We were asked this question recently, on the assumption that they had ceased in the Church, and are now renewed. That is erroneous. Miracles never entirely ceased in the Church; they only waned. God has never left himself without a witness. The Papal Church has always claimed to possess this power. The Protestant Church, anxious to discredit all Papal claims to the divine favor, has denied to it this power, and as itself could show little or no better proof of miraculous endowment, it has agreed to say that this gift gradually but rapidly waned after the apostolic age, till it was soon utterly lost to the Church, and that it will never return, because not needed as it was in the beginning.
This is ex parte testimony, which the Catholic Church denies. It also assumes that miracles were only designed for the first establishment of the Church, by authenticating the divine mission of Christ and His Apostles. All our modern arguments on "the evidences" proceed on this assumption. This is the product of an artificial habit of thought. It has no foundation in reason or Scripture. Far more biblical, as well as rational, is the Catholic doctrine, that miracles are for all time, to authenticate God's agents and work everywhere. God is immutable, and his methods cannot radically and suddenly change. For the conversion of the heathen now, there is as much need as there was for the conversion of the Jew and Gentile then. Both Jews and heathen remain mostly unconverted yet. There is no intimation in the Scriptures that miracles were ever to cease in the Church, but plain intimations of a coming era of their great increase.
The waning purity and spirituality of the Church diminished this form of its power. Matter was more conspicuous, and mind repressed in influence. Now a better day is dawning. Signs and wonders of healing power are increasing. The power of the apostolic era will doubtless yet return; and ultimately, perhaps ages hence, we shall see and do greater wonders than the apostles knew. And now, and still more in the future, we have, and shall have, a philosophic understanding of the law of this agency; such as the apostles could not attain.
