spirit is torn out of the
peaceful element of its heavenly atmosphere; then love becomes hatred
and despair, and wisdom as well as the revealed word of the Lord
madness and blasphemy." Edmond was mute. "Know I then," continued the
old man, "that which I call nature and its energies, the mind and its
faculties? how each day it varies in different men for the most
insignificant occasions! The poet, the artist knows how to speak of
feelings, which to the uninitiated must appear as delirium, or miracle:
energies unfold themselves, of which the former world was ignorant,
many others have in the course of time declined, or have been
forgotten; they appear again probably to astonish, or to give a firmer
foundation to true science. Would my mind set limits to the Almighty,
and know I, what God from wise, unsearchable causes will permit or
execute? but no miracle can ever be elevated to a religious mystery;
revelation requires not this to announce its eternal truth; the Saviour
himself did not perform his miracles for that purpose, and reproaches
the pharasees and people; miracle seeking testifies disbelief and
irreligion, and where passion, party or sect, in the conflict of
opinions, relies upon these inexplicable phenomena and wish to found
conviction, or even to prove and explain for ever and ever out of what
is indefinite, then is it all over long since with every sincere
examination, with all true religion."

"And the resurrection of the Lord?" said Edmond. "Is not," said the
former, "to be reckoned among the phenomena, commonly called miracles,
if the grosser, unenlightened mind can indeed comprehend them only in
this manner." "Go on," said Edmond, "to make your opinions clear to me,
I am not yet too old to learn." "It happens not unfrequently," resumed
the priest "that remorse and despair either in criminals or in weak,
sickly men have produced a sudden cure of old paralysis, so that the
strength of the arm has been able to tear off their fetters, or to
break iron posts; passion or terror exasperated that man, and gave him
what in an ordinary state he did not possess. In dreams, in sickness,
strange worlds are often discovered to us, and unknown feelings,
scarcely foreboded, are presented to our view, and thus it may well
happen, nay, I have myself experienced it, that in excited minds,
inspired by enthusiasm, remorse, and passion, a state, as if between
sleep and wakefulness, originates, in which, in the struggles of th