Very often they were displayed on unimportant occasions and in insignificant cases.

In this supreme moment, when such aid was most urgently demanded, not a miracle was worked.
Amazement filled the Christian populations of the East when they witnessed these Persian sacrileges perpetrated with impunity.

The heavens should have rolled asunder, the earth should have opened her abysses, the sword of the Almighty should have flashed in the sky, the fate of Sennacherib should have been repeated.

But it was not so.

In the land of miracles, amazement was followed by consternation--consternation died out in disbelief.
2.