TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13475, 15 July 1909, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

A very remarkable instituHealing tion was opened the other by day in- London—a hospice Prayer, where the sick

by prayer and the laying on of hands*' wDI be practised. Of course there is nothing new in such an idea; what makes ibia one remarkable is that it is fathered by the Church of Ungla^d.,; The head -of .the, hospice is Mr J. M/H.ickeQn, who iff 1 president of the .Society of Emmanuel —formed in London, four years ago to band together those who believe in the efficacy of spiritual healing—and has exercised his gifts in private oiroles for a long time. Mr Hickson says that he found, when a boy in Australia, that he had the gift of healing, and that his mother gradually developed it through religion. Since then he has devoted uimselt to spiritual healing, and the results have been astonishing. . He cites-two instances.'" His .tlnnt'on was drawn by a Birmingham rector to the case of a young woman who had in- | jured her spine by falling downstairs, and. for twelve years had been unable to move. "When I laid hands'on her she said she felt a warmth suddenly suffuse her whole body. That girl, I am rufoimed, is now <\bh* to .walk a mile. In another case of spine trouble that had resulted in. holplessness for ten years, hie treatment led to an almost complete recovery. A comparison naturally suggests itself between this movement and Christian Science. Mr Hickeon explains that he and his co-work-ers ihave no antipathy to the doctors. The work of spiritual healing and the york of the medical profession frequently overlap, and he himself has frequently worked with doctors. He recognises that there are cases in which the skill of a doctor is essential, and he saye two doctors will be associated with the hospice. At the first service at the hospice prayers' were offered for a girl suffering from St. Vitus's dance, a priest incapacitated by lung. trouble, a woman suffering from paralysis, and a woman attached by cancer. j

"The Times" follows its Concerning fascinating article on Tigers. lions, from which we

quoted recently, with an equally fascinating one on tigers. The writer thinks the" evidence shows that the tiger is more formidable than the liwi. It is true that an Anglo-Indian with the contempt born of familiarity, speaks of it as "naturally a harmless timid animal," and there are cases on record in which a tiger has been beaten off by native women with sticks and by a missionary armed with a Chinese umbrella. It is when it/ has acquired a taste for human flesh, or been wounded, that a male tiger is formidable, and of course a female with cubs is very dangerous. Though there may be times when a tiger is, in the words of a British officer, "ridiculously easy to kill," the writer thinks that more men have lost their lives in following up a supposedly, mortally wounded tiger than in any other department of sport. The Indian tiger has been called "the villager's best friend," because it keeps down the animals that destroy his crops, but some villages have to pay a heavy sprice for the benefit of others. It is estimated that a tiger that lives entirely on cattle may cost the community from £70 to £650 a year, and the man-eater's tolj may be terrible. One man-eater has been known to kill fifteen natives every month with horrible regularity; another averaged eighty people annually for eeveral years; a third killed 127 people and stopped traffic on. a public road for weeks.

The writer has much that is A . interesting to say about the "Model tiger's gorgeous ekin and its Wild savage roar. 1% possesses an Beast." almost incredible faculty of making itself invisible. A hunter has told how he and his beaters beat every tussock in a strip of covert where they were convinced a tiger -was lying, and how, when the search was over, a tiger bolted from behind a small bush "not largo enough to hide a hare." Colonel Durand, in o. letter to "Tlie Times" on this article, says he has seen a tiger sitting up in the sunlight a hundred yards from him, washing his face like a cat, and then "move a couple of eteps into the shade, and fade away like the Cheshire cat in 'Alice in Wonderland.'" Th© tiger also has an «t traordinary faculty of moving in the stick-slrewn jungle in the driest season, without making a sound. When hunting the tiger, says Colonel Durand, the great beast will sometimes appear before you without having given to straining oars the slightest warning of its approach. According to the writer in "Th o Times," a throne can nsk no more sumptuous trapping than a tiger's skin, and the noblest-looking animal in tho Zoo is the Siberian tiger. As for the tiger's voice, it is less royal than tho lion's, but it "hushes the jungle and fills the twilight with horror,' , and some hold it to be more awe-inspiring and savage than that of tho so-called king of beasts. The tiger has been well called a "model wild beast."