from the
academic scheme of transformation which we have been considering.

'The French Catholics (writes the _Times_ correspondent in
Paris on June 25, 1908) are awaiting with concern the report
of a special commission on a mysterious affair known as the
Miraculous Hailstones of Remiremont. On Sunday, May 26,
1907, during a violent storm that swept over that region of
the Vosges, among the great quantity of hailstones that fell
at the time a certain number were found split in two. On the
inner face of each of the halves, according to the local
papers that appeared the next day, was the image of the
Madonna venerated at Remiremont and known as Notre Dame du
Tresor. The local Catholics regarded it as a reply to the
municipal council's veto of the procession in honour of the
Virgin. So many people testified to having seen the
miraculous hailstones that the bishop of Saint-Die
instituted an inquiry; 107 men, women, and children were
heard by the parish priest, and certain well-known men of
science [names given] were consulted. The report has just
been published in the _Semaine Religieuse_, and concludes in
favour of the absolute authenticity of the fact under
inquiry. ....The last word rests with the bishop, who will
decide according to the conclusions of the report of the
special commission.'

This is Catholicism in practice. Those who think to reform it by their
contention that supernatural interventions can never be matters of fact,
are liable to the reproach which they most dislike--that of scholastic
intellectualism, and neglect of concrete experience.

This denial of the supernatural as a factor in the physical world seems
to us alone sufficient to make the position of the Modernists in the
Roman Church untenable. That form of Christianity stands or falls with
belief in miracles. It has always sought to bring the divine into human
life by intercalating acts of God among facts of nature. Its whole
sacred literature, as we have said, is penetrated through and through by
the belief that God continually intervenes to change the course of
events. What would become of the cult of Mary and the saints if it were
recognised that God does not so interfere, and that the saints, if
criticism allows that they ever existed, can do nothing by their
intercessions to avert calamity or bring blessing? The Modernist priest,