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ment, but one which the Sergeant for a time declined; indeed, accepted it only after many arguments addressed to his sense of duty, and enforced by pressing personal reasons brought to bear on his kind heart by his minister, Mr. Porteous.

The other event, of equal-may we not safely say of greater importance to him?-was his marriage! We shall not weary the reader by telling him how this came about; or by tracing out all the subtle magic ways by which a woman worthy to be loved untwined the cords that had hitherto bound the Sergeant's heart; or how she alone tapped the deep well of his affections into which the purest drops had for years been falling, until it gushed out with a freshness, fulness, and strength, which are, perhaps, oftenest to be found in an old heart, when it is touched by one whom it dares to love, as that old heart of Adam Mercer's required to do if it loved at all.

Katie Mitchell was out of her teens when Adam, in a happy moment of his life, met her in the house of her widowed mother, who was confined to a bed of feebleness and pain for years, aud whom she had attended, with a patience, cheerfulness, and unwearied goodness which makes many a humble and unknown home a very Eden of beauty and peace. Her father had been a leading member of a very strict Presbyterian body, called the "Old Light," in which he shone with a brightness which no church on earth could of itself either kindle or extinguish; and when it passed out of the earthly dwelling, it left a subdued glory behind it which Dever passed away. "Faither" was always an authority with Katie and her mother, his ways a constant teaching, and his words an enduring strength, for they were echoes from the Rock of Ages.

The marriage took place after the death of Katie's mother, and soon after Adam had been ordained to the eldership.

himself fully understand? At the time we write, a starling was his friend, but one neither deaf nor dumb. This starling had been caught and tamed for his boy Charlie. He had taught the creature with greatest care to speak with precision. It's first, and most important lesson, was, "I'm Charlie's bairn." And one can picture the delight with which the child heard this innocent confession, as the bird put his head askance, looked at him with his round full eye, and in clear accents acknowledged his parentage; "I'm Charlie's bairn!” The boy fully appreciated his feathered confidant, and soon began to look to him as essential to his daily enjoyment. The Sergeant had also taught the starliug to repeat the words, "A man's a man for a' that," and to sing a bar or two of the ditty, "Wha'll be king but Charlie."

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Katie had more than once confessed that she wasna unco fond o' this kiud o' diversion;" had pronounced it to be "neither natural nor canny,' and had earnestly remonstrated with the Sergeant for what she called his "idle, foolish, and even profane" painstaking in teaching the bird. But one night, when the Sergeant announced that the education of the starling was complete, she became more vehement than usual on this assumed perversion of the will of Providence. "Nothing," he said, "could be more beautiful than his 'A man's a man for a' that.'" Katie said "The mair's the pity, Adam! Its wrang-clean wrang-I tell ye; and ye'll live to rue it. What right has he to speak? cock him up wi' his impudence! There's mony a bairn aulder than him canna speak sae weel. no a safe business, I can tell you, Adam."

It's

"Gi' ower, gi' ower, woman," said the Sergeant ; "the cratur' has its ain gifts, as we hae ours, and I'm thankfu' for them. It does me mair gude than ye can see when I tak' the boy on my lap, and see hoo his e'e blinks, and his bit feet gang, and hoo he laughs when he hears the bird say, 'I'm Charlie's

A boy was born to the worthy couple, and named bairn.' It's a real blessing to me, for it makes Charles, after the Sergeant's father.

It was a sight to banish bachelorship from the world, to watch the joy of the Sergeant with Charlie, from the day he experienced the new and indescribable feelings of being a father, until the flaxen-haired blue-eyed boy was able to toddle to him, be received into his waiting arms, and then mounted on his shoulders, while he stepped round the room to the tune of the old familiar regimental march, performed by him with half whistle half trumpet tones, which vainly expressed the roll of the band that crashed harmoniously in memory's ear. Katie "didna let on " her motherly pride and delight at the spectacle, which never became stale or common-place.

Adam had a weakness for pets. Dare we call such tastes a weakness, and not rather a minor part of his religion, which included within its scope a love of domestic animals, in whom he saw, in their willing dependence on himself, a reflection of more than they could ever know, or

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our bonnie bairn happy. And when I'm cutting, and stitching, and hammering, at the window, and dreaming o' auld langsyne, and fechting my battles ower again, and when I think o' this and that awfu' time that I have seen wi' brave comrades noo lying in some neuk in Spain; and when I hear the roar o' the big guns, and the spluttering crackle o' the wee anes, and see the crowd o' red coats, and the flashing o' bayonets, and the awfu' hell-excuse me -o' the fecht, I tell you its like a sermon to me when the cratur' says, 'A man's a man for a' that !'” The Sergeant would say this, standing up, and erect, with one foot forward as if at the first step of the scaling ladder. "Mind you, Katie, that it's no' every man that's 'a man for a' that;' but mair than ye wad believe are a set o' fushionless, water gruel, useless cloots, cauld sowans, when it comes to the real bit-the grip atween life and death! O ye wac wunner, woman, hoo mony men when on parade, or when singing sangs aboot the war, are gran' hands, but wha lie flat as scones on the grass when they

see the cauld iron! Gie me the man that does his daty, whether he meets man or deevil-that's the man for me in war or peace; and that's the reason I teached the bird thae words. It's a testimony for auld friends that I focht wi', and that I'll never forget-no, never! Dinna be sair, gudewife, on the pair bird."-"Eh, Katie," he added, one night, when the bird had retired to roost, "just look at the cratur' ! Is'na he beautifu'? There he sits on his back as roon as a clew, an' his bit head under his wing, dreaming aboot the woods maybe-or aboot wee Charlie-or aiblins aboot naething. But he is God's ain bird, wonderfu' and fearfully made." Still Katie, feeling that "a principle"-as she, à la mode, called her opinion--was involved in the bird's linguistic habits, would still maintain her cause with the same arguments, put in a variety of forms. “Na, na, Adam!" she would persistingly affirm, "I will say that for a sensible man an' an elder o' the kirk ye'r ower muckle ta'en up wi' that cratur'. I'll stick to it, that it's no fair, no richt, but a mockery o' man. I'm sure faither wadna have pitten up wi 't."

"Dinna be fleyting on the wee thing wi' its speckled breast and bonnie e'e. Charlie's bairn, ye ken-mind that!"

"I'm no fleyting on him, for it's you, no him, that's wrang. Mony a time when I spak to you mysel', ye were as deaf as a door nail to me, and could hear naething in the house but that wee neb o' his fechting awa' wi' its lesson. Na, ye needna glower at me, and look sae astonished, for I'm perfect serious."

"Ye're speaking perfect nonsense, gudewife, let me assure you; and I am astonished at ye," replied Adam, resuming his work on the bench.

"I'm no sich a thing, Adam, as spakin' nonsense," retorted his wife, sitting down with her seam beside him. "I ken mair aboot they jabbering birds maybe than yersel'. For I'll never forget an awfu' job wi' ane o' them that made a stramash atween Mr. Carruthers, our Auld Licht minister, and Willy Jamieson the Customer Weaver. The minister happened to be veesitin in Willy's house, and exhorting him and some neebours that had gaithered ben to hear. Weel, what hae ye o't, but ane o' they parrots, or Kickcuckkoo birds-or hoo d'ye ca' them?—had been brocht hame by Willy's brither's son-him that was in the Indies-and didna this cratur' cry oot "Stap yer blethers!" just ahint the minister, wha gied sic a loup, and thocht it a cunning device o' Satan!"

"Gudewife, gudewife!" struck in the Sergeant, as he turned to her with a laugh. "O dinna blether yoursel', for ye never did it afore. They micht hae hung the birdcage oot while the minister But what had the puir bird to do wi'

was in.

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Satan or religion? Wae's me for the religion that could be hurt by a bird's cracks! The cratur' didna ken what it was saying."

"Didna ken what it was saying!" exclaimed Katie, with evident amazement. "I tell you, I've see'd it mony a time, and heard it, too; and it was a hantle sensibler than maist bairns ten times its size. I was watching it that day when it disturbed Mr. Carruthers, and I see'd it looking roon, and winkin' its een, and scartin' its head long afore it spak; and it tried its tongue-and black it was, as ye micht expek, and dry as ben leather-three or four times afore it got a sound oot; and tho' a' the forenoon it had never spak a word, yet when the minister began, its tongue was lowsed, and it yoked on him wi' its gowk's sang, Stap yer blethers, stap yer blethers!' It was maist awfu' to hear it! I maun alloo, hooever, that it cam' frae a heathen land, and wasna therefore sae muckle to be blamed. But I couldna mak' the same excuse for your bird, Adam !”

A loud laugh from Adam proved at once to Katie that she had neither offended nor convinced him by her arguments.

But all real or imaginary differences between the Sergeant and his wife about the starling, ended with the death of their boy. What that was to them both, parents only who have lost a child—an only child-can tell. It "cut up," as they say, the Sergeant terribly. Katie seemed suddenly to become old. She kept all her boy's clothes in a press, and it was her wont for a time to open it as if for worship, every night, and to "get her greet out." The Sergeant never looked into it, but read his Book at the fireside, put his mark into it, prayed, and went to bed in peace. Once, when his wife awoke and found him weeping bitterly, he told his first and only fib; for he said that he had an excruciating headache. A headache! He would no more have wept for a headache of his own than he would for one endured by his old foe, Napoleon.

This great bereavement made the starling a painful but almost a holy remembrancer of the child. “I'm Charlie's bairn!" was a death knell in the house. When repeated no comment was made. It was generally heard in silence; but one day, Adam and his wife were sitting at the fireside taking their meal in a sad mood, and the starling, perhaps under the influence of hunger, or, who knows, from an uneasy instinctive sense of the absence of the child, began to repeat rapidly the sentence, "I'm Charlie's bairn!" The Sergeant rose and went to its cage with some food, and said, with as much earnestness as if the bird had understood him, 'Ay, yer jist his bairn, and ye'll be my bairn too as long as ye live!

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"A man's a man for a' that!" quoth the bird. "Maybe," murmured the Sergeant.

(To be continued.)

HISTORY OF A MIRACLE.

NEAR the sources of the Arno and the Tiber, a branch of the Apennines rises wooded almost to its summit. In its hollows there are deep grottoes, and two jutting rocks which, according to an old legend, were upheaved towards the sky at the moment of the death of Christ. Here St. Francis of Assisi found one of his favourite retreats. The mountain belonged to him as much as anything can be said to have belonged to a man whose principle was not to own anything on earth. The Count Roland, the lord of the country, had made him a gift of it. In this retirement the disciples of Francis built a chapel and some rude cottages; and amidst its wild and lofty solitudes during the summer of 1224, and the fast of forty days which the Saint kept in honour of the Archangel Michael, there is supposed to have here happened the greatest miracle of the middle ages-the miracle of the Stigmata.

reported, a little inquiry serves to explode them. They disappear when fairly looked into. This is to put the historical question fairly in a shape in which no one is entitled to quarrel with it. We do not set out from any sceptical basis. We do not venture to prejudge the question of the supernatural; we simply ask evidence of it. And if satisfactory evidence is not to be found, we ask for explanation. What account does the marvel admit of? How did the supposed miracle arise? how did men really come to credit it, if it did not really happen? The historical problem is only exhausted when we are able to give some answer to these questions.

Let us look at the evidence in the special case before us. The miracle of the Stigmata is handed down to us through what we may call three primary sources. These are the biographies of St. Francis, written within forty years of his death, and each of them with significant variations containing an account of the miracle. Thomas de Celano, a disciple of the Saint, wrote his life in obedience to papal command-three years after his death-in 1229. Twenty years afterwards, viz., in 1247, the three companions (Leo, Rufinus, Angelus) wrote a sort of supplement to this original biography. They had been friends of St. Francis, and one of them (Leo) had been his confessor and chosen confidant. They profess to give facts, and while charged by the general of the Order with a careful recital of the miracles of the Saint, they yet draw attention to his character as far greater than any of his miracles, which were to be considered, according to them, mainly as evidences of his saintliness. Finally, Bonaventura, the most Platonic of the mediaval schoolman, and general of the Order of Franciscans, wrote a life of the great founder in Paris in 1263. This task was laid upon him by the Order on account of the many legendary stories already in circulation regarding the Saint, and was only undertaken after a visit to his birthplace, and elaborate inquiries at St. all the contemporaries of Francis who still survived. The book is half a gospel, half a poem, and while undertaken with a view of clearing the life of the Saint from legends, can least of the three biographies claim to be free from legendary and mythical material.

In a former paper we spoke of this miracle, of its strange and fascinating character, and the deep hold which it took of the spiritual imagination of the Medieval Church, and promised to return to it and consider whether it admitted of any natural explanation. To the devout Catholic of course it needs no such explanation. It is only a part of the supernatural furniture familiar to his mind. The Saints are to him beings of a higher order. The supernatural life of the Church is perpetuated in them, not merely in the saintliness, purity, and frequent beauty of their character, but in their doings and sufferings. They do what others cannot do; they have an intimacy with heaven which others have not. They confound their enemies with a word; they come forth from cruel tortures unharmed. Nature obeys their behests, and a secret charm of diviuity hedges them about. miracle, therefore, is merely a fitting part of their lives. The wonder would be if it were not present. And, marvellous as is the great mine of the Stigmata, there is nothing in it to excite the incredulity of the faithful, who see the lives of the Saints through this haze of supernaturalism. Francis was the great medieval Saint. All other saintliness is eclipsed by his; and it is only appropriate, therefore, that to him should have been granted this choicest token of divine favour, to wear on his body the marks of his Lord's Passion.

The

But the historical student cannot accept such an explanation even if he would. He must look at every fact on its own evidence. He must ask of any marvel which he encounters-did the thing really happen in that form, or in any form? What proof is there that it happened at all? Is not its very claim to be supernatural a presumption against it? For similar supernatural facts, it is admitted on all hands, no longer happen. If they are for a time

Such are the sources of the miraculous story. More particularly, Thomas de Celano tells us that in the two last years of his life the Saint bore the signs of the cross in five places of his body, just as if he had hung upon the cross with the Son of God. The miracle happened in this wise, according to him. As the Saint communed with God in solitary retirement he besought some special expression of the Divine Will; and opening the Gospel, according to his wont, three times, his glance fell each time upon

Note. This paper is founded on Hase's interesting the narrative of the Passion. Then suddenly he

Sketch of the Life of St. Francis of Assisi.

saw in vision a seraph with six wings and out

be registered in the archives of Assisi, as completing the primitive testimony to the miracle. This is the only hint thus early of the mode in which the sacred wounds were made on the body of St. Francis. For in none of our narratives is there any mention, as in the later legends, of the wounds having been communicated by embrace, or, as represented in the great picture of Giotto in Assisi, by bloody rays proceeding from the vision, and imprinting them on the body of the Saint. There is an especial obscurity also in the first and simplest form of the story of the vision by Thomas de Celano, namely, as to how the wounds were seen at all in the crucified seraph, when with two of its wings it covered its whole body.

stretched hands as if attached to the cross: two wings covered the head, two were unfolded for flight, and the remaining two covered the whole body. The sight ravished the Saint and pierced his heart with ineffable joy; and as he asked what it meant there began to appear on his own hands and feet mysterious marks of nails, as on the apparition -the heads of the nails projecting in the palms of his hands and upon his feet, a curved surface of swollen flesh upon the hands, and at the right side a wound that often bled and wet his garments. The story of the three companions is very similar. One morning, as St. Francis was upon Alverno, the name of the mountain solitude, at the time of the elevation of the cross, he was lost in a transport of compassionate sympathy for his crucified Lord. The same vision of the seraph appeared to him with the addition of the figure of the crucified One gleaming between the wings of the heavenly appari-based. The character of the evidence is particularly tion; and when the vision vanished, the same marks as of nails appeared, the flesh rising in swollen lumps, and leaving the colour of iron.

The account of Bonaventura is less simple. There is more an air of reflection and explanatory comment about it. He says that the thought was impressed upon St. Francis as he consulted the Gospel. "I must become like Christ in His passion, even as I have sought to follow Him in all the acts of his life." Then the vision of the seraph is related with some difference in the details of the vision:-"One morning, as the Saint was praying on the slope of the mountain, he saw a seraph descend from heaven with a rapid flight, having between wings of fire the image of a crucified man. In the celestial figure the Saint at once recognised his Lord, and all the tender bitterness of the Passion entered into his soul as a sword, while it was communicated to him by chosen revelation that he must be transformed into His image not by the martrydom of the flesh, but by ardour of soul. Immediately the apparition vanished, the marks of the nails and the wound in the side began to appear."

Such is the story as given by St. Francis' three early biographers. It is not necessary to give any later accounts. One or two points claim to be noticed on the face of the story before we proceed to examine more particularly the evidence on which the miracle rests. In the vision as narrated by Thomas de Celano, there is only a crucified seraph seen; in the vision of the three companions there the further vision of a crucified man between the wings of the seraph; and in the vision of BonaVentura the seraph becomes Christ himself. And this last view is declared to be confirmed by the statement of a brother, in 1282, to whom St. Francis appeared, informing him that it was no Angel but Christ himself who was manifested to him while the mountain was bathed in a golden light, and who Himself impressed with ineffable sweetness the stigmata upon his body. The general of the Order caused the statement of the brother to

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Passing over such minor criticisms, let us look at the evidence on which the fact of the miracle, or of St. Francis bearing the wounds of the Passion, is

deserving of notice. According to his first biographer, the saint carefully concealed the stigmata from inspection. To no one during his life was the secret fully revealed. Two of the brethren * alone were permitted to see the wound in his side, and one of them also to touch it with his hands. It was only after his death that the miracle became fully known. Then the whole people of Assisi flocked to view the dead body of the Saint, and gazed on it with stricken awe in its resemblance to that of the Son of God, which bore the sins of the world upon the cross. He adds, significantly, that it was esteemed the highest favour to be admitted "not only to kiss the sacred wounds, but to see them." The narratives of the three companions agree in this respect substantially with that of Thomas de Celano. There is an important difference, however, in the statement of Bonaventura. He also mentions, indeed, that the Saint endeavoured carefully to hide the sacred mystery during his lifetime, by covering his hands with the sleeves of his frock, and wearing shoes on his feet. But he adds that, notwithstanding his efforts at concealment, some of the brethren saw the stigmata of the hands and feet,” and “very many affirmed by oath that they had seen them." The distinction in the original is peculiar, and deserves to be exhibited :"Latere non potuit quin aliqui stigmata manuum viderunt et pedum-plurimi se vidisse juramento firmârunt." Several cardinals even are said to have seen, and to have celebrated the miracle in prose and verse. And the Pope Alexander IV., according to Bonaventura, in a sermon which he himself heard, declared that he had witnessed with his own eyes the wounds of the Saint while he lived. After his death, Bonaventura goes on to say, as many as fifty monks and innumerable laymen saw them, and many touched and kissed them. It is true that Francis concealed so carefully the wound in his side, that two witnesses alone had seen it privately *Elias of Cortona and Rufinus.

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"Non solum ad osculandum, sed ad videndum sacra stigmata."

the stigmata. So late as 1259, the Holy Father utters threats against certain secular clergy and monks of Spain who remained incredulous even after all that had been said on the subject.

-the same two mentioned by Thomas de Celano. But the brethren who washed the Saint's garments had come to know of the wound which they afterwards saw with adoring reverence when he was dead. And the great schoolman concludes his It is unnecessary to pursue the thread of evidence narrative by the statement that the "fact of the further down. We have already plainly got beyond stigmata had been assured not only by two or three the range of primary evidence. The more thowitnesses, which would have been enough, but roughly we examine the facts, the more clearly superabundantly by a large number, so as to take indeed will we see that there is, after all, only one away from the incredulous all pretext of unbelief." bit of really original evidence brought before us. The increase in the number of witnesses of the For the question comes to be, Is there any one miracle in proportion to the distance of the bio- really trustworthy who affirms that he saw the grapher from the time of St. Francis is highly | stigmata, or, at least, that he heard with his own significant. It is the usual law of evidence in ears some one, whose words admit of no dispute, such matters, and is calculated at once to raise affirm that he saw the stigmata? This is the suspicion. A further cause of suspicion is to be lowest measure of evidence that could possibly be found in a special incident mentioned by Bona- accepted. Even if we had such evidence, what ventura. There was, according to him, an un- possibilities of deception might remain as to the believer, a "doubting Thomas," among the crowd real character of the wounds or seeming wounds of the inhabitants of Assisi who flocked to see the seen! What possibilities of explanation might awful sight after the Saint's death-a certain there be without calling in question the veracity of knight of the place. But as soon as he was per- the witness ! But the primary question, upon mitted to see the wounds with his own eyes, and which the whole truth of this story must hinge, is, to touch them with his hands, his incredulity van- Have we such a witness? On the first view we ished, and he became par excellence the witness of seem to have more than one such witness. For we the truth of the miracle. There is a vein of inven- have Bonaventura telling us that he heard Alextiveness here that is highly significant. ander IV. declare in a public discourse that he had himself seen the stigmata. Then we have the statement of Thomas de Celano that both Elias of Cortona, and Rufinus, one of the three companions, saw the wound in the side of St. Francis. Let us see what these statements come to when examined.

A few further fragments of evidence are adduced. A Spanish bishop, writing against the Albigenses in 1231, mentions the stigmata of St. Francis as a fact so well ascertained that he argues from it regarding the manner in which Christ Himself may have suffered. As this bishop, however, evidently founds upon the narrative of Thomas de Celano, which had appeared two years before, he cannot be regarded as an independent witness. There only remains to be considered, therefore, the solemn attestations of the two Popes, Gregory IX. and Alexander IV., both contemporaries and friends of the Saint. The character of their evidence can only be appreciated in connection with the purposes which it was intended to serve.

A certain bishop of Olmutz, and a Moravian friar of the Great Dominican Order, had cast open discredit upon the miracle of the stigmata. The former had forbidden any one to represent the wounds upon the images of St. Francis, or of any other saint. Gregory IX. notified to the bishop that his conduct was offensive to God and Holy Church, and called upon him to retract his denial of the miracle. The friar he summoned to Rome to receive the chastisement due to his daring. This occurred in 1237, eleven years after the death of St. Francis; and whatever weight may be due to the Papal testimony in favour of the miracle, the causes which provoked it at least proved that the miracle was not universally acknowledged. Nor was it received without doubt many years after this. The testimony of Alexander IV., like that of his predecessor, consists of a denunciatory brief, directed against those who in their insensate blindness still ventured to dispute regarding the fact of

Of Bonaventura's good faith there can be no doubt. He is one of the highest and purest characters of the Middle Ages. But then his evidence is only hearsay; and we have the statement of Pope Alexander himself, which must be allowed to supersede any account of it from secondary sources. In none of his declarations on the subject, directed against those who still in different quarters questioned the miracle, does Alexander affirm that he himself saw the stigmata. His statement is always of a general character. "Faithfully observing eyes," he says, "beheld them, and fingers to be trusted trembled while they touched them;"* but he says nothing of his own experience. What is more remarkable still, his predecessor, Gregory, in the very bull by which St. Francis is enrolled among the number of the saints, while speaking generally of Francis' miracles, makes no allusion to this, the greatest of all; and Alexander relates that it needed a vision of the Saint himself to assure Gregory of the wound in the side. Why this wound should have required more special evidence than the marks on the hands and feet we are not informed.

We are left then to test the evidence of the two

Viderunt namque oculi fideleter intuenter et certisejus et pedibus expressa undique similitudo clavorum de simi palpantium digiti palpaverunt, quod in manibus subjecto proprio carnis excrevit vel de materia novæ creatonis accrevit.

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