The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock; also, the Official Depositions of the Eye-witnesses

natural as well as in things natural, will pronounce, in a
semi-dogmatic tone, that the apparition has been the effect of
some natural cause unknown to man ; or that all the wit
nesses who bear testimony to what they assert they saw,
have in some way or other been themselves deceived. On
the other hand, thousands of people, at home and abroad,
will be convinced—as most persons who have visited the
site have been convinced—that the Apparition was, in its
appearance, a reality, objectively present to the gaze of the
different persons who beheld it ; and that it could not, by
any possibility, have been produced by human agency.
Opinions do not undo facts.
Whatever the views may be of those who read these pages,
they in no way concern the editor of this pamphlet, which
is simply a reproduction, in book form, of the facts that he
has already published. One need not conceal the fact that
the Tuam News was the medium through which the public
learned, for the first time, the story now so well known regard
ing the Apparition seen at Knock on the 21st of August last.
The correspondent of the Daily News, London, puts this
point prominently forward in the issue of that journal, Satur
day, 28th February, just passed. "Publicity," says he,
" was first given to the alleged occurrence in the Tuam News
of the 9th January, and then in a cautious, hesitating manner,
accompanied by an intimation that the ecclesiastical autho
rities had up to that time pronounced no final opinion."
Every child of Mother Church knows full well that she has
been always, and at all times, cautious in giving her sanction
to any new apparition or vision, or to any new devotion.
She knows, in the words of Gamaliel, the Jewish doctor of
the law, " that if this design or work be of men, it will fall
to nothing ; but if it be of God, you are not able to destroy
it :" and time only will nr*~» strongly confirm its truth.