THE NEW MESSIAH.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1248, 30 January 1896, Page 11

THE NEW MESSIAH.

SCHLATTER. THR COLORADO HEALER. M A R V E LLO US C URES. From Our Special Correspondent. London, December 13 The London paper;; are devoting con siderable space just now to considering the evidence f ■r arid against the achievements of Frai'cis Schlatter, the Colorado " healer," whose ren.arkable exploits have thrown all other topics in the States temporarily into the shade. Schlatter the Chronicle) is an Alsatian peasant, who settled a tew years ago m Long Island as a shoemaker. He was regarded there as a queer fellow who had "visions" and who could " talk like a book." Removing last year to New Mexico, he was soon heard of as a " New Mersiah," with a wonderful p >wer of curing diseases. He went fo Denver, the capital of Colorado, where he is said to have effected extraordinary cures parallel .vith tho3e of Lourdes On one morning alone he received 2104 letters from sufferers all over America who betrged his aid, and in one month he received over 42,000 letters. He "blessed" handkerchiefs, and they were taken home by believing patients, and what is more these patients were cured, or at least so they say. In one case a handkerchief was applied to the face of a boy suffering from a terrible chronic catarrh, and he was entirely cured. An intelligent witness who, so far from an ignorant, superstitious peasant, is divisional superintendent of the Union Pacific Railway, declares that " the sensation of touching the hand of Schlatter is something like an electric current being turned on." This current the witness felt passing into his hand when he was treated by Schlatter for deafness. Soon he felt his ears hum, and then it seemed as though plugs had been taken out of them. INow he c&n hear as well as ever. The Union Pacific Railway Company has actually notified such of its employees a 3 are suffering from ailments of chronic standing that ife would convey

thenl add their families to Denver' free to • consult Schlatter,, and a hundred and fiftj' men accepted the invitation, with several ; remarkable results. Francis Schlatter is of coUrsea religious enthusiast who believes that fie has a divine mission to alleviate the wues of the world. He was "called" twice to his mission, but resisted ; on the third "call"he left the shoemaker's bench, "and went out into the mountains, bareheaded and barefooted, and fasted for seventyfive days before returning to begin healing at Albuquerque, New Mexico." Then his career as a " healer" began with the marvellous results we have alluded to. He is desciibed as a large and powerful man, wonderfully broad across the shoulders, his hands always warm, no matter how cold the weather, and one of his pationtii whom he cured of rheumatism, says of him :— * * itn the face he looks like no man I ever saw, but as much like the picture of Jesus Christ as one man could look like another." A few days ago Schlatter, who lived at the house of a deaf ex alderman of Denver, one of his patients, disappeared, leaving behind him this brief note : " My mission is finished. Father takes me away. Good-bye." Crowds of disappointed patients waited for some time on the chanee that their benefactor might return, " but they withdrew after demolishing the fence for souvenirs." It is said that Francis Schlatter has disappeared among the mountain valleys of Colorado. What are we to say of this extraordinary story from a large, intelligent, modern city, the capital of an American State, at the end of the nineteenth century] Doubtless opinion here will be as divided a* it is in America, whore the Schlatter miracles have qui'.e eclipsed Congress and the silver question as subjects for newspaper "copy" and general conversation. " Humbug and imposture," say some; "Divine inspiration," say others. It is not very easy to see where the imposture comes in, any more than at. Lourdes. Schlatter has received, it is true, presents of clothing, but he has made no money out of his alleged powers ; while there are his patients, who can be seen, examined, and cross-examined, who say that wherea3 they were lame, or deaf, or rheumatic, they are now cured by a process stages in which they can describe. We are inclined to agree with the judgment of the New York Tribune :—"lt is not easy to form an intelligent judgment concerning the apparent power over disease possessed by Francis Schlatter, the healer. Perhaps we should say undoubted rather than apparent power ; for ii seems to h* established by numerous reputable witnesses that he haß effected a large number of remarkable cures." Admission of the facts, doubt as to the methods—this seems to us the rational attitude of mind. It is absurd to take the wholly negative position of certain men of science, and say that such things are impossible. Even so sceptical a thinker as Huxley admitted that "cannot" is scarcely a legitimate term in science. The cures attributed to Schlatter are recorded not only in Hebrew, but in Indian, Greek, Egyptian, and other historical writings, not necessarily as common events, but still as facts believed in by men who were as great thinkers as anyone now living. It may be. that psychic gifts, accompanied by physical manifestations, once admitted over the entire expanse of civilisation, are now reappearing under conditions more favourable than were known for centuries of human history. It is certain that all the wiser of modern physicians are trusting more and more, like the wisest of the ancients, to natural, mental, and moral agencies, rather than to medicines, which learned ignorance has been pouring into human bodies through many generations. The contact of an absolutely healthy or (it was hs Carlyl* told us, originally the same word) "holy" organism with one that is diseased or weakened may, for aught we know, have an effect undreamed of in the physiology of a rather cheap materi ilisni. Such at least was the view of so original a thinker and master of science a 3 James Hinton, and such an idea lay at the root of the medical theories of Dr Charcot. We admit that handkerchiefs which have been " blessed " look a little like quackery ; but we must not be frightened by the dogmas of a few belated scientists into refusing to i pay any attention to well attested stories of new forms of human-healing power.