The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1915. THE ALLEGED APPARITION AT MONS.

New Zealand Tablet, 2 September 1915, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1915. THE ALLEGED APPARITION AT MONS.

OME stories which are going the . rounds ‘ about an alleged appearance of angels : in dKSwMV the course of the Battle of Mons are being / accorded a very liberal measure. of space T in the daily press, and are being ■ read with a rather surprising amount of interest r and; attention. Ministers have devoted ■ 9 - S&TTgimi 0 L r\ f ]ia .ollLionf.-' or»/I i*r» onvvtA A 1 n n “ Vll w .T k» WW J vv Uj tVilVi -iii ooxiiv |/x(ivc>a animated newspaper discussions have taken place. There Are varying versions of v the alleged incident, but the main points are sufficiently simple. It

154 reported tht- in the course of the British retreat • IT. “ ' v/ . 4 ’ si ,-^ iA,L ' xcuxcau from Moris- a British company, ,pursued by "the Germancavalry, took refuge in a " chalk pit, and that as the Germans advanced a troop of angels appeared between the British and their enemy. When the German horses rushed up towards the spot they saw the angelic figures, arid- in spite of the efforts of the riders, stampeded. Thus' the lives of the -British soldiers were saved, and the Germans were put to confusion.

To the Catholic mind there is nothing in the least degree inherently improbable in the apparition and intervention of angels on the field of battle. On the contrary, such visitations are entirely in line with the teachings of the Catholic Faith. Of the angels we read in, the Epistle to the Hebrews that they are ‘ all ministering spirits.’ According to Catholic theology, they serve God continually in heaven, and they also defend countries, cities, churches, etc., besides offering to God the .prayers'of the faithful. Further, each man has an angel who watches over him, defends him from evil, helps him in prayer, suggests good thoughts, and at last, if he is saved, presents his soul to God. In addition to the spiritual services rendered, they also assist and deliver God’s people from all kinds of temporal evil. They liberate from prison, break the chains of captives and set them at liberty, as Scripture records (Acts xii., 7) of the prince of the Apostles and supreme head of the Church. ‘ And behold an angel of the Lord stood by him and a light shined in the room. And he, striking Peter on the side, raised him up, saying: Arise quickly. v And the chains fell off from his hands.’ They rescue from flames, as is related of Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago, who were saved in the midst of the fiery furnace (Daniel iii. , 49) ; from lions, as we see in the case of Daniel himself (Daniel' vi., 22); from calumny, infamy, and death, as the Holy Spirit declares to us of Susanna (Daniel xiii., 55, 59) ; and from the sword, as in the person of Isaac (Gen. xxii., 11). , We learn, moreover, in the fourth Book of Kings (i., 9-15), how they protect their friends, and are the adversaries of such as seek to injure them; and how they arm themselves on their behalf, assume the garb and form of soldiers, and go forth to do battle for them. We meet with striking instances of this in the Book of Machabees. For example, in 2 Mach, iii., 25-27, we read: ‘For there appeared to them a horse with a terrible rider upon him, adorned with a very rich covering. And he ran fiercely and struck Heliodorus with his forefeet : and he that sat upon him seemed to have armour of gold. Moreover there appeared two other young men, beautiful and strong, bright and glorious, and in comely apparel ; who stood by him on either side and scourged him without ceasing with many stripes. And Heliodorus suddenly fell to the ground.’ *

There* is, therefore, to the devout mind, nothing in the slightest degree incredible or intrinsically improbable in the story of angelic visitants intervening to assist men in imminent peril of their lives. Whether or not we are to believe that in a particular case such a visitation has in fact taken place is wholly and solely a question of evidence. In the story of the alleged incident at Mons we are bound to say that in our judgment the evidence so far produced is wholly insufficient to warrant us in definitely accepting the actuality of,the occurrence,- . (1) The evidence is very belated. The Battle, of Mons took place on August 24, 1914 —that is, rather more than a year ago— and we are only , hearing the angels story now. (2) The evidence, as we have it, is not direct, but only hearsay. We have not the direct testimony of the witnesses themselves we have Only second-hand reports from others as to what the witnesses are alleged to have seen and said. We have in one case the writer of a magazine article, who says that a clergyman’s daughter told him that she knew two officers who told her, etc., etc. Ip another case we have the statement of a nurse, which she said she had from a wounded soldier. , (3) The- men in the fighting line are naturally in a state, of high nervous tension; and as 'the Manchester

'Guardian points out, there is no limit to:the possibilities of the imagination when the faculties are excited by - . fatigue, hunger and thirst, and the weakness fromwounds. (4) The evidence is singularly meagre: >• So far as we can see, it is practically confined to the two officers and the wounded soldier before referred to. If ■ the incident really occurred, there - must . have been scores and hundreds of : witnesses. (5) The evidence is contradictory, and on one point at least is in palpable opposition to known facts. One witness says it was a company in a chalk pit who were saved; another says nothing about a company or a chalk pit, but declares that the-rescue happened to a-weak part of the line - that had given way. One says the,angels were standing on the top of the chalk pit; another says they were mounted on white horses. One of the witnesses^ one of the two officers before mentionedgoes so far as to declare that the apparition not only stampeded the horses but drove the whole German army back. This man’s statement supplies the finishing touch' of improbability and hallucination to the story. Here, it is, as recounted at a meeting of the Rescue Prevention Society by the president, Mrs. Carr-Glen. ‘Mrs. CarrGlen’s story was frOm an officer, who asked a German cavalry officer (prisoner) why they had stopped short: when they could so easily have got through to Paris? His reply was, “We could notnot a man dared. We saw the angels. The horses saw them, and stopped dead.’’ ‘I do not disbelieve this,’ the officer is alleged to have added. ‘The check to the German advance on Paris has never been explained, or the reason why they swung round when only 20 miles from the city.’ That is to say, we are asked to believe that a doubtfully authenticated vision of angels "saved a company in a chalk pit during the retreat from Mons, and that it . also caused the retreat of the whole German army, which sober history records took place nearly a week after, and as the result of the launching of Joffre’s reserves and of the fine - and unexpected offensive of the British troops. We have no hesitation in dismissing this aspect of the story as sheer figment. No Christian would wish to speak otherwise than with the utmost sympathy and respect of reputed supernatural interposition in times of danger and crisis; and we repeat that Catholics, at least, would have no difficulty whatever in believing in such intervention if substantiated by anything like reasonable and credible evidence. But to put forward ill-balanced, contradictory, and unhistorical stories as authentic fact, and to demand credence for them in the name of religion, tends to weaken rather than strengthen religious faith, and ; is calculated to bring the cause of religion and the doctrine of the supernatural into ridicule and disrepute. It is a curious illustration of the vagaries of the human mind that the very ministers who unreservedly accept the Mons —Such as -the Rev. Dr. Horton—not believe a word of the Lourdes miracles, though there are years and volumes of accumulated evidence to substantiate them.