The  art  of  healing,  for  instance,  was  in  the  ignorance  of
past  times  regai-ded  aa  being  more  intimately  connected  with
religion  than  with  medicine;  so  that  the  priests  in  those  days
were  the  sole  physicians,  and  the  multitude  were  taught  to
drink  at  Holy  Wells,  or  to  kiss  the  bones  of  defunct  "  saints,"
as  the  only  moans  of  getting  cured  of  their  diseases. Within
the  last  few  centuries,  however,  different  notions  have  come
over  the  people;  we  have  leamt  that  the  Ahnightj'  Power  that


PRIESTLY  DELUSIONS. 415

made  the  human  body  has  ordained  certain  laws  of  health  in
connexion  with  it,  and  that  it  is  merely  by  studying  and  con-
forming to  these  that  we  con  hope  to  continue  in,  or  to  be
restored  to,  a  state  of  bodily  or  mental  sanity. Surely,  too,
we  may  say,  without  being  accused  of  "  philosophic  infidelity,"
that  experience  teaches  us  that  disorders  are  oftener  healed
nowadays  by  medicine  than  by  prayer — the  very  principles
of  medicine  itself  being  but  the  scientific  rendering  of  the
Creator's  sanitary  commandments ;  and  whereas  the  doctrines
taught  by  the  physician  inspire  us  with  the  highest  sense  of
the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  Him  who  framed  us  (showing  us
that  bodily  affliction  comes  either  from  an  ignorant  or  wilful
infraction  of  some  health-law),  the  therapeutic  principles  taught
by  the  priest,  on  the  other  hand,  tend  only  to  make  mankind
regard  the  Creator  as  some  evil  power  dispensing  afflictions
from  mere  malevolence,  and  consenting  to  remit  them  only
after  long  penance  and  supplication. 