The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others | Page 5

his sacrifice was accepted. A deluge destroys all but one family, who
are saved in an ark, the type of the Church of God, and a rainbow is set
in the sky as a type of the covenant between God and man. A child is
miraculously born to Abraham in his old age, who is afterwards offered
to God as a type of the Redeemer, and saved from death by a fresh
supernatural manifestation of the Divine will. The chosen race become
captive in Egypt, as a figure of man's bondage to sin; a series of awful
miracles, wrought by the instrumentality of Moses himself, a type of
Jesus Christ, delivers them from their slavery, terminating with the
institution of the Passover, when the paschal lamb is eaten, and they are
saved by its blood, as mankind is saved by the blood of the Lamb of

God. The ransomed people miraculously pass through the Red Sea,
foreshadowing the Christian's regeneration by baptism; as they wander
afterwards in the desert, manna descends from heaven to feed them,
and water gushes from the rock to quench their thirst, and to prefigure
that sacred food and those streams of grace which are to be the
salvation of all men. Almost every interruption of the laws of nature
bespeaks the advent of the Redeemer, and does homage to Him as the
Lord of earth and heaven.
At length a code of laws is given to the chosen race, to separate them
completely from the rest of men, and a promise of perpetual temporal
prosperity is granted to them by God as the reward of their obedience,
and as a figure of the eternal blessedness of the just. From that time
with, as before, occasional exceptions, the supernatural events which
befall them wear a new aspect. Their peculiarly typical import is
exchanged for one more precisely in conformity with the leading
principle of the new dispensation. The rites and ceremonies of the new
Law prefigure the Sacrifice and Redemption of the Messias; but the
miracles of the next fifteen hundred years are for the most part directed
to uphold that rule of present reward and punishment, which was the
characteristic feature of the Jewish theocracy. The earth opens to
punish the disobedience of Core and his companions. Fiery serpents
smite the murmuring crowd with instant death; while the promised
Saviour is prefigured, not by a miracle, but by the erection of a brazen
serpent by the hands of Moses. The walls of Jericho fall prostrate
before the trumpets of the victorious Israelites; one man, Achan,
unlawfully conceals some of the spoil, and an immediate supernatural
panic, struck into his countrymen, betrays the committal of the sin.
Miraculous water fills the fleece of Gideon, to encourage him to fight
for his country's deliverance. An angel foretells the birth of Samson to
set his people free, when they are again in bondage. Samson himself is
endowed with supernatural strength; exhausted with the slaughter of his
foes, he prays for water to quench his thirst, and a stream bursts forth
from the ass's jawbone with which he had just slain the Philistines.
Bound in chains, blinded, and made a jest by the idolaters, his prayer
for a return of his strength is heard by God, and he destroys a multitude
in his last moments.
And thus, through all the history of the Kings and the Prophets, the

power of God is repeatedly put forth to alter the laws of nature for the
purpose of enforcing the great rule of the Mosaic law. The
disobedience of the Jews might, if God had so pleased, have been
invariably punished by the instrumentality of the ordinary course of
events, shaped by the secret hand of Divine Providence so as to execute
His will, just as now we find that certain sins inevitably bring on their
own temporal punishment by the operation of the laws of nature. And
so, in the vast majority of instances in which the Jews were rewarded
and punished, we find that the Divine promises and threats were
fulfilled by the occurrence of events in the natural order of things. But
yet frequently miracles confirmed and aided the work of chastisement
and blessing; and of the numerous wonders which were wrought from
the giving of the law to the coming of Christ, we find that nearly all
bore this peculiar character. For many centuries also a constant
miraculous guidance was granted to the people in the "Urim and
Thummim," by which they were enabled, when they chose to remain
faithful, to escape all national calamities and enjoy the fullest blessings
of the promised land.
Under the Christian dispensation, again, a new character is imprinted
upon the supernatural history of the Church, which is, in fact, the
impression of the Cross