"MIRACLES" OF FATHER IGNATIUS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3061, 4 December 1908, Page 7

"MIRACLES" OF FATHER IGNATIUS.

IDEATH OF REMARKABLE CLERGYMAN. "We ("London Daily Mail") regret "to announce the death of Father lg- • natius, who passed away at his sister's residence, Darjeeling, near ' Camberley. Father Ignatius—the Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyne—was born in London -seventy-one years ago. He wn» ordained in 1860 to the curacy of St. Peter's, Plymouth, and subsequently held various other curacies, but very early in his career he conceived the idea of forming an Order of St. Benedict within the Church of England. The ultimate outcome was the Benedictine Abbey at Llf.nthony, which he founded in 1870. To the Jast, however, he remained in loyal, though lay, communion with the Eng- j lish Church, but refused to preach in the churches owing to what he contended was the rationalism permitted by the bishops. Long before the foundation of the abbey hi* preaching attracted great attention. One of his objects in "those days was to purge Lombard :Street of its undercurrents of money "worship and sordidness. On one ' occasion, towards the close of 1888, he was announced to preach the mid-dav sermon to City men at : St. Edmund's Church. The church was crowded, and at the close of ' the sermon there was great confusion. He was surrounded by a mob, but insisted despite the protestations of eight policemen, in making his way through the crowd to his cab, v?hich -•he reached in safety. Then occurred one of the miracle ' which Father Ignatius firmly believtd were connected with him at varices intervals in his life. He had no sooner taken his seat in the cab than -a man, picking up a stone, hurled it through the cab window. The atone, ' however, did not strike Father Ignatius, but—so the story goes—it was • caught by an unseen hand and deposited gently at his feet. Among other stories told of him waa that he raised from the dead a labourer who was said to have been killed during building operations at Llanthony, and that he brought to . life again a girl who had died of typhoid fever. He is said also to have revived a dying woman to normal vigour and taken deadly poison with impunity, while many who had mocked and opposed him were reported to have been visited by swift super- ; natural retribution. He claimed that a vision of the " Virgin Mary appeared to him at Llanthony Abbey, and be and his ' little community on each anniversary of the appearance celebrated the festival of "Our Lady of Llanthony."