i 9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



MODERN MIRACLES. 



BY PROF. E. P. EVANS. 



IF, as it has often been stated, the age of miracles in the his- 

 tory of religions is past, it is certain that the age of marvels in 

 the evolution of science is just beginning. The Orient, which 

 from time immemorial has been the chief seat and source of theo- 

 sophic systems and theurgic traditions, is still peculiarly prolific 

 in all sorts of magical phenomena and other mysterious mani- 

 festations. 



In illustration of this fact we may refer to the performances 

 of the Arabian fakirs which excited so great astonishment at the 

 Paris Exposition of 1889, and to the more recent but equally 

 wonderful feats of the East Indian, Soliman, in the Panoptikum 

 at Berlin. These fakirs are called ' Aissavidya from the name of 

 the founder of the fraternity, Sid Mohammed Ben 'Aissa, a saint 

 of royal lineage born at Mekinez, in Morocco, about the end of 

 the fifteenth century. 'Alssa, or ' Yissa, is the Arabic for Jesus : 

 'Aissavtdya is therefore etymologically synonymous with Jesuits, 

 and both orders are really somewhat akin in scope and spirit, 

 although to a superficial observer the Mohammedan society may 

 seem to have 1 - little in common with that founded by Ignatius 

 Loyola, except the name and the general principle of absolute 

 obedience, which is thus forcibly inculcated in one of 'Aissa's 

 statutes : " Thou shalt be in the hands of thy sheik like a corpse 

 in the hands of the embalmer ; his commands are the commands 

 of God himself." In this injunction the Jesuitical doctrine of the 

 " sacrifice of the intellect " is pushed to its extreme consequences. 

 It is also a curious coincidence that 'Aissa should have established 

 in northern Africa a religious order having for its general aim 

 the revival and propagation of Islam, at the same time that Loyola 

 established a religious order in Paris under the same name, hav- 

 ing for its object the revival and propagation of Catholicism. 

 Both orders are likewise exceedingly intolerant and fanatical, not- 

 withstanding wide differences in their methods of procedure and 

 the manner in which this zealotry manifests itself. 



Besides the common purpose of propagandism as an associa- 

 tion, each individual member of the order aspires by means of a 

 severely ascetic life and long-continued physical and spiritual dis- 

 cipline to attain perfection through emancipation from the flesh 

 with all its trammels and torments. In order to arrive at this 

 state, called Tauhidi, and corresponding to the Jtvanmukti (release 

 from the body before death) of the Hindu Yogi, the candidate 

 passes through seven stages of penitential purification, each more 

 rigorous than the preceding one, resulting not only in the com- 



