The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others | Page 4

been
appointed to him by his God, then the miracles of each epoch will bear
their own special corresponding characteristics. And lastly, if by a new
exercise of regenerating and restoring power it has pleased the Invisible
One to rescue His creatures from the consequences of their ancient ruin,
then again we may expect to recognise the history of that redemption in
the whole course of the miraculous intercourse between the Redeemer

and the redeemed until the end of time. The supernatural elements in
the Paradisiacal, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian states,
may be expected to be in many respects distinct, each embodying with
awful and glorious power the invisible relations which the God of
nature and of grace has thought fit to assume towards His creatures.
And such, in fact, has been the case. Not only is the ceaseless existence
of a miraculous intercourse between God and man one of the most
completely proved of all historical events, but the miracles of each
dispensation are found in a wonderful degree to correspond with the
relationship of God to man in each of the separate epochs. The same
superhuman consistency is found to pervade all the works of God, both
where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the
common laws of nature are burst through, and the material universe is
made as it were the bondslave of the unseen. The impiously meant
assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little
look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of miracles, that all things
are governed by unchanging law, may learn that in truth unchanging
laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range and a unity in
the essence and will of God, of which mortal intelligence never
dreamed. The natural and the supernatural, the visible and the invisible,
the ordinary and the miraculous, the rules of the physical creation and
the interruptions of those rules,--all are controlled by one law, shaped
according to one plan, directed by one aim, and bound to one another
by indissoluble ties, even where to human eyes all seem lost in
confusion and thwarted by mutual struggle.
Of what we should now call the miraculous, or supernatural,
communion between God and man in Paradise, we know historically
but little. The records of revelation being for the most part confined to
the state of man as he is, and his actual and future prospects, present
but a glimpse of the conscious communion which was permitted to the
first of our race in their original bliss. It is, however, believed by
theologians, that in Paradise what we should now term miracles did not
exist; for this reason, that what is now extraordinary was then ordinary.
God conversed with man, and man held communion with angels,
directly and habitually; so that in a certain sense man saw God and the
world now unseen. [Footnote: See St. Thomas, Summa, pars prima,
quæst. 94. art. 1,2.] For it is not the mere possession of a body which

binds the soul with the chains of sense; it is the corruption and
sinfulness of our present frames which has converted them into a
barrier between the spirit within and the invisible universe. As Adam
came forth all pure and perfect from the hands of his Creator, a soul
dwelling in a body, his whole being ministered fitly to the purposes of
his creation, and with body and soul together he conversed with his
God. It was not till the physical sense became his instrument of
rebellion, that it was dishonoured and made his prison-house, and laid
under a curse which should never be fully removed until the last great
day of the resurrection.
Upon the fall of Adam, a new state was introduced, which lasted about
two thousand five hundred years. During its continuance, the
supernatural intercourse between Almighty God and His degraded
creatures took an entirely different character. What had originally been
continual, and as it were natural, became comparatively rare and
miraculous. Henceforth there seemed to be no God among men, save
when at times the usual laws of the earth and the heavens were
suspended and God spoke in accents which none might refuse to hear.
Of these supernatural manifestations the general aspect was essentially
typical of the future redemption of the lost race by a Saviour. That
promise of deliverance from the consequences of sin, which Almighty
God had vouchsafed to the first sinners, was repeated in a vast variety
of miraculous interventions. Though there may have been many
exceptions to the ordinary character of the Patriarchal miracles, still, on
the whole, they wear a typical aspect of the most striking prominence.
The first miracle recorded after the fall is the token granted to Abel that