London, Dec. 14.—­Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have been discovered on the European battle-fronts.  Heroes with “charmed lives” are being made every day, according to Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has found the miraculous way by which they are developed.  He calls it “audible treatment”.  “Practical utilization of the powers of God by right thinking,” is the agency through which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead beside him.  This amazing treatment includes a new type of prayer.  It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly, and to hundreds more by letter.  Nothing since the war began has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of the statements of Dr. Rawson....

At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of “No Man’s Land” to be crossed.  Our troops could not get across.  Then Capt.——­, who practices this method of prayer, treated them for an hour before they started, and not a man was knocked out.  He was the only officer left out of eighty in his brigade.  He simply held onto the fact that man is spiritual and perfect and could not be touched.  A bullet fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder.  But it never penetrated his chest.  He was frequently in a hail of shells and bullets which did not touch him.

#The Graft of Grace#

All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world of commercial competition.  It happens not merely to Christian Science and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist and Baptist religions.  For you see, when you are with the wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you must fake.  The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church publishing long lists of money-miracles?  Have I not shown the Church of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to protect crops and win wars and heal those who are “sick in estate”—­that is, who are in business trouble?

The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that is not so.  I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which operate in human societies.  I blame the prophets and priests and healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the competitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to swindle or to starve.