THE plan of the divine work developed itself by degrees with all its admirable and powerful logic. But no one at that moment, and M. Massy less than any one else, perceived the invisible hand of God directing all things, however manifestly such was the case. It is not in the middle of a charge that one can judge of the disposition of a battle. The unfortunate Prefect having left the straight path, saw nothing in what was passing around him but an irritating series of vexing incidents, and an inexplicable fatality. Remove God from certain questions and the inexplicable will meet you at every turn.
The march of events, slow but unstoppable, was upsetting, one by one, all of unbelief, and forcing the wretched philosophy of man to beat a retreat and abandon its intrenchments one after the other.
The Apparitions had taken place. The Free-thinkers had, in the first instance, absolutely denied their reality, while they accused the youthful Seer of being a mere tool in the hands of others, and of engaging in a series of jugglery from mercenary motives. This theory did not hold good when brought face to face with the child’s examination. Her veracity made a deep impression on all.
The spirit of incredulity driven out of this, their first position, had fallen back on hallucination and catalepsy.
“She fancies she sees; she does not see. There is nothing in it.”
Providence, however, had assembled from every quarter of the horizon its thousands and thousands of witnesses round the child in her state of ecstacy; and when the proper moment arrived had solemnly attested the truth of Bernadette’s narration by causing a Spring to gush forth publicly, before the spell-bound eyes of the throng which had flocked to the spot.
“There is no Spring,” the unbelievers had said. “It is an oozing of water, a pool, a small pond. Call it what you will, except a Spring.
But while they were solemnly and publicly denying its very existence, the Spring was increasing, almost like a being endowed with life, and assuming prodigious proportions. More than 25,000 gallons issued daily from this strange rock.
“It is accidental, it is a singular circumstance,” Unbelief had stammered out, reduced to desperation and recoiling from hour to hour.
And see―events following their invincible course―the most striking cures had immediately attested in every direction the miraculous character of the Spring, and given a new and decisive proof of the reality of the all-powerful Apparition, whose gesture had sufficed to cause this Fountain of Life to gush forth from beneath the hand of a mere mortal.
The first impulse of the Philosophers had been to deny the reality of these cures, as they had denied in the first instance the sincerity of Bernadette, as they had denied the very existence of the Spring.
Yet suddenly the cures had become so numerous, so notorious, that the enemy had been obliged to beat a retreat and admit their reality.
“Well, be it so! Cures are certainly effected, but they are owing to the impregnation of mineral substances. The Spring possesses certain therapeutic virtues,” had been the cry of the incredulous, holding in their hands I know not what semblance of a chemical analysis. Then the most astounding cures, which were absolutely inexplicable by a hypothesis of this nature, had been multiplied to an immense extent; and simultaneously, though from opposite quarters, several conscientious and enlightened men, thoroughly acquainted with the science of chemistry, had boldly declared that the Spring of Massabielle did not possess in itself any mineral virtue, that it was composed of ordinary water, and that the purely official analysis furnished by M. Latour de Trie was solely intended to meet the well-known views of the Prefect.
Driven thus from all the intrenchments in which, after successive defeats, they had sought refuge; pursued by the blasting evidence of facts; curshed beneath the weight of their own admissions; unable to retract these successive and forced admissions, which had been publicly registered in their own journals, what had the Philosophers and Free-thinkers to do? The Philosophers and Free-thinkers had but to humbly surrender their arms to Truth. They had but to bow their heads, to bend their knees, and to believe; they had but to do what is done by the ripe ears of corn, when the wheat, that gift of God, comes by degrees to fill their grains, as is mentioned by the author of the Essays. “It has happened,” says Montaigne, “to really learned persons, as it happens to spikes of corn. They stand erect and hold their heads high, as long as they are empty; but, when they are full and heavy with ripe grain, they begin to bow down and lower themselves towards the ground. In like manner, men, after having tried everything and sounded everything have renounced their presumption and acknowledged their natural condition.”
It may be, the Philosophers of Lourdes did not possess enough of largeness and strength of mind to apprehend the good seed of truth. It may be, their pride rendered them inflexible and impervious to the clearest evidence. One thing is certain, that, with the exception of a few who were happily converted, there did not happen to them what happens “to really learned persons,” and they continued “to hold their heads high,” like the empty ears of corn.
Not only did they maintain their attitude of incredulity; but impiety, driven with shame and disgrace from quibble to quibble, from sophism to sophism, from one falsehood to another, and reduced to the most absurd shifts, suddenly threw off the mask, and exposed its full deformity. It passed, we would say, from the realm of discussion and reasoning, which derive considerable moral support from the exasperation of the Free-thinkers, who were entirely discomfited, humiliated, and consequently furious.
He also had been vanquished to far in the anologous if not identical struggle into which he had entered with the Supernatural. All his efforts had failed.
Issuing from the inmost recess of a solitary rock and announced by the voice of a child, the Supernatural had commenced its march, overturning all obstacles, dragging the multitude and its train, and gaining on its passage the enthusiastic shouts, prayers, cries of gratitude, and exclamations of the popular faith.
Once more, what still remained to be done?
To withstand the clearest evidence, and to take violent measures against the throng of believers.
