MIRACLE WORKING IN LONDON.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 192, 20 August 1870, Page 2

MIRACLE WORKING IN LONDON.

A. jIAN, ealliug himself Dr. Newton who asserts that he has received power to perform miracles, has been inviting the sick and maimed to attend at Cambridge Hall, Newman Street, to experience the benefit of his miraculous agency. A gentleman, writing to a ontemporary,thus describes the proceedings. About 100 persons of both sexeo were crowded together- at ths uppei' end of the hall, and in the center of a small space between them and the platform stood Dr. Newton, in his shirtsleeves, calling upon the diseased to come orward and be healed. Grouped in different

parts of the hall were some blind, many lame, and many paralysed persons, waiting for an opportunity to geb to the front. In his frequent explanatory remarks to the people aruund him, he said he did not perform the miracles by his own power, but by the Divine power which was given him for the purpose, and by the presence of which in the hall every one was blessed. When a patient was placed, in his hands he would make some such speech as the following, which was literally made m one instance:—"lt is by love this is done, especially female love. You must love the doctor. You must believe in him. After calling upon God and the holy angels to help him, he would usually pass his hands over the face and limbs of the patients, jerk his own limbs about as if through a shock of electricity, and then declare them cured. . . • Men and women suffering from various forms of partial lameness were put through their facings in a painfully shuffling manner, and were then almost persuaded that they had been cured; but the contortions of their countenances, in their unavailing endeavours to realise the cure, ludicrously upset the wouldbe miracle, and the delusion was more fully dispeiled when they attempted to walk from the hall. In one case great confusion ensued on the doctor expressing his inability to cure a blind man, and he was denounced as an impostor and swindler. Several other cases wero submitted to the doctor, but the result in every instance was the same. As the people were leaving tao hall, Dr. Newton offered to give a Divine blessing to all who would pass in procession by him and some eighty or ninety persons actually accepted his benediction. Dr. Newton has since been " practising" at Swindon. We read with horror nowadays of the tortures to which witches used in old times to be subjected, and muss to think how it was possible that only a hundred years ago people'could have been so very ignorant. Yet though we are a hundred years older, we are apparently not a day wiser. Dr. Newton still draws crowds of the sick and the strong to see the miraculous cures which somehow he always fails to perform. In his speech at Swindon on June 5, his mania, or blasphemy, seems to culminate, for he stated " that he held direct communion with the Redeemer in bodily form, seeing him face to face, and that he was only influenced and taught by Christ in person what to do and sa\." The North Wilts Herald states that the Rev. R. F. Young, of Swindon, believes in his miraculous cures, and has openly published a statement to that effect.