Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-24
to let him pass, and could have kept him

TO let him pass, and could nave kept MN
alive -
IN THE WHALE FIVE YEARS
without any air, if He had chosen tor
Who made the whale? God. WHO
made Jonah? God Tfsen he could do
anything he pleased with eithere them.
The moment you begin to explain away
the miraculous and supernatural, ven
surrender the Bible. Take the super
NATURAL out of the Bible, and you make
it collection of lies and humbugs, in
preference to which chooseslEsop' Fa-s
bles. They are what they pretend TO be,
fables. But if, after all that the Bible
declares, Jesus is not God, and Lazarus
was not raised from the dead, and the
water was not turned into wine, and the
Red sea was not divided, and in answer
to prayer Hezekiah Is boil did not get well,
then the Bible is the worst fraud ever
perpetrated in God s universe.
Ali my friends, have we been mis-
taken? Does God hear and answer
prayers, or does he not? Hezekiah was
sick unto death; he prayed for his life:
God heard him. and added fifteen years
to that lifetime The prayer saved him
the lump of fig applied being merely
the God-appointed human Instrumental
ity.
"But,'' says some one, 81 don't
believe the Bible'. All! then we will
have to part company for four or five
minutes, for it is useless to try to argue
with any man with whom you cannot
stand upon common ground. If any
argument, if you would be successful,
there must be some common data to
start from. 1t is foolish to try to prove
to a man that twice three are six, pro-
vided he does not admit the multiplica-
ton table, or that two and two are four,
if he does not admit the addition table.
My fret address,. therefore, is to those
who do believe in the Bible. l want to
tell you that prayer is the mightiest of all
remedies, and that the aliopathic and
homeopathic, and the eclectic schools viii
yet acknowledge it. Here are two cases of
sickness precisely alike; the same kind
of medicine is given to both of them, and
in the same quantities. The one patient
RECEIVERS, and the other does not. Why?
God blcsses the one remedy, and does not
bless the other. Prayer has helped many
BLUNpERING DOCTOR
through with case that would have
otherwise become completely. unmanaEe-
BILE There is such thing as Gospel
hygiene, as Christian pharmacy, as divine
materia medica. That is a foolish man
who, in case of sickness, goes only to hu-
man resources, when we have these in
stances of the Lord : help in the sick
room. Before you call the doctor, while
he is there, and after he goes away,
look up to Him who cured Hesekiah.
Let the apoIhecary send the poultice, but
God makes it draw. OH | am glad 10
have doctor who knows how to pray. God
send salvation to all the doctors!
Sickness would be oftonGr baked, death
would he oftener hurled back from the
dOor-sill if medical men came into the
sick room, like Isaiah of the text, with Il
prescription i'll their hands and the word
of the Lord in their mouths.
John Abercrombie, the most celebrated
physician of Scotland, prayed when he
went into the sick room, and he wrote no
more ably about "'diseaseS of the brain -
than about ''the philosophy of the moral
feelings - ! con t know how much of
the medical success of Sydenham, and
Cooper, and Harvey, and Rush, depend
ed upon the fact that they knew how TO
pray as well as TO prescribe. | don t want
Il physician who sees no God in human
anatomy, to doctor my broken bones. If
God made us (and think He did, and
if the Bible is true (and ant rather dis
posed TO think it is) then it is not strange
that prayer does traverse natural cause;
aye, that it introduces. q new cause.
When God made the law He did not make
it SO strong
HE COULD Not BREAK 1T.
IF God made our bodies, when they are
broken, he is the one to mend them; and
it is reasonable that we should call Him
in TO do it. If my furnyee in the cellar
breaks down there is no one so competent
to repair it as the manufacturer. If my
watch stops there is no one so competent
to set it going rs the one who made it. If
the body is disOrdered, call in the Maker
of it. 1t is not all, as these physicians
tell us, a matter of ventilation or pois-
oned mir, of cleanliness or dirt, of nutri-
tious diet or poor fare. l have known
people to get well in rooms where the
windows had been six weeks down,
tight shut, and l have known them to die
right under patent ventilators. l have
known children sickly who every day had
their bath, and l have known children
robust, the washing of whose faces
would make their features unrecognlZ-
able
God did not make the law and then run
away from it What is a law of nature?
1t is only Gods usual way of doing
things. But He has said that if His chill
dren ask Him to do q thing, and He can
consistently DO it, He will do it. Go on
with your pills and plasters, and nos
trums, and eliXirs, and your catholicon,
but remember that the mightiest agency
in your recovery is prayer. Prayer to
God brought the kings cure, the lump
of figs being the Ged-directed human in
strumentality.
l would have you also see-for it is
another lesson of the subject-that our
prayer must also be accompanied by
means. 1t is an outrage to ask God to do
thing while we sit incident. The
prayer, to be acceptable, must come not
only from the heart, but from the hands.
We must work while we pray, devotion
and work going together. Luther came
to Melancthon' S bedside and prayed for
his recovery, and insisted, at the same
time, that he should take some warm
soup, the soup being just as
important as the prayer. In the time of
the great plague that came to York of
England the priests prayed all night and
all day for the removal of the plague,
but did not think of clearing out
THE DEAD DOGS AND CATS
that lay in the cutters, causing the sick