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

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two hours, is a thing quite impossible to comprehend. A
person can understand how one could be deceived even with
his or her eyes open, and the senses quite alive to all things
else around and about ; but how fifteen could be deceived or
could conspire, differing, as they did, in age, state, and con
dition, is something as marvellous in the moral world as the
Apparition itself is in the order of material events. One of
three conclusions must be come to by any sensible and
rational being who weighs theevidence: Either the Apparition
was a reality ; or, it never took place ; and all the fifteen wit
nesses have conspired without cause, and have been deceivers ;
or they all of one accord innocently imagined they beheld
what they never saw. Which of the three is the easier to
credit: (i)that they saw it ; or (2) imagined they saw it;
or (3) concocted the whole thing, and were deceivers ? The
non-Catholic affirms, " there was no such thing as an appari
tion ;" " it is all a hoax." So, too, says the incredulous
Catholic ; and, mind you, very few learned Catholics yet give
any credit to the events that have been narrated. This is
fair. It is natural that the people should doubt. It is even
right that they should doubt, for every story that one hears
ought not to be readily credited. And it always happens
that those who doubt longest, like St. Thomas the Apostle,
are those who are, in matters of truth, the firmest supporters
afterwards of that which they are certain is true. Well, then,
in respect to the non-Catholic section of the community and
of the Catholics who do not give credit to the story or narra
tion of the first Apparition, one could say : You must (a)
either believe that the apparition did de facto take place,
account for its appearance as you will ; or (3), that fifteen
quiet, rational people, while in their senses, and while awake,
were deceived ; or that, worse still (c), they were rogues and
cheats prepared quite well enough to combine. The reply