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Rh indeed are, examples of seemingly supernatural cures—we will mention one directly—attested by very strong evidence, but these are certainly not among them. Putting aside innumerable instances of failure and some of detected imposture which have been heard of in connection with Lourdes—it is too early yet to apply that test to Marpingen—it must never be forgotten how almost incalculable is the power of imagination over every kind especially of nervous disorder. There are unquestionably many persons of whom it may be said, in a different sense from that of the words as originally used, that "their faith has made them whole;" or, on the contrary, has made them ill. A ready instance comes to hand in connection with the recent hydrophobia scare. There can be no doubt that tetanus, which so closely simulates hydrophobia as often to be indistinguishable from it to all but adepts, may be and is produced by fear; and thus nervous persons who assume that a dog which bites them must be mad—though the chances are always really at least ten to one the other way—may easily give themselves a fatal disease without any external cause. On the other hand, a case was reported the other day from Italy, of a woman who was raving, as was supposed, from hydrophobia, but who promptly recovered on a miraculous relic being applied to her. The same explanation will cover innumerable cases, whether at Lourdes or elsewhere, of alleged miraculous cures. But we observed just now that there are examples on record of miraculous cures, the direct evidence of which is very striking. The late Sir James Stephen mentions one of them in these words: "The greatest genius, the most profound scholar, and the most eminent advocate of that age (the seventeenth century), all possessing the most ample means of knowledge, all carefully investigated, all admitted, and all defended with their pens, the miracle of the Holy Thorn. Europe at that time produced no three men more profoundly conversant with the laws of the material world, with the laws of the human mind, and with the municipal law, than Pascal, Arnauld, and Le Mâitre; and they were all sincere and earnest believers." Mr. Lecky similarly observes that few historical facts are so well authenticated as "the miracles of the Holy Thorn, or at the tomb of the Abbé Paris," which last, we may add, were attested among others by Voltaire. Be it so, but these are "Jansenist" miracles which Ultramontanes have always and scornfully refused to admit. The manifestations at the tomb of the Abbé Paris were actually suppressed by authority, ecclesiastical and civil, which suggested the famous epigram:

Those who reject the far stronger evidence of these miracles must find some better argument than the alleged cures if they would have us accept the miraculous portents of Lourdes and Marpingen.

The debate in the Prussian Chamber was opened by Herr Bachem,