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D., and Provost Wrangel, together with the new Swedish pastor, Mr. Wicksel, and the Reformed pastor, Schlatter, had yesterday, on Ascension Day, attended the new church, where they had heard two splendid and edifying sermons in German and English delivered to two large audiences."
The whole town was flooded with a sort of exaltation, and there was a recrudescence of childishly superstitious beliefs, which broke out with all the spontaneity and vigour that usually characterises the manifestation of popular religious phenomena. What would have been the end of it if Schlatter had not so decisively and inexplicably disappeared?
"It was dusk when we arrived at Rouse's Point, and we had not so good a view as I could have wished of the extensive wharves and landings; the boat, 300 feet long, built to carry over whole trains; and the extensive station works of the Northern or Ogdensburgh Railroad, which is just opened. 'I had been introduced, at Saratoga, to the superintendent of this line, Colonel Schlatter, by Mr.
For every sick man healed at Denver or Lourdes, ten well men may be made sick. Faith cure and patent medicines feed on the same victim. For every Schlatter who is worshiped as a saint, some equally harmless lunatic will be stoned as a witch. This scientific age is beset by the non-science which its altruism has made safe.
Schlatter, with his undeniable hypnotic power, had consequently small difficulty in accomplishing "miracles" that is to say, in producing incomprehensible and inexplicable phenomena. His custom of dealing with people in crowds gave him greater chances of success than if he had merely treated individual cases.
"All nature being directed according to His Will," said Schlatter, "and nothing being accomplished without Him, I am driven to warn the earth in order to fulfil His designs." Being simple-minded and highly impressionable, the first cure that he succeeded in bringing about seemed to him a direct proof of his alliance with God.
Indeed, the spectacle of such child-like faith, allied to all the excesses of civilisation, and backed up by the ground-work of prejudices from which man has as yet by no means freed himself, is one to provide considerable food for reflection for those who study the psychology of crowds in general, and of religious mania in particular. The case of Schlatter is not a difficult one to diagnose.
Nothing had suggested his desertion for the disappointed crowds considered it a desertion indeed. Even Alderman Fox, deeply troubled as he was, could offer no consolation to his fellow-citizens. He, who was formerly stone-deaf, had gone one day to see Schlatter at Omaha, and when the latter took his hand his deafness had completely disappeared.
When he did so, it was only in order to impress the souls of those who had need of this outer sign in order to enjoy the benefits sent them by the Father through His intermediary. This explains how Schlatter was able to treat from three to five thousand people every day. He would stand with outstretched hands blessing the crowds, who departed with peace in their souls.
Full of gratitude, he offered Schlatter a large sum of money, which was refused. He then offered the hospitality of his house at Denver, and this being accepted, Schlatter arrived there, preceded by the glory of his saintly reputation and his miraculous cures. Two months passed thus, and never had prophet a more devoted and enthusiastic disciple than the worthy alderman of Colorado's capital city.
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