Читать книгу The Wonders of Prayer - Various - Страница 71

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The following incident is related by her pastor, at Woburn, Mass., who, for three and a half years, was well acquainted with her physical condition, and who testified, in The Congregationalist, that no medicine, or physician's aid or advice, was of any avail:

"From the first of my acquaintance to the last, she had an unswerving confidence in her recovery. Many times has she said to me: 'I believe that I shall be well. Jesus will raise me up. I shall hear you preach some day.'

"But, in common with the friends who were watching her case, and with the physicians who had exhausted their skill upon her in vain, I had little or no hope for her. It seemed to me that her life was to be one of suffering; that God was keeping her with us that we might have a heroic example of what His grace could enable one to bear and to become.

"A few days ago, I received from her lips the following statement of the origin and progress of her sickness: 'My first sickness occurred when I was about sixteen years old. This illness lasted for a year. Indeed, I was never well again. That sickness left me with a bad humor, which, for two years, kept me covered with boils. When the boils disappeared, the trouble was internal. Physicians feared a cancer. For ten years, I was sick, more or less--sometimes able to work, sometimes utterly prostrate.

"'My second severe illness began in the Autumn of 1871. I had been failing for two years. Then I was obliged to give up. I was on the bed five months. From this illness I never recovered so as to labor or walk abroad. When not confined to my bed, I have been on the lounge, as you have known me. No one can ever know the suffering which these years have brought me.'

"My acquaintance with her began in the Spring of 1873. Several times since I have known her, she has been carried so low that we have thought her release near at hand; and, indeed, the general tendency has been downwards. I recently asked an intelligent physician, who had attended her for a year or more, to give me the facts in her case. He replied: 'She is diseased throughout. Her system is thoroughly soured. It responds to nothing. Almost every function is abnormal. There is no help for her in medicine.' Other physicians had tried their skill with the same result. It was generally admitted by doctors, friends and family, that nothing more could be done for her. While all saw only suffering and an early death in store for her, yet she confidently expected to be well, and her faith never waned.

"It was her custom to spend a few weeks each year in the family of one of the sisters in the church. At her last visit, it was evident to this lady that Mary was not so well as in former years. One day, when conversation turned upon this topic, she felt constrained to express her fears. But Mary was hopeful. A proposition was made, and arrangements were perfected to visit Doctor Cullis, to secure the benefit of his prayers. But her feebleness was so great that the plan was abandoned. 'If,' said Mrs. F., 'faith is to cure you, why go to Doctor Cullis, or to any one? Let us go to God ourselves; and, Mary, if you have faith that God can and will cure you sometime, why not believe that He will cure you now?'

"She felt herself cast on God alone. All hope of human help was at an end. She had thought it, hitherto, enough patiently to wait His time. She saw that, after all, she must not dishonor God by limiting His power. Again her Bible opened to the familiar passages, 'the prayer of faith shall save the sick;' 'according to your faith be it unto you.' She felt that the time for testing her faith had come. She would dishonor the Lord no longer. Requesting the prayers of the family that God would now grant healing and restoration, she tottered to her couch, and, asking that in the morning she might be well, calmly closed her eyes in the assurance that it would be so. And according to her faith, so it was. She came forth in the morning without a remnant of the pain which had filled a decade of years with agony. That Sabbath was to her, indeed, 'a high day.' A week later the frequent prophecy that she should hear me preach was fulfilled.

"Not a vestige of suffering remained. So far as that is concerned, there was not a hint left that she had been an invalid for almost a score of years.

"She immediately took her place in the family as a well person. Two days after, I saw her. She came to meet me with a step light and strong, and with a face written all over with thankfulness and joy. Since that time all the abandoned duties of active life have been resumed. When last I saw her, she was in bounding health and spirits, declaring that she could not remember when she had felt so happy and well. That night--one of the coldest of the winter, the roads at their iciest--she walked more than half a mile to and from the prayer-meeting.

It is difficult for those who are not conversant with the case to believe it, yet there is no illusion in it. That she went to sleep a suffering, feeble, shattered woman, and, awoke free from pain, and that she has been gaining in strength ever since, are facts that cannot be doubted."