ting their enterprises under way and enjoy a monopoly of their limited method of obtaining revenue. Some who succeed are doubtless as sincere men and women as ever lived. Others oscillate between knavery and unbridled fanaticism.
The horrible mixture of superstition and blasphemy to which these views frequently lead is not known to all. I quote from a paper published in Newark, N. J., in the interest of faith-healing:
Death.—Three of the richest men in Ocean Park, N. J., have died. Faith-healing has been taught in the place, but was rejected by them, so death came.
Charleston, S. C.—A few years ago the Holy Ghost sent me to preach in that city. But they rejected the Gospel and me. A wicked man shot at me and tried to kill me, but God saved me so that I was not harmed.... But I had to leave Charleston and do as the great Head of the Church said:... "when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet." Earthquake, September 1, 1886; one-half the city in ruins. It has a population of about fifty thousand people. Ye wicked cities in the world, take warning! God lives!
SUPPOSED DIFFICULTIES
It has been suggested that if faith-healing can be demonstrated to be subjective, what is called conversion can be accounted for similarly. If by conversion is meant the cataleptic condition which occurred among Congregationalists in the time of Jonathan Edwards, certain Presbyterians and Baptists in the early part of this century in the South and West, and the early Methodists, and is still common among colored people, Second Adventists, and the Salvation Army, and not wholly unknown among others, I admit that such phenomena are of natural origin.
But if conversion is understood to mean a recognition of sinfulness, genuine repentance, and complete
