I say "helpless" because in their attitude they give up trying to explain.
They record these things, but they are bewildered by them. They can explain
St. Thomas' particular action simply enough: too simply. He was (they
say) a man living in the past. But when they are asked to explain the
vast consequences that followed his martyrdom, they have to fall back
upon the most inhuman and impossible hypotheses; that "the masses were
ignorant"--that is as compared with other periods in human history (what,
more ignorant than today?) that "the Papacy engineered an outburst of
popular enthusiasm." As though the Papacy were a secret society like modern
Freemasonry, with some hidden machinery for "engineering" such things. As
though the type of enthusiasm produced by the martyrdom was the wretched
mechanical thing produced now by caucus or newspaper "engineering!" As
though nothing _besides_ such interferences was there to arouse the whole
populace of Europe to such a pitch!

As to the miracles which undoubtedly took place at St. Thomas' tomb, the
historian who hates or ignores the Faith had (and has) three ways of
denying them. The first is to say nothing about them. It is the easiest way
of telling a lie. The second is to say that they were the result of a vast
conspiracy which the priests directed and the feeble acquiescence of the
maim, the halt and the blind supported. The third (and for the moment most
popular) is to give them modern journalistic names, sham Latin and Greek
confused, which, it is hoped, will get rid of the miraculous character;
notably do such people talk of "auto-suggestion."

Now the Catholic approaching this wonderful story, when he has read all the
original documents, understands it easily enough from within.

He sees that the stand made by St. Thomas was not very important in