LOURDES
BY
THE VERY REV. MONSIGNOR
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
WITH EIGHT FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
B. HERDER, PUBLISHER
17, S. BROADWAY
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 theprivilege of meeting a famous French scientist—to whom we owe one ofthe greatest discoveries of recent years—who has made a special studyof Lourdes and its phenomena, and of hearing him comment upon what takesplace there. He is, himself, at present, not a practising Catholic; andthis fact lends peculiar interest to his opinions. His conclusions, sofar as he has formulated them, are as follows:
(1) That no scientific hypothesis up to the present accountssatisfactorily for the phenomena. Upon his saying this to me I breathedthe word "suggestion"; and his answer was to laugh in my face, and totell 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 curesas he himself has witnessed or verified, is the atmosphere of prayer.Where this rises to intensity the number of cures rises with it; wherethis sinks, the cures sink too.
(3) That he is inclined to think that there is a transference ofvitalizing force either from the energetic faith of the sufferer, orfrom that of the bystanders. He instanced an example in which his wife,herself a qualified physician, took part. She held in her arms a child,aged two and a half years, blind from birth, during the procession ofthe Blessed Sacrament. As the monstrance came opposite, tears began tostream from the child's eyes, hitherto closed. When it had passed, thechild's