noticed that he here follows the example of Bishop Douglas, and, like that prelate, he seeks to support his view by other cases which must he thinks be thus explained. He refers to two modern instances1. A wonderful cure of a Mrs. Ann Mattingly, attested by a number of affidavits published at Washington, March 10, 1824. 2. The case of Mrs. Stuart, cured at the convent of St. Joseph, Ranelagh, in the diocese of Dublin, published by Dr. Murray, Bishop of Dublin, 1823. It would seem that though a strong Protestant he did not fully share Paley's distrust of miraculous narratives published in the interest of an Established religion, and above all of the Popish religion.

Professor Powell himself, in accordance with his well-known views, favoured a natural explanation, viz., 'that the apparent spinal or hip disease was due entirely to the deceptive effect of hysterical affection, simulating the supposed disorder, and which was at once removed when the hysteria was subdued.' He refers to a letter from Mr. Travers, an eminent surgeon, who was consulted in the case, and who 'after some doubt at length explained it in the way just stated.' He also refers to a notice of the case by Sir Benjamin Brodie in a small volume called Lectures on Local Nervous Affections.' This book is a collection of cases in which hysteria simulated local injury or disease, and it is true that

Sir Benjamin speaks of Miss Fancourt's illness as an instance. But I feel bound to say that his notice seems to me cursory. He does not appear to have had any knowledge of the case except from the report of the Christian Observer.' He simply speaks of it as plainly an hysterical affection simulating disease of the hip-joint,' and does not notice the circumstances stated in the father's letter as to the spine and collar-bone. Dr. Maitland refers to other eminent medical men who thought the case inexplicable.

In the number of 'Macmillan's Magazine' for April 1871, there is an account by an eminent medical man, Dr. Day, of a Belgian ecstatic, Louise Lateau. Dr. Day does not speak as an eye-witness. He takes the particulars from an account published by Dr. Lefebvre, Professor of General Pathology and Therapeutics at the University of Louvain. Dr. Lefebvre himself had long and carefully examined the case. The facts, indeed, have been so minutely and scientifically investigated, and the absence of fraud has been so strictly tested, that there cannot, I should think, be any doubt as to the truth of the mere phenomena. They are briefly as follows:Louise Lateau was a peasant girl of pious but not enthusiastic character, who after a severe illness received without external cause marks resembling those known as the stigmata, and already spoken of in the

case of St. Francis. In her case there were marks similar to those commonly associated with the crucifixion upon both sides of the hands and of the feet, a mark upon the left side of the chest, and also pricks in a zone going round the head between the hair and eyebrows. But there was not the appearance of nails. From these marks blood issued every Friday. Further, about a quarter of a year after these appearances, an ecstatic state began to recur every Friday. In this state Louise Lateau saw visions of our Lord's Passion, and remained perfectly insensible to outward things, even under the

most severe tests.

Dr. Lefebvre considered these phenomena inexplicable in the present state of medical science. But in a number of the Lancet,' published immediately after the account in Macmillan's Magazine,' it is maintained that these phenomena, however strange, can be explained by the action of the mind, when its attention is automatically, and therefore very long and very powerfully, directed to a particular part of the body. A singular case is mentioned in which a severe injury to the fingers of a child was followed by inflammation and sloughing in the corresponding parts of the mother's fingers. Dr. Carpenter, in his Mental Physiology,' has also mentioned this case, and added another similar case on the authority of Dr. Tuke.

1 Carpenter's Principles of Mental Physiology,' p. 682.

The imaginary cold experienced by some subjects in displays of electro-biology has been known to produce actual chilblains.

The article in 'Macmillan's Magazine' tells us that there are on record in all about seventy alleged cases of receiving the stigmata, beginning with that of St. Francis.

I have cited these three cases because, as it seems to me, they are adequately attested, and seem to prove that religious feeling may produce bodily effects which in ignorant times would certainly have been accounted miraculous, and which may, I think, be fairly compared with the miracles of the New TestaWith a little research, other cases might, I have no doubt, be added. But as enough may have been said upon this point, I will pass on to another which is of great importance in our subject.

ment.

The cases which I have brought prominently forward have all been connected with the influence of the Christian religion. Incidentally, reference has been made to other analogous cases which had no such connection; which, in fact, had sometimes no connection with any religion.

I would now expressly call attention to the fact, as a very important point, that wonderful bodily effects are produced by mental influences other than religious. Of this fact we have already had one example in the Vespasian cures. It is evidently important in

our present inquiry, because it tends to deprive the cause of these anomalous cures, be it what it may, of a strictly religious character. I will illustrate it further, by a reference to the cures by the king's touch, of which mention has been already made. We have, indeed, a great deal of evidence that such cures really occurred. I will give some. Dr. Tooker, who lived in the reign of Elizabeth, and was made Dean of Lichfield, wrote a book upon the subject, entitled 'Charisma sive Donum Sanationis.' In Chapter VIII. he gives the names and abodes of some persons whom he knew to have been cured, and he tells us that he had by inquiries found the cures to be real and permanent. He says that the cured were of all ranks, ages, and sexes, and he adds the instructive remark that he had found in the applicants for relief incredibilem ardorem et fidem adipiscendæ salutis.'

Mr. Richard Wiseman was a principal surgeon in the army of Charles I., and serjeant-surgeon to Charles II. He has left a collection of surgical treatises, amongst which there is one on the king's evil. It opens with a notice of cures by the king's touch, from which I extract the following passage :—

'I myself have been a frequent eye-witness of many hundreds of cures performed by His Majesty's touch alone, without any assistance of chirurgery, and those many of them such as had tired out the