Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-28
to let him pass, and could have kept him
IN THE WHALE FIVE YEARS

without any air, if He had chosen to?
Who made the whale? God. Who
made Jonah? God. Then he could do
anything he pleased with either of them .
The moment you begin to explain away
the miraculous and supernatural, you
surrender the Bible. Take the super
natural out of the Bible, and you make
it collection of lies and humbugs, in
| preference to which choose 4Esop's Fa-
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 5 boil did not get well 3,
| then the Bible is the worst fraud ever
perpetrated in God 8 universe.
All! 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 q man that twice three are six, pro-
vided he does not admit the multiDliCa-
ton table, or that two and two are four,
if he does not admit the addition table.
Ny first 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 allopathic and
homeopathic, and the eclectic schools will
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 blesses the one remedy and does not
bless the other. Prayer has helped many
A LAUNDERING DOCTOR
through with q case that would have
otherwise become completely unmanage-
BILE. There is such thing rs Gospel
hygiene, as Christian pharmacy, as divine
materia medca That is q foolish man
who, in case of sickness, goes only TO hui
man resources, when we have these in
stances of the Lord IS 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 apothecary send the poultice, but
God makes it draw. OH l am glad to
have doctor who knows how to pray. God
send salvation to all the doctors!
Sickness would be oftener baked, death
would be oftener hurled back from the
i, I'll ,,,%n hn
sick room, like Isaiah of the text, with a
prescription in 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 - don'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. l don t want
a 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 l am rather dis
posed to think it is) then it is not strange
that prayer does traverse natural cause;
aye, that it introduces new cause.
When God made the law He did not make
it so strong
HE COULD NOT BREAK IT.
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 furnace 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 as 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 matter of ventilation or pois-
Oned air, 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 have known them to die
right under patent ventilators. l have
known children sickly who every day had
their bath, and [ 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 a thing, and He can
CONSISTENTLY 10 1t, ne Will uO H. uO Oh
with your pills and plasters, and nos
5rums, and elixirs, and your catholicon,
s5ut remember that the mightiest agency
q your recovery is prayer. Prayer to
Gsd brought the kings cure, the lump
ofEaSs being the God-directed human in
strdhIentality.
1 would have you also see-for it is
another lesson of the subject-that our
prayer must also be accompanied by
smeans. 1t is an outrage to ask God to do
a thing while we sit indolent. 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 rs 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
ness. We must use means as well rs
supplication. If man has Governing
prayers asking for health, and then
sits down to a full supper of indigestibles
IL