The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lourdes, by Robert Hugh Benson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Lourdes

Author: Robert Hugh Benson

Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18729]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOURDES ***

Produced by Geoff Horton, Karina Aleksandrova and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

LOURDES

BY

THE VERY REV. MONSIGNOR
ROBERT HUGH BENSON

WITH EIGHT FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

ST. LOUIS MO.:
B. HERDER, PUBLISHER
17, S. BROADWAY

LONDON:
MANRESA PRESS
ROEHAMPTON, S.W.

1914

Nihil Obstat:

S. GEORGIUS KIERAN HYLAND, S.T.D.,
CENSOR DEPUTATUS

Imprimatur:

GULIELMUS F. BROWN,
VICARIUS GENERALIS,
SOUTHWARCENSI.

_15 Maii, 1914._

PREFACE.

Since writing the following pages six years ago, I have had the
privilege of meeting a famous French scientist--to whom we owe one of
the greatest discoveries of recent years--who has made a special study
of Lourdes and its phenomena, and of hearing him comment upon what takes
place there. He is, himself, at present, not a practising Catholic; and
this fact lends peculiar interest to his opinions. His conclusions, so
far as he has formulated them, are as follows:

(1) That no scientific hypothesis up to the present accounts
satisfactorily for the phenomena. Upon his saying this to me I breathed
the word "suggestion"; and his answer was to laugh in my face, and to
tell me, practically, that this is the most ludicrous hypothesis of all.

(2) That, so far as he can see, the one thing necessary for such cures
as he himself has witnessed or verified, is the atmosphere of prayer.
Where this rises to intensity the number of cures rises with it; where
this sinks, the cures sink too.

(3) That he is inclined to think that there is a transference of
vitalizing force either from the energetic faith of the sufferer, or
from that of the bystanders. He instanced an example in which his wife,
herself a qualified physician, took part. She held in h