NEARLY A MIRACLE.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 571, 21 August 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEARLY A MIRACLE.

A very, instructive storyi-of 'i^wbiiderfill cure' ha 3, during the last few days, attracted some attention, and, if properly regarded, has rewarded it. The story was told by a correspondent of the ' Melbourne Argus,' who signed his name, aud came forward to corroborate and amplify a former versiou of the incident. One day last month he was fellow-passenger in the train with a gentleman suffering from paralysis in the legs, from an accidental injury. The gentleman had to be lifted into the carriage by some friends, and his legs were quite destitute of feeling. At Gisborne station another passenger got in, who, learning from the patient the nature of his case, said in a decided tone, 'I can cure you.' Ho then 'asked the patient to lie on his face, and after making a few passes and breathing on the supposed injured spot, he told him 'to rise,' which summons he obeyed with slight success, and he dropped on the seat again, saying that the pain seemed considerably less. He then rose and walked.' Subsequently, in obedience to a second command, he walked without any support across the carriage ; at Kyneton he got out and walked on the •latform, and at Castlemaine he took his luggage and walked away. : Clearly a wonderful, noi to say a miraculous, "cure. Or rather a miraculous cure in the primitive meaning i f the word, before people began to talk about 'laws of nature.' The story is round complete, authenticated by eyewitnesses. Shrines have been built, and pilgrimages made, and canonisations celebrated on far less warrant. But the present age is intolerant of the miraculous, aud now we have all heard of the wonderful element taken out of the story by another correspondent, who is able to supply the antecedents and the sequence of the incident. It seems that the patient could walk before he got into the carriage; he could walk about the house an t street, although he 'was certainly weak about the legs.' On the other hand, he was not cured when he left the carriage, as he ' has been under the doctor's hands ever since, and has only just recovered.' In fact, there was no cure and nothing extraordinary at all. The patient's mind was, perhaps, rallied and stimulated, and his belief acted upon, and the imagination of the witnesses did the rest. There was a beautiful case for a miracle if investigation had stopped at the proper point. It was pushed beyond this point, aud the element of the wonderful disappeared.