endured the _cross_ of Christ. The death of the body is the life of the
soul; and the Son of God is, as it were, again visibly incarnate in the
world which He has redeemed.

The phenomena of this miraculous state are as various as they are
wonderful. There is scarcely a natural law of our being which is not
found to be frequently suspended. Such is the _odour of sanctity_,
a celestial perfume that exhales from the person of the Saint, in
conditions where any such delicious fragrance could not possibly spring
from natural causes, and where even, as in the case of a dead body,
nature would send forth scents of the most repulsive kind. In such
instances, sometimes in life, sometimes in death, sometimes in health,
sometimes in loathsome diseases, there issues from the physical frame an
odour of unearthly sweetness, perhaps communicating itself to objects
which touch the saintly form.

Or a strange supernatural warmth pervades the entire body, wholly
independent of the condition of the atmosphere, and in circumstances
when by the laws of nature the limbs would be cold; sometimes, while
sickness has reduced the system to such a degree of exhaustion, and
brought on so morbid an action of the functions, that the stomach
rejects, with a sort of abhorrence, every species of food, the most holy
Eucharist is received without difficulty, and seems not only to be thus
received, but to furnish sufficient sustenance for the attenuated frame.
Not unfrequently corruption has no power over a sacred corpse; and
without the employment of any of the common processes for embalming,
centuries pass away, and the body of the Saint remains untouched by
decay, bearing the impress of life in death, and not crumbling to dust,
as in cases of natural preservation, when exposed to the action of the
atmosphere. Add to these, the supernatural flexibility and lightness