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very zealous believer), the devotion of Lourdes has attracted more than 100,000 visitors. On the 6th of October' (the day of the famous pilgrimage so largely advertised in our newspapers), there were counted among these visitors eight 'bishops and sixteen deputies.'

Of course the famous new devotion' has not established itself without the usual amount of not very edifying controversy between the credulous and incredulous; chiefly represented by priests on one side, doctors on the other, and journalists on both. One incident in the dispute is of rather a comical nature, and is thus reported by Dr. Barbaste. It appears that M. le Docteur Voisin, of the Hospice de la Salpêtrière at Paris, had made the following declaration at a medical conference:That the miracle of Lourdes has been 'affirmed on the credit of a child subject to hallucinations, 'who has since been kept shut up in the Ursuline convent at 'Nevers.' A certain M. Artus takes fire at this audacious assertion, and proposes a resort to a test of truth which we have not often seen applied in religious polemics. I have 'given,' he says, ' a challenge to the public on the subject of 'the events at Lourdes; and have offered to bet a minimum 'sum of 10,000 francs, deposited by me with M. Turquet, notary at Paris, against anyone who should pretend to 'demonstrate the falsehood of any two, only, of the miracles recounted by M. Henri Laserre, in his book entitled "Notre "Dame de Lourdes." And I have accepted for judges the most eminent members of the Institute.' No one, according to M. Barbaste, has taken up the glove; and he triumphs accordingly. It is possible the doctors, with professional caution, recognised the proverbial difficulty of winning a wager by proving a negative.

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Whatever Dr. Barbaste's tests of the efficacy of physical cures may be, his definition of supernatural manifestations is at all events comprehensive enough. 'Sensorial hallucination,' he tells us, may exist without any trace of madness. Those 'affected by it reason justly on all points, even on that which 'affects them, and of which they recognise the falsehood. Hallucination is often the privilege of les natures d'élite; it forms part of the attendance on genius. To see things which do 'not exist, to see imaginary beings, is the characteristic of a deranged understanding. But to see supernatural beings and converse with them, does not, in my view, constitute madness. It would be necessary, first to prove that a supernatural order of beings does not exist, and [or?] that no communication is possible between human beings and that order.'

Reasoning which of course establishes, incontrovertibly, that no one can have a right to pronounce anyone else mad for seeing things not seen to himself, however extravagantly absurd such visions may be, inasmuch as no one can possibly disprove their possibility. As Dr. Johnson was reported, in Peter Pindar's clever parody, to have said, in coarser language than we can reproduce, of witches, nought proves their nonexistence.' To all this-and it does in truth constitute the staple of the whole argument in favour of modern supernatural manifestations, from the miracles of La Salette down to table-rapping, which are instilled into our capacity for belief at the present day-the only possible answer is to be silent and leave common sense to achieve its slow victory. E pur si muove.'

There are those who believe, with Buckle and Lecky, that a violent recrudescence, so to speak, of any particular superstitious belief, and a sudden and striking multiplication of the popular evidence in favour of it, are signs that it is on the eve of extinction. Never were so many notorious witches, in judicial and clerical opinion, as in the middle of the seventeenth century; fifty years later there was not one left. In like manner, thinkers of this rationalistic turn of mind believe that the mania for recent miracles, prophecies, and the pilgrimages and observances consequent thereupon, having now attained its extreme of paroxysm, will melt away suddenly, not gradually, and leave not a trace behind. We cannot look so far into the future as to form a judgment on such probabilities. All we can say is, that if the excessive multiplication of prodigies does presage their disappearance, then those of the Church of Rome are certainly foredoomed. The 'devotions' of La Salette and Lourdes are only specimens on a large scale of what is now proceeding and developing in hundreds of less celebrated sanctuaries all over France, and, though in a less conspicuous degree, in Western Germany, Belgium, and wherever priesthood is powerful and controversy at the same time vehement. There is a general sameness about the particulars of these multiplied manifestations which renders it difficult to select any characteristic features. But two things may be pretty equally predicated of all. They abound in prophetic revelations and in miraculous cures; but the revelations never disclose anything which seems to require revelation to attest it; the cures are always confined to the classes of diseases in which deception is easy or natural causes easily adducible, or else they are of so stupendous an order as to defy criticism. We have before us a list of 'miracles' obtained by the intercession of Notre Dame des Lumières, a

Madonna of great popularity at Marseilles, which a newspaper of the city professes to have copied, verbatim et literatim, from the original in that church. It comprises―

Now it need hardly be said that a single case, well authenticated, of an amputated limb restored would be worth more, as matter of evidence, than hundreds of such instances as these taken together. But this simple, obvious, and convincing kind of miraculous cure is precisely that of which no example is ever offered us. A pregnant truth, if we would but attend to it. But those who disbelieve in existing miraculous agencies do not require it. Those who do, are long past caring for it. A remark which, we fear, is of equal force as regards the facts and speculations which we wish in this article to communicate, concerning one of the most popular and high class 'devotions' of the present day--that which inspired the recent pilgrimage to Paray-le-Monial.

Everyone remembers the interest which this curious manifestation of mediaval tendencies in an age like ours excited only a few months ago. The railway carriages which conveyed the pilgrims were thronged with three very different classes of votaries with the really devout, who had addicted themselves in earnest to that 'culte' of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which has acquired such predominance during the present century, and of which the original well-spring oozed gradually from the soil at Paray-le-Monial, like the sacred fountain of Lourdes; with the curious, busy, half-serious mob who followed the fashion from mere love of excitement, and in order to 'say that they were there;' and lastly, with political zealots, or schemers, who were anxious to make political capital of the occurrence. The little town of Paray-le-Monial-said, traditionally, to have lost all its commerce and industry by the expulsion of its Protestants after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and to have taken monasticism in exchangetowards which their course was directed, is placed amidst local associations well calculated to stimulate both the political and the spiritual fervour of the disciples. The seignorial. castles of the Bourbonnais-the cradles of the house which still affects to rule France by divine right-flank it on the one side. On the other, just over the bleak ridges of the Charolais, lies Cluny, the ancient metropolis of the Benedictines, in its secluded valley. Within an easy distance is Lyons,

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the modern head-quarters and workshop of French Catholic devotion. And it does so happen-though we mention this only in passing, as our concern is not with politics-that the worship of the Sacred Heart, whatever it may have been besides, has been from the outset associated with high-flown legitimist notions in Church and State. It was started in the seventeenth century by the Jesuits and their courtly supporters; treated with suspicion or aversion by the Opposition in general; by Jansenists, Parliaments, and Bishops of the oldfashioned Gallican type. When the Revolution approached, the Sacred Heart became a rallying signal of Royalism. The brave Vendeans marched against the Republican cannon under its insignia. When their leader Charette was taken and carried to trial, he wore a heart of Jesus em'broidered on his dress.' The Restoration made of it a political emblem more than ever. There is a story in M. Lemontey's history of the Regency (a work to which we shall have to direct more particular attention presently) which we can only present subject to the obscurity in which that author himself leaves it. The Jesuitical party, he says, 'fabricated and 'made public, through the most popular newspapers, pretended 'writings of Louis XVI., in which he protested against different acts of his reign, and proceeded to devote himself and his kingdom to the Sacred Heart.' The following is part of a declaration thus attributed to Louis XVI., but so evidently a gross invention that it is difficult to conceive what purpose could have been served by promulgating it:

1. I solemnly promise to take, within the interval of a year, counting from the day of my deliverance, both with the Pope and with the bishops of my kingdom, all measures necessary for establishing, with due observation of canonical forms, a solemn feast in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; which shall be celebrated for ever throughout the whole of France, the first Friday after the octave of the Holy Sacrament, and always followed by a general procession, in reparation of the outrages and profanations committed in our holy temples during the recent troubles by schismatics, heretics, and bad Christians.

2. To go in person, within three months, counted from the day of my deliverance, to the church of Notre Dame at Paris, or any other principal church of the place where I may happen to be; and to pronounce there, on a Sunday or feast day, at the foot of the high altar, after the offering of the Mass, and between the hands of the celebrant, a solemn act of consecration of my person, my family, and my kingdom, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; with the promise to give to all my subjects an example of the worship (culte) and devotion which are due to that adorable Heart.' (Lemontey, Euvres, vii. 446.)

Our present concern, however, with the Devotion of the Sacred Heart does not relate, as we have said, to its political significance, whatever that may be. We must deal with another, and to millions of devout believers a more important feature of the subject. We pursue our quotations from M. Lemontey, premising, in justice, that he writes as an unbeliever and an enemy. M. de Belsunce, of whom he speaks, is the famous Bishop of Marseilles, renowned for his self-devotion at the time of the Great Plague of that city, the last notorious visitation of that disease in Western Europe, but not less distinguished (according to Saint-Simon and others of the anti-Jesuit party) for his credulity and fanaticism than for his Christian courage. He was the first ecclesiastic of rank who patronised, in a public manner, the revelations of Margaret Marie Alacoque.

'In order to appreciate the motives which engaged M. de Belsunce to consecrate his diocese to the Heart of Jesus, it is necessary to know the origin of this mystical devotion, of which some of the details are not wanting in singularity. The first person who conceived the idea of rendering worship to that part of the human body in which the Word became incarnate, was an Armenian sectary, the famous Godwin, chaplain and confidential agent of Cromwell, and President of Magdalen College at Oxford. Some of the fanatics with whom England then abounded mingled this novelty with their other superstitions. It is known that the Stuarts brought back with them an escort of Jesuits, whose evil counsels were the principal cause of their ruin. Among these monks was a certain Father La Colombière, confessor of the Duchess of York, and as great an intriguer as that celebrated Queen of St. Germain's. He heard the invention of Godwin spoken of, and saw at a glance the use which might be made of this coarse image (grossière) fit to captivate the senses of the multitude. He determined to introduce it into France, where he made frequent journeys for the interests of his Society. The Jesuits, accustomed to make themselves popular all over the world by borrowing rites from any quarter, set themselves to propagate this novelty, in spite of its heterodox origin.' (Lemontey, Euvres, vol. vii. p. 443.)

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According to the testimony of English writers,' adds M. Lemontey, this figurative worship originated in the brutal superstition of some partisans of the regicide Cromwell; and I am not surprised at it.'

We have sought in vain, for our own part, for the English 'writers' to whom M. Lemontey avows himself indebted for this suggestion. But we find that a German man of lettersTheodore Wenzelburger, in a paper contributed to the periodical Unsere Zeit' of the 15th November last, on the subject of the Sacred Heart,' has the following notice of