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MacPhilpin 1880, Google Books scan of Harvard copy

Internet Archive · 91 pages · text by OCR

This is an 1880 book, The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock, prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill and Son. The Internet Archive holds a Google scan of the Harvard College Library copy. It reprints Tuam News accounts and the official depositions of eye-witnesses to the apparition of 21 August 1879 on the sacristy gable of Knock Church, County Mayo. It argues that natural light could not have caused the apparition and lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.

  • p. 1 …A public domain book is one that was never to copyright or whose legal copyright term…
  • p. 27 …the church, the reflection from them could never beam on the outside at the foot of…
  • p. 32 …The tenants have never been rich. The wealthiest is only so far above want, that one…
  • p. 38 …Either the Apparition was a reality; or, it never took place; and all the fifteen witnesses…
  • p. 39 …point of fact (if he were deceived), never had occurred. And then you must multiply that…
  • p. 40 …the gables of a house, and they never continue longer than a few moments, like a…
  • p. 41 …It is never even, nor at rest. But in the Apparition there was no rippling, or…
  • p. 51 …It was still bright; I had never heard from Miss M'Loughlin about the vision which…
  • p. 53 …a large globe of golden light; I never saw, I thought, so brilliant a light before…
  • p. 56 …sight to be seen at the chapel such as we never before beheld, and she told
  • p. 58 …came there first I thought I would never leave it. I would not have gone so…
  • p. 60 …bright at the south gable, but it never entered my head that it was necessary to…
  • p. 85 …I never walked on the heel, but simply tipping the ground with the top of my…
can life and manners in that great republic to the west of the Atlantic. In this way our Catholic people are not at all put about by the narration of miracles or of miraculous apparitions at Knock. They are, by faith, aware beforehand that such things happened before, happen now, and will take place as long as the Church of God is on earth. The angels appeared to Abraham, and walked with him, and talked to him, and directed "him in all his ways." They appeared and spoke to, and brought to a foreign country and back, the grandson of Abraham, Isaac, the father of all the Israelites. The same is true of Tobias and Daniel, the prophets; and of St. Peter, the head of the Apostles, and of numerous saints in the Catholic Church in Africa, in Rome, and in this island during the golden age of sanctity in Ireland. What happened once, why not happen again? It is the same God who ruled and governed mankind then as now; it is the same Church that points out to her children the way to heaven; the Irish faithful, like those in the time of St. Columkille, or at a later period, are the brothers of the Redeemer, purchased by his sacred Blood. He loves us as He loved them, and sends his angels to take charge of us, as they took charge of them in days past. These points have been spoken of and canvassed in conversation amongst laity and amongst religious for the past six months. It was only when the matter was described in a former issue of the Tuam News that the faithful began to attach any degree of credibility to the facts before that time incorrectly narrated. The Tuam News gave a summary of the events that had occurred up to that time, stamped with the appearance of the supernatural. The Apparition of the 21st of August last cannot well be understood without having some notion of the position and form of the little Catholic church in the village of Knock.

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 91 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.