Lourdes

f the Scottish priest of whom I have spoken, an altar had been reserved for me. The Rosary Church is tolerably fine within. It has an immense flattened dome

at which I both vested and said Mass, was at the farther end; but each side, too, was occupied by three priests, celebrating simultaneously upon altar-stones laid on long, continuous boards that ran the len

atch) who had been cured of consumption in the previous year, and who now came back to report a state of continued good health. Her brother-in-law came with her, and she remarked with

previous year, and that she supposed her case had been entered in the books; but at the mo

e caught sight of him, and presently was showing him off to me, much to his smiling embarrassment. He had caught consumption of the intestines, it seemed, some y

, cured of severe internal troubles (I did

, cured in the previous June of deafness, rising, in the case of one ear at least, from a perforation of the drum. She was present at the piscines,

report of the lame child whom we had seen on the previous day. All was as had been said. She could now put her heels to the ground and w

him!-but she was allowed to tell her story, and to show a copy of her parish magazine in which her story was given. She had had in her body one wound of ten centimetres in size. After bathing one evening she had experienced relief; by the next mo

of the "ameliorations." She was now able to walk, but the use of her hand was not yet

thout support. He had been cured in the piscines. He had been well ever since. He followed the trade of a carpenter. And now he hopped solemnly, first on one leg a

insanity. He had had the illusion of being persecuted, with suicidal tendencies; he had been told he could not travel twenty miles, and he had travelled over eight hundred kilometres, af

ne of the churches, I think, when there was a sudden discharge of matter, and a sense of relief. On the morrow, after another bath, the sense of

, had been declared "incurable" in her certificate. The cure had taken place during the procession, in the course of which she suddenly felt herself, she said

rm measured a circumference of seventy-two centimetres, amputation had been declared necessary. She had refused, and had come to Lourdes. Her cure occupied three days, at t

red miraculously by the Mother of God. Various periods had elapsed since their cures-a day, two or three months, one year, eight years, nine years. These persons had been operated upon, treated, subjected to agonizing remedies; one or two had been

OTTO I

ome say nothing; some are content to say that science at its present stage cannot account for it all, but that in a few years, no doubt ... and the rest of it. I did not hear

of these occasions, in the presence of bystanders. She was bidden, she said, to go to the water. She turned to go down to the Gave, but was recalled and bidden to dig in the earth of the Grotto. She did so, and a little muddy water appeared where no soul in the village knew that there was water. Hour by hour this water waxed in volume; to-day it pours out in an endless stream, is conducted through the piscines; and it is after washing i

dence is irresistible? Let us go back to the Gospels. It used to be said by doubters that the "miraculous element" must have been added later by the piety of the disciples, because all the world knew now that "mi

ve in Him." It is known how some asked for a "sign from heaven" and were refused it; how He Himself said that even if one rose from the dead, they would not believe; yet, further, how He begged them t

itnessed them, and helped vastly in the confirmation of the faith of those who already believed; but that miracles, as such

for the Beelzebub theory. We have seen, too, how severely scientific persons such as Dr. Boissarie and Dr. Cox-if they will permit me to quote their names-knowing as well as anyone what medicine a

aw Jesus Christ Himself in glory, they could always say that "at present science cannot account for the phenomenon of a luminous body apparently seated upon a throne, but no doubt it will do so in the course of time." If they saw a dead and corrupting man rise from the grave, they could always argue th

ef; and because without that belief all life falls into chaos, and human evidence is nullified, and all noble motive and emotion cease-for us, who have received the gift of faith, in