11th of May. Now, really, we can see nothing surpris. ing in this, except Dr. Badeley believing that he has established the fact of relief being experienced at the moment of Prince Hohenlohe's prayers being offered up at Bamberg! Says the Doctor in italics, " 1 personally attested that the recovery of Miss O'Connor immediately succeeded the instructions of Prince Hohenlohe❞—which, being interpreted, signifies, that he attested that "sweet little Barbara's" thumb had got much better during the nine days which intervened between his two visits,-and that he was told that that amendment had commenced from a certain hour, and in consequence of following certain directions.

What follows then ?-that the Doctor believes in the miracle? The Lord and Martin Luther forbid! No, "Let the Catholics enjoy their opinion that it was by miracle in consequence of prayer ;-and Protestants that it was by prayer without miracle, or by the power of the mind exerted on the body." The Doctor disserts learnedly on these two positions. He is rather involved, we think, in his exposition of miracle without prayer. What is a miracle but an act of super-human power, performed by a person especially gifted with that power by Heaven?-It matters not whether it be performed by touch or by prayer-and, that the Doctor believed this gift to be exclusive, or nearly so, to Prince Hohenlohe, we have his avowal in these words: "We have no right to doubt that the prayers of the Prince have been more successful than the prayers of others;" else indeed, if it were the mere efficacy of prayer,-that is, of prayer made with faith,-why does not Sister Barbara and Mother Gerard (the superior of the convent,) and the worthy Doctor himself, whose faith cannot be doubted, begin praying for all the sick

throughout the land?-The Doctor may certainly be restrained by the consideration that his friends the druggists would suffer considerably by such a mode of practice-but there can be no such reason to operate upon the lovely, pale, O'Connor's child," or the Lady Abbess. But, says the Doctor, faith is equally needed in the person for whom the prayers are offered, as in the offerer. This is the first time we ever heard such doctrine broached. When a prayer is made to turn a sinner from the error of his ways, and still more for the conversion of an unbeliever, there cannot possibly be any belief in the party prayed for-therefore either. such prayers are to be regarded as wholly inefficacious, or else there is no more need for the University of Edinburgh, and the College of Physicians;-a man's credulity will be his sufficient diploma,

In support of his other alternative, that Barbara's mind operated upon her body, or rather upon her thumb, the Doctor tells several stories of the power of the imagination. There is one of the wife of a great military officer," who, on her husband's going to a government abroad without her, "almost immediately. became yellow !"-and died in a few weeks:-growing yellow is a curious effect of not going to India. There is also an old Joe Miller of a captain in the navy jumping up from a fit of the gout on the approach of a French frigate. But the principal one, is a story of one of Loutherbourg's cures, which the Doctor evidently considers his crushing argument, from its being anthenticated by names-at least by initials-whereas the others are only of "a friend of mine "—" a brave naval officer "-" a certain great military officer," &c.but here we have the testimony of Lady D. and Mr. R.— A single C. great Cæsar to express, And Scipio shrunk into a Roman S.

This delectable and veracious history, thus indisputably authenticated, asserts that a man who had lost the use of his limbs from a weakness in the loins, was suddenly cured by Loutherbourg looking at him and, that he walked back to London from Hammersmith, where Mr. L. lived, without any inconvenience!

We do not mean to deny that the mind has great influence on the physical frame but a full belief of that fact is perfectly consonant with laughing at such trash as this.

It may, perhaps, seem mere waste of time to have noticed such a production at all;-but when a statement is made public, in the shape of a medical case, with the name of the physician at full length, it acquires from that fact alone some little importance. It is strange that medical men, who have so much experience among the saddest realities of life, should have so often been duped in this manner. It was a physician, if we recollect, who first introduced Miss Caraboo to the world;

more than one physician believed the practical bull of a blind woman seeing, in the case of Miss M⭑Evoyand more than one also attested that Anne Moore (the Fasting Woman of Tutbury) lived without food.

We hope we shall not be mistaken as wishing to say any thing harsh, or even sarcastic, with reference to the Catholic part of this business, as such. We are the very last persons in the world to hurt the feelings of any one on the score of his religious belief-but the Catholic religion does not involve in its creed that a mad German prince can cure a sick English nun-any more than the church of England enjoins that Johanna Southcott will yet give birth to Shiloh, or that Huntington received his leather-breeches ready made from Heaven*.

* The case of Johanna Southcott furnishes another extraordinary instance of medical credulity.

1

The Connexion of Christianity with Human Happiness; be ing the substance of the Boyle Lectures for 1821. By the Rev. WILLIAM HARNESS, A.M., Christ Church College, Cambridge. 2 vols. London, Murray. 1823.

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It is very generally known that, by the will of the Honourable Robert Boyle, there is provision made for the annual production of eight sermons, to the confutation of infidelity and the proving of Christianity against all new objections which have not already received good answers. No subject in the world has been so extensively discussed as the Christian religion. Its greatest enemies, its most bitter contemners, must acknowledge the magnificence and importance of the theme. Religion is the strongest instinct of man after that of sustaining his life;-it is, indeed, sometimes far stronger. It occupies him in his lowest condition, and it absorbs his faculties in their proudest state of culti vation and knowledge. But the Christian religion, far more than all others, has been a subject of consideration, learning, and dispute. No other religion has received such strong and lasting opposition- none other has been so eloquently maintained, or produced so many examples of inspiring constancy and virtuenone has gained such distinguished success over the evil passions of men. It presents a theme as curious to the cold philosopher, to the lover of abstract reasoning, as to the breast glowing with humble piety. A religion which runs counter to all the natural impulses of animal man, which tells him he is to disregard this life, and every thing his senses make him acquainted with, when put in competition with things that to conceive almost transcends his power,-such a religion,

offering happiness in an eternity beyond all our present conceptions, must attract the deep attention of all reflecting men. Those who are penetrated with its belief unite in the desire of exhibiting to the world the truth they have found, and each according to his particular views brings forward a scheme of proof.

We do not mean to enter into any discussion of the various methods taken by the numerous divines who have been chosen to fulfil the injunctions of the pious Boyle. The lectures published are various, and present all modes of argument. Mr. Harness has, we think, wisely chosen the most popular plan. He has not attempted the metaphysical and reasoning demonstration of the truth of Religion and Christianity, which, after the profound work of Dr. Samuel Clarke would be unnecessary, and which in this day of indolence, and neglect of laborious investigation, would be disregarded if offered to the public;-but, he has made it his aim to prove against our present infidels, that Christianity is the source of happiness, even in this world, that Christian principles are essential to all human happiness,— that they could not have been established by the powers of unaided reason,-and that, in their deficiency, reason could not have supplied any substitutes. This he has aimed to do in a form that shall not deter the young or indolent reader from following his course of thought; and, by adding a popular interest to objects of everlasting importance, he has still farther brought inducements to the careless lovers of amusement to enter on a subject, that if given but a fair hearing, before the heart loses its young feelings in the endless pleasures that the present age rushes into so prematurely, will be received with the affection which man feels for truth, even when he is too corrupted to follow its