614 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



who have accompanied me thus far may be disposed to say : " Well, 

 this is all very amusing as a story ; but what is the practical inter- 

 est of it ? We are not likely to believe in the miracles worked by 

 the spolia of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, or by those of any other 

 saints in the Roman calendar." 



The practical interest is this : If you do not believe in these 

 miracles, recounted by a witness whose character and competency 

 are firmly established, whose sincerity can not be doubted, and who 

 appeals to his sovereign and other contemporaries as witnesses of 

 the truth of what he says, in a document of which a MS. copy 

 exists, probably dating within a century of the author's death, 

 why do you profess to believe in stories of a like character which 

 are found in documents, of the dates and of the authorship of 

 which nothing is certainly determined, and no known copies of 

 which come within two or three centuries of the events they 

 record ? If it be true that the four Gospels and the Acts were 

 written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all that we know of 

 these persons comes to nothing in comparison with our knowledge 

 of Eginhard ; and not only is there no proof that the traditional 

 authors of these works wrote them, but very strong reasons to the 

 contrary may be alleged. If, therefore, you refuse to believe that 

 « Wiggo " was cast out of the possessed girl on Eginhard's author- 

 ity, with what justice can you profess to believe that the legion of 

 devils were cast out of the man among the tombs of the Gada- 

 renes ? And if, on the other hand, you accept Eginhard's evi- 

 dence, why do you laugh at the supposed efficacy of relics and the 

 saint- worship of the modern Romanists ? It can not be pretended, 

 in the face of all evidence, that the Jews of the year 30, or there- 

 about, were less imbued with the belief in the supernatural than 

 were the Franks of the year a. d. 800. The same influences were 

 at work in each case, and it is only reasonable to suppose that the 

 results were the same. If the evidence of Eginhard is insuffi- 

 cient to lead reasonable men to believe in the miracles he relates, 

 a fortiori the evidence afforded by the Gospels and the Acts must 

 be so.* 



But it may be said that no serious critic denies the genuineness 

 of the four great Pauline Epistles — Galatians, First and Second 

 Corinthians, and Romans — and that, in three out of these four, 

 Paul lays claim to the power of working miracles. \ Must we sup- 

 pose, therefore, that the Apostle to the Gentiles has stated that 

 which is false ? But to how much does this so-called claim amount ? 



* Of course there is nothing new in this argument ; but it does not grow weaker by age. 

 And the case of Eginhard i3 far more instructive than that of Augustine, because the for- 

 mer has so very frankly, though incidentally, revealed to us, not only his own mental and 

 moral habits, but those of the people about him. 



f See 1 Cor. xii, 10-28 ; 2 Cor. vi, 12 ; Rom. xv, 19. 



