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46 a supernatural element. It seriously diminishes the influence of Christianity by subjecting it to a test which it cannot endure. It diverts attention from the moral and spiritual transformation which Christianity professes to work, a transformation which wherever made manifests its divinity, so that none who behold it need any other proof that it is of God. It destroys the ascendancy of reason, and thus, like similar delusions, it is self-perpetuating; and its natural and, in some minds, irresistible tendency is to mental derangement.

Little hope exists of freeing those already entangled, but it is highly important to prevent others from falling into so plausible and luxurious a snare, and to show that Christianity is not to be held responsible for aberrations of the imagination which belong exclusively to no race, clime, age, party, or creed.

to the public, through "The Century Magazine," of the substance of the foregoing excited much discussion, and led the most conspicuous advocates of "faith-healing" therein exposed to make such defense as they could. But confident assertions of supernatural powers, and vehement denials of the sufficiency of natural causes to account for their results, and quotations of misapplied passages of Scripture, have been the only defensive weapons of the faith-healers. They have, however, been compelled to avow that "they keep no record of failures, as they do not depend upon phenomena or cases, but upon the divine Word."

This admission is fatal. If they cannot do the works, either they have not the faith, or they