The author of this work, The Facts of Lourdes, has held his position since 1917, and had previously worked at Lourdes under Dr. Boissarie. The book is one of intense interest not only to Catholics, but to those of all creeds, because no one could get up from reading it without being certain that cures of a kind outside the ordinary laws of cure do take place at Lourdes.

The object of the book is, however, to show the general public what is the work of the medical bureau, and to demonstrate that the blind acceptance of all ‘cures’ as miraculous is very far from the truth, and that a very thorough investigation of all those who claim to be cured is made by expert physicians and surgeons of all nationalities and creeds.

The Bureau is hampered in its work by at least two things, one of which it should be at once the care of medical men sending cases to Lourdes to remove, viz. insufficient certification. Doctors will send cases with the bare statement that the patient is ‘very ill,’ has ‘agraphia,’ ‘constant cough.’ On many a page Dr. Marchand implores doctors to co-operate with him and send full reports, with laboratory reports and X-ray photographs where necessary. The object of the Bureau is not to add haphazard to the list of miracles, but to investigate and demonstrate inexplicable cures. The second difficulty is of course much greater, because it arises from the attitude of mind of the patients themselves.

It is not a little curious that, with the exception of a chapter in one of Lafcadio Hearn’s most delightful books, nothing seems to have been written in English about Père Labat. Although one of the greatest of the old travellers, and often quoted or alluded to, we never recollect meeting with one single article concerning him in any other book or periodical: and of our encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries, very few notice him or his labours. However, out of his own interesting and voluminous works, and with the help of some French books of reference, it is not difficult to reconstruct his life. Perhaps the fullest of all accounts of him is that given by Dr. Rufz, the historian of the Island of Martinique.

Jean Baptiste Labat was born in Paris in the year 1663. When nineteen, he received the Dominican habit in the Convent of the Annunciation in the Rue S. Honoré. The succeeding eleven years, he spent partly in Paris, partly in Provence, where he preached a little, and taught philosophy and mathematics at Nancy. He had already felt attracted towards the foreign missions of the Order, when one day he read a Letter from the Dominican Superiors in the French West Indies, appealing for volunteers, the greater part of their missionaries having recently fallen victims to the yellow fever. His mind was quickly made up, he sent in his name, obtained the necessary permissions, and betook himself to La Rochelle to await the sailing of a ship for Martinique, and to furnish himself with passports, credentials, books, outfit, and mathematical instruments.

Historically, by far the most interesting thing in the process of the Catholic Church is the embryonic character of every Catholic institution at its origin. In this the Catholic process is exactly consonant with creation.

Most moderns would say that this was true of all human institutions: it is the fashionable tag of the day based on a vague materialism, or Pantheism, and it is entirely wrong. In almost all human institutions except Catholic institutions, the work of man is deliberate, planned, and fails. It does not develop consonantly to its origins: you do not see in its growth the unfolding of a germ. Institutions very often grow up unconsciously from origins which have no sort of resemblance to or communion with their final form: but then their origins are exactly not embryonic. Such developments are but examples of the truth that the human will cannot impose itself upon the world. What is remarkable about Catholic institutions from the smallest to the greatest (until it is at last found to be true of the Church itself) is that the origins are (1) of one essence with the final thing, and yet are (2) simple, i.e. undifferentiated, and (3) apparently insignificant : and in those three lies the true meaning of the word embryonic.

The infant Church was born at a time when the greatest state that the world has ever seen was attaining to its full development. The whole civilised world west of the Euphrates was united under a single head. The age of civil war, of social unrest, of the exploitation of the conquered peoples was at last over. Everywhere new cities were springing up, trade was flourishing and population increasing. It was ‘the hour of the prince of this world,’ the apotheosis of triumphant material power and wealth.

And yet the whole splendid building rested on non-moral foundations—often on mere violence and cruelty. The divine Caesar might be a Caligula or a Nero, wealth was an excuse for debauchery and the prosperity of the wealthy classes was based on the institution of slavery—not the natural household slavery of primitive civilisation, but an organised plantation-slavery which left no room for any human relation between slave and master.

Hardly more than a stone’s throw outside the northern or Damascus Gate of the Holy City stands a white block of buildings which glare in the brilliance of the Oriental sun. The whiteness is enhanced by the dark green of the pines, olives and fig trees from the midst of which the buildings rise. Altogether the place with its garden is a landmark of the district, bare for the most part of vegetation. Indeed there are few such gardens near Jerusalem, and this owes its existence solely to the energy and enthusiasm of a group of men whose aim in the Holy Land is by no means that of gardeners. Forty years ago and less, the place was as barren and desolate as the sun-scorched surroundings are to-day. That garden seems to me symbolic.

As you look out over the trees from a window or from a terrace of the house, a glorious sight meets the gaze. Jerusalem lies spread at your feet. You are looking almost due south. On your right you see the great black dome of the church of the Holy Sepulchre ; over on the left is a similar dome, the Dome of the Rock, covering the site of the ancient altar of holocausts ; in the distance rises the pyramidal church of the Dormition of Our Lady, with its accompanying tower marking the scene of the Last Supper; further on the left stands the Mount of Olives crowned by the tower of the Ascension, and at its feet snuggles the little Garden of Gethsemane.