remained a hale, active man till his death, which occurred just the other day. That is only one case out of many.”

“How many?”

“I think I have been the means of healing about 30,000 patients in the six and a half years during which I have devoted my time to the work. Of course many of those patients were suffering from diseases which might have been cured by ordinary means. Others were declared to be incurable.”

“Declared to be incurable by whom?”

“By the chief physicians in the colonies. I have in my pocket”—producing the papers as he spoke—“certificates signed by the witnesses, attested sometimes by magistrates, and at other times by ministers of religion and colonial ministers, that the person named in the certificate has received instantaneous relief by my touch. Here is one in which a person stone-blind from birth received sight when I blew into his eyes.”

“Then do you cure all diseases?”

“Certainly not. There are many things which I cannot do. I cannot raise the dead, nor can I restore an arm which has been cut off, a joint which has been excised, or an eye which has been destroyed. When there has been complete destruction of any important organ I cannot effect a cure; but when destruction of the organ has not been complete, I am frequently able to effect a cure in cases which the regular faculty have given up as utterly hopeless.”

“Take cancer, for instance: can you cure that?”

“I have treated some cases with remarkable success; but of course I can do so only when the cancer has not eaten too far into the vital organism of the sufferer. I have treated some thirty cancer cases, the cure in all being complete. The treatment was that of laying my hands over the part affected, anointing with a little magnetized ointment, and sometimes the injection of magnetized oil. Beyond that I do nothing. I have here records of ten cures of cancer in all parts of the body. If you will glance over the accounts, described by the newspapers at the time when they occurred, or copies of the certificates which I leave with you, you will see that there is almost no limit to the variety of the cures which I have been able to effect.”

“That is all very well, Mr. Stephen, but you will not make converts by newspaper extracts. The point is this: Will you consent to submit your gift to a practical test?”

“Certainly,” said he; “I have already written to Sir Baldwin Leighton, asking him if he can place me in communication with the governors of deaf, dumb, and blind asylums, in order that I may be able to try my powers upon the patients of those institutions. I am quite satisfied that if I am allowed a fair opportunity of trying the effect of my healing touch, ten out of every hundred of the inmates of these asylums will receive their sight, or regain their speech and hearing. I ask for no payment: I simply request that in these institutions which are maintained by the public charity for the relief of helpless sufferers, and where, therefore, there can be no collusion or any suspicion of trickery or fraud, I should be allowed to lay my hands upon the eyes or the ears of the inmates. I can do them no harm; and I am perfectly sure that in at least ten per cent of the cases I shall be able to give great if not entire relief.”

“This is all very well; but before you can expect the governors of public institutions to allow you to touch their inmates there must be a preliminary illustration of your power. Otherwise they would say justly that they would be over-run with quacks, all of whom might wish to try a patent nostrum upon the unfortunate ‘inmates of public institutions.’”

“Very well,” said Mr. Stephen, “I am willing to submit my gift to the most stringent test which your scientific sceptics can suggest. I am willing to give an exhibition of my power under any test, in the presence of any picked number of sceptics whom you may nominate, and you may bring there half a dozen cases of disease certified by the faculty as incurable. Of course you will not bring sufferers whose complaints are manifestly beyond my power to cure. As I said before, I make no claim to restore organs that are destroyed, but there is a sufficiently wide category in the complaints ‘that flesh is heir to’ to afford you an ample choice of half a dozen typical incurable cases. When the deaf, dumb, lame, and otherwise suffering persons whom you wish experimented on have been brought and are in the presence of those whom you shall name, I will undertake to effect an immediate improvement in the condition of, say, four out of the six. It will probably become a complete cure on the second or third visit. I seldom or never see a patient more than thrice.”

“Well, that seems fair. You have no objection to my publishing this offer in the Pall Mall Gazette?”

“None. I make no profession to any skill. I can only exercise a power which I discovered quite accidentally was vested in me. The limits of that I can ascertain only by experience. I am perfectly willing to have that power subjected to the severest tests which you can suggest, and I have no doubt at all, from the invariable experience of the last six years, that cures will be effected for which no existing scientific hypothesis can adequately account.”

The Gazette says in another column:—“We commend the challenge of Mr. George Milner Stephen, which we publish in another column, to the special attention of all interested in the exposure of popular delusion. Here is an educated English barrister of unimpeachable character, who has rendered no little service to the state, informing all the faculty that he can heal patients whom they have dismissed as incurable, by merely breathing on them or touching them. In an ordinary, unknown, vulgar charlatan this challenge might have passed unnoticed. In the case of the Australian cousin of Mr. Justice Fitzjames Stephen it must be treated more seriously. We invite communications from our scientific readers as to the best way of putting our visitor to the test.”

Scores of American healers do similar works to those of Dr. G. M. Stephen, but the fashionable press ignores them because they have not wealth and social position. The Journal of Man will endeavor to do them justice. In all such cases, in which the healing power is inexhaustible, we know that it is replenished from spiritual sources. Dr. Stephen exercises a little policy in not mentioning the spiritual source of his power. Godless science and dead sectarianism recoil from spirit life. No human constitution contains an inexhaustible fountain of life—the fountain is above, and fortunate are they who can reach it.