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Show uu FAITH AS A MOVING POWER What was the "king's evil?" That Is a question which it Is not easy to answer The term certainly had a very largo contonatlon. It must havo covered, as Dr. Crawford puts It '.n his books on "The King's EMI," ''many benign and readily curable ail-monts, ail-monts, as well as many beyond tho range of medicine and surgery of that dav or of this." Then wc got a llttlo light on the still more difficult question: ques-tion: Wus this cure by royal touch a reality or a delusion'' A reality certainly, within the limits of tho legitimate operation of faith. It Is to this explanation that we have to come at last, for this Is an ago of faith at least in this souse, that faith Is recognized by science as a very strong moving power. Tho limits of thlb power are. at present at least, beyond definition. And Indeed who can say what nervous disorder enn or can not do In stimulating organic dlsense? It Is a rollef to return to the historical his-torical side of the subject, limited as this Is to the healing bv royal touch It begins with Edward tho Confessor, Con-fessor, so far as this country Is concerned, con-cerned, though U had beeu exorcised in Franco before this time But Ed-1 ward seems to have healed as saint, not as king. The Norman kings dropped drop-ped tho practice, Henry II revhed it: It was nn asset in the treasury of kingcraft. Richard was an absentee and w-e at least hear nothing In this connection about John It would be a mistake, however, as Dr. Crawford points out, to Infer tho non-existence of tho practice from tho silence of the chroniclers. They say nothing, for Instance, about Edward I, but we know from the King's household accounts ac-counts that ho was diligent In this matter. In April. 127S, he touched 533 sick folk. Quite possibly wc might have known nothing about It but that the dole of a penny given to each person had to be entered In tho accounts. James I seems to havo been at first inclined to drop the practice. Ho was, and Indeed remained skeptical, but ho soon recognized that he could not afford to gie It up Charles II, with his characteristic sagacity, realized real-ized this fact. No king was more dll-Igo'it dll-Igo'it in discharging this function, and he did it with a most creditable gravity James II, as we might suppose, sup-pose, was even more zealous. During a royal progress in 1CS7 wo hear of his touching In the course of a week as many as 1,500 patients. It was one of the counts of tho Indictment of the Duke of Monmouth that he attempted to usurp tqls rpyal prerogative. William Wil-liam III refused to exercise It, but Anne revived It, and had one distinguished distin-guished patient In tho person of Samuel Sam-uel Johnson. George I stopped this practice for good, though the service remained for n while in the Book of Common Prayer. London Spectator. oo |