Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — HE CURES BY FAITH. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HE CURES BY FAITH.

WONDERS'WROUGHT BY JOHN A. DOWIE'S AID. ■ r—nr ..i 1 Either the Man Is a Worker of Miracle* or Elae He I* a Monstrous Fakir —A Nice Point of Law to Be Settled. ■•IS Prays Away Disease. A unique case of great interest is soon to come before the courts of Chicago. The question to which an answer must be given is whether John A. Dowie is possessed with the power of working miracles of healing such as are attributed to the Apostles and Christ himself, or whether the man is a mountebank, a conscious humbug,- who has deluded people for his own gain. It is but a few years that Mr. Dowie has been at work and already his fame is as wide as the continent and not a day passes that does not witness a crowd of pilgrims from every section oft the country who have come to have their sickness healed by him. He started with one small wooden building where religious exercises were performed and cures

were made and this was called Zion’s Tabernacle. Now he has two others, but the first remains the head of them all. It is these wooden buildings which have been the means of bringing Dowie into court. People who live about these have become disgusted with the crowd of halt and maimed and blind who are constantly flocking to these buildings and they have prayed the authorities that the tabernacles may be suppressed as nuisances. It is maintained on the other side that are beneficialinstitutions, inasmuch as they help suffering humanity, and thus are

worthy of the law's protection. Thus the question resolves itself into this: whether true cures are performed there.or is the whole thing a fake. This is the delicate question the courts must decide. The Gift of Healing. Dowie, the head of this healing movement, was a Congregational minister in Sydney, Australia. He was an orthodox believer in the dogmas of that sect, nor did he allow his interpretation of Scripture to go contrary to authority. For years this was his mental attitude. Then a plague broke out in the city. People died by hundreds; one after another his own congregation was smitten. The physicians were in despair and human skill appeared vain. Dowie sat himself down to think when, suddenly, there flashed into his mind that verse of the Bible which says that the prayer of faith shall heal the sick. Instantly he arose and went to the house of a parishioner where lay two children whose lives had been abandoned by*tho doctors. He knelt down, prayed for them and laid his hands upon them and they—arose well. Such is Dowie’s story of his first cure. Ever since then, he says, he has gone on with ever-increasing faith and he claims that 18,000 people owe to his method their cure from all manner of diseases. Dowie does not claim that any power of healing rests in himself; his whole mission is to pray and animate the faith of the patient, for it is the man’s individual faith alone which affects the cure. The laying on of hands and the admonition to arise and walk in the Lord’s name Dowie regards as ceremonies and as such parts of the divine institution of healing But

faith is'the main thing; without this success is impossible, but so great is Dowie’s own faith that he can inspire the minds of those who possess it in a less degree than himself. '.' The opponent's'of Dowie are prepared to show, they say, that the cures wrought have been performed only on persons troubled with hysteria or else are the results of 'pure delusion. Dowie, on the other hand, pointe to a mass of affidavits made by those who claim cures and their friends to the effect that they have been really made well. The managing editor of the New York World seems to have suffered one of those discouragements a conscientious journalist is so apt to meet. A much extended head and a glaring column of doubleleaded type give notice that the World’s war correspondent has reached Jackson’s Hole and discovered thirty-six babies in one house. If the war correspondent saw any Indians or sigfis of carnage he forgot to wire about it. Louis Rich and his son George, while crossing a field at Valparaiso, Ind., were attacked by a bull. The elder Rich died from his injuries shortly afterward and his boy is not expected to recover.'*

JOHN ALEXANDER DOWIE.

THE ZION TABERNACLE.

MBS. DOWIE.