that invisible Power whose aid the soul invokes.... Prayer has a right to the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpourings which words cannot express, of that interior speech which we do not articulate even when we employ it.- Anna S. S. Swetchin. Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.- Victor Hugo. Prayer is the wing wherewith the soul flies to heaven, and meditation the eye wherewith we see God.- St. Ambrose. In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.-John Bunyan. Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, James Montgomery. The Christian life is a long and continual tendency of our hearts toward that eternal goodness which we desire on earth. All our happiness consists in thirsting for it. Now, this thirst is prayer. Ever desire to approach your Creator, and you will never cease to pray. Do not think it is necessary to pronounce many words.— Archbishop Francis de S. Fénelon. Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul.- Hannah More. Prayer among men is supposed a means to change the person to whom we pray: prayer to God does not change him, but fits us to receive the things prayed for.— Bishop Edward Stillingfleet. At first I prayed for light: I asked the world's deep law Before my eyes to ope, And let me see my prayer fulfilled, And realize my hope. But God was kinder than my prayer, And darkness veiled me everywhere. And next I asked for strength, That I might tread the road That I might never know A faltering, failing heart, But manfully go on And reach the highest part. But God was kinder than my prayer, And weakness checked me everywhere. And then I asked for faith: Could I but trust my God, His light thus shining round, Would make a heaven below. And now I pray for love, Deep love to God and man,→ However dark his plan; And faithful, though the darkest clouds And God is kinder than my prayer: Ednah D. Cheney (Riverside Record). I cannot find thee. Even when, most adoring, Yet high above the limits of my seeing, And folded far within the inmost heart, And deep below the deeps of conscious being, Thy splendor shineth: there, O God, thou art. I cannot lose thee. Still in thee abiding, The end is clear, how wide soe'er I roam; The law that holds the worlds my steps is guiding, And I must rest at last in thee, my home.* Eliza Sodder (H. and T. B. for C. and H., 278). Deep unto deep may call, but I With peaceful heart can say, Thy loving-kindness hath a charge No waves can take away: Then let the storm that speeds me home Deal with me as it may. O thou, who art the secret source That rises in each soul, Thou art the ocean too,- thy charm, That ever-deepening roll. Anna L. Waring. William C. Gannett. See lines from Derzhavin's "Ode to God," chap. xliii., post. CHAPTER XXXI. ALLEVIATION. What Two Views of the Curative Ministrations of Jesus to Minds and Bodies diseased? (1) THAT the cures were wholly supernatural. (2) That they were entirely natural, or at least merely preternatural,* and that the record thereof was made from exaggerated oral narrations. Thus, for instance, the little daughter of Jairus was only in a comatose condition,-"not dead, but sleeping,' - to rise up at the tender, familiar tones of her friend, "Talitha, cumi!". "My pet lamb, rise up!" There are modern cases of both febrile and nervous affections amenable to control by moral power; for instance, by the ascendency of any one commanding the patient's respect, or by any agency that arouses his own dormant energy of self-control. At the Faith Convention, Old Orchard Beach, Me., Aug. 1, 1881, several persons testified to having been physically healed "by faith." And, in a sermon on "Faith Cures," citing that of the wife of Rev. S. L. Gracey, after prayer of Dr. C. Cullis, Dr. Withrow mentions the case of a friend who had long suffered agonies under sciatica, to whom a friend said, "I will cure you," uttering the words in a tone of emphatic assurance. He procured a lump of alum, and commanded the sufferer to put it into the pocket of his pants, and not to remove it, and he would certainly have no more pain. Neither did he have any to speak of, for years afterward. Another friend suffering from the same disease was confidently assured that thousands had been cured by placing a potato in the skirt pocket of the coat. He did it, and the pain vanished as by magic. These were not cases of hysteria, imaginary pains that only needed the patient to count himself free, and he would be. And surely there was nothing miraculous or medicinal in the manner of their cure. *In the sense adopted in Mr. A. Bronson Alcott's Conversations. Dr. Benjamin Rush tells of an old man who for several years had suffered an annual attack of gout. He was lying in one of these paroxysms when his son accidentally drove the shaft of a wagon through the window of his room, making a terrible noise and smashing of glass. The sufferer leaped from his bed with the agility of a boy, forgetting either crutch or cane, which from that time on were not needed. ... A moral wretch may match the achievements of the most righteous man in making marvellous cures. No monarch, in the seven centuries that "the king's evil" was cured by the royal touch, equalled the perfidious and profligate Charles II. A full hundred thousand patients are said to have come under his hand.— Dr. J. L. Withrow (Golden Rule, Sept. 30, 1882). One Dr. William A. Hammond publishes the case of a Catholic patient, who for many months had suffered from a distressing spasmodic affection of certain muscles of her neck. morning, she expressed regret at being unable to go to Lourdes. He told her that he had some of the water of Lourdes, and another water which had produced marvellous results, and in his opinion was preferable to the other. This last was called Aqua Crotonis. Both were at her service, but she was strongly advised to use the latter. She evinced the greatest joy, and begged hard for the water of Lourdes, but consented to try the Croton water first. The genuine Lourdes water was given her, labelled Aqua Crotonis. This was rubbed on the affected part vigorously for two days, with no result. Croton water was then given her, labelled "Water of Lourdes, Feast of the Annunciation, 1879." The patient received it about 11 A.M. At half-past one, she rushed into the consulting room, exclaiming, "I am cured! I am cured! See what the Holy Virgin has done for me!" And she was cured. The contracted muscles were relaxed, and she could turn her head as well as ever. Similar was the case of a sick German Protestant at Washington, whose husband, on viewing the remains of President Garfield at the Capitol, picked from the wreath presented by Queen Victoria a loosened flower, thinking it a partially opened tuberose. He put it in water by her bedside, and it blossomed out, disclosing the form of a dove in the centre. It seemed miraculous to her, as she did not know there was such a flower (the flower of the Holy Spirit). She began to mend from the moment she saw it, calling it the Christ flower, sent from the dead President's bier to heal her. Where the disease was regarded as the effect of demoniacal possession, the sufferer's belief that Jesus had some secret means of cure, or was especially favored by God with power of casting out the devil, would act as a strong ally to that sense of moral power and 'authority" which his commanding presence inspired. And this, too, whether Jesus merely addressed the supposed demons in accordance with the needs of the patients, or was himself so far a child of the times as to attribute their sufferings to actual evil spirits dwelling in them. Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, once gave a laborer a prescription, saying, "Take that, and come back in a fortnight, when you will be well." The patient came at the fortnight's end, with a clean tongue and happy face; he had made a pill of the paper, and faith in his physician's skill had done the rest. In the case of the pre-natal crotalus bite already mentioned,* the physician remarks that occasionally a girl gets hysterical and "begins to play all sorts of pranks,-to lie and cheat, perhaps in the most unaccountable way, so that she might seem to a minister a good example of total depravity. We don't see her in that light. We give her iron and valerian, and get her on horseback if we can, and so expect to make her will come all right again." On this and on cognate subjects upon which human science is yet in its creeping infancy, no intelligent student feels in any presumptuous mood of proffering very positive affirmation or denial. To predicate of man or of the lower animals or of migratory birds the possession of a sixth sense is a mere alternative of convenience. "One thing is sure," says Goethe, "under certain conditions, our soul, through the exercise of mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason; and the power is given it to antedate the future,-ay, to see into the future." It is well authenticated that Swedenborg, when hundreds of miles from his Stockholm home, was conscious of a conflagration there going on and imperilling his own house. So, also, is well authenticated the phenomenon of mind-reading, as demonstrated by a Yale student and others. So, also, that of the American girl who, when blindfold, reads a book printed in a foreign language. Of Stuart C. Cumberland, who in London, New York, Boston, and other cities, has given wonderful demonstrations in thought-reading, it is said: He blindfolded himself, and taking Rev. H. W. Beecher by the hand, asked him to think of some object in the room. When the clergyman said he had done so, Mr. Cumberland placed Mr. Beecher's hand to his own forehead, and then, seemingly in a state of high nervous excitement, ran across the room and took the eye-glasses from Dr. Meredith Clymer's nose. At the same time, Mr. Beecher shouted, Ante, chap. xix. |