The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1905-08-05
ALLEGED PRAYER-CUREs.
Archdeacon Wilberforce a Firm Be-
lever in Them.

Archdeacon Wilberforce a Firm Be-
iiever in Them.
In at least one parish in London the
efficacy of prayer in effecting the re-
covery of patients critically i'll has been
repeatedly tested This is the parish of
st. Johns, behind Westminster Abbey,
where the rector, Archdeacon Wilber-
force, has applied the prayer test with
what he considers satisfactory results.
The last instance he related on Sunday
at the altar after a generous offering
had been made for the London hos
pitfalls.
IA few Sundays previously the VEN
cradle archdeacon had asked the con-
gfegation to unite in silent prayer for
the recovery of a woman who was APP
phrently hopelessly i'll. The results he
explained in detail. Almost at the very
moment when the prayers of a large
congregation were offered the patient
opened her eyes and said to her attend
ant: Il fell much better" The i'm
provement went on without interrupt
ton during the night and the next day.
The crisis was passed at the moment
when a few hundreds of believers in
prayer were united in the pious hope
that she might recover. Gonzales
cence was virtually complete when the
rector told his flock how directly the
prayers had been answered. With this
record of the efficacy of prayer, he de-
liberately proposed another test. A
man had met with an accident in a
lift. The injuries were not necessarily
mortal yet the nervous shock had been
%nr., IL nd hn in fn
condition. The archdeacon asked the
congregation to pause for single
minute and to pray for the recovery
of the sufferer. This was done, and the
congregation : was encouraged by
many previous instances to belive that
the prayers would be answered. The
prayer test has been applied in this
parish many times, and some of the
cures effected have been most remark
able The archdeacon does not balance
probabilities nor speak with any indeci-
sion when he refers to this subject Of
an immediate and supernatural inter-
vention in the sickroom. He stands
erect like a soldier and with an en-
pIatic gesture declares that he knows
that the recovery of the patients is due
to- the prayers offered in St. Johns,
Westminster.
The archdeacon is the grandson of
the great William WHEREFORE, \an anti
slavery agitator and pt1ilanthropist,
who was described in his own time as
the brightest star in the evangelical
ornament, Three of the Protestant re-
formers's sons fell under the influence
of DIR. Newman in the Tractarian
movement and entered the Roman
Catholic Church; and the fourth,
Samuel Wilberforce, bishop first of Ok
ford and then of Winchester, was
GENEROUSLY described by Motley as
"part1y admired, partly pitied as
brand p1ucked from the burning, but
with the smell Of the burning strong
upon him." and after decades of pole
mics was acknowledged by impartial
churchmen to be the greatest prelate
OF this time. The arch-deacon is the
bishops youngest son, and while his
brother is the bishop of Chichester and
man of much learning, the traditions
Of a great name, as well as the charac-
teristic traits and eccentricites of a
fanny of genius, are maintained by the
canon of Westminster and the rector of
Queen Anne's sham-classic temple in
Smith Square. Like his grandfather,
he has an irrepressible ardor for agi-
tations and proclamations against
social abuses and political wrongs
even against scientific methods such as
vivisection like his father, he has
the reputation of being man of the
world so sinuous in his courses and so
dextrous in his expressions that no
party In the English church claims him
with assurance as an authority on any
religious question. Yet "Soapy SAM
himself. who could boast of being al
ways In hot water and coming out of
1t with clean hands, had not a deeper
tone of conviction than the archdeacon
has when he is bent upon making
people understand that he says what he
believes and knows to be true. This is
his note of personal authority when he
announces the results of the prayer
test. The Wilberforces have been men
of scientific tastes and social fads. The
great bishop of Oxford used to find rec
reation in the study of trees and flow
ers when suspicious contemporaries
were describing him as Jesuit and