While modern thought holds the testimony
to the vast mass of such legends in all ages as worthless, it is
very widely acknowledged that great and gifted beings who endow
the earth with higher religious ideas, gaining the deepest hold
upon the hearts and minds of multitudes, may at times exercise
such influence upon those about them that the sick in mind or
body are helped or healed.
We have within the modern period very many examples which
enable us to study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of
these I will select but one, which is chosen because it is the
life of one of the most noble and devoted men in the history of
humanity, one whose biography is before the world with its most
minute details--in his own letters, in the letters of his
associates, in contemporary histories, and in a multitude of
biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these sources I
draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of Protestant
origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and
Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church.
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