cles in the Christian dispensation: that they take from faith its true value and merit. I would not have you be a doubting Thomas refusing to believe in the risen Saviour, unless you put your hand into His side and your fingers into the place of the nails; but like blessed Peter, relying not on the testimony of flesh and blood, but on the revelation of your heavenly Father, I would have you blindly and unhesitatingly confess Christ to be the Son of the living God. And as, for that grand profession of faith, Christ made Peter the rock whereon to build His Church, so will He make your faith, if like to Peter's, the base for a superstructure of virtue that will reach and carry you up to the very throne of God. For " blessed are they that have not seen and have believed."
Brethren, briefly stated, my contention is this: Miracles as stimulators of faith are a lamentable necessity rather than an unmixed blessing. They served their purpose in the hands of Christ confronting a bigoted and a pagan world; in the hands of the infant Church struggling for existence; in the hands of a Francis Xavier in the van of civilization and Christianity. They are useful in a Lourdes, to stem the rising tide of infidelity, and in a Naples, where Nature is so beautifully arrayed that the people would fain worship her as a God; but in an ideal Christian community there should be no place, no necessity for them. For faith, according to St. Paul, is the substance of things to be hoped for; the evidence of things that appear not. The evident substantial
