mind of a whole people is excited, and hence peculiarly predisposed to meet powerful impressions from specially gifted and highly privileged persons, such miraculous cures are, of course, most numerous and most striking. This was the case, for instance, in the first days of Christianity, at the time of the Reformation, and during the years which saw the Order of Jesuits established. There is little to be gained, therefore, by confining the era of such phenomena to a certain period--to the days of the apostles, when alone genuine miracles were performed, as many divines believe, or to the first three centuries after Christ, during which Tholuk and others still see magic performances. Magnetic and miraculous cures differ not in their nature, but only in their first cause, precisely as the trance of somnambulists is identical with the trance of religious enthusiasts. The difference lies only in the faith which performs the cure; if it is purely human, the effect will be only partial, and in most cases ephemeral; if divine faith and the highest power co-operate, as in genuine miracles, the effect is instantaneous and permanent. Hence the contrast between the man who at the Lord's bidding "took up his bed and walked" and the countless cripples who have thrown aside their crutches at the graves of saints, only to resume them a day or two afterward, when, with the excitement, the newly acquired power also had disappeared. But hence, also, the resemblance between many acts of the early Jesuit Fathers and those of the apostles; the intense energy of the former, supported by pure and unwavering faith, produced results which were to all intents and purposes miraculous. With the death of men like St. Xavier, and the rise of worldly ambition in the hearts of the Fathers, this power disappeared, and modern miracles have become a snare and a delusion to simple-minded believers. The faith in such psychical power possessed by a few privileged persons is as old as the world. Pythagoras performed cures by enchantment; Ælius Aristides, who had consulted learned physicians for ten years in vain, and Marcus Antoninus, were both cured by incubation. Tacitus tells us that the Emperor Vespasian restored a blind man's sight by moistening his eye with saliva, and to a lame man the use of his feet by treading hard upon him. (Hist. l. iv. c. 8.) Both cures were performed before an immense crowd in Alexandria, and in both cases the petitioners had themselves indicated the means by which they were to be restored, the emperor yielding only very reluctantly to their prayers and the urgent requests of his courtiers. (Sueton., _Vita Vespas._) Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, had cured colic and diseases of the kidneys by placing the patient on his back and touching him with his big toe (Plutarch, _Vita Pyrrhi_); and hence Vespasian and Hadrian both used the same method!