GULIELMUS F. BROWN,
VICARIUS GENERALIS,
SOUTHWARCENSI.

_15 Maii, 1914._




PREFACE.


Since writing the following pages six years ago, I have had the
privilege of meeting a famous French scientist--to whom we owe one of
the greatest discoveries of recent years--who has made a special study
of Lourdes and its phenomena, and of hearing him comment upon what takes
place there. He is, himself, at present, not a practising Catholic; and
this fact lends peculiar interest to his opinions. His conclusions, so
far as he has formulated them, are as follows:

(1) That no scientific hypothesis up to the present accounts
satisfactorily for the phenomena. Upon his saying this to me I breathed
the word "suggestion"; and his answer was to laugh in my face, and to
tell me, practically, that this is the most ludicrous hypothesis of all.

(2) That, so far as he can see, the one thing necessary for such cures
as he himself has witnessed or verified, is the atmosphere of prayer.
Where this rises to intensity the number of cures rises with it; where
this sinks, the cures sink too.