the exalted strain it gave forth. 



Let us consider another example. A man is seized with one of the many forms of 

 illness to which human nature is subject. For a day or a week he languishes on his bed of 

 sickness, wrestling bravely against the enemy, but in vain. Ilis sorrowing friends cannot 

 stay the progress of the disease, and ere long death that ever shadows life claimed a victory. 

 The pulse is stilled ; the action of the heart is stopped ; the mysterious substance that felt 

 and thought and loved, and which, together with the body, constituted the intelligent sub- 

 ject, no longer animates the physical organism. The man is dead. No one doubts it ; not 

 even the devoted love of mother, or sister, dares hope. Ere the funeral rites have been per- 

 formed indubitable signs of corruption are seen, and the body is borne without delay to the 

 sepulchre. There the sentence of dust to dust begins to be verified in its regard. What 

 shall we say, should it be asserted by credible witnesses, that on the fourth day a crowd came 

 to the tomb, and after the stone had been removed from the door, an authoritative voice 

 cried out : " Lazarus, come forth," and that the dead man obeyed the call, came forth, and 

 was restored to his friends ? Let science pause before crying out, " absurd," " impossible," 

 "against all laws of nature." No ; against what usually happens, yes; against natural laws, 

 decidedly not. It is a first aphorism of physical science that no particle of matter is destroyed, 

 no force is lost. Changes and transformations of various kinds are being contiimally verified, 

 but annihilation is unknown. IIow had death been brought about ? Simply by a dissolu- 

 tion of some vital part of the organism ; after death a general dissolution set in ; but in neither 

 case was any particle of matter destroyed, nor any force lost. Under changed forms they 

 continued to exist. To readjust to their former complex relations the scattered forces, and 

 to restore the waste of the organs, the intervention, indeed, of the Divine Power, or a miracle, 

 is required to so intensify and sublimate their qualities and atfinities as to bring them, at once, 

 into that mutual relation which had been slowly effected in the ordinary process of develop- 

 ment. By artificial means we raise the temperature of the atmosphere in a hot liouse, and 

 vegetation is accelerated. ' True, it is not instantaneous ; for the greater, and the lesser, exist 

 in our regard, because of our finite nature ; but thei-e are no such limitations for the Infinite. 

 In keeping, then, with all the qualities of organic forces whose actions are always pi-opor- 

 tionate to their intensity, and in harmony with the laws -of growth which act slowly, or 

 rapidly, according to the conditions of their environment, the wasted vital organs could be 

 brought back to a healthy state, and be fitted to renew their commerce with the spirit, which, 

 at the will of its Creator, could animate them again. 



To burst asunder the rocks, or the fetters of the imprisoned, it is only necessary to 

 intensify the repulsive force of matter, and, like a flash, the rocks are riven, and the fetters 



