AN ENGLISH PRIEST ON THE APPARITIONS AT KNOCK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 397, 19 November 1880, Page 9

AN ENGLISH PRIEST ON THE APPARITIONS AT KNOCK.

On Sunday. September 11th, the annual sermons in aid of the debt on the mission of the Church of the English Martyrs, Preston, were preached. At the evening service, at which there was a crowded congregation, the Key. J. Chapman (of St. Augustine's) delivered an interesting address on a visit which he had recently made to Knock. He took for his text I. Cor. iii. 19—" For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, for it is written, The Lord knoweth that the thoughts of the wise are vain." Time after time, he said, had the truth of these words been confirmed by experience. If we looked back on man's history— it mattered not whether it be before the dawn of Christianity or since the coming of our Blessed Lord history ever revealed the same fact — viz., the shallowness of the wisdom of the world when it attempted to fathom and explain away the workings of His Providence. The tendency of man's mind had ever been — but still more especially in the piesent century — only to accept whatever man's reason could grasp, thoroughly understand, and account for ; but whatever rose beyond its search, whatever it could not sift, perfectly master, and explain, that at once was treated, not as above reason, but as contrary to reason, and therefore to be rejected. Consequently we found that whenever there was any marked interposition on the part of Providence in the affairs of man, whenever there was any supernatural manifestation, straightway the worldly wise tiied to assign it to natural causes, and when that failed they scouted it and treated it as the mere wandering of a diseased imagination or tlic delusions of devotees. Such, then, being the casc\ we need not be fui prised that the apparitions of our Lady at Knock had met with like treatment. The lev. gentleman described tbe position of the church, its dimensions, &c, and wunt ou to say that he should never foj get the impression produced on him by the scene theie witnessed. There vcrc some 200 people of his class and rank <n the spot, kneeling on the wet, muddy earth, and pi aying in a manner such as he hart never before witnessed— praying with increasing fervour and unflagging faith. Neither tbe pitiless rain which was fast falling nor the cold wind which swept from the neighbouring hills produced the slightest effect upon them, or in any way lessened the fervour of devotion. These visitors weic not confined to the district or to the country itself, but it would seem that well nigh every district in which the name of this new sbrine of our Lady had been heard had sent forth its representatives to honour her whom God had so loved to honour. Lancashire, ever foremost in the cause of the Catholic religion, had its representatives, aud so, too, many other counties in England had sent citizens. And what was it that was drawing such numbers to this wild and comparatively unknown part of Ireland, that bade them forego all comfort and ease and disregard the dangers and hardships of long and protracted journeys ? The answer was — because God had taken compassion upon His people ; and as He formerly sent His angel into the desert to save Hagar and her Bon, so too now He had sent His own Blessed Mother to dispense His favours to His children — favours beyond the power of man to grant, or of the human intellect to explain, and which forced all to exclaim, " The finger of God is here." The wonders and marvels which had taken place at Knock had been received with incredulity — nay, even with the scornful ridicule of many. The world's opposition, however, died out before the light of truth, and conviction gradually displaced its former want of belief. In the face, then, of any attack and of any denial, the apparitions of our Lady of Knock still contimied to stand every test, and gained credence and strength the more rigidly we inquired into them. Time after time had tbe witnesses of these apparitions repeated the account of what they had seen with an earnestness and with an accent of sincerity which placed doubt beyond question. They had no inducements held out to them, to make such statements, and no chance to make profit out of their declarations. Their evidence had been and was still daily confirmed by events which proved the accuracy of their statements. For all who had visited Knock, and many oven who had not been so privileged, agreed with him that since the first apparition of our Lady, on the 21st of August, there had been wrought works, many

and numerous, beyond man's power, and which must be attributed to the power of God. The rer. gentleman then proceeded to narrate the apparitions and to give an account of a few of the cures, remarking that in some instances he had seen and spoken to the persona who had been so favoured. Continuing, he said that we heard at times objections brought against the devotions by some people who threw disciedit upon the whole movement, because a few who had vibited Knock bad returned apparently no better for their visit. These few cases were brought up and were supposed to counteract the vast number of other cures that were mentioned. The same objection, one would think, might be brought up with greater force against there being any miraculous effects produced by the Probatica or pond at Jerusalem, for in St. John's Gospel we read that "in its live porches there lay a great multitude of sick, of blind, and of lame, waiting for the moving of the waters, and an angel descended at certain times into the pond, and he that went down first was cured of his infirmity." Here, though there was a large multitude waiting, some even for years, yet only one at a time was cured. Again, others attributed these causes to the effects of excitement on the human system or to overwrought imagination. Certainly the excitement must itself be miraculous, the imagination, must be marvellously overwrought, if it could make cripples imagine their limbs were straight, the blind they were possessed of sight, and the dumb of speech, or if it could make the blood course freely through the palsied limbs of the paralytic. If we denied those apparitions of the Mother of God at Knock and the cures that had taken place, then we should find ourselves in the untenable position of the apparitions — and they were now to be numbered by hundreds — people of different nationalities and characters, unknown one to the other, yet in some marvellous manner had all arranged and agreed to concoct this tale and set it afloat to deceive their fellow-men. There was but the one caude for it all, and let the worldy wise cavil at it as they would ; and that cause was the poodness and mercy of God. Long ago and repeatedly had puch things, even religion itself, been condemned as illusions and madness ; nay, from the earliest times of Christianity the Mystery of the Cross was treated as folly, and yet that did not prevent this pretended folly from changing the face of the world. — Nation.