Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1889-01-05

Iie Sood Ihflstlans Immediately go to
work anu try to explain the whole thing
by natural laws, SO as to please the ration.
alists, and say that the whale is an air
breathing fish; that every little while it
comes TO the surface, and that the whale
that swallowed Jonah did the same thing,
and thus got a supply for itself and for
the prophet. Why not rather say that
God can do anything; and He could take
Jonah through the whales throat, al
though the throat would not have been
half large enough ordinarily to let him
pass, and could have kept him alive in
the whale five years without any air, if
lie had chosen to? Who made the whale?
God. Who made Jonah? God. Then
he could do anything he pleased with
citLer of them.
II spirit OF II BIBLE.
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
a collection Of lies and humbugs, in pref.
erence TO which choose Esop's Fables.
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's boil did not get well, then the
Bible is the worst fraud ever perpetrated
in Gods universe.
taken? Does God hear and answer
prayer, or does he not? Hezekiah was
sick unto death; he prayed for his life
] .Nal bonrI l;,,, nnI aIloI Yftaan "A p n
that lifetime, The prayer saved him
the lump of figs applied being merely the
God appointed human fundamentally.
But says some one, Il 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. In 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, provided he does not
admit the multiplication table, or that
two and two are four, if he does not adj
NIT the addition table.
ARGUMENT TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE,
My first address, therefore, is TO those
who do believe in the Bible. | want 10
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 a case
that would have otherwise become com
pletely unmanageable. There is such a
thing as Gospel hygiene, as Christian
pharmacy, as divine materia medica.
That is a foolish man who, in case Of
sickness, goes only TO human resources,
when we have these instances Of the
Lords help in the sick room. Before you
call the doctor, while he is there, and
after he goes away, look up 10 LIZ who
cared Hezekiah. Let the a~pethecary
send the poultice, but God makes il draw.
Oh! | am glad to have a doctor who
knows how to pray. God send
salvation to all the doctors,
Sickness would be oftencr baked, death
would be oftener hurled back from the
door sill, if medical men cam into the
sick room, like Isaiah Of the text, with a
prescription in their hands, and the word
of the Lord in their mouths.
John Abcrcrombie, 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, depended
upon the fact that they knew how 10 pray
as well as to prescribe. | 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
land | am rather disposed to think it isl,
then it is not strange that prayer does
traverse natural cause; ay, that IT intro
duces a 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 1t is reasonable
that we should call Him in to do it. II
my furnace in the cellar breaks down,
there is no one so competent to repair il
as the manufacturer. If my watch stops,
there is no one so competent to set it 60
ing as the one who made it. If the body
is disordered, call in the Maker of it. Ii
is not all, as these physicists tell us, q
matter of ventilation or poisoned air, OF
cleanliness or dirt, of nutritious diet OIL
poor fare. | have known people to gel
well in rooms where the windows had
been six weeks down, tight shut, and
have known them to die right under
patent ventilators. have known chill
dren sickly who every day had their bath,
and | have known children robust, the
washing Of whose faces would make
their features unacceptable.
God did not make the law and then
run away from it. What is a law OF
%nature2 1t is only Gods usual way OF
doing things. But he has said that If his
children ask him to do q thing, II he
can consistently do it, he will do it. &c
on with your pills, and plasters, and
nostrums, and %elixirs, and your catho'
Icon, but remember that the mighties'
agency in your recovery is prayer
Prayer to God brought the kings cure
the lump of figs being the God-directet
human fundamentally.
would have you alse see-for 1t is an
| other lesson Of the subject-that on
| prayer must also be accompanied by
means. 1t is an outrage 70 ask God t
do a thing while we sit indolent. Th'
prayer, to be acceptable, must come no
| H. f.or> &I,a Lanrt hat from tho hnndG