LOURDES REVISITED.

VICTORIA, B.C., AUGUST, 1914.

I visited Lourdes again in May of the present year. Much water had passed under the old stone bridge that spans the Gave since last I gazed on that swirling stream, and listened to the hoarse music of its voice. Lourdes has grown a great deal in these fourteen years. The old town has widened its bounds on the right bank of the river, and on the left the low meadow land is covered with shops and hotels. These, indeed, may be said to make up the town. In the shops, as I also noted when last I was there, the wares are almost wholly of a devotional character—a fact that gave rise to the following incident. The joke that gives it point is at my own expense.

I left my soap at Saint Sebastian, the last town in Spain ere you cross into France. It may be needful to tell the reader that the traveller in Europe has to carry his own soap. I wanted to buy that necessary article in Lourdes, but did not know where to get it. The stores that lined the streets on either side seemed to offer nothing but beads, medals, statues, etc. What was worse, I could not for the life of me recall the French word for soap. I tried to get at it through the Italian "sapone." Cutting off the final vowel, I entered the nearest store, and boldly asked for "sapon." The salesmaid at first looked puzzled. But on my repeating the order, her face broke into a smile of comprehension. Quickly she sped to a corner of the store, and thence brought me a tiny statue of St. Paul! "Sapon," no doubt, sounded more like "Saint Pol" than like the elusive "savon" that I had tried in vain to get hold of. Going into another shop, where a window bore the legend "English and German spoken," I asked for soap. They told me the girl who was to wait on English-speaking customers had not yet joined the staff. I inquired in Italian if they knew that language, and to my great relief was answered in the affirmative, and directed to a little shop down a near street, where I bought an excellent piece of soap that is still in my possession.

Man has wrought many changes in Lourdes. Only the works of God remain unchanged. The Gave flows merrily on, singing its way to the sea. Round about are the eternal hills, which change not. The grotto in the rocks of Massabielle still looks out over the hurrying river, even as Our Lady, from her quiet niche, smiles down upon the ever flowing and ebbing multitude at her feet. How mighty has been that tide of pilgrimage since last I knelt before the statue of Our Lady there! Day by day, month by month, year by year, it keeps renewing itself, flowing ever onward like the leaping waters of the Gave.

I reached Lourdes on the eve of Saturday, May 10, and stayed there over Sunday. The great Swiss national pilgrimage was there, in eight trains; a pilgrimage from Metz in two trains; a mixed pilgrimage from Strassburg, in two trains; the seventeenth pilgrimage from Namur in three trains; the ninth national Bavarian pilgrimage in two trains; and the ninth Austrian, also in two trains. There were in all some fifteen thousand pilgrims, of many nations and many tongues. But one was the faith that drew them thither; one the devotion. And one was the hymn they sang in unison in the marvellous torchlight procession that night. I stood watching it as it wound its way down the great oval pathway through the meadow of Lourdes. The spire of the stately basilica that stands over the Grotto, the grand façade, and the Church of the Rosary beneath, were all ablaze. Then ten thousand pilgrims, a very torrent of moving lights, poured into the pathway, circled slowly round it, swaying and singing as they passed along. The sounds that rose upon the night air, under the listening stars, were as the voices of the sea.

A thought that saddens comes to me as I write these words, after three short months. Many, many of the men who walked side by side in that procession have ere now met face to face on European battlefields. Man is part beast, and part angel. The angel is of God, the beast of the earth, earthy. And the beast that is in man, true to its nature, fights its fellows; the angel can but weep over the fallen and the slain.

What a sight that was of sick and suffering humanity before the statue of Our Lady in the rocks of Massabielle! It seemed as if all the ills that poor human flesh is heir to were brought together there. One had not the heart to ask favours for oneself, so piteous was the spectacle of so much misery unrelieved. For out of the thousands that yearly seek a cure at Lourdes but few are made whole. Yet all are renewed in spirit, and strengthened to bear their ailments with Christian resignation. It is not that they want faith; it is rather that God does not will to free even those who have faith from all evil here below. "It is appointed unto man once to die." Through many tribulations, through the gates of death itself, we must enter into the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of endless ages, whereon, as St. Augustine so beautifully expresses it, "sits the untroubled light, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding." Meanwhile in patience we shall possess our souls.

A year ago one came to Lourdes, a girl from a town in France, sick beyond all human hope of recovery. She had a complication of maladies, including consumption in its last stage. Her doctor, an unbeliever, deemed it madness in her to undertake the long journey. But go she would. He told her, if she were cured, he himself would go with her next year to Lourdes. They were both of them there the Sunday I was there—she to thank Our Lady for the wondrous favour, he to ponder upon the superhuman power that wrought it, and to find, let us hope, healing and peace for his soul.

In a corner of France, amid the foothills and under the shadow of the Pyrenees, Lourdes lies sheltered with its holy shrine. Afar it lies from the madding strife that now ravages and reddens with blood many a fair field that was white unto harvest. Let us pray Our Lady that the war may soon be over—that He who chid the wild waves on the sea of Galilee may now stay the fierce onset of angry passions, and bring a great calm.