tions are the same. The limitations must have respect to what and how they heal, and the permanence of the cure. It will be noted that none of them can raise the dead, or if any profess ability to do so, or by prayer to restore to life, the rest will unite to deny the claim of the others, and so fully support our view. Nor can they give sight to one born blind, nor healing to one born deaf, where the cause of deafness is the absence of any of the organs necessary to hearing. Instances have been published where children who had lost their hearing by scarlet fever or other disease, have been made to hear by the manipulations of spiritualists or by the prayers of Catholics or Protestants; but whether true or not, no case which can be shown to be one of congenital deafness or blindness can be attested where sight or hearing has been made possible by any other than surgical treatment. Further, none of them can restore a limb that has been cut off, or an eye that has been lost.
In mental derangement it is to be admitted that all have been successful in some cases of a functional character, and in some of protracted melancholia; but no authentic account has been adduced of the cure of dementia or idiocy.
Another common limitation is the existence of many cases of the same disease in which cures are effected, which they cannot relieve in the least. Pitiful instances could be detailed of persons who have traveled long distances, or have believed in the water, or the power of the dead body of an ecclesiastic, or of prayers at his tomb, or of the mystic touch of Newton, or of Dr. Cullis, or of a coterie who have made their headquarters at a famous resort on the coast of the Atlantic, and have died bitterly disappointed. Many have died while firmly believing that God would heal them, and that they were not about to die. Neither
