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This book is a discussion of faiths that have dominated the minds and hearts of people from the days of the Temple of Aesculapius at Epidaurus down to the present day cults, such as that founded by Mary Baker Eddy.
The book shows careful and extensive research. The only part of the book with whose content I am intimately familiar from personal observation and study is that regarding Bernadette of Lourdes. Dr. Major shows a sympathetic understanding of the unhappy child who saw the apparition at whose command a chapel was built. I can disagree with only one statement he makes: that she was 'ignorant, nervous and grossly superstitious'. She was ignorant because she had no education but as far as I know there is no indication that she was nervous save at the times she saw the apparitions. To prove that she was grossly superstitious, he says that she saw the devil prowling about and scowling at her. It should be noted that this hallucination occurred when she was in delirium a few hours before she died and did not at all represent the normal attitude that she showed either when she saw the apparitions at the site of the present shrine, or later.
The style is clear and the book is very interesting to read. One is especially pleased that the author discusses these faiths that have cured people with a spirit of wonder and of reverence. There is absent the pat explanation and the scornful contempt that so often marks a discussion of these phenomena.
There are interesting discussions of the Children's Crusade, that most pathetic episode of the Middle Ages, the Dance of St. Vitus, the phenomena of the blood appearing on the Host, and of the stigmata on the hands and feet that are said to have occurred in the case of the Abbess of Bingen and St. Francis of Assisi. Finally, there is a brief and interesting discussion of witchcraft in England and in this country.