6IFT OF 
 ROBEKT 
 BE1PHER. 
 
Protestant Miracles. 
 
 HIGH ORTHODOX AND EVANGELICAL AUTHORITY FOR 
 
 THE BELIEF IN DIVINE INTERPOSITION 
 
 IN HUMAN AFFAIRS. 
 
 SOME ACCOUNT OF MARVELOUS CURES OF ILLNESS, 
 
 RESCUE FROM DANGER. DEATH, POVERTY AND 
 
 SUFFERING, THROUGH FAITH AND PRAYER, 
 
 IN RECENT CENTURIES. 
 
 Compiled from the Writings of Men Eminent in Protestant Churches. 
 
 By F. J. Ryan. 
 
 n 
 
 STOCKTON. GAL. 
 RECORD PUBLISHING Co., PRINTERS. 
 
 1899. 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 1899 
 BY F. J. RYAN. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This work was begun with very little thought that it would 
 ever become a book. Its origin is this: I had been reading 
 and hearing lectures on Christian Science, on metaphysical 
 healing; mental science, etc., for some months, when there 
 seemed to be almost a general onslaught on the first named 
 system of religion and therapeutics, by orthodox clergymen, 
 newspaper writers, coroners and other public officers, even to 
 legislators. The animosity appeared to reach its climax in my 
 home city just about the time the Scientist congregation an- 
 nounced as the subject of its Wednesday evening meeting, "Is 
 Christian Science a Delusion?" 
 
 In examining the affirmative side of the proposition I found 
 the basis thereof to be a Protestant dogma to the effect that 
 the age of miracles had passed away with the immediate suc- 
 cessors to the apostles. I also found that the men who held 
 to this dogma prayed with apparent fervor for especial bless- 
 ings upon their favorite charities, Sabbath schools, enterprises, 
 and about the time the onslaught was made, that orthodox 
 Protestant clergymen were lobbying for appointment as chap- 
 lains to several legislative bodies where they must pray for the 
 rare miracles of the investment of those bodies with wisdom. 
 
 I remembered well the stories told by revivalists in my 
 youth I hadn't heard any revival sermons for a generation 
 of how they were aided in their work by miraculous means. 
 
 164804 
 
I remembered also that some clergymen had regarded the as- 
 sassins, Booth and Guiteau, as instruments of Providence, It 
 didn't matter that these were ministers of the gospel of hatred 
 when their sectional prejudices were stirred. I never heard of 
 any of them being disciplined for what Northern clergymen 
 of the same churches usually regarded as blasphemy. With 
 these matters in mind I set about investigating the truth or 
 falsity of the plea that Protestants agreed on the proposition 
 that the age of miracles had passed away with the second cen- 
 tury of our era. I was astounded at the result of my first 
 week's search by finding that many of the most responsible, 
 scholarly, eminent and effective laborers in the Protestant 
 field of Christianity, in every century, and perhaps in every 
 year since the Reformation, including Luther, have not only 
 believed in but put themselves on record as believing in mira- 
 culous healing of the sick; of the rescue of the righteous from 
 death by storm, by flood, by fire, by accident, by crime, by 
 freezing and other means, in answer to prayer. I have also 
 found cases in which clergymen have endorsed, as true, stories 
 of the vindication of just persons from grave accusations of 
 crime and other miraculous occurrences; of special provi- 
 dences and divine interpositions in human affairs for the pro- 
 motion of religion and justice. 
 
 In pursuing my researches for material I have examined 
 several hundred volumes by authors of acknowledged ability, 
 learning and authority. While I have found something of 
 value in nearly every work, many of them contain matter that 
 is in substance repetitions of some other authors. Some are 
 amusing for the simplicity they seem to ascribe to their 
 readers. This class, though it includes some of the most 
 
learned and famous, seems to suppose the reader will not or 
 cannot detect discrepancies of statement or inconsistences of 
 argument, when the inconsistent or incompatible statements or 
 arguments are widely separated. 
 
 Some are intrinsically and apparently intentionally amus- 
 ing. Of this class is Scientific Sophisms," by Samuel Wain- 
 wright, D. D. While it does not defend miracles it ridicules 
 that class of scientists who seem to require readers to reject 
 the supernatural for the hyper-natural, who spin metaphysical 
 theories as intangible and unintelligible and that convey as 
 little information on the subject to the average mind as do 
 the clouds that chase each other or tumble and roll over each 
 other during a summer storm. These theorists seem to expect 
 their reader to play Polinius to their Hamlet and declare that 
 they see in those nebulous theories whales, camels or weasels, 
 as the theorist may suggest, without detecting the inconsist- 
 ency or absurdity of the theories or assumptions. 
 
 In reading the various hypotheses advanced by material- 
 ists philosophers real and presumptive to explain away 
 miracles, the conclusion is often forced on the reader that it 
 requires more credulity to accept the theory than to accept the 
 miracle. They seem to imagine that in calling marvelous 
 occurrences "phenomena" they have disposed of the question. 
 It never seems to occur to them that their writings will be read 
 by those who can distinguish between matters of terminology 
 and matters of logic, or that any will perceive that to call a 
 miracle a phenomenon does not take it out of the realm of the 
 miraculous. 
 
 It may strike some of those who read this work that the 
 authorities I quote in support of the opinion that the age of 
 
miracles has not passed away, do not agree well. That must 
 be granted, but the disagreement is principally as to what are 
 miracles. However inconsistent the arguments of one may be 
 with those advanced by others, the inconsistency is no concern 
 of mine. The main fact remains that most of those from whom 
 I quote deserve to rank as leaders of Protestant thought and 
 others are, at least, non-Catholic, so that in quoting them I am 
 consistent with the purpose I had in view in undertaking to 
 show that Protestants, under which classification I include all 
 who are neither Catholics, Jews, Atheists, Spiritualists, Swe- 
 denborgians nor anti-Christians, are by no means unanimous 
 in the belief that no real miracles have been wrought since 
 the death of the immediate successors of the apostles. 
 
 Some may want to know who is the author of this little 
 volume. He is a very obscure person and his personality is 
 not involved. If the reader doubts anything stated herein as 
 fact, he doubts not the author but the authority to whom he 
 refers or whom he quotes. He has sought to verify his state- 
 ments and, as far as possible, has confined himself to works 
 that may be found in almost all public libraries in cities of 
 say half a century's growth. The author is old in newspaper 
 work, but this department of literary work is new to him and 
 critics will probably see in it the evidence of journalistic 
 journey-work and lack of literary finish the ornamentals of 
 book-architecture. These were not the object of the work and 
 I have made fact the first object and argument the second. If 
 the few arguments are good and well based they need neither 
 a celebrated name nor the gilding, molding, carving or fillagree 
 work of the word-artist to support them. On its merits this 
 little book is respectfully submitted. F. J. R. 
 
PROTESTANT DISBELIEF. 
 
 IT OVERSHOT ITS MARK AND CAUSED ITS AUTHORS 
 TROUBLE. 
 
 When it is asserted, as it often is, that the age of miracles 
 has long been passed, it becomes a matter of interest to know 
 when the age ended. The time usually given, by those who 
 regard themselves as orthodox Christians, is the end of the 
 second century. They rarely go into particulars as to the ex- 
 act year or even the decade, but the impression gained is that 
 miracles went out about the time that Constantine made 
 Christianity fashionable. 
 
 Constantine embraced Christianity A. D. 313 and his con- 
 version was one of the last miracles that are now generally 
 recognized as genuine by orthodox Protestants. Catholics 
 believe that miracles are still wrought by men of exceptionally 
 pure and Christ-like lives. Even Father DeSmet, in his letters 
 from the missions, in what was then Oregon territory, tells of 
 some phenomena that were miraculous and, if my memory is 
 not at fault, among them were the exorcising of evil spirits. 
 I cannot now find the letters to which I refer, but my recol- 
 lection is that these stories were published in a Catholic weekly 
 paper in St. Louis during about the years 1844 to 1848. It will 
 not do to quote Catholic authority, however, as Protestants 
 
g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 generally discredit their accounts. Even the authors of the 
 Bampton lectures, whose object is to defend the Gospel ac- 
 counts of miracles against disbelievers, discredit Catholic mira- 
 cles and ignore all other miracles than those recorded in the 
 canonical scriptures. The same course of reasoning adopted 
 by the Bampton lectures would suffice to substantiate other ac- 
 counts of miracles, but the lectures skillfully avoid that con- 
 clusion by ignoring the events presented as miraculous. 
 
 For the purpose of the argument the word "miracle" is 
 here employed in the ordinary sense in which it is popularly 
 employed, viz: An event occurring or effect brought about 
 by means beyond or above the natural laws known to physical 
 science. 
 
 As a rule orthodox Protestants scout all accounts of 
 modern miracles, but there are exceptions to the rule; notably 
 among the revivalists who in their zeal tell the most marvelous 
 stories of divine preservation of life; rescue from death by 
 accident, famine, pestilence or assassination. 
 
THE BAMPTON LECTURES. 
 
 EFFORTS OF PROTESTANTS TO ARREST THE RESULT 
 OF THEIR OWN DOUBTS. 
 
 The efforts of Protestants to discredit and cause disbelief 
 in "Catholic" miracles had an unforeseen effect. It aroused a 
 spirit of investigation and one effect of that was the gradual 
 discrediting not only of all ecclesiastical and apostolic mira- 
 cles but widesoread attacks on the belief in "miracles of any 
 . kind. This skepticism seems to have invaded the churches 
 and the inroads of the spirit of inquiry, skepticism and criti- 
 cism were so great that the churches found themselves com- 
 pelled to take the defensive. 
 
 In the course of time the ablest men in all the orthodox 
 churches were retained to deliver sermons and lectures; to 
 write replies to and refutations of the arguments of those who 
 discredited or belittled miracles in any age. The result is a 
 vast mass of literature, widely diffused; much of it conflicting 
 and inconsistent, but all tending to preserve the foundation of 
 orthodoxy, which, if miracles and myths should be proved to 
 be synonymous, would crumble like the mortar in the Buden- 
 siek tenement house of New York (which was made princi- 
 pally of mud) and bury many pious people in the ruins. 
 
 The Bamoton lecture series was one of the most notable 
 of the organized defenses of the miraculous origin of Chris- 
 
Io PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 tianity. The fund to support these lectures was a bequest by 
 John Bampton, canon of Salisbury, who died in 1751 and left 
 his wealth in trust to support the lecture courses. 
 
 John Tyndall deals without mercy with the distinction be- 
 tween miracles and special providences which Dr. Mozley, one 
 of the Bampton lecturers, attempted to establish. In "Frag- 
 ments of Science," page 379, Tyndall says arguments against 
 modern miracles are quite as forcible against ancient, in which 
 all Christians believe, and adds that in the "fascination of a 
 desire to establish or avoid a certain result a favorite pastime 
 with some minds they mix proof and trust, which was dan- 
 gerous to scientific minds. What must it be to Mozley's in- 
 discriminate audiences." 
 
 Lecky, in his ''Rationalism in Europe," shows how men, 
 whose minds had once been started in the direction of doubt 
 of the miraculous, rushed from polytheism past monotheism 
 to atheism and placed the clergy and the churchmen in general 
 in the awkward position of teaching the miraculous of the 
 past and denying the possibility of it in the present. The in- 
 consistency of orthodoxy, so far as the established church of 
 England is concerned, is illustrated by a controversy "Chris- 
 tianity and Agnosticism," published by Appleton & Co. in. 1889. 
 In that volume three eminent English churchmen, Henry Wace, 
 D. D., the Bishop of Peterboro, and W. H. Mallock, com- 
 bined their talents in an effort to refute the arguments of Prof. 
 Thomas H. Huxley. A perusal of the volume will show how 
 churchmen stagger under the burden they have assumed. 
 
 William Howitt, in speaking of the apostolic miracles, and 
 
THE HAMPTON LECTURES. IT 
 
 what appeared to be general Protestant disbelief in them, said: 
 "If they are not true, Christianity is not true. If they are 
 true, the fault lies with us if we lack the power of performing 
 them; we have not the vital Christianity and only half Chris- 
 tianity." Howitt was a clergyman and was eminent in litera- 
 ture in his day. 
 
 EMINENT BELIEVERS IN MIRACLES. 
 It seems strange, passing strange, that those who have 
 written volumes in defense of the gospel accounts of miracles 
 should either ignore the accounts of apostolic miracles, those 
 of the early fathers, or of latter years, yet this is done. E. A. 
 Bertram, in his "Homeletic Encyclopaedia," quotes extensively 
 from ecclesiastical writers from the earliest days in defense 
 and explanation of the miracles of the gospels and follows 
 these with equally extensive quotations from like writers to 
 discredit later miracles. St. Augustine is first quoted to the 
 effect that miracles had ceased and that they "would not move 
 if not wonderful and if usual would not be wonderful." In a 
 foot note, however, the compiler quotes later words of Augus- 
 tine which say miracles were being Wrought "even now," which 
 was in the fifth century, Augustine's latest writings having 
 been done in 429. All the other authorities quoted range from 
 the eleventh century down to Henry Ward Beecher, except 
 Gregory, who was so much of a wonder-worker that he was on 
 that account sumamed Thauinaturgis. The accounts of the 
 miracles he performed challenge the capacity of the reader to 
 believe. Gregory died in the year 234, so that his testimony, 
 as well as his miracles, may be left out of consideration. 
 
J2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 The late Cardinal Newman published a work on the mira- 
 cles of the Roman Catholic church, but Protestants, of course, 
 ignore it. It may be remarked, apropos of what is recognized 
 or ignored by Protestants and seetarists (if they are not the 
 same), that for years they ignored Newman's magnificent 
 hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," because, after he wrote it, he be- 
 came a Catholic and a priest. It is the purpose here, however, 
 to deal with Protestant doubt and effort to discredit all mira- 
 cles of modern times, and especially the healing of diseases, 
 so that Newman may be left out of the account for the present, 
 at least. 
 
EPISCOPAL MIRACLES. 
 
 WHY THEY AND BELIEF IN THEM ARE HARD TO FIND. 
 SOME STRIKING EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE. 
 
 The reason this article, devoted to miracles and the belief 
 in them in the Anglican church (which includes the Protestant- 
 Episcopal church in the United States), is short, is that belief 
 in modern miracles is discouraged by that organization. While 
 the book of common prayer indicates a belief that God will 
 comply with requests for blessings, the writers of the church 
 have left very little record of events of a marvelous character 
 or of a practical belief in the miraculous beyond the miracles of 
 the bible. 
 
 A search of the available books on the subject resulted in 
 the discovery of some striking exceptions to the rule of disbe- 
 lief. Macaulay, in Vol. 1, page 61, of his history of England, 
 says that it was objected to Henry VIII being the head of the 
 church, that St. Paul had spoken of certain persons whom the 
 Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the faithful. 
 Henry's friends were ready with the answer that he was the 
 very overseer, the very shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had 
 appointed and to whom the expression of St. Paul applied. 
 Among those who held that view was Cranmer, who taught that 
 the royal and sacerdotal characters had been inseparably 
 joined by divine ordinance. 
 
 When Elizabeth came to the throne this idea had to be 
 remodeled and the thirty-seventh article of religion was ac- 
 
I4 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 cording! y framed. It declares that the ministering of God's 
 word does not belong to princes, though Cranmer had pre- 
 viously declared that God had committed to Christian princes 
 the whole care of all their subjects, as well concerning the ad- 
 ministration of God's word for the cure of souls as concerning 
 the administration of things political. In a foot note to page 
 62 Macaulay says "these are Cranmer 's own words." 
 
 This exception to the rule of disbelief in the miraculous, 
 was a political necessity, just as was its modification. It very 
 naturally recalls what was said of Abraham Lincoln's opinion 
 about hell. When asked, after hearing some stories of atroci- 
 ties to Union soldiers in Confederate prisons, if he did not be- 
 lieve in hell, he is reported to have answered: "It may be a 
 military necessity." 
 
 Protestantism in England in its early history was not 
 favorable for the growth of miracles. It presented no encour- 
 agement of either climate or soil. So far was it from approv- 
 ing efforts at that part of the teachings of Jesus, that early in 
 the eighteenth century it expelled certain of its ministers who 
 believed in healing the sick, as will be seen elsewhere. It also 
 caused the expulsion from England of certain French Protest- 
 ant exiles who believed their leaders to be able to even raise 
 the dead. A remnant of the sect thus expelled still exists in the 
 United States, mostly in Pennsylvania, and its members are 
 known as Schwenkfeldians. Other isolated remnants are oc- 
 casionally met in other states and in Europe. 
 
 It did not extinguish all belief in- miracle working, however. 
 Conyers Middleton, D. D., who distinguished himself in the 
 
EPISCOPAL MIRACLES. I ^ 
 
 first half of the eighteenth century as a writer on religious and 
 political subjects did not agree with the church of which he 
 was a minister. In Leslie Stephen's "English Thought in the 
 Eighteenth Century" Middleton is noticed quite extensively. 
 Stephen says Middleton asked by insinuation if St. Augustine 
 is discredited concerning miracles, why should Moses or 
 Matthew be believed, and if Augustine is believed why not also 
 accounts of modern miracles. 
 
 In recent years Canon Farrar, one of the most prominent 
 prelates of the Church of England, takes both sides of the 
 subject. In his "Lives of the Fathers" he speaks incredulously 
 of the miracles ascribed to Gregory, who is classed as a saint 
 by Catholics. He says Gregory had a weakness for collecting 
 the bones of martyrs, but he also mentions, without question, 
 miraculous cures attributed to those relics. He also tells of 
 St. Augustine unconsciously healing Paulus and Palladia. The 
 beneficiaries in this case were a young man and his sister, who, 
 while seeking aid from the saint, fainted in his church. When 
 they recovered consciousness, the infirmities of which they 
 came to be healed had disappeared. 
 
 These are. of course, Catholic miracles but not "Popish," 
 as they occurred at a time when there was no objection to 
 popery. They are principally significant because they are men- 
 tioned by so high a church dignitary and authority as Canon 
 Farrar, after his predecessors had so generally, and almost 
 unanimously, treated Augustine as a deluder in the matter of 
 his marvelous stories. Indeed, they quote him to the effect 
 that no miracles wore performed in his day, as if to prove him 
 
i6 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 a liar on his own testimony. 
 
 The only miracle Farrar attributes directly to Augustine is 
 quoted from the saint's biographer, Possidius. It is the healing 
 of an unnamed sick man. On this Farrar comments: 
 
 It must be classed with similar incidents and simi- 
 lar testimonies in all ages, even down to our own. 
 Further on he says such miracles stand on a level with the 
 miracles wrought at the exhibitions of the Holy Coat of Treves, 
 in Prussia. This Holy Coat is alleged to be that for which the 
 Roman soldiers cast lots at the crucifixion, a mere sight of 
 which cures all manner of ills, but it is a Catholic relic and 
 the miracles are like unto it. 
 
 Butler (Catholic), in his "Lives of the Saints," quotes Dr. 
 Cave, whom he describes a.s an eminent Protestant authority, 
 in support of the miracles of St. Ambrose, as being well authen- 
 ticated by evidence. 
 
 Among those clergymen of the English church who did not 
 adopt the views of the majority on the subject was William 
 Stephen Gilly M. A., etc, prebendary of Durham. In a volume 
 published in London in 1827 he quotes approvingly from 
 Boyer's history of the Vaudois of the miraculous escape of 
 those whom the Presbyterians claim as of their fold. The story 
 is told elsewhere under the head of "Presbyterian Ideas." 
 
 If it were allowable to quote from books evidently pub- 
 lished for Sunday school libraries, this chapter might be greatly 
 enlarged, but I prefer to cite, with few exceptions, the cases 
 that seem to be well authenticated by well known writers or 
 clergymen of the church. 
 
PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. 
 
 LATTER DAY MIRACLES VIEWED WITH DISFAVOR BY 
 CALVIN'S DISCIPLES. 
 
 Presbyterians furnish fewer evidences of a belief in the 
 miraculous than most other sectarians. The spirit of the early 
 Presbyterians which impelled rather than persuaded them to 
 oppose everything that smacked of "popery" made them studi- 
 ously avoid noticing events that seemed supernatural. Their 
 records are not wholly destitute of such evidence, however 
 
 "Presbyterians" is the title of a work by Rev. George P. 
 Hays, D. D. LL.D. It is a concise history of the origin and 
 career of the churches of that denomination, with introductions 
 by Rev. John Hall, D. D. LL.D., and Rev. William E. Moore, 
 D. D. LL.D. Dr. Hays includes among Presbyterians the Wal- 
 denses of the continent of Europe, but he does not go so far 
 as do thir own historians in ascribing their preservation to 
 direct interposition of Providence. On page 40 of his work he 
 says the Reformation and revival of religion were the results 
 of the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the church at large 
 at a time when providences were fully ripe. On page 143 the 
 historian, speaking of the "spiritual darkness" in which the 
 eighteenth century closed, the loss of Harvard College to or- 
 thodox Congregationalists and the revival of A. D. 1800, says: 
 
 The problem of the time was to find some perma- 
 
x g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 nent system for reaching the whole country with the 
 few available men on hand. God raised up choice men 
 like Nettleton in Connecticut, Griffin in Boston, Finney 
 in Ohio, etc. * * * * They were specially endowed 
 with power from on high. 
 
 ORIGIN OF CAMP MEETINGS. 
 
 Dr. Hays tells how camp meetings originated with those 
 Presbyterians who afterwards formed the Cumberland sect of 
 that denomination, but he touches very lightly upon the "bodily 
 exercises" of which Elders Jacob Knapp and Peter Cartwright 
 said so much. He shows that it was the resort to revival 
 methods that evolved the camp meeting, and what others call 
 "the jerks" are very tamely described by him. 
 
 In a chapter written by two ministers of the Cumberland 
 church, J. M. Howard and J. M. Hubbert, they say that when 
 the proposition was made to Samuel McAdow for the revival- 
 istic Presbyterians to secede and set up an independent synod, 
 early in the nineteenth century, that pious man spent the whole 
 night in prayer and in the morning announced that he had re- 
 ceived sufficient light to justify him in joining the new move- 
 ment. Thus the Cumberland Presbyterian church is in some 
 measure, at least, dependent on an answer to man's prayers for 
 its origin, although disbelief in the doctrines of predestination, 
 and especially that part of it that taught infant damnation, 
 was a powerful factor. 
 
 That this sect believe in direct communication of God to 
 man, akin to inspiration, is evident in the way they defended 
 the licensing to preach of men who had not been thoroughly 
 
PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. X g 
 
 educated. In the chapter devoted to the Cumberland church 
 its authors say: "They believe that some who become religious 
 late in life are called to preach the Gospel and that the strict 
 Presbyterian rule would prevent these from obeying God's 
 call." 
 
 Calvinism, as taught by the "regular" or original Presby- 
 terians, deals with the miraculous in its origin. It teaches the 
 doctrine of man's total depravity and that to be saved he must 
 be born again. The miraculous feature of this teaching is 
 found in the dogma that the new birth is not subject to man's 
 will, but is the gift of the Holy Ghost. As the Holy Ghost is 
 omnipotent and omniscient. He must have known from all 
 eternity what He should do in all eternity to come. He must 
 have known to whom He should give this new birth and herein 
 is the dogma of election or predestination. 
 
 Another evidence of Presbyterian belief in divine inter- 
 position is given on page 93 of "Presbyterians," where the his- 
 torian tells of the revivalists of 1740-41 entering churches to 
 preach, against the objections of the pastors, on the ground 
 that they had "the right to follow out what they called divine 
 leading, even though nobody but themselves were able to un- 
 derstand the supposed providential indications." 
 
 The same historian quotes from a letter of Cotton Mather, 
 of the year 1718. thus: 
 
 We are comforted with great numbers of the op- 
 pressed brethren coming from the north of Ireland. 
 The glorious Providence of God in the removal hither 
 of so many of a desirable class hath doubtless very 
 great intentions in it. 
 
2O PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Though Mather was not a Presbyterian, the people of 
 whom he wrote were of that persuasion and the quotation of 
 his words in the history may be regarded as a Presbyterian 
 endorsement of special providences, alias miracles. 
 VAUDOIS MIRACLES. 
 
 A history of the Vaudois, or Waldenses, who are claimed 
 as Presbyterians, by Antoine Monastier, one of their pastors, 
 was translated by J. M. McClintock, who, in a preface to the 
 American edition, wrote: "The Vaudois have been preserved 
 from age to age amid the Alpine fastnesses and valleys of Pied- 
 mont a perpetual testimony, at once to r.he providence of God 
 and the persecuting cruelty of that ecclesiastical power which 
 for centuries has 'exalted itself against God.' " Monastier, in 
 describing a battle of the Vaudois against the papal troops 
 sent to exterminate them in 1488, says the Vaudois prepared 
 for the conflict by prayer. Their enemies, seeing them pros- 
 trate, ridiculed them, ''being full of confidence in their own 
 numbers, equipments and valor." The papist leader, LeNoir, 
 is described as "another Goliath defying Israel, boasted with 
 horrible blasphemies of the carnage he would make among the 
 heretical herdsmen." Having incautiously raised his visor on 
 account of the heat, a Vaudois arrow pierced his head and 
 killed him. The historian thus attributes the result of the con- 
 sequent flight of the papists: "But the Divine mercy secured 
 the victory to the smaller number; God hearkened to those 
 who relied on him." 
 
 Further along in the same chapter the historian describes 
 the invaders trying to reach those of the Vaudois who had fled 
 
PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. 2I 
 
 to an almost inaccessible spot, the Pra-di-torre. When they 
 reached a narrow gorge they were suddenly enveloped in a fog 
 so thick they dared not advance because they "could not distin- 
 guish a single object," and he continues: 
 
 The Angrognines, emboldened by this interposition 
 of Providence in their favor, issued forth from their 
 retreats, vigorously attacked their perplexed aggres- 
 sors, whom they defeated, put to flight and pursued. 
 
 Monastier, on page 136 of his work, describes the Reforma- 
 tion as a miracle of mercy which "God was pleased to effect in 
 many places," by raising up Luther, Zwingli and others as a 
 result of the ''direct intervention of Divine Providence." The 
 work having been translated for the London Religious Tract 
 Society, before the middle of the present century, naturally 
 becomes an orthodox Protestant document by adoption, with 
 all its belief in fifteenth century miracles. 
 
 As to the reality of Vaudois miracles, William Stephen 
 Gilly, prebendary of Durham, who is referred to among Episco- 
 pal authorities, quotes approvingly from Boyer's history of that 
 people of the miraculous escape of 800 or 900 of those Protest- 
 ants from the country into which French and Sardinian op- 
 pression had driven them. Boyer says the country was guarded 
 by 3000 hostile Catholic troops, which greatly increased the 
 natural difficulties of the mountainous region. These Vaudois 
 had been granted amnesty by the Duke of Sardinia, who also 
 gave them liberty to settle in his dominions, and their victories 
 over the hostile legions Boyer says formed a miraculous pre- 
 
22 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 servation of these Protestants from Catholic hostility. He 
 further says of the change of heart of the Duke of Sardinia, 
 that "God sent a spirit of division between the King of France 
 and the Duke of Savoy, insomuch that they strove who should 
 first gain the Vaudois to their party." (Boyer's Vaudois, page 
 226.) 
 
 This movement against the Vaudois began in 1686 and the 
 divine interposition in their behalf was in 1690. This was near- 
 ly fourteen centuries after the time at which orthodox Protest- 
 ants of to-day assert that the age of miracles ended. 
 A PRECOCIOUS PROPHET. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle tells in his autobiography how 
 opposition to his appointment as minister at Inveresk, Scot- 
 land, was overcome. The position was in the gift of a certain 
 nobleman who had promised it to him. The people wanted an 
 older man, as Mr. Carlyle was not 24 when he was appointed, 
 and were preparing to make his position uncomfortable. 
 
 The opponents were in the habit of frequenting a shop 
 kept by a woman who had known Carlyle from infancy. When 
 they spoke to her of an older man she told them they might as 
 well be reconciled for Carlyle had been foreordained to the 
 place she heard him prophesy it when he was but 6 years old. 
 The opponents were terrified at the idea of setting up opposi- 
 tion to a "meenister" sent by God, and especially one who had 
 been foreordained to the place. The result was that he went 
 there, won their love and remained fifty years. 
 
 This prophesy was simply an "auld wife's tale," but it 
 illustrates the belief of the Scottish Presbyterian in the mira- 
 
PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. ~ - 
 
 ^3 
 
 culous. Carlyle says the foundation for it was the old woman's 
 fondness for him in his childhood. After caressing him as he 
 stood on a stairhead at her shop, she expressed the hope that 
 he should succeed his father, who was the minister of her town. 
 The child, thinking she expected his father to die soon, 
 said: "No, I'll ne'er be minister here. Yonder is my church," 
 and he pointed to the spire of Inveresk, which is not far dis- 
 tant from his native home. This the old woman considered 
 prophesy that the child was foreordained for Inveresk and the 
 people of that parish accepted her interpretation and dared 
 not "quarrel with God's appointed." 
 
ARGYLL'S IDEAS. 
 
 A PRESBYTERIAN DUKE'S DEFENSE OF THE BELIEF 
 IN THE MIRACULOUS. 
 
 The Duke of Argyll, father of the present Marquis of 
 Lome,, who is a son-in-law of Queen Victoria, published in 
 1866 a volume containing a series of papers in support of the 
 belief in miracles. These papers were originally published in 
 various British periodicals but were enlarged and corrected as 
 criticisms of and answers to them appeared from representa- 
 tives of the various schools of skepticism and materialistic 
 philosophy. 
 
 The Duke distinguished himself before he attained his 
 majority as a defender of Scotch Presbyterianism and hence 
 his work on miracles must be regarded as the expression of 
 an orthodox opinion. His book is entitled "The Reign of Law," 
 and so popular does it appear to have been that several editions 
 have been published on both sides of the Atlantic. The first 
 chapter is devoted to the supernatural. In it he says that 
 miracles are really events brought about by the operation of 
 law and he argues very closely to show the reasonableness of 
 this view. He says, page 13: 
 
 Advancing knowledge of physical laws has been 
 
 accompanied by advancing power over the physical 
 
 world. It has enabled us to do a thousand things, any 
 
ry 
 
 ARGYLL'S IDEAS. 2 c 
 
 one of which, a few generations ago, would have been 
 considered supernatural. 
 
 In this connection he mentions a lecturer on the subject 
 of heat, who exhibited many wonderful things, among them 
 ice frozen in contact with red-hot crucibles. Upon this he re- 
 marks: 
 
 If the progress of discovery is as rapid for the 
 next 400 years as it has been during the last period 
 of the same extent, men will be able to do many things 
 which would now appear to be supernatural. 
 
 * * * 
 
 No man can have any difficulty in believing that 
 there are natural laws of which he is ignorant; nor in 
 conceiving that there may be beings who do know them, 
 and can use them even as he himself now uses the few 
 laws with which he is acquainted. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The relation in which God stands to those rules of 
 
 His government which are called "laws" is, of course, 
 
 an inscrutable mystery to us. 
 
 The Duke in the course of his definition of terms prepara- 
 tory to entering upon his arguments quotes approvingly from 
 Dr. Horace Bushnell. whose work is noticed elsewhere: 
 
 That is supernatural, whatever it be, that is either 
 
 not in the chain of natural cause and effect, or which 
 
 acts on the chain of cause and effect in nature, from 
 
 without the chain. 
 
 After arguing that the spread of Christianity and the pre- 
 
2 6 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 servation of the Jews as a distinct people are the results of 
 Divine interposition, i. e., miracles, he moralizes on the belief 
 
 in miracles being essential to religion, and says: 
 * 
 
 Once admit that there is a Being who 1 irrespective 
 
 of any theory as to the relation in which the laws of 
 Nature stand to His will has at least an infinite 
 knowledge of those laws and an infinite power of put- 
 ting them to use then miracles lose every element of 
 inconceivability. In respect to the greatest and highest 
 of all that restoration of the breath of life which is 
 not more mysterious than its original gift there is no 
 answer to the question which Paul asks: "Why should 
 it be thought a thing incredible by you that God should 
 raise the dead?" 
 
 Were I to quote further from Argyll or from those divines 
 whose writings he quotes in support of his position, much mat- 
 ter that has already been written- would be repeated and this 
 work be made unnecessarily long. I therefore simply mention 
 the names of a few as James McCosh, LL.D. ; Rev J. McLeod 
 Campbell; John Tulloch, D. D., principal of St. Mary's College, 
 St. Andrews, Edinburgh. As the work contains no direct refer- 
 ence to recent miracles, but mentions approvingly Dr. Bush- 
 nell's work on that subject, it is fair to construe its arguments 
 as applying to miracles of all times. This construction seems 
 warranted also by a line in the preface to the fifth edition, viz: 
 "The argument it maintains is at variance with the philosophy 
 of some of the most active and popular thinkers of the time; 
 and on a few important points it deviates from the view com- 
 
ARGYLL'S IDEAS. 2 y 
 
 monly adopted by men with whom I am more generally 
 agreed." In two copious notes appended to the volume he an- 
 swers two of his critics, Dr. Ward, editor of the Dublin Review, 
 and Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, but in neither is the critic shown to 
 have disputed the arguments supporting belief in miracles. In 
 a note appended to page 19 he quotes Rev. J. M. Campbell in 
 support of his theory that miracles are in accordance with 
 law over which God, the infinite author, has infinite control, 
 though these laws and their operation transcend our knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 One who cares to go into minute details of the study of 
 natural laws and trace their wide ramifications will find "The 
 Reign of Law" a most interesting volume aside from its chap- 
 ter on the supernatural. 
 
 His grace quotes the philosopher Locke to the effect that 
 we can never know what is above nature unless we know all 
 that is within nature, and on this he comments: 
 
 In this passage Locke * * * * misses another 
 truth, quite as important that a miracle would still be 
 a miracle even though we did know the laws through 
 which it was accomplished, provided those laws, 
 though not beyond human knowledge, were beyond 
 human control. We might know the conditions neces- 
 sary to the performance of a miracle although utterly 
 unable to bring those conditions about. Yet a work 
 performed by the bringing abou,t of conditions which 
 are out of human reach would certainly be a work at- 
 testing superhuman power. 
 
PURITANS AND MIRACLES. 
 
 EVIDENCE OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS' BELIEF THAT 
 GOD INTERVENED IN THEIR BEHALF. 
 
 Though a majority, perhaps, of those who claim direct 
 religious descent from the Plymouth pilgrims are the most 
 active in sowing disbelief in miracles, the history of the Pilgrim 
 settlement in Massachusetts contains many acknowledgments 
 of such belief. In 1867 a history of the Pilgrim Fathers was 
 published by the American Tract Society. The author was W. 
 Carlos Martyn, who also wrote a history of the English Puri- 
 tans. In giving an account of the rise of Puritanism in Eng- 
 land Martyn attributes it to zeal with which the Lord touched 
 the hearts , of a number of yeomen in the North of England. 
 When describing the voyage to Holland, in 1608, the historian 
 quotes Young, a former historian, to the effect that when the 
 ship was driven by storms to the coast of Norway and was 
 about to be wrecked, God rescued them. Young was on board 
 the ship and his words are thus given: 
 
 But when man's hope and help wholly failed, the 
 Lord's power and mercy appeared for their recovery, 
 for the ship rose again and gave the mariners courage 
 once more to manage her. While the waters ran into 
 their very ears and mouths and all cried, "We sink, we 
 sink," they also said, if not miraculous, yet with great 
 
PURITANS AND MIRACLES. 2 Q 
 
 height of Divine faith, "Yet, Lord, thou canst save." 
 And He who holds the winds in His fist and the waters 
 in the hollow of His hand did hear and save them. 
 Then when the religious adventurers wearied of Holland 
 and decided to try the wilds of America, Martyn says they 
 "announced their intention" to follow Columbus, and launch 
 boldly across the Atlantic, "trusting in God." Having come to 
 this decision they, "after humble prayers unto God for his 
 direction and assistance," held another conference as to what 
 part of America they should decide upon. As they were not in 
 favor with the government and had no hope of obtaining a 
 charter for land, they determined in this, as in other things, 
 to rest on God's providence, but they also rested somewhat in 
 London merchants, who formed a company, got a charter and 
 became partners with the Pilgrims. The terms were hard 
 upon the adventurers, but they accepted them and "had a sol- 
 emn meeting and a day of humiliation to seek the Lord for his 
 direction." 
 
 Martyn closes ChapterVI of his work with a reflection on 
 the singular combination of circumstances which produced the 
 Plymouth settlement, and says: 
 
 God builded better than men knew and, when the 
 time was ripe, He chose the Pilgrims, Englishmen, 
 Protestants, exiles for religion, men disciplined by mis- 
 fortune, cultivated by opportunities of extensive obser- 
 vation, equal in rank as in rights, bound by no code but 
 that of religion and the public will, and with these ele- 
 ments He planted a model state and bade it grow into 
 
30 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 a democracy, Christian commonwealth, that it might 
 
 be, at once, an exemplar and a benefactor to mankind. 
 
 These extracts are sufficient to show that the Pilgrim 
 fathers in the seventeenth century and the American Tract 
 Society in 1867 believed in miraculous intervention by God in 
 the affairs of mankind. But the Puritans also believed that 
 God intervened in their behalf to save them from starvation, 
 from the treachery of the Indians and from the consequences 
 of the folly and vice of irreligious settlers. On page 198, after 
 moralizing on the futility of the communal experiment of the 
 first two years and its abandonment, Bradford, one of the 
 historians of the colony, is quoted thus: 
 
 Let none object that this is man's corruption and 
 
 nothing to the philosophy (socialistic) per se. Yes; 
 
 but since all men have this corruption in them, God, in 
 
 His wisdom, saw another course fitter for them. 
 
 When the colonists finished planting the second year all 
 their food had been consumed, "and they rested on God's provi- 
 dence alone." Wherefore Bradford says, "they above all peo- 
 pie in the world had occasion to pray to God to give them, their 
 daily bread." After detailing how. a scanty supply of food was 
 procured the history shows that just as the colonists were ex- 
 pecting a bounteous corn crop a drouth came and famine 
 threatened. 
 
 In this emergency, the devout Pilgrims resorted 
 
 to the "mercy seat and besought Him who had so often 
 
 appeared to succor them to aid them now. A special 
 
 day of fasting and prayer was appointed." 
 
PURITANS AND MIRACLES. ~I 
 
 It has been well said that answers to prayer do not 
 generally come with observation. They are often sent 
 in a way which is hid from most persons and frequent- 
 ly even from those who receive them. There are, how- 
 ever, instances in which these answers are so striking 
 as to be visible to all. 
 
 Thus writes Martyn, the modern historian of the American 
 Tract Society, and he follows it up by saying that the fast day 
 opened with a cloudless sky, but he quotes Winslow, another 
 writer from observation, to show that at the close of the ser- 
 vices the sky was overcast and a soft rain that began next day 
 continued fourteen days. On this Winslow remarks: 
 
 It was hard to say whether our withered corn or 
 our drooping affections were most quickened and re- 
 vived, such was the bounty and goodness of our God. 
 God again intervened to defeat a conspirator against the 
 prosperity of the Puritans. One of the merchant adventurers 
 by trickery gained a charter or patent that included all their 
 lands and much more, all in his own name. He set out with a 
 large ship for those days but was twice driven back by storms 
 or defects in his vessel and he "was by this time grown so sick 
 of his patent that he vomited it up." 
 
 I have here only quoted from or referred to half of Mar- 
 tyn's history and have not sought to amplify the evidence of 
 Puritan belief in special providence or miracles. I used Mar- 
 tyn's work because it was the most compendious and because 
 it bore the orthodox endorsement I have mentioned. 
 
 Not only did these godly men believe that they were mira- 
 
3 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 culously saved from death by wreck, famine and savage war- 
 fare and from the machinations of civilized enemies, but that 
 the Lord had depopulated the region to which He guided them. 
 Hutchinson's history says (Vol. I, page 38): 
 
 Our ancestors supposed an immediate interposition 
 of Providence in the great mortality among the In- 
 dians, to make room for the settlement of the English. 
 Palfry, in his history published in 1892, in a note on page 
 177 of Vol. I, comments on this remark of Hutchinson: 
 
 He who understands that there is a divine govern- 
 ment of human affairs, and who recalls what has fol- 
 lowed upon the occupation of this region by civilized 
 men, may well hesitate to pronounce that they erred in 
 that belief. 
 
 Those who want further evidence that Congregationalists 
 did not always discredit miracles should, beside reading the 
 sketch of the first Puritan settlement in New England, read the 
 biographies of Increase Mather, first president of Harvard Col- 
 lege, and his still more widely noted son, Cotton Mather. They 
 believed in other miracles than those for evil and by the power 
 of the devil. They believed themselves to be God-guided and 
 inspired, at least to some extent. That the record Cotton 
 Mather made is disgraceful alike to the church of which he was 
 a minister and to Christianity in no wise militates against the 
 fact that he represented Congregationalist thought in New 
 England in the day in which he lived. And that thought was, 
 v.hen interpreted by the acts of its exponents, that the devil 
 was a great power; that God's power could not be relied on to 
 
PURITANS AND MIRACLES. ~ ~ 
 
 counteract it; that man had to oppose his own power to it and 
 stamp it out by murder and cruelties beside which sudden mur- 
 der was mercy. The only logical deduction is that the followers 
 ot Mather thought the devil more powerful than God and them- 
 selves more powerful than the devil. 
 
 If belief in miracles and belief in witchcraft are both be- 
 lief in the supernatural, then those who planted the Congrega- 
 tional church on American soil believed in the interposition of 
 supernatural power for evil if they did not believe in it for 
 good. For the purposes of this work this reference is sufficient 
 for this chapter. 
 
 On the subject of belief in miracles and treating witchcraft 
 as miraculous, Lecky says in "Rationalism in Europe" that 
 Protestantism "from the beginning looked upon modern mira- 
 cles (except those which were comprised under the head of 
 witchcraft) with an aversion and distrust that contrasts re- 
 markably with the unhesitating credulity of its opponents." 
 Lecky cites a number of cases that form striking exceptions 
 to the rule of doubt which gradually extended from modern 
 miracles to those of the fathers, after Constantine's conver- 
 sion. The wave of doubt having been set in motion the theolo- 
 gians found themselves unable to arrest it. Indeed, they 
 seemed to fear that they would be overwhelmed by it, and 
 Lecky says Christianity became an attenuated system of moral 
 philosophy, an admirable auxiliary to the police force. 
 
STARTLING MIRACLES. 
 
 AN EMINENT CONGREGATIONALIST DIVINE'S WORK 
 ON DIVINE HEALING. 
 
 Among the most eminent and respectable of modern theo- 
 logians who have written on the subject of miracles is Horace 
 Bushnell. In his work, "Natural and Supernatural," a work of 
 372 pages, he refers to numerous cases of marvelous cures as 
 late as the present century and some of them in America. 
 Those of ealier day were performed among the Huguenots who 
 fled to England; among the Jansenists in Paris; at St. Medard, 
 in France and by George Fox, the originator of the Quaker sect, 
 but Bushnell, in Fox's cases, omits the dates and other par- 
 ticulars, as if these were too well known to call for further de- 
 tails than that they were performed in Maryland. 
 
 The most marvelous thing he relates is a story of Arthur 
 Howell, a Quaker leather currier, who worked in Philadelphia, 
 and who relieved the memory of a deceased woman from the 
 suspicion of a horrible crime, though he had never known the 
 woman in life. Her innocence was revealed to him as her 
 funeral was passing him on the street and he stopped the pro- 
 cession to proclaim what was afterwards abundantly proved. 
 This story is not dated, but it appears on page 325 of "Natural 
 and Supernatural." 
 
 Bushnell takes the Christian Observer to task for discredit- 
 
STARTLING MIRACLES. ,- ,- 
 
 ing miracles and says it takes substantially the same ground 
 as the atheistic Hume, viz: "We must admit of any solution 
 rather than a miracle." Upon this Dr. Bushnell comments: 
 Little wonder it is that we have difficulty in sus- 
 taining the historic facts of Christianity when the most 
 Christian, the most evangelical teachers, assume so 
 readily the utter incredibility of any such gifts and 
 wonders as the gospels report and as they, themselves, 
 have it for a righteousness to believe. 
 
 This is quoted from page 329 and from that to the 346th 
 page he relates several cases of what he terms miraculous cures 
 and solutions of grave difficulties, such as one hears at experi- 
 ence meetings in Christian Scientist churches on Wednesday 
 evenings. Bushnell would not sneer at these relations as do 
 many if not most orthodox clergymen of to-day, though he was 
 a D. D. of the Wesleyan University and an LL.D. of Harvard. 
 It is true that he was accused of heresy in writing his "God in 
 Christ," but he was acquitted by the association of Congrega- 
 tionalist ministers who tried him. He wrote his "Natural and 
 Supernatural" before "Science and Health" was even outlined 
 and it was published in 1858. 
 
 In the face of these learned men, who support their opin- 
 ions by excellent reasonings, the lesser lights of some orthodox 
 churches, to whom Dr. Bushnell should he respectable author- 
 ity, stigmatize as shallow, ill-trained, ill- brained and fanatical 
 those who believe in the healing power of mind, even with the 
 living evidences before them in the forms of wives, husbands, 
 brothers, sisters, parents and children rescued from the verge 
 
-5 STARTLING MIRACLES. 
 
 of the grave by its agency. Such doubters try to jest fact out 
 of existence to sneer down truth and, by the methods of the 
 stump orator and the police court attorney, to discredit even 
 the words of Him who spake as never man spake. 
 
TY 
 
 JVIethodist JWHraeles, 
 
EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. 
 
 METHODIST REVIVALISTS TELL HOW GOD GAVE THEM 
 SPECIAL AID. 
 
 That John Wesley, the originator of Methodism, believed 
 in miracles is evident from the history of Methodism by Abel 
 Stevens, D. D., New York and London, 1858. In the earliest 
 pages of the work several events are described from which the 
 inference is unavoidable that the author regards them as of 
 supernatural origin. The "physical phenomena" or "jerks" are 
 attributed to the devil, but the rescue of Wesley when he was 
 a child from his father's house, which was burning, is related 
 as if it were miraculous, though details related show that it 
 was somewhat marvelous yet was well accounted for on purely 
 natural grounds. The tone of the author shows that he regards 
 it as miraculous and this indicates that the belief survived 
 among Methodist doctors of divinity until after the middle of 
 this century. 
 
 The physical phenomena were such as were common, and 
 still are, at revivals and camp meetings in some parts of the 
 United States. These Wesley attributed to Satan mimicking 
 God's work, but the historian argues that the primitive Chris- 
 tians "had the jerks" and the early American Presbyterians 
 
EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. 
 
 were similarly affected at camp meetings, and he fortifies his 
 position by relating numerous wonders of that kind. 
 
 WESLEY'S ARGUMENT. 
 
 Wesley's argument that mira'cles are realities is that all 
 Christians believe in a general providence; that there could be 
 no general providence if there were no special providence, be- 
 cause a whole without parts is inconceivable, and that special 
 providences are miracles. In answer to the self-propounded 
 question, "Do you expect miracles?" he answered: 
 
 Certainly I do if I believe the Bible; for the Bible 
 teaches me that God hears and answers prayer, but 
 every answer to prayer is properly a miracle. If natural 
 causes take their course, if things go on in their natural 
 way, it is no answer at all. 
 
 Rev. Joshua Marsden, an English Wesleyan, after a visit 
 to the United States in 1812, published a sketch of Francis 
 Asbury, one of the early bishops of the Methodist church in 
 this country. In the sketch Mr. Marsden said: "Divine wis- 
 dom seemed to direct all his undertakings, for he sought its 
 counsel upon all occasions." 
 
 "METHODIST FANATICS." 
 
 "A Barrister, 1 ' in a series of papers on the Evangelical 
 sects, in the London Quarterly Review, Vol. IV (1820), com- 
 plains of the "bigotry and fanaticism" of the orthodox dissent- 
 ers and Methodists of that day. He cited their organs, the 
 "Evangelical" and "Methodist" magazines in proof of their 
 human weakness. The Methodist Magazine for October, 1804, 
 
4o PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 declared that the recovery of the King in 1788 was due to the 
 prayers of John Pawson and his congregation, and this was 
 considered proof enough of the charge of fanaticism. 
 
 itinerant preachers of the Methodist church were repre* 
 eented to have had special gifts for causing rain in seasons of 
 drouth, and the magazine is charged with such fanaticism as 
 asserting that the Methodists caused the abatement of a plague 
 of caterpillars by producing an invasion of crows by which the 
 pests were devoured. The barrister quotes quite at length 
 from the magazine named, an article written by William Shep- 
 herd of Banbury, who in 1804 claimed to have restored to life 
 a child that had died before medical aid could be summoned. 
 Shepherd wrote that within an hour and a half after he recalled 
 the child's life it had eaten a meal and was playing around the 
 house as if nothing unusual had occurred. 
 
 ELDER JACOB KNAPP. 
 
 Elder Jacob Knapp, who was to the East what Peter Cart- 
 wright was to the Mississippi valley, adds his testimony to the 
 reality of modern miracles, in his autobiography. After re- 
 lating the difficulties with which he contended during his early 
 days as an evangelist, he says, on page 32: 
 
 But in my distress I cast my burdens on the Lord. 
 I sought to know the will of God. I cried unto the Lord 
 and, blessed be His name, very soon He made known 
 His ways and lifted upon me the light of His counte- 
 nance. After spending one whole night in fasting and 
 prayer and continuing my fast till midnight, the place 
 where I was staying was filled with the manifested 
 
EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. 4I 
 
 Glory of God. His presence was revealed to me, not ex- 
 actly 111 visible form, but as really to my recognition as 
 though He had come in person, and a voice seemed to 
 say to me: "Hast thou ever lacked a field in which to 
 labor?" I answered: "Not a day." "Have I not sustained 
 thee and blessed thy labors?" I answered: "Yea, Lord." 
 "Then learn that henceforth thou art not dependent on 
 thy brethren but upon me. Have no concern, but go 
 on in thy work. My grace shall be sufficient for thee." 
 I will only make one more reference to Knapp's belief in 
 miracles in his behalf. On page 96 of his book he relates that 
 in February, 1839, in Rochester, N. Y., while snow lay on the 
 ground a mob attacked the church where he was preaching, 
 when a violent thunder storm arose and the lightning's flashes 
 were so vivid that the mob was dispersed. 
 
 PETER CARTWRIGHT. 
 
 What American has not heard of Peter Cartwright? He 
 was one of the most notable of pioneer preachers of the Metho- 
 dist church in the then far West. He was licensed as an ex- 
 horter in 1802 in Kentucky and was during more than half a 
 century a very prominent figure and powerful propagator of 
 Christianity as expounded by his church. That he believed in 
 miracles is more evident in the preface to his autobiography 
 than complimentary to the modern Methodist. In his preface 
 he says: 
 
 MIRACULOUS DULLNESS. 
 
 When I consider the unsurmountable disadvantages 
 and difficulties that the early pioneer Methodist preach- 
 
4 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 ers labored under in spreading the Gospel in these 
 western wilds, in the great valley of the Mississippi, 
 and contrast the disabilities that surrounded them on 
 every hand, with the glorious human advantages that 
 are enjoyed by their present successors, it is confound- 
 ingly miraculous to me that our modern preachers can- 
 not preach better and do more good than they do. 
 In describing scenes at camp meetings and revivals, Mr. 
 Cartwright tells at some length of "the jerks," a spasmodic 
 affliction, that came upon many who were in attendance. He 
 grows amusing when he describes the humiliation of finely 
 dressed young men and women being seized and the finery of 
 the ladies go flying under the influence of these physical phe- 
 nomena. One incident which he relates is far from amusing, 
 however, and it is here copied. He does not say just when the 
 tragic event occurred, but as it was soon after he began his 
 ministry it must have occurred not later than 1802. The story 
 is this: 
 
 MIRACLE FATAL TO A SCOFFER. 
 While I am on this subject I will relate a very 
 serious circumstance which I knew to take place with 
 a man who had the jerks at a camp meeting on what 
 was called. the ridge, in William Magee's congregation. 
 There was a great work of religion in the encampment. 
 The jerks were very prevalent. There was a company 
 of drunken rowdies who came to interrupt the meeting. 
 These rowdies were headed by a very large drinking 
 man. They came with their bottles of whisky in their 
 

 EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. ,~ 
 
 pockets. This large man cursed the jerks and all reli- 
 gion. Shortly afterward he t ook the j erks and he 
 started to run, but he jerked so powerfully he could not 
 get away. He halted among some saplings and, al- 
 though he was violently agitated, he took out his bot- 
 tle of whisky and swore he would drink the damned 
 jerks to death, but he jerked at such a rate he could 
 not get the bottle to his mouth, though he tried hard. 
 At length he fetched a sudden jerk, and the bottle 
 struck a sapling and was broken to pieces and spilled 
 his whisky on the ground. There was a great crowd 
 gathered around him, and when he lost his whisky he 
 became very much enraged, and cursed and swore very 
 profanely, his jerks still increasing. At length he 
 fetched a very violent jerk, snapped his neck and soon 
 expired with his mouth full of cursing and bitterness. 
 
 Cartwright's comment was this: 
 
 I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent 
 from God, first, to bring sinners to repentance, and, 
 secondly, to show professors that God could work with 
 or without means and that He could work over and 
 above means and do whatever seemeth Him good, to 
 the glory of His grace and the salvation of the world. 
 In Chapter IX of Cartwright's autobiography he tells of 
 the hardships he endured in Ohio and in getting back to his 
 father's home in Kentucky for a new outfit; his receipts dur- 
 ing a year not being sufficient to pay for a new suit of clothes. 
 
44 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 He set cut with seventy-five cents, but Providence raised up 
 friends for him on the way and they voluntarily furnished him 
 money. This was in 1807. When he reached Hopkinsvifle, 
 Ky., he t'ound a tavern kept by an acquaintance of his father 
 and was entertained on credit. During the night the land- 
 lord's wife was seized with hysterics and her screams aroused 
 the weary preacher, who rose and asked the cause of the trou- 
 ble. When it was explained he offered to pray, which offer the 
 afflicted woman eagerly accepted. He prayed and sang and the 
 pcor woman, who was described as the sister of an apostate 
 Baptist minister, was healed of her disorder and her husband 
 was overjoyed. 
 
 I have here cited only sufficient to show that the vener- 
 able preacher who spent his life from early manhood to feeble 
 age in preaching the Gospel according to the Methodist church, 
 agreed with Wesley, its founder, in believing in miracles and 
 special providences, in healing by the invocation of divine aid 
 and in what Christian Scientists now characterize as "demon- 
 strating'' for ways and means. 
 
 NEWLAND MAFPIT. 
 
 Elderly people may remember a great revivalist in Rev. 
 J. Newland Malfit, who from about 1822 to 1848 created great 
 sensations wherever he went. On account of the great scandal 
 that surrounded his latter years and his death, his career is 
 rarely referred to now by Methodists. He was not only the 
 peer of Knapp and Cartwright as an evangelist, but greatly 
 superior to them in education. I have been unable to find any 
 biography of him beyond the brief sketches in encyclopaedias 
 
EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. .- 
 
 but I am old enough to distinctly remember his visit to my 
 native home and the great sensation it created. I also remem- 
 ber the stories that were current of miraculous conversions 
 and some miraculous occurrences that were hardly religious in 
 their character. The first were related by pious people and of 
 the others only a part were accepted by the pious. I cannot now 
 verify my statements by documentary evidence, but there are 
 many living people who will readily recall what I have here 
 written as fact. The appalling fate that overtook the once bril- 
 liant man, whether he was guilty of all that was charged upon 
 him or not, apparently caused most of religious people, ortho- 
 dox and "liberal" alike, to let his name drop into oblivion if 
 it would. His few writings are now more rare than valuable, 
 I assume, but enough is known of him to show that he and the 
 Methodists of his day believed that miracles WCFC wrought by 
 more than a dozen of their leaders. 
 
 R^v. Chauncy Giles published a little book in 1890 on the 
 efficacy of prayer, but he, like many others who believe that 
 prayer is answered, prescribed very minute conditions prece- 
 dent to be observed. Among them I failed to find healing of ill- 
 ness classed with things that would be "asked amiss," but the 
 reverend author does not make it plain that he regards it as 
 one of the laudable objects of supplication. 
 JACOB GRUBER. 
 
 Jacob Gruber was one of the earliest of Methodist preach- 
 ers in the Southern States. He was zealous, earnest, vigorous, 
 self-denying, "an unrelenting enemy of oase," and a man of 
 unwavering faith. It is related of him in "Methodist Heroes" 
 
4 6 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 that night once overtook him on a mountain during a heavy 
 snow storm and he lost his way. He had to keep moving and 
 close to his horse all night to keep from freezing and when 
 morning came he reached a cabin before the inmates had risen. 
 In response to their congratulations he said the Lord sup- 
 ported him and he didn't even take cold. 
 
 Another night he was exposed in a similar manner and in 
 the morning he and his horse safely crossed a dangerous river 
 on the ice. He did not find the house he was seeking until he 
 and his horse had been without food nearly or quite two days, 
 yet again he escaped cold because, he explained, the Lord 
 saved him. 
 
SAM JONES' EXPERIENCE. 
 
 THE REVIVALIST RELATES THE HISTORY OF HIS CON- 
 VERSION AND FIRST SERMON. 
 
 Sam Jones, the great Southern revivalist, opens his auto- 
 biography, in his "Own Book," with a quotation from Charles 
 G. Finney and applies it to his own case, viz: "It has pleased 
 God, in some measure, to connect my name and labors with an 
 extensive movement of the church of Christ." This Jones 
 makes mor^ specific on page 15 of that autobiographical sketch. 
 After telling of his dissipation and his promise to his dying 
 father to reform he says: 
 
 When peace and pardon were given, after days of 
 seeking, I was impressed that I should preach the Gos- 
 pel. I did not know from whence these impressions 
 came; I thought as did Gideon Ausely,*'! cannot preach, 
 I am not fit to preach, I do not know anything to 
 preach." I sought the advice and counsel of several 
 faithful preachers and I believe each of them said the 
 same thing: "You are called to preach. You can go 
 willingly into it, or you will lose your religion if you 
 refuse. * * * I conferred not with flesh and blood 
 further but began immediately to preach the Gospel as 
 only a man can preach it who knew but two facts 
 God is good and I am happy in his love. 
 Jones then tells the story of his first sermon, which, though 
 
4 8 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 he does not say he was inspired, reads like the relation of a 
 miracle. He had gone to an appointment with his grandfather, 
 a preacher, who was hoarse. The preacher who was to have 
 taken the venerable gentleman's place failed to arrive and 
 Grandfather Jones told Sam lie must fill the appointment, say- 
 ing: "If God is calling you to preach, you can preach; come 
 on in the pulpit." 
 
 He then describes his opening, but says he has forgotten 
 his exigesis and analysis and says '"hundreds were melted to 
 tears and many went forward for prayers." After service his 
 grandfather assured him lhat God had called him and bade 
 him go ahead with the work. 
 
 Jones has gone ahead and his lame as a revival preacher 
 is equal to, though not of the same kind, as that of Professor 
 Finney, whose case seems to him so much like his own. The 
 thousands who have crowded Sam Jones' meetings in all parts 
 of the United States have heard him relate his own experience 
 and many other stories of miraculous conversions, testify that 
 Protestant sectarians believe in miracles, each within their 
 own sects and in answer to the prayers of their favorite 
 preachers, but each are skeptical concerning those performed 
 through the instrumentality of other evangelists. Especially 
 is this skepticism true as applies to new systems of religion 
 and the advocates thereof. 
 
AN EMINENT METHODIST. 
 
 BISHOP FOWLER ON SPECIAL PROVIDENCES WITH 
 EXAMPLES OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Charles H. Fowler, D. D. LL.D., is one of the brightest men 
 in the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he is a bishop. 
 When he was editor of the New York Christian Advocate, a 
 sermon of his special providences was published in the "Com- 
 plete Preacher" for July, 1S77. In that sermon Dr. Fowler 
 said: 
 
 It is just as much account to pray about the 
 weather as it was when Elijah prayed about it. Here 
 is a storm beating up the coast likely to drive every- 
 thing to pieces. The Lord touches somewhere else in 
 the universe some other element, gives it a little turn, 
 and the storm veers off. All we need is to get hold of 
 the great combiner. A Baptist preacher by the name of 
 Edwards, who had been an old sea captain,* when a 
 a tornado was coming straight down upon his house, 
 knew that there was mischief in the cloud. He believed 
 that God was at home in Wisconsin, and calling to his 
 children said: "Do you see that cloud? That means 
 haim. Let us go into the house and tell God about it." 
 And thoy went in and prayed to the Lord that he would 
 
 , The Edwards here is undoubtedly the person referred to elsewhere 
 at haviner been mysteriously supplied with groceries and fuel. 
 
c o PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 take care of them if they were worth saving. They were 
 saved and the next day and for months afterwards you 
 could see the broad track of that tornado that cleaned 
 up every blade of grass, every roof and hamlet, and 
 tree and stick and stump in its path, bearing right 
 down on this clergyman's house until it came within 
 a quarter of a mile of it, when it made nn abrupt turn, 
 went to one side till opposite his house, then it turned 
 back into its old path and went on. That man got hold 
 of the great Combiner and the Lord looked after him. 
 
 Dr. Fowler illustrated his idea by a hypothetical case. He 
 supposed a pious man in deep meditation over whose path 
 hung a tree that was liable to fall any moment. A sound ar- 
 rests his footsteps in time to prevent him being under the tree 
 as it falls, "and 'he is as much saved by the providence of God 
 as he would have been if the Lord had come out and rolled up 
 his sleeves and held up the tree before the eyes of men. 
 
 He cited the case of a soldier who was moved by an irre- 
 sistible impulse to get under cover while eating his lunch one 
 day in front of Petersburg. He had hardly moved his head 
 when a rebel bullet pierced the tree where it had rested. On 
 this he comments: "He was saved as much as if the Lord had 
 come down and turned aside that gun." 
 
 He also recited the case of a ship's return to her home port 
 after a three years' voyage and, as she was about to land her 
 crew, a storm sent her upon the rocks, where she was pounded 
 to pieces. A poor woman who had been to the shore to meet her 
 son went home and spent the night in prayer. At daylight 
 
AN EMINENT METHODIST. 
 
 that son burst into the room and cried: "I knew, mother, that 
 you would pray me ashore." Upon this Fowler said: "She, 
 too, got hold of the great Combiner. That is what I believe 
 about Providence and about prayer, and the Bible is full of it 
 from one end to the other." 
 
 Dr. Fowler did not stop there. He told of Fletcher being 
 saved to the church and to God by the act of a clumsy servant 
 scalding him and thus preventing him going to sea as a lieu- 
 tenant in the British navy in a ship that never came back. 
 
MIRACLES THAT ENTERTAIN. 
 
 STORIES OF GOD'S INTERVENTION IN AID OF THE 
 STRIVERS AFTER VIRTUE. 
 
 Rev. J. V. Watson, D. D., was a man who was deeply re- 
 spected in the morning and until the noon of the present cen- 
 tury, when he died. He entered the itinerant ministry of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church during the second decade of the 
 century and was for many years editor of the Northwestern 
 Christian Advocate, in Chicago. After his death a book he had 
 in preparation was publisher] and, though all the articles it 
 contains were not written by him, the author said the staple 
 of the volume was from his pen and, as all of it was culled 
 from the paper of which he was for ten years the editor, the 
 miraculous incidents must be regarded as having the stamp of 
 Methodist approval. 
 
 The story with which Dr. Watson opens his volume has 
 for its chief incidents the inspiration of a young preacher and 
 the resultant conversion of his scoffing brother. It was written 
 by a woman whose name is not given, except as "Sister A." 
 Elliott Ray is the young preacher who, on attempting to 
 preach while his taunting brother sat facing him and ready to 
 execute a threat, failed for a moment. Then, knowing that his 
 mother was at home praying for his success, he began by be- 
 seeching those present to pray also and, through his mother's 
 prayers, grew more and more eloquent until the whole congre- 
 
MIRACLES THAT ENTERTAIN. 
 
 gation was profoundly moved, many to tears and the sneering 
 brother Charles converted. 
 
 The ninth story is by Sylvanus Cobb, probably not the 
 author once so well known with the addition of -'junior" to 
 his -name, but his father, who was an honored clergyman. It 
 tells of the almost miraculous reclamation of a besotted father 
 who awoke from a half drunken sleep in a patch of woods and 
 overheard his little daughter bewailing his degradation and 
 contrasting it with his former loving kindness and provident 
 care for them and discussing their mother's ardent prayers for 
 his reform. It is a prettily written story and closes with the 
 acknowledgment of the husband that his wife's prayers are 
 answered. 
 
 "The rnwelcome Preacher" contains a much more striking 
 miracle story. It is an account of a Kentucky village that con- 
 tained twenty-seven self-important Methodists, who, in 1823, 
 asked for the most noted and popular preacher of the state as 
 their pastor. The conference sent them a young man who 
 had just been admitted to the conference and who was, in con- 
 sequence, so very coldly received, that his heart would have 
 failed him had not Bishop George accompanied him. 
 
 The young man pleaded to have the appointment cancelled, 
 but the bishop conducted him into a deep wood, where they 
 both prayed for success. This helped the youth, because the 
 bishop had fallen ill while they were on the journey to the 
 station. The bishop, after failing to prevail upon the youth 
 to try to cure him by prayer, resorted to supplication for him- 
 self, and was healed. Here is miracle No. 1 of this story, 
 
ex PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 which is a mere incident of the narrative. After the prayer in 
 the woods the bishop exacted a promise from the young man 
 to follow this prescription: 
 
 Go back to town; if you find a cross there bear it; 
 diligently and lovingly perform every part of your 
 duty; do the work of an evangelist; fast once a week, 
 and spend one hour of each day in special prayer that 
 God may open your way in that community; do this for 
 one month and at the end of that term, if you do not 
 feel willing to stay, consider yourself released from 
 the appointment. Can you do this? 
 
 He thought he could, and the bishop left him and pursued 
 his journey, leaving the half fainting youth to God and His 
 mercy. Faithfully was the promise kept without sign of any 
 change until the last Sunday of his probation. When he peeped 
 out on the morning of that day the roads showed "group after 
 group of citizens flocking toward the Methodist church." The 
 sight was naturally inspiring and the author of the story de- 
 scribes the sermon as that of "a man sent from God" and 
 gloriously baptized with the Holy Ghost and that his eye, 
 hitherto confused and unsteady, "now kindled with a light 
 that never shined on sea or shore/ " He adds: 
 
 The power of the Highest was manifestly upon the 
 audience and the presence of an ambassador of Christ 
 was attested by sobs and groans from every part of the 
 house. The preacher descended from the pulpit with- 
 out pausing in his discourse, and invited to the place 
 of prayer those who desired to flee the wrath to come. 
 
MIRACLES THAT ENTERTAIN. ~ * 
 
 With loud cries for mercy, sinners came streaming 
 down the aisle and before the congregation was dis- 
 missed seven souls professed to find peace in believing. 
 This was followed by a revival which for four weeks was 
 so all-absorbing that little else received any attention. When 
 the call was made for those who wished to join the church one 
 hundred and eleven presented themselves. 
 
 That village was made a permanent station and the author 
 discloses in two brief paragraphs at the conclusion of his story 
 that it is Russellville, Ky., and that the unwelcome preacher 
 was then (in 1856) Rev. E. Stevenson, D. D., book agent, of the 
 M. E. Church South. 
 
 Dr. Watson did one praiseworthy act in getting out his 
 bcok. He devoted a chapter to Newland Maffit and in It dis- 
 plays sufficient Christian charity to touch lightly on the of- 
 fenses charged on that gifted but erratic zealot and give, him 
 full credit for what of good was in him. 
 
ORTHODOX PRAYER CURE. 
 
 A TEXT BOOK FOR METHODIST PREACHERS WHICH 
 
 TEACHES MIRACULOUS HEALING. 
 Rev. James Caughey, who is described as "an eminently 
 successful revivalist" on the title page of a work with the 
 lengthy title, "Helps to a Life of Holiness and Usefulness or 
 Revival Miscellanies," contributes a striking bit of evidence 
 in support of religion as a cure for disease. That his works 
 must be regarded as authority, I accept as evidence that the 
 matter in the volume from which I shall quote was "selected" 
 by Rev. Ralph W. Allen and Rev. Daniel Wise and was ct ; the 
 forty-second thousand. On page 345 of this work Mr. Caughey 
 speaks of an "ingenius Dr. C." thus: 
 
 Dr. C. reckons all gloomy wrong-headedness and 
 spurious free- thinking as so many symptoms of bodily 
 disease and, I think, says: "The human organs in 
 some nervous distempers may, perhaps, be rendered 
 tit for tne actuatirn of demons" and advises religion 
 as an excellent remedy. 
 
 In a chapter devoted to answers to prayer two page>. 401 
 and 402, are devoted especially to the subject. The writer 
 quotes a simile employed by others who had spoken and writ- 
 ten before him, which likened the petitioner to a man in a boat 
 who grappled a ship. The ship did not yield to him but towed 
 the boat with it. Of this Mr. Caughey says: 
 
ORTHODOX PRAYER CURE. ^ 
 
 I do not like the idea, however ingeniously carried 
 out, that God is as stationary, with regard to the 
 returning sinner or praying believer, as the ship to the 
 boatman. It seems to make against the analogy of the 
 Scripture, "Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh 
 to you. James, iv:8. This seems like a proposal to 
 meet us half way, and if we take the example of the 
 prodigal son, as illustrative of the willingness of God 
 to receive returning sinners, our Heavenly Father per- 
 forms the largest part. The prodigal did not run to 
 meet his father but his father ran to meet the repent- 
 ing son, "and fell upon his neck and kissed him." 
 
 In a chapter devoted to preaching the author tells a story 
 that would have fitted well into that from which the foregoing 
 extract was taken. It is in brief that a young minister named 
 Stoddard, at North ham pton, Mass., whoso congregation be- 
 came convinced that he had never been converted because, 
 though he was learned and devoted to his work, his preaching 
 did not appeal to them. After a conference they decided to 
 hold a meeting at which to pray for his conversion. The pas- 
 tor, surprised at a gathering of which he had no notice, in- 
 quired the cause of one whom he saw going to the church. 
 When informed he retired and prayed for himself. Mr. Caughey 
 says: 
 
 While they were yet speaking, God answered and 
 set His soul at liberty. It was not long before the. peo- 
 ple of God obtained evidence, most unquestionable, that 
 he had indeed passed "from death unto life." That 
 
rg PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 man labored among them nearly half a century, and, 
 it is said, he was ranked among the most able minis- 
 ters of the age. 
 
 That Caughey's works are soundly orthodox is evident 
 from the preface, a note which says that after 10,000 copies had 
 been sold in about a year, the plates were purchased by the 
 book agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, by 
 whom the book was afterwards published. 
 
COMMUNED WITH GOD, 
 
 REVIVALIST CAUGHEY'S ACCOUNT OF HIS FAILURE 
 TO MARRY. 
 
 Rev. James Caughey, who is mentioned elsewhere in this 
 volume, as the author of "Revival Miscellanies," was one of 
 the early Methodist preachers in the United States, having been 
 ordained deacon in 1834 at the annual conference in Troy, N. 
 Y. In a biographical sketch in ''Earnest Christianity" his 
 words are quoted concerning his communion with God. For 
 the sake of saving space I reduce them to their essence, but 
 those who wish to verify my work or dispute it will find the 
 matter on pages 12 to 15 of the work named, which was edited 
 by Rev. Daniel Wise and Rev. Ralph W. Allen. 
 
 In 1839 Mr. Caughey was appointed to Whitehall, N. Y., 
 and began to reflect on taking a wife. Immediately his heart 
 became hard and "the Lord seemed to depart from" him. The 
 more he reflected on the subject the further the Lord seemed 
 to withdraw from him. He says: 
 
 God, who had honored me with such intimate 
 communion with Himself since my conversion, appar- 
 ently left mo to battle it out alone. I was about to step 
 out of the order of IJis providence and He was re- 
 solved to prevent it unless I should refuse to under- 
 stand why He thus resisted me. Had l continued the 
 conflict I believe He would have let me take my own 
 
5 O PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 course, nor would He have cast me oft', yet I solemnly 
 feel He would have severely chastised my disobedience. 
 While in this state of mind Caughey resorted to fervent 
 and long continued prayer for relief from the weight that op- 
 pressed him and light as to what he should do, determined to 
 obey the divine command. He says: 
 
 During three days I cried to God without any an- 
 swer. On the third day in the afternoon I obtained an 
 audience with the Lord. The place was almost as still 
 as Sinai * * * I left the place without receiving 
 any light, but my heart was fully softened and subdued 
 and I felt sure I had prevailed in some way with God. 
 I was confident light and direction were coming. 
 
 On the same evening (July 9, 1839) a light reached him and 
 he gives the following as a feeble attempt to reproduce the 
 form in which the divine will was communicated to him: 
 
 These matters that trouble thee must be let en- 
 tirely alone. The will of God is that thou shouldst 
 visit Europe. He shall be with thee there and 
 give thee many seals to thy ministry- He has 
 provided thee with funds. Make thy arrangements 
 accordingly; and next conference ask liberally from 
 the proper authorities and it shall be granted thee. 
 The message also contained some directions how to pro- 
 ceed, and Caughey says it came in a way that left no room for 
 doubt. Throughout the page he tells of the heavenly feelings 
 it left with him, of joy, of rest, of peace, and he exclaims: 
 
COMMUNED WITH GOD. 
 
 6l 
 
 Oh the sweetness of that communication I then en- 
 joyed with God. 
 
 The next day he unpacked his books, set his study in order 
 and proceeded to fulfill his pastoral mission and prepare for 
 his coming voyage. The meaning of the expression: "He has 
 provided thee with funds," is explained by saying .he had a 
 few hundred dollars, the propriety of accumulating which he 
 had long doubted, but this revelation had cleared his conscience 
 and "the meaning of many past providences was now ex- 
 plained." 
 
 In pursuance of the Divine will Caughey obtained leave 
 from the conference; went through Canada as commanded and 
 converted about four hundred persons. Comparatively little 
 is said in the sketch of his work in England, but he created a 
 profound sensation in Dublin, whither he went unannounced. 
 In the seven years of his stay in Ireland and England 22,000 
 persons professed conversion under his labors. 
 
 The body of the work consists of extracts from Caughey's 
 journal. In it can be found many incidents of a miraculous 
 character, but to reproduce them, even in the most abbreviated 
 form, would occupy space unprofitably. They would simply 
 become cumulative evidence of Methodist belief in miracles, 
 which is abundantly proved without them. 
 
Evidence of 
 Baptists. 
 
BAPTIST TESTIMONY. 
 
 FATHERS OP THAT DENOMINATION RELATE THE 
 WORKING OF MIRACLES. 
 
 The history of the Baptist Church shows that its organiza- 
 tion in Holland was miraculous. J. M. Cramp, D. D., in "Bap- 
 tist History/' a work published in London in 1871, quotes from 
 Menno Simon's "Narrative of His Secession From Popery" 
 how he was called upon, about 1535, by several Anabaptists 
 who besought him to become their pastor. He did not deem 
 himself qualified because, though he had been several years a 
 Catholic priest, he was not sufficiently familiar with the Scrip- 
 tures. His callers were urgent, however, and he says: 
 
 At length, after much prayer, I resigned myself to 
 the Lord and His people with this condition: They 
 were to unite with me in praying to Him fervently, 
 that, should it be His holy pleasure to employ me in 
 His service to His praise, His fatherly kindness would 
 then give me such a heart and mind as would testify 
 to me with Paul. "Woe is me if I preach not the Gos- 
 pel," but should His will be otherwise, that He would 
 order such means as to permit the matter to rest where 
 it was. 
 
 In support of this course he quotes Matt. xviii:19,20. It 
 is left to be inferred that the Lord gave Menno the sign he 
 sought, for he became the great leader, and Mossheim says he 
 
BAPTIST TESTIMONY. <- 
 
 became "almost the common father and bishop of all the 
 Anabaptists." 
 
 Menno has given a name to one sect of Baptists who are 
 widely scattered over Europe and have large settlements in the 
 northwestern States of America. They are known as Mennon- 
 ites. and those who have settled in the United States are 
 largely emigrants who fled from Russia on the withdrawal of 
 the exemption from military service. They are essentially 
 Germans, their forefathers having left the fatherland on ac- 
 count of oppression and induced by the Czar's promise of per- 
 petual exemption from military duty. 
 
 A TRAITOR STRICKEN DUMB. 
 
 Menno's success in Holland attracted the attention of the 
 authorities, who persecuted the Baptists and offered a reward 
 for the apprehension of Menno. A traitor agreed, for a reward, 
 to cause the arrest of the apostle at a meeting, but he escaped. 
 Soon afterward Menno, in a boat, passed the traitor and the 
 officers who sought him, on the canal, but the traitor was un- 
 able to speak and betray him. When Menno had escaped to 
 the bank the traitor's tongue was loosened and he cried out 
 that the bird had flown. The officers were so incensed that 
 they, disregarding his plea that his tongue had been bound, 
 caused him to be severely punished. 
 
 A MINISTER HEALED. 
 
 In 1638 Hanserd Knollys, an ordained minister who had 
 abandoned the Church of England after preaching several 
 years, emigrated to New England. He was not allowed to re- 
 main in Boston because he was suspected not to be an orthodox 
 
56 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Puritan and he returned to London late in 1640 and sustained 
 himself by teaching while preaching to the Baptists gratuitous- 
 ly. While in America he sojourned at Dover aad it is presum- 
 ably at that place that he was healed of a grave ailment by 
 prayer. Knollys' account of his illness and recovery is this: 
 
 Two learned, well-practiced and judicious doctors 
 of physic had daily visited me and consulted several 
 days together, and I was fully persuaded that they did 
 what they possibly could to effect a cure and knew also 
 that God did not succeed their honest and faithful en- 
 deavors with His blessing. Although God had given a 
 signal and singular testimony of His special blessing by 
 each of them unto other of their patients, at least six- 
 teen, at the same time, I resolved to take no more 
 physic, but would apply to that holy ordinance of God, 
 appointed by Jesus Christ, the great physician of value, 
 in James v: 14,15: "Is any sick among you let them 
 call the elders of the church and let them pray over 
 him, annointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; 
 and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the 
 Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins 
 they shall be forgiven him," and I sent for Mr. Kiffin 
 and Mr. Vavasor Powell, who prayed over me and an- 
 nointed me with oil in the name of the Lord. The Lord 
 did hear prayer and heal me; for there were many 
 Godly ministers and gracious saints that prayed 
 day and night for me (with submission to the will of 
 God) that the Lord would spare my life and make me 
 
BAPTIST TESTIMONY. g 
 
 more serviceable to His church and to His saints, whose 
 prayers God heard; and as an answer to their prayers 
 I was perfectly- healed but remained weak long after. 
 The cautious historian in quoting this account of the an- 
 cient belief in the power of prayer in healing illness/ says: "We 
 copy it without comment," but the miraculous escape of Menno 
 through the informer being deprived of the power of speech, 
 and the Divine evidence of his fitness to become a pastor, was 
 given without the saving clau&e. 
 
 In reviewing his own history some years before his death, 
 Mr. Knollys, who had acquired considerable property after his 
 return to England, wrote: 
 
 Thus my Heavenly Father made up my former 
 losses with His future blessings, even in outward sub- 
 stance, besides a good increase of grace and experi- 
 ence, in the space of the forty years that I and my 
 dear faithful wife lived together. 
 
 Mr. Knollys died in his ninety-third year and so much was 
 he venerated by Baptists that in 1845 the "Hanserd Knollys 
 Society" was formed for the republication of the works of 
 early Baptist authors. He was among the first three minis- 
 ters of his denomination in England who were "honored while 
 living and whose memory is blessed." 
 
 HE HEALS ANOTHER PREACHER. 
 Knollys' faith in the power of prayer to heal was not con- 
 fined in its operative effect to himself. The history from which 
 I quote says, on page 389, that Benjamin 1 Keach, another of the 
 three immortals mentioned above, who was of a weak consti- 
 
68 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 tution, was so ill in 1689 that his life was despaired of. 
 
 His physicians had exhausted their skill and his 
 relatives took leave of him, expecting his departure to 
 be near at hand, when, as Crosby relates, "The Rev- 
 erend Mr. Hanserd Knollys, seeing his friend and 
 brother near to all appearances expiring, betook him- 
 self to prayer, and, in an earnest and very extraordin- 
 ary manner, begged that God would spare him and add 
 unto his days the time granted unto His servant Heze- 
 kiah. ' As soon as he had ended his prayer he said: 
 "Brother Keach, I shall be in Heaven before you" and 
 quickly left him. So remarkable was tho answer of God 
 to this good man's prayer, that I cannot omit it; though 
 it may be discredited by some, there are yet living in- 
 contestable evidences of the fact; for Mr. Keach re- 
 covered of that illness and lived just fifteen years after- 
 wards; and then it pleased God to visit him with that 
 short sickness which put an end to his life." He died 
 July 18, 1704, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. 
 William Kiffin, the third of the trio, wrote his own memoirs 
 from which Cramp copies copiously. He does not recount any 
 remarkable miracles, but all through the extract copied by 
 Cramp there are acknowledgments that God guided and pro- 
 tected him in the exercise of his religious duties as a minister, 
 teacher and exemplar of the faith. 
 
 A REVIVALIST'S MIRACLES. 
 
 When I began this work I had little idea that I should find 
 so much material from non-Catholic authorities. Before hav- 
 
BAPTIST TESTIMONY. g 
 
 ing made any researches I had almost accepted the dicta of my 
 Protestant friends and those authorities whose works I had 
 casually examined, that Protestants agreed that the age of 
 miracles had passed and that God did not now interpose in 
 human affairs because it was not necessary where His word 
 was before mankind to read, learn and believe. I had heard 
 revivalists tell of wonderful things that had happened to them 
 but didn't recall them. One of these stories will serve as a 
 fair sample. A Baptist preacher who was widely known in the 
 "early fifties" as Sailor Edwards said in one of his discourses 
 in Detroit, Mich., that God had commanded him to go forth 
 and rouse a dying people to their danger of everlasting pun- 
 ishment. His wife, of less faith than he, told him he would do 
 better to earn something to eat and something to cook it with. 
 He hearkened to God, rather than to his wife, and though his 
 larder or what stood in its stead was empty, he obeyed the 
 command. He learned on his return from his revival tour 
 that he had not been gone an hour when a wagon was driven 
 to his home with ample provisions and was soon followed by 
 a load of stove-wood. He declared that the Lord sent the pro- 
 visions and fuel and that he had never discovered the human 
 agency employed by the giver of all good. If this miracle was 
 ever disputed I never heard of it. Edwards' home, if my mem- 
 ory serves mo correctly, was then at or near Laporte, Indiana, 
 which was, at the time when Edwards flourished, but little 
 less easy to reach than now, and if he did not speak the truth 
 he could easily have been refuted had any cared to make in- 
 vestigation, but I never heard of any being made. In the arti- 
 
70 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 cle on Bishop Fowler of the M. E. Church, elsewhere in this 
 volume, will be found another miracle that saved Edwards' 
 home and family from destruction. 
 
 Any person who reads the life or sermons of Spurgeon, 
 the eminent Baptist preacher of London, must conclude that 
 he believed in miracles. His 'story of the building of the taber- 
 nacle and of the Stockwell orphanage plainly indicate the be- 
 lief in Divine interposition in aid of both those great and 
 laudable enterprises. 
 
 ROGER WILLIAMS' TESTIMONY. 
 
 Roger Williams, who settled Rhode Island, after being 
 expelled from Massachusetts by the Puritans, bears testimony 
 to the reality of miracles. On that terrible winter night when 
 he was warned to leave the Puritan colony and was refused 
 even the privilege of awaiting the abatement of the storm, a 
 mysterious messenger called on him; gave him minute direc- 
 tions how and whence to proceed. The pious pioneer Baptist 
 followed the directions thus mysteriously given with unfalter- 
 ing faith that God had sent the unknown, unrecognized 
 stranger. Even when the howling of wolves in the wilder- 
 ness was such as would have terrified one less steadfast, the 
 .outcast Baptist remembered that he was under the protection 
 v of God who saved Daniel from the lions and he quailed not. 
 
 The history of Roger Williams, his rebukes of what he 
 deemed Puritan sins, his expulsion from Massachusetts and his 
 founding the Baptist colony in Rhode Island, are too well 
 known to need citations of authorities here. 
 
SPURGEON ON PRAYER. 
 
 THE EMINENT PREACHER GIVES REASONS FOR BE- 
 LIEVING IT IS ANSWERED. 
 
 Spurgeon. the phenomenal preacher of London, was a firm 
 believer in the power of prayer and that God answered prayers. 
 In one of his "Sermon Notes" (Vol. II, page 162) he says the 
 Lord will answer prayer because: 
 
 1. He has appointed prayer and made arrange- 
 ments for its presentation and acceptance. He could 
 not have meant it to be a mere farce: that were to 
 treat us as fools. 
 
 2. He prompts, encourages and quickens prayer; 
 and surely He would never mock us by exciting de- 
 sires which He never meant to gratify. Such a thought 
 well nigh blasphemes the Holy Ghost who indites 
 prayer in the heart. 
 
 Spurgeon gives three other reasons that are scarcely less 
 forcible, the third of which is: "He has already answered 
 many of his people and ourselves also." In fortifying his posi- 
 tion he comments on an illustration: "If true prayer is not 
 answered the nature of God must have changed." In support 
 of his position he quotes from Trapp, Thomas Brooks and 
 Harrington Evans. 
 
 One cannot read Spurgeon's four volumes of "Sermon 
 
*72 PEOTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Notes" without being convinced that the author believed that 
 God intervened in human affairs as much as He ever did in an- 
 swer to prayer and to promote the cause of piety and justice, 
 but the word "miracles" is avoided while miraculous interven- 
 tion is taught. 
 
College Professors' 
 Teachings. 
 
UNION SEMINARY. 
 
 SOME VIEWS FROM THE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF THE 
 PRESBYTERIANS. 
 
 The Religious Encyclopaedia, edited by Philip Schaff, D. 
 D. LL.D., professor in Union Theological Seminary in New 
 York, with Rev. Samuel M. Jackson and Rev. D. S. Schaff as as- 
 sociate editors, ought to be accepted as good orthodox authori- 
 ty. It devotes a large amount of space to miracles. In one arti- 
 cle by F. Godet occur these passages: 
 
 There is an objection often made to the miracles of 
 Bible history, that none are wrought now. * * * 
 
 The alleged decrease in the series of miracles is ab- 
 solutely false. 
 
 These passages are widely separated, but they apply to the 
 same subject or they have ncr application. 
 
 Julius Kostlin follows Godet in an article on the historical 
 view of miracles, in which he says Luther regarded them as 
 angelic ministrations and set no limits on the agency, yet be- 
 lieved that since Christ came they were not necessary, but he 
 makes no mention of Luther's belief in the supernatural to the 
 extent of causing him to dash a bottle of ink at the devil, who, 
 he said, appeared in his study. The ink mark on the wall was 
 long an object of half- worship by tourists in Germany, who 
 deemed a tour of Europe incomplete if they did not see the 
 
UNION SEMINARY. _- 
 
 eplash. After describing the views of several theologians and 
 philosophers on the subject, Kostlin says: 
 
 But in truth there are miracles which cannot be 
 explained upon ground of laws inherent in nature. 
 They are only explicable on the supposition of Divine 
 direct action upon nature. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Before the last word can be spoken upon miracles 
 some definite idea must be attached to the phrase 
 "laws of nature." It will require a more comprehen- 
 sive treatment of the subject than the scientists are in- 
 clined to give it, for much more than material nature 
 must be studied. 
 
CURES AND CONVERSIONS. 
 
 DR. BRUCE DEFENDS MODERN MIRACLES IN TWO 
 COLLEGES. 
 
 A. M. Bruce, D. D., and professor of apologetics in the Free 
 Church College of Glasgow, Scotland, published in 1893 a vol- 
 ume entitled, "The Miraculous Element in the Gospels." On 
 page 316 he begins the consideration of modern miracles thus: 
 
 How has it come to pass that the whole Christian 
 people, speaking broadly, has allowed the healing of 
 the body to fall into abeyance in comparison with the 
 saving of the soul? 
 
 He then says some now think that if the church lived up 
 to Christ's teachings cures would be as common now as con- 
 versions. He cites Matt, viii :17; Mark xvi :17 and 18, which 
 some hold to be an unrestricted promise to believers in all 
 ages and says (page 317) that the possibility of supernatural 
 cures in answer to prayer is believed by all who pray, and con- 
 tinues: 
 
 Neither is it a question as to the reality of alleged 
 faith cures, whether of the present or any past time. 
 A Christian man has no interest in obstinately denying 
 their reality. On the contrary, he can only hope that 
 all cases of the kind are as the most enthusiastic ad- 
 
CURES AND CONVERSIONS. ~~ 
 
 vocates of modern miracles could desire, and devotedly 
 wish that their number were greatly multiplied. 
 Dr. Bruce then relates what misery he witnessed during 
 his apprenticeship as a preacher in Scotland when he longed 
 for the healing power of the apostles. Notwithstanding these 
 declarations Dr. Bruce thinks the church should not put 
 healing on a level with the pardon of sin because "it unduly 
 magnifies the benefit of mere physical health." 
 
 Lest the orthodox skeptic concerning what is termed 
 miraculous healing may regard Dr. Bruce as less than full 
 orthodox, it is well to explain, as he, does, that his book is a 
 series of lectures prepared at the invitation of Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary of New York, in 1886. In these lectures one 
 is devoted to ''Miracles in Relation to the Order of Nature." 
 In this he defends miracles and treats as flimsy the opinions of 
 those who regard them as being in conformity with "higher 
 law" or "unknown law," which he treats as substantially the 
 same thing, or perhaps it would be more descriptive to say, 
 "unsubstantially the same nothing." Dr. Bruce quotes from 
 Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma" thus: 
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ENDORSED. 
 Medical science has never gauged, perhaps never 
 enough set itself to gauge the intimate connection be- 
 tween moral fault and disease. To what extent or in 
 how many cases what is called illness is due to moral 
 springs having been used amiss, whether by being 
 over-used or by not being used sufficiently, we hardly 
 at all enquire and we too little know. Certainly it is 
 
7 g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 due to this very much more than we commonly think, 
 and the more it is due to this the more do moral thera- 
 peutics rise in possibility and importance. 
 Thereupon Dr. Bruce comments: 
 
 On this view it is conceivable that medical science 
 may yet penetrate the secret of Christ's healing minis- 
 try, just as it is possible, and we may hope probable, 
 that the causes and cures of such fatal disease as chol- 
 era and consumption will yet be discovered. When that 
 day comes moral therapeutics will be a recognized 
 branch of medical art and many of the evangelical 
 "miracles" of healing will be miracles no longer, but 
 natural cures. 
 
 After further reasoning to the same effect this learned 
 divine treats of modern instances of apparent miracles and 
 says they are not be taken for granted nor scornfully denied. 
 
 Some of the hypotheses advanced by skeptics and so-called 
 liberal Christians to account for miraculous occurrences by 
 physical laws, or on other grounds than those of what are 
 called supernatural theories, are amusing. One of these, which 
 Dr. Bruce notices, is by Paulus, a theological writer. It goes 
 beyond the absurd and attributes deceit to the Savior. It is 
 that Jesus, desiring to make a present to the bridal couple at 
 Cana, Galilee, gave them wine and made them believe he had 
 changed it from water, taking advantage of the company as 
 "na fu j but just had plenty." Others have attributed to Jesus 
 hypnotic powers of such extent as to make the whole bridal 
 company drink water and believe it to be superior wine. 
 
VIEWS FROM YALE. 
 
 PROFESSORS FISHER AND HARRIS BELIEVE IN MIRA- 
 CLES AS REALITIES. 
 
 George P. Fisher, professor r* Church history in Yale Uni- 
 versity, is the author of a work entitled, "Supernatural Origin 
 of Christianity." pub]isiu>n in 1887. He devotes a chapter ol 
 fourteen pages to Christian miracles and argues the reason- 
 ableness of belief in all except those classed as Catholic. By a 
 course of reasoning, that he fails to see is as forcible against 
 all belief in miracles as against any, seems to satisfy himself 
 that there was no necessity for the Catholic miracles and hence 
 that they were not real. 
 
 Fisher does not seem to have remained fixed in this opin- 
 ion. In his other work, "Grounds of Theistic and Religious 
 Belief," page 291, he evinces a belief in the power of prayer to 
 heal sickness. He says: 
 
 The restoration of the .sick in response to prayer 
 is commorly through no visible or demonstrable in- 
 terference with natural law. Yet no one would be 
 charged with incredulity for holding that, in certain 
 exceptional instances, the supernatural agency discov- 
 ers itself by evidence palpable to the senses. So dis- 
 creet an historian as Neander will not deny that St. 
 
g o PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Bernard may have been the instrument of effecting 
 cures properly miraculous. 
 
 Dr. Fisher quotes Edmund Burke's opinion that in the in- 
 troduction of Christianity into Britain, by Augustine and his 
 associates, that Providence might have directly interfered for 
 an end so worthy. He also quotes thus from F. D. Maurice: 
 
 I should think it very presumptuous to say that it 
 has never been needful, in the modern history of the 
 world, to break the idols of sense and experience by 
 the same method which was sanctioned in the days of 
 old. 
 
 Dr. Fisher makes it plain that he is not credulous on the 
 subject of answers to prayer. On page 292 he says the most 
 that can be said of miracles in post-apostolic ages is that some- 
 times they have occurred in answer to prayer and he italicizes 
 "sometimes." 
 
 PROFESSOR HARRIS A BELIEVER. 
 
 The Philosophic Basis of Theism is a work by Samuel Har- 
 ris, D. D., LL.D., professor of systematic theology in the Yale 
 University, published in 1888. In this the author, pp. 65 to 72, 
 controverts Hume's assertion that a miracle is incredible be- 
 cause contrary to universal experience. Dr. Harris' reasoning 
 is very close, analytical and exhaustive, and his conclusion is 
 that Hume's position is illogical, but the professor does not 
 carry his argument so far as to apply it to any class of mira- 
 cles. For this reason I assume that it applies as well to mod- 
 ern as to ancient mysteries. 
 
VIEWS FROM YALE. Q T 
 
 A VENERABLE YALE MAN. 
 
 The venerable Noah Porter, who was for many years a 
 member of the faculty of Yale University, published a volume 
 entitled, "Fifteen Years in the Chapel of Yale College." In that 
 volume is a sermon in which he advises the graduating class 
 of 1881, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." In the closing 
 words of the sermon he says God "never fails to give success 
 to the man that seeks first whatsoever is true; whatsoever is 
 honorable; whatsoever is lovely; whatsoever is of good report." 
 
 AN AMERICAN WAR MIRACLE. 
 
 The venerable Timothy Dwight, once president of Yale and 
 for many years tutor and professor in that college, in his lec- 
 tures on theology teaches that blessings are often given in an- 
 swer' to prayer. If he knew of no other, he says: 
 
 The blessings communicated to this country would 
 furnish ample satisfaction concerning this subject to 
 every sober, much more, to every pious inhabitant of 
 This country. / mong these the destruction of the 
 French armament under the Duke D'Auville in the year 
 1746, ought to be remembered with gratitude and ad- 
 miration. * * * This fleet consisted of forty ships of 
 war; was destined for the destruction of New England; 
 was of sufficient force to render that destruction, in the 
 ordinary progress of things, certain; sailed from Che- 
 bucto, in Nova Scotia, for this purpose, and was entire- 
 ly destroyed on the night following a general fast 
 throughout New England by a terrible tempest. Im- 
 
82 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 pious men, who regard not the work of the Lord, nor 
 the operation of His hands, and who for that reason 
 are finally destroyed, may refuse to give God the glory 
 of this most merciful interposition. But our ances- 
 tors had, and it is hoped their descendants ever will 
 have, both piety and good sense, sufficient to ascribe to 
 Jehova the greatness and the power, and the victory, 
 and the majesty; and to bless the God of Israel forever 
 and ever. 
 
 The Scriptures put this subject out of doubt by de- 
 claring directly, that blessings are given to mankind 
 in answer to prayer. 
 
 President DwigLt then proceeds to explain that prayer does 
 not change the intentions of the deity or that prayer deserves 
 to be granted, but that "without prayer the blessings would 
 never be obtained." 
 
 This ascribes to God all power, but many of those who 
 profess the same religion as President Dwight, while admit- 
 ting that his teachings are correct, would deny that God could 
 or would relieve suffering humanity of so much as a toothache, 
 however sincerely the sufferer might pray. 
 
DISCREDITS HIMSELF. 
 
 WHITE, THE PHILOSOPHER, EDUCATOR AND DIPLOMAT, 
 PERPETUATES ABSURDITIES. 
 
 Andrew D. White, former president of Cornell University, 
 present ambassador near the imperial German Court, in the 
 Popular Science Monthly of May, 1891, discredits miracles in 
 an article that is largely devoted to Xavier, who is more gen- 
 erally known as St. Francis Xavier. White says, after illustra- 
 ting how miracle stories grow, that testimony which would now 
 be laughed at by a school-boy, "was until a comparatively re- 
 cent period, accepted by the leaders of thought." After exerting 
 his powers of logic to destroy all belief in miracles the eminent 
 educator, philosopher and diplomat thus betrays that he does 
 not fully concur in his own opinion: 
 
 It should be especially kept in mind that, while the 
 vast majority of these (miracle stories) were doubt- 
 less due to the myth-making faculty and to that devel- 
 opment of legends which always goes on in ages igno- 
 rant of the relation, physical cause and effect, some of 
 the miracles of healing may have had some basis of 
 fact 
 
 The learned gentleman seems not to perceive that this ad- 
 mission estops him from further arguing against the reality of 
 ' what are called miracles, and he continues his effort to put 
 
g, PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 limits on the omnipotent or even on the operation of laws 
 of which even he is ignorant, and at the same time to admit the 
 reality of some miracles, in these words: 
 
 We of modern times have seen too many cures per- 
 formed through influences exercised on the imagina- 
 tion, such as those of the Jansenites at the cemetery of 
 Medard; of the Ultramontanes at Le Sallet and Lourdes 
 and of various Protestant sects at Old Orchard and 
 elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp-meetings, to 
 doubt that some cures, more or less permanent, were 
 wrought by sainted personages in the early cnurch 
 and throughout the middle ages. 
 
 One is prompted to ask where the learned gentleman would 
 draw the line of the limit upon the power of the Almighty to 
 operate laws of His own making, the effect and even the ex- 
 istence of which President White has not been able to trace. 
 If such cures could be effected by saintly or sainted personages 
 in the early church, the power must be extinct or saintly per- 
 sonages must be able to exercise it now. If the power ever 
 existed it was a Divine power and must exist still, or if the 
 learned philosopher imagines it to be extinct it would follow 
 that God must have lost some of His power. Is this what these 
 learned men mean when they attempt to draw the line or 
 trocha, chronologically or geographically, beyond which mira- 
 cles shall not pass? 
 
 The purpose of Dr. White's paper is to discredit all who 
 pretend to heal disease by any other agency than that of drugs 
 
DISCREDITS HIMSELF. gr 
 
 or the surgeon's instruments. He quotes freely from Saints 
 Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine to the effect that "the precepts 
 of medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching and 
 prayer" and says this doctrine was reiterated from time to time 
 throughout the middle ages. 
 
 This shows pretty well for Christian Science as a return to 
 the faith and practice of the Christians of the 
 days when Christianity was practiced for its in- 
 trinsic virtue. truth and its benefit to humanity. 
 That Dr. White's object is to protect medical practice is further 
 evinced by an article in the succeeding number of the same 
 magazine on the absurd idea that the touch of royal personages 
 cured scrofula and epilepsy. As if to emphasize his contempt 
 for his own opinion that his other opinion was subject to 
 doubt and exception, he says: 
 
 There are no miracles of healing in the history of 
 the human race more thoroughly attested than those 
 wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the 
 Stuarts and especially that chosen vessel, Charles II. 
 These were not all despised Catholic miracles with which 
 White contradicts himself, but he cites others performed in 
 France which were by Catholic monarchs. He also cites other 
 English Protestant cases and then repeats his doubts of him- 
 self by quoting from Collier's Ecclesiastical History, that to 
 despise these cases "is to come to the extreme of skepticism, to 
 deny our senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." 
 
 Notwithstanding the absurd appearance this gives to Prof. 
 White's papers, they are grave in tone and his contradictory 
 
85 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 positions are sufficiently wide-separated for the inconsisten- 
 cies to escape the notice of a reader who is not critical. 
 
 In a note to his chapter on "Miracles and Medicine," when 
 republished in book form, in 1896, President White relates that 
 on his arrival in St. Petersburg in 1893, to take up his official 
 residence as minister, he heard much of the stories of Father 
 Ivan's miracles. He relates two of these only to follow them 
 by a complete and satisfactory refutation, but also quotes the 
 witness by whom he refutes the two stories as saying that Ivan 
 had done wonders in healing the sick and relieving distress. 
 Upon this White says it was made evident that Ivan is a 
 saintlike man. 
 
 Professor John Fiske of Harvard in his book, the "Unseen 
 World," in discussing the errors of scientists in dealing with 
 mystic subjects, says, page 129: "Most scientific and philo- 
 sophical works have their defects." This remark of the 
 learned educator would apply with peculiar force to that other 
 eminent educator and diplomat, Andrew D. White. 
 
A GERMAN PROFESSOR. 
 
 DR. CHRISTLIEB OF BONN UNIVERSITY ON MODERN 
 
 MIRACLES. 
 
 Among those orthodox theologians who dissent from the 
 prevailing opinion or the opinion that is most frequently 
 found recorded in books, is Dr. Theodore Christlieb, professor 
 of theology and university preacher at Bonn, Germany, who 
 was for some years pastor of an orthodox German congrega- 
 tion in London. He delivered a series of lectures, some of 
 them in London on the subject of miracles and these were pub- 
 lished in book form in 1874 under the title: "Modern Doubt 
 and Christian Belief." The first four lectures are devoted to 
 the miraculous origin of Christianity and the fifth to "Modern 
 Negation of Miracles." He devotes a short space to describ- 
 ing that negation and says those united thereon are so: 
 
 Because with the truth of miracles the entire cita- 
 del of Christianity stands or falls. For its beginning 
 is a miracle; its Author is a miracle; its progress de- 
 pends upon miracles and they will hereafter be its 
 consummation. 
 
 A little further along, he says: "The negation of miracles 
 leads to the annihilation, not merely of the Christian faith, but 
 of all religion. Upon these postulates the learned theologian 
 bases a long argument that is not within the purview of this 
 work, but he quotes Beyschlag, a contemporary, to the effect 
 
83 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 that one who denies miracles beseeches God in vain for the re- 
 covery of a loved child whom He would have healed of illness, 
 and more to the same effect. Dr. Christlieb gives several 
 definitions of miracles, one of which is: Supernatural phe- 
 nomena, between which and miracles for affirmation of faith, 
 many other orthodox authorities try to draw sharp distinc- 
 tions. 
 
 In tracing the negation of miracles he says their possibili- 
 ty has been doubted for the past 200 years. This seems to 
 imply that belief in them was the rule before in earlier times. 
 He then reviews the positions of the English and German 
 schools of denial, the fears of some churchmen that they foster 
 superstition and asks his hearers to compare Gospel miracles 
 with those of the "Romish and Oriental" churches. On pages 
 305-7 appear these very positive declarations: 
 
 And do not a multitude of analogies go to show 
 that God can interfere supernaturally at any time in 
 all natural existence? 
 
 The man who endeavors to make the laws of nat- 
 ure a ground of proof against miracles, simply begs the 
 question, for he always presupposes what he desires to 
 prove. 
 
 Regarding apostolic miracles later than the second century 
 Christlieb cites Tertullian, Origen and Theodore of Mopsueste 
 as witnesses of their performance as late as the year 429. 
 Theodore is thus quoted: 
 
 Many heathen among us have been healed * * * 
 so abundant are miracles in our midst. 
 
A GERMAN PROFESSOR. 
 
 8 9 
 
 After relating the miracles wrought by Hans Egede in 
 Greenland and others mentioned in that connection elsewhere 
 in this work, Christlieb adds the escape of the missionary ship 
 Harmony off the coast of Labrador. An iceberg bore down 
 upon the vessel which was unable to avoid it but when within 
 one foot of the ship and when it seemed inevitable that it 
 must be crushed by the mountain of ice and all on board lost, 
 tjie iceberg suddenly stopped and then drifted away. He also 
 refers to Luther healing Melancthon and gives an account of 
 the restoration of a girl who had been paralyzed twenty years 
 in South Germany, but is not specific enough to make the case 
 valuable except to say that the healing was publicly certified 
 as a miracle. Toward the close of the chapter occur these 
 significant passages: 
 
 Most of us are aware that wonderful things are 
 
 related of the healing of the sick in the present day. 
 
 Yet these are but weak analogies of that divine power 
 
 of healing in the New Testament history. 
 
 In a note on page 335 Spurgeon, the great preacher, is 
 quoted as calling certain German preachers "modern workers 
 of miracles." To his own question regarding miracles: "Do 
 they still occur,' " Dr. Christlieb devotes nine pages of his work. 
 The answer is affirmative and he closes the chapter with the 
 words: "With God nothing shall be impossible." 
 
MARVELOUS VISIONS. 
 
 A HARVARD PROFESSOR RELATES MANY ASTONISHING 
 CASES OF SUPERNATURAL SIGHT. 
 
 Dr. Edward Hammond Clarke, a physician of Boston, who, 
 according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet physician, was 
 at the head of his profession for many years, was the author 
 of a work of 315 pages devoted to visions. The introduction 
 was written by Dr. Holmes, who endorses three of the marvel- 
 ous cases as those of which he had some personal knowledge. 
 The "essay," as Holmes calls it, was written while Dr. Clarke 
 believed -himself to be slowly dying of an internal consuming 
 disease, for which his profession afforded no remedy. His 
 death in 1877 confirmed the belief, and his book was published 
 the following year. 
 
 Dr. Holmes says Clarke originally intended to follow his 
 father's profession the ministry and it is evident from what 
 is said of him and his parents that Dr. Clarke was "orthodox" 
 as that term is understood in New England. The miraculous 
 character of some of the instances related in the work may 
 therefore be construed as orthodox endorsement of an active 
 belief in the miraculous of the present. In the initiatory 
 chapter of his work, Dr. Clarke treats of the many and various 
 phases and varieties of visions and of the persons who relate 
 them from those whom the Christian world recognizes as 
 
MARVELOUS VISIONS. gj 
 
 prophets, down to the delirium tremens patients. After mor- 
 alizing on the incredulity of people generally and the indiffer- 
 ence of many to the marvelous, he says: 
 
 The persistence with which the truthfulness of the 
 visions has been affirmed, at all times, everywhere, and 
 by such a variety of individuals, is of itself a significant 
 fact, and one that deserves consideration. It implies 
 that below the nonsense, charlatanism, fanaticism, ig- 
 norance and mystery, upon which visions are largely 
 built up, there is somewhere a substratum of truth, if 
 we could only get at it. Such a growth could never 
 have appeared, nor would it continue to appear, if its 
 roots did not draw their nutriment from something 
 more invigorating than fancy or deception. It must 
 be admitted, moreover, that the question of the possible 
 occurrence of visions is one of .great interest and im- 
 portance. Its interest lies in its intimate connection 
 with the attractive and a shadowy territory the terra 
 incognita and debatable ground which stretches be- 
 tween the body and mind, and which connects this 
 world with the next. Its importance lies in the fact 
 that its solution, if a solution is possible, would not 
 only throw light upon some of the intricate and vexed 
 problems of psychology, but would aid materially in 
 dissipating many popular superstitions and widely 
 spread delusions. 
 
 To show how high Dr. Clarke stood as authority in medical 
 science, it is only necessary to cite from an obituary article in 
 
02 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 the Boston Daily Advertiser, reproduced in Dr. Holmes' intro- 
 duction. That article says he graduated at Harvard in 1841, 
 got his medical degree in Philadelphia in 1846; was in 1855 
 chosen professor of materia medica in Harvard University, and 
 resigned in 1872. 
 
 Dr. Clarke relates a number of instances in which highly 
 credible persons had visions. Some of these were his own 
 patients and the others were vouched for to him by his profes- 
 sional brethren in whom he could confide. Reviewing the sub- 
 ject of vision after relating seven cases, the author treats of 
 the machinery of normal seeing and hearing, and says: 
 
 If the modicum of truth hidden by the ignorance, 
 superstition and charlatanism which surround such 
 occurrences, could be disinterred from its environment, 
 a real service would be rendered to humanity. For 
 where truth and error are united, if the truth can be 
 discovered, error can be safely left to itself. Nothing 
 dies so quickly as error and falsehood, when there 
 is no truth to animate them. 
 
 He then says it is a common but erroneous notion that we 
 see with our eyes and hear with our ears and he proceeds to 
 show that the seat of sensation is the brain. To this he de- 
 votes several pages, in the course of which he employs the ex- 
 periments of Dr. David Ferrier to show that a frog or a pigeon 
 deprived of its brain retains sensation, but has no power of 
 spontaneous action. From these experiments Dr. Clarke con- 
 cludes that the brain is only one seat of sensation and that 
 there is spinal as well as cerebral consciousness. Notwith- 
 
MARVELOUS VISIONS. Q ~ 
 
 standing the frog and the pigeon, are shown to retain their 
 sight and hearing after the removal of the brain hemispheres, 
 Dr. Clarke fails to show that the brain is not the seat of sen- 
 sation by which the senses of seeing and hearing are enjoyed. 
 
 Dr, Clarke's work is replete with interesting matter, but 
 only a small amount will be cited here in addition to what has 
 been taken. He mentions the case of a young woman who 
 had lost her voice in consequence of a severe attack of bron- 
 chitis. He does not say what medical relief was sought, but 
 she asked and obtained the consent of Dr. Ware of Boston to 
 seek aid from "a notorious charlatan, who cured disease in the 
 old ecclesiastical way, by laying of hands on the affected re- 
 gion." This charlatan restored her voice and she was "net- 
 tled" because Dr. Ware seemed pleased but not surprised at her 
 recovery. After a year she had another attack and "again 
 put herself under the care of Dr. Ware," from which it appears 
 plain that the doctor failed to cure her before she resorted to 
 the charlatan. Again he failed and again she resorted to the 
 charlatan who failed also. Here it is well to explain that 
 after she was restored the previous year, Dr. Ware gave her his 
 theory of the charlatanry by which she recovered her voice. 
 In consequence, Dr. Ware told her, she had lost faith in the 
 charlatan. Dr. Ware t*hen adopted charlatanry himself; told 
 her to sit down, concentrate all her power of will in an effort 
 to speak and her voice would return. She did as directed and 
 the experiment was so successful that she retained her voice 
 up to the time Dr. Ware told the author of the case. 
 
 Dr. Clark on page 277 describes a death-bed scene in which 
 
g, PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 the patient, a woman of refinement and education, appeared to 
 have a vision and as she expired he says he experienced a sen- 
 sation that made him perceive that something had departed 
 from her. He does not say he saw anything but Dr. Holmes 
 in his introduction intimates that Dr. Clarke used much more 
 distinct language when relating to him what he experienced. 
 From what both say the inference seems unavoidable that Dr. 
 Clarke had a vision in which he saw the flight of that which is 
 variously termed the soul, spirit, ego or identity, that animates 
 mankind. 
 
 As to Dr. Clarke's opinion of visions as realities, the opin- 
 ion quoted by Dr. Holmes in his introduction is the best index. 
 That opinion is thus expressed: 
 
 Probably all such visions as these are automatic. 
 But yet who, believing in God and personal immortal- 
 ity, as the writer rejoices in doing, will dare to say 
 absolutely all; will dare to assert there is no possi- 
 ble exception. 
 
PROFESSOR FINNEY. 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVALIST'S AND EDUCATOR'S CALL AND 
 CAREER MIRACULOUS. 
 
 Charles Grandison Finney was one of the most noted, as he 
 was the most scholarly of revivalists of the early and middle 
 part of the nineteenth century. In early life he was religious- 
 ly inclined and was a prodigy of learning, for which reason his 
 preceptor, when he was about twenty years old, advised him 
 not to go to college, as he could master the Yale course in two 
 years by pursuing his studies in private. Finney adopted the 
 advice and took to teaching. At the age of 24 he began the 
 study of law, was speedily admitted to practice in Adams, 
 Henderson county, New York, and continued in that profes- 
 sion four years. During all this time he was not a Christian 
 in the accepted orthodox sense, though he appears to have been 
 too regular in his attendance at church for the peace of the 
 pastor and of the church-goers whom he worried by his 
 criticisms until that good man declared his presence and lead- 
 ership of the choir was dangerous to religion. ^ ^ 
 
 Until he was 29 years old he had never owned a Bible, but 
 when studying law met so many references to it that he 
 bought one and studied it diligently. During Finney's child- 
 hood and youth that part of Northwestern New York in which 
 he was reared was the "far West." Churches and schools 
 
g5 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 were few and poor; preachers were generally ignorant in addi- 
 tion to their rarity and poverty and Finney heard but little 
 preaching that was endurable to him until he went to Connec- 
 ticut in his twentieth year to pursue an academic course under 
 a Yale graduate. With his mental acuteness and critical dis- 
 position he found little satisfaction from the average sermon 
 even in Connecticut and when he went to New Jersey and the 
 South to teach, he heard no more preaching until he settled 
 near his parents' home in Adams, N. Y. 
 
 His biographer, G. Frederick Wright, D. D., LL. D., a pro- 
 fessor in Oberlin seminary, of which institution Prof. Finney 
 was for many years president, who tells the story of his con- 
 version, compares it to that of Saul of Tarsus. He says: "In 
 Finney's own opinion this version of Gospel truth was in a 
 large degree the result of the direct operation of the Holy Spir- 
 it upon his mind." And he continues: 
 
 The main facts of the Gospel, though in unattract- 
 ive form, had, without doubt, been brought within his 
 survey by the faithful pastors in Warren and in Adams, 
 and perhaps even by those unlettered itinerants to 
 whom he had listened in earlier days; while his own 
 resistence to the manifold claims of duty had wrought 
 up to the highest degree within him that sense of the 
 need of divine grace which is the starting point of all 
 true religious faith. Upon these elements of truth the 
 illuminating spirit now descended as in a lightning 
 stroke, and helped him to see the broad and reasonable 
 basis upon which the Christian rests his hope of life 
 and immortality. 
 
PROFESSOR FINNEY. 
 
 In the busy street and in the light of day, there 
 came to him a vision of Christ, transfixing him to the 
 spot where he stood and arresting his whole train of 
 worldly thought. For a considerable time he stood 
 motionless where the vision met him, until at last he 
 yielded to the summons and resolved that he would 
 accept Christ that day or die in the attempt. 
 In pursuance of this resolution, Finney retired to a deep 
 wood and passed many hours in great perturbation of mind, 
 which closed with a deep and earnest prayer for grace and 
 more light. In the evening while alone in his office he again 
 resorted to prayer and, as his biographer says, "he seemed to 
 have a vision of the Lord and that Christ met him face to face." 
 This vision his biographer calls an illusion in which he seemed 
 to see Christ as a man. On being aroused he sat down by his 
 fire and "received what he describes as 'a mighty baptism of 
 the Holy Ghost.' This was an'experience he was not looking 
 for and of which he did not remember to have heard before." It 
 is thus described: 
 
 It seemed to him as if there was a positive force 
 like electricity entering and penetrating his whole sys- 
 tem. He wept aloud with joy and love and, to use his 
 own words, 'literally bellowed out the unutterable 
 gushings of his heart.' 
 
 What followed his conversion was almost as miraculous 
 as that event itself. In the morning Finney received a second 
 "baptism of the Holy Ghost" and he resolved to at once respond 
 to what he regarded as the Lord's call upon him to preach. 
 
9 8 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 When a deacon of the church reminded him that he was to 
 appear for him in a suit to be tried that morning, he told the 
 litigant that he had been retained by the Lord Jesus and could 
 not try the case. The deacon thereupon settled his suit and 
 betook himself to prayer. The noise of Pinney's conversion, 
 circulated largely by himself, caused an impromptu meeting 
 that evening and Finney made an open profession of religion, 
 whereupon the minister, Mr. Gale, confessed that he had ex- 
 pressed a doubt of God's power to convert such a sinner as 
 Finney had been. Thenceforth Finney devoted himself large- 
 ly to revival work and many who are still living as the nine- 
 teenth century is closing will remember to have heard him in 
 what is now the central West. His career as a revivalist, es- 
 pecially his earliest years, were full of events that partook of 
 the miraculous. Among these occurrences were several visit- 
 ations like that which brought about his conversion. During 
 the third year of his work as a nevivalist and the first year after 
 his ordination, those physical manifestations known among 
 the vulgar as "the jerks" made their appearance among his 
 audiences and put an end to a violent controversy between 
 Presbyterians, who had been exempt thitherto, and the Bap- 
 tists, who had experienced them before Finney's arrival. 
 
 The work from which this sketch has been derived was 
 published in 1891 and it quotes from Dr. Aiken's Historical 
 Sketch of Presbyterianism, thus: "After forty years, I am 
 persuaded that it (Finney's revival work) was the work of 
 God." 
 
 Finney's belief in miracles was not confined to his early 
 
PROFESSOR F1NNEY. gg 
 
 experiences. It did not cease with his conversion or his ca- 
 reer as a revivalist. When he became a settled pastor in New 
 York city, he says he found that he knew "comparatively little 
 about Christ and that a multitude of things were said about 
 Him in the Gospel of which I had no spiritual view, and of 
 which I knew little or nothing." How he learned more may 
 best be told in his own words, viz.: 
 
 What I did know of Christ was almost exclusively 
 as an atoning and justifying Savior. But as a Jesus 
 to save men from sin, or as a sanctifying Savior, I 
 knew very little about him. This was made, by the 
 spirit of God, very clear to my mind. And it deeply 
 convinced me that I must know more of the Gospel in 
 my own experience, and have more of Christ in my 
 heart, or I never could expect to benefit the church. In 
 that state of mind, I used often to tell the Lord Jesus 
 Christ that I was sensible I knew very little about 
 Him, and I besought Him to reveal Himself to me, that 
 I might be instrumental in revealing Him to others. 
 I used especially to pray over particular passages and 
 classes of passages in the Gospel, that sp^ak of Christ, 
 that I might apprehend their meaning and feel their 
 power in my own heart. And I was often strongly 
 convinced that I desired this for the purpose of making 
 Christ known to others. 
 
 I will not enter into details with regard to the 
 way Christ led me. Suffice it to say, and alone to the 
 honor of His grace do I say it, that He has taught me 
 
IOO PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 some things that I asked him to show me. Since 
 my own mind became impressed in the manner in 
 which I have spoken, I have felt as strongly and un- 
 equivocally pressed by the spirit of God to labor for 
 the sanctification of the church as I once did for the 
 conversion of sinners. 
 
 It will be apparent from this that Prof. Pinney believed 
 in the inspiration of modern evangelists. This belief must 
 have been greatly strengthened by letters and from other 
 sources that God rewarded his later labors by "awakening a 
 spirit of inquiry on the subject of holiness throughout the 
 church, both in this country and in Europe." 
 
 His views were opposed by the leading New School Gal- 
 vinists, who took measures to avoid responsibility for him and 
 to preach against the new doctrine which he promulgated as a 
 result of this inspiration, which he called "sanctification." 
 
 As Finney never retracted but continued to prosper and 
 grow in popularity, it seems evident that the opposition gave 
 to his belief the approval of silence, so far as the New School 
 Presbyterians were concerned. 
 
 Finney disagreed with the Presbyterians in the matter of 
 church government while in New York, and his church with- 
 drew from that connection and became Congregational long 
 before he devoted himself to Oberlin college. His belief in 
 miracles and the endorsement of his belief of his miraculous 
 calling and inspiration by Presbyterians and Congregational- 
 ists for half a century should of itself estop both from pleading 
 that the age of miracles is past. 
 
PROFESSOR F1NNEV. JOI 
 
 The history of Oberlin college, as given in 
 the biography of Finney by G. F. Wright, a 
 professor in that institution, shows that the first president 
 of the then "Oberlin academy" was miraculously or divinely 
 guided to secure Finney. President Shepherd had started for 
 Cincinnati on hearing that Lane seminary was being rent as- 
 under by the negro question, to secure talent for his school. 
 The roads were so execrable that he had decided to go to New 
 York instead, because he could travel on the old national road 
 while travel on the mud roads, 150 miles, to Cincinnati seemed 
 impossible. 
 
 At a tavern where he sojourned to rest his horses and 
 himself after a tedious pull to a central Ohio point, he met 
 Theodore Keep, son of one of the directors of Oberlin, who 
 urged him to proceed to Cincinnati and secure Asa Mahan, 
 who was about to retire from the presidency of Lane. Keep 
 also urged him to then continue his journey to New York and 
 secure Finney, who had then reached almost the height of his 
 fame as an evangelist.* 
 
 Finney encountered not only stout opposition from Con- 
 gregational and Presbyterian ministers, but from others also. 
 Some of this opposition reached the point of violence, much of 
 it because he made several innovations upon what were con- 
 sidered established and respectable methods of revival work. 
 Principal among his innovations was the "anxious seat," or 
 "mourners' bench," of which his biographer says he was the 
 inventor. 
 
 * Biography of Finney by Wright, pp. 125 to 135 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Among those who were stoutest in their opposition was 
 Lyman Beecher, the patriarch of the talented tribe of preach- 
 ers. Beecher told Finney to his face that if he ever entered 
 New England he would meet him at the boundary and contest 
 every inch of ground with him. At that time, Finney was a 
 Presbyterian. After some years, when -a daughter of Beecher 
 asked Finney if he were not going to visit Boston, he an- 
 swered: "Not until your father invites me." Within a short 
 time the orthodox ministers of Boston united in an invitation 
 or request that Finney visit that city "and lo! the name of 
 Lyman Beecher led the rest." 
 
 In describing the work Finney did in the New England 
 metropolis, Dr. Edward Beecher, son of the man who had de- 
 clared war on him, said he honored Finney "and loved him as 
 one as truly commissioned by God to declare His will as were 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or Paul." 
 
 The conversion of Lyman Beecher from a violent opponent 
 to a friend, Fiuney regarded as one of the many evidences he 
 had received of God's special interposition to prosper his work. 
 
WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
 
 PRESIDENT MARK HOPKINS BELIEVES THAT MIRA- 
 CLES COME IN ANSWER TO PRAYER. 
 
 Mark Hopkins, D. D., LL. D., for many years president of 
 Williams college, in his "Law of Love and Love as Law," has 
 a chapter devoted to prayer. In this he says prayer is not 
 simply desire but paramount desire and that any form of ask- 
 ing for anything, except for that for which this desire is para- 
 mount, would not be asking. He says, p. 302, that any other 
 asking would be hypocrisy to the omniscient eye and contin- 
 ues: 
 
 It is only a paramount desire presented to God 
 
 with the submission becoming a creature, that is 
 
 prayer, and the question is whether, in consequence of 
 - such prayer man would receive what he would not 
 
 without it. On this point the Bible raises no doubt. 
 
 There is in that no recognition of the difficulties raised 
 
 by philosophy. 
 
 In the matter of praying for rain Dr. IJopkins quotes 
 approvingly from the Duke of Argyle's "Reign of Law," thus: 
 There are no phenomena visible to man of which it 
 
 is true to say they are governed by any invariable 
 
 force. That which does govern them is always some 
 
 variable combination of invariable forces. 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Upon this idea, carried out to its full development, Dr 
 Hopkins reasons: 
 
 If, as some suppose, man can cause rain by the fir- 
 ing of cannon, then it may be obtained by asking it, 
 even of Him. In such a case there would be simply a 
 different adjustment of invariable laws; and if results 
 may be thus produced to some extent by the interven- 
 tion of human will, without a miracle, it cannot be ir- 
 rational to suppose they may be thus produced to any 
 extent by divine will. 
 
Anstuet*s to 
 
THE POWER OF PRAYER. 
 
 A PIOUS GERMAN'S COLLECTION OF CA^ES OF HEAL- 
 ING BY FAITH. 
 
 A modest little book published in German in Cincinnati 
 under the title, "Power of the Prayer of Faith," contains be- 
 tween seventy-five and one hundred instances in which 
 prayers were answered in striking ways. The author, Karl 
 Gottlob Schuh, gives no indication of his own standing in any 
 church or in the community in which he lives (Greenville, 
 Ohio but it is evident that he is a man of great piety and on 
 terms of sufficient familiarity with people prominent in the 
 religious world, to have received their consent to quote them as 
 witnesses. 
 
 The first miracle story in this book is attributed to "a 
 well-known man of God." Shorn of its superfluous verbiage, 
 it is this: The narrator, who was pastor of a church, found 
 at his gate at daybreak a member of his congregation, weeping 
 because her husband had gone away saying he would not re- 
 turn until the religious excitement then prevailing should 
 abate. As it was about time for an early morning prayer 
 meeting, he conducted the woman thither and the congregation 
 united in praying for the conversion of the fugitive. At a 
 night meeting the supplications were renewed and with great 
 fervor and solemnity. To the astonishment of the congrega- 
 
THE POWER OF PRA\ER. 
 
 tion the recreant entered, proclaimed his renunciation of Uni- 
 versalism and said that while riding away he was overcome by 
 a sense of his guilt and knew he must be born again. This 
 man, the author relates upon his own account, is now one of 
 the elders of a Presbyterian church and one of the most dili- 
 gent servants of God that can be found. 
 
 The value of this and many accounts of miraculous heal- 
 ings and conversions, is impaired if not destroyed by the fail- 
 ure of the author to properly authenticate them. The same 
 is true to a degree of the story of his own experience in being 
 healed of dyspepsia and catarrh, because he admits that his 
 book was published before the healing was complete. The work 
 is all the author of this work desires, however, because it is 
 proof that, orthodox Protestants do not all believe that the 
 age of miracles is past. With what other evidence is here 
 produced and precedes this chapter, it is in the nature of cor- 
 roborative evidence. For further corroboration Mr. Schuh 
 quotes Dwight L. Moody, J. S. Inskip, Bishop Bowman and 
 others who are less prominent in the Christian world. 
 
 The story of Bishop Bowman is of the healing by prayer 
 
 
 
 of Bishop Simpson. Bowman was attending a conference of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church in Indiana in 1858 when the 
 illness of Bishop Simpson was announced and Bishop Jones, 
 who presided, asked the conference to unite in prayer for his 
 restoration. William Taylor, the eminent missionary (since 
 a bishop), led, and Bowman says he never heard so powerful 
 a prayer. While on his knees he was impressed that the 
 bishop would recover and he made a note of the exact time of 
 
I0 g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 this manifestation. When next he saw the bishop that prelate 
 was at work as ably and diligently as ever. Bowman asked 
 the bishop concerning his recovery and learned that the turn- 
 ing point of his disease was at the exact moment when he, 
 Bowman, experienced the sensation described above, and dur- 
 ing the prayer in the conference. The doctors had given him 
 up and left his room. When they returned an hour later they 
 were astounded at the improvement that had taken place dur- 
 ing their absence, contrary to all human experience and ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 Inskip's story in brief is that illness had hindered him in 
 his evangelistic work and. threatened to end it and his earthly 
 career. He describes his affliction in full in a letter dated May 
 27, 1879. Though an evangelist, he seems not to have thought 
 of resorting to prayer until suddenly attacked in Boston by a 
 headache that compelled him to relinquish the conduct of an 
 afternoon meeting. His hostess advised him to seek relief in 
 prayer and quoted to him James v-14, 15. He and his host's 
 family followed the suggestion; he was healed; conducted the 
 evening meeting and had no return of his malady. 
 
 One case, th authority for which is given as Dr. Edwin 
 P. Hatfield, a well-known preacher of the Presbyterian Church, 
 in the State of New York; is that of a little girl who was healed 
 of paralysis and a serious aft'ection of the hip-joint, both re- 
 sulting from accident. After a season at a hospital and medi- 
 cal and surgical treatment, without avail, the child of 9 or 10 
 years was taken home and the pious mother resorted to prayer. 
 Weeks of almost unremitting supplication, pious conversation 
 
THE POWER OF PRA\ER. 
 
 and study of the accounts of healings by the Lord Jesus when 
 on earth followed. One day while thus engaged the little girl 
 rose to get a drink of water when she suddenly called out: 
 "Mother! See, I can walk again!" From that moment the 
 girl found her crutches superfluous and examination showed 
 that a great ulcer, which was among her afflictions, had disap- 
 peared; the dislocation of the hip was reduced and the afflicted 
 leg had been restored to as great perfection as the other. The 
 girl was 21 years old when her mother related the case to Dr. 
 Hatfield and had had no return of the maladies, but had been 
 healed of another dangerous illness fifteen months after her 
 first healing. 
 
 Mr. Schuh publishes from Miss Carrie F. Judd of Buffalo, 
 N. Y., who had considerable reputation as a faith-healer, the 
 account of her healing. As her case may not be regarded as 
 one proper to classify among evangelical Protestant cases, I 
 will only say concerning it that its incorporation in Mr. Schuh's 
 book gives it at least a partial standing in that class. 
 
 The most remarkable case related by Mr. Schuh is that 
 of Miss Jennie Smith of Dayton, Ohio, once of Middleburg or 
 Spring Hills, Champaign county, of the same State. Through 
 a series of misfortunes Miss Smith lost health; powers of loco- 
 motion and parernal protection, all within a short time. Be- 
 side this, her father before his death had lost all his property 
 and left his widow and nine children in poverty. Miss Smith 
 traveled constantly as a missionary in a wheeled couch and 
 after suffering and working sixteen years, without receiving 
 any relief from doctors, she went to Philadelphia for treat- 
 
IIO PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 ment in 1378. Her physician being a Christian, she suggested 
 to him that prayer be tried instead of a surgical operation and 
 he consented. Three ministers who. had been stationed in 
 Dayton while Miss Smith lived there happened to be residing 
 in Philadelphia and were present at her request when the 
 prayer was offered. When faith had almost fled and strength 
 forsaken her, she recalled the story of the withered hand. It 
 seemed as if the heavens opened and an electric stream swept 
 through her entire system and gave it new strength. She 
 raised herself to a sitting position* her physician sprang to her 
 side and let down the footboard of her wheel-chair, she sprang 
 out, ran around the room and sang: "Praise God From All 
 Blessings Flow." Miss Smith, says the author, now works 
 great blessings among the railroad men in Eastern cities and 
 goes about on foot instead of being wheeled in a chair as for- 
 merly. 
 
 Moody's story, located in Scotland, is much like that of the 
 miraculous conversion of the Universalist attributed to an un- 
 named pastor, in the first story herein referred to, and is no 
 better authenticated. Nearly all of the other stories in this 
 work depend upon the credulity of the reader to believe the 
 words of unknown men and in many cases of men to whom the 
 author gives neither habitation nor name. 
 
AN EXALTED AUTHORITY. 
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA'S CHAPLAIN ON ANSWERS TO 
 PRAYED BY MIRACULOUS MEANS. 
 
 A very ordinary looking book bearing the title: "The New 
 Cyclopaedia of Illustrative Anecdote" is the product of the 
 genius of Rev. Donald Macleod, D. D., Chaplain to Her Majes- 
 ty, and editor of "Good Words." Anecdote 288, illustrative of 
 the efficacy of prayer, tells how Rev. Richard. Cecil was deliv- 
 ered from the hands of three robbers on East Grinstead Com- 
 mon. The minister when surrounded thought it "an occasion 
 for faith" and recalled the Scripture passage: "Call upon me 
 in time of trouble and I will deliver thee." When the leader 
 asked him who he was, etc., and learned his identity, he or- 
 dered the others to let him go. As Mr. Cecil had 16 on his 
 person, he felt the escape to be miraculous, though the robber 
 assured him he was released because the leader had heard him 
 preach and knew him. 
 
 Anecdote 856 tells of a lady traveling in her own coach, 
 finding it hampered with provisions, ordered her servant to 
 give the food away. The governess obtained leave to be the 
 almoner and sought out the. neatest premises in the village. 
 There she found a starving woman on her knees praying for 
 food and gave her a hamper fiill of choice viands. The poor 
 woman, without rising, thanked God for having sent her the 
 
j j 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 food. The writer of the story does not say in what country 
 or at what date this occurred, but it is to be inferred that it was 
 in the Christian land of Great Britain. 
 
 Anecdote 872 is of Heine, Berlin's famous physician, who 
 lost all his savings by a bank failure. The loss almost de- 
 prived him of reason, but he resorted to prayer and his cheer- 
 fulness and hope were restored. 
 
 Number 874 is so striking that I am almost tempted to 
 copy it entire. It tells of a party of Moravian ministers on 
 the Britania, from London to St. Thomas, in the West Indies, 
 when the ship was attacked by pirates. The missionaries re- 
 tired to the cabin to pray when the crew prepared for battle. 
 The pirate fired several broadsides and, though within grap- 
 pling distance, failed to hit the Britania. The pirates threw 
 ernpplers, but failed to catch them and when they thought they 
 conld destroy the mission ship by more firing, a sudden squall 
 prevented their shots taking effect. When the smoke of battle 
 rose the pirate saw the Britania sailing serenely away under 
 fu!l canvass. On this the compiler comments: "Thus won- 
 derfully did God answer prayer and save the vessel." 
 
 These few, taken from among many similar anecdotes, 
 should be sufficient to show that the chaplain to Queen Vic- 
 toria of England, etc.', believed in miracles as late as 1872, when 
 the Rev. Dr. Thomas Guthrie of Edinburgh wrote to Dr. Mac- 
 leod a letter commending his work which the compiler says 
 was intended as an aid to the teacher and preacher in the 
 school or the pulpit. Dr. Guthrie says it must be of great 
 service to the ministry "by furnishing them with suitable and 
 
AN EXALTED AUTHORITY. j j - 
 
 striking illustrations of both its doctrines and its duties." 
 
 One incident I cannot forbear to mention, though it is for- 
 eign to the object of this work. It tells of Archbishop Usher, 
 having heard much of Rev. Samuel Rutherford's piety, decideu 
 to visit him when visiting Scotland. Disguised as a pauper 
 he begged lodging of the famous preacher, who sealed him in 
 the kitchen while he apprised Mrs. Rutherford of his presence. 
 Mrs. R., desirous of testing the orthodoxy of her guest, 
 asked him how many commandments there were and he an- 
 swered: ''Eleven." The pious woman rebuked his ignorance 
 sharply and sent him to bed in a garret. Mr. Rutherford, hear- 
 ing him at prayer, decided to treat him more becomingly and, 
 having learned his identity, invited him to occupy his pulpit. 
 The archbishop accepted and took for his text: "A new 
 commandment give I unto you," etc. 
 
 Mrs. Rutherford was deeply humiliated, of course, when 
 she learned that she had snubbed an archbishop while enter- 
 taining an angel unawares. This same story is told and in 
 much more interesting form in Dr. J. V. Watson's book, which 
 is mentioned in the chapter devoted to Methodists. Its author 
 was no less notable writer than T. S. \rthur, who was famed 
 in his days as a writer of highly moral fiction. 
 
TO HELP PREACHERS. 
 
 A BOOK WITH MIRACLE STORIES TO ENLIVEN AND IL- 
 LUSTRATE SERMONS. 
 
 Miracles seem to play an important part in the instruction 
 of ministers. In books miblished for their benefit and to aid 
 them in preaching, special providences and answers to prayer 
 form the bases of many anecdotes compiled to enable preachers 
 to liven their sermons and illustrate points therein. One of 
 these books is "The Dictionary of Anecdote and Illustrative 
 Fact," compiled by Rev. Walter Baxendale, author of ''The 
 Preacher's Commentary on the Book of Ruth." The author's 
 name is not important, as he gives his authority for most of the 
 anecdotes, some of whom are eminent in the religious world. 
 These stories are attributed to Spurgeon. The second is put 
 in condensed form to save room: 
 
 SPURGEON ON PRAYER. 
 
 A preacher, whose sermons had converted men by 
 scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one 
 of the conversions was owing to his talents or elo- 
 quence, but all to the prayers of an illiterate lay-broth- 
 er who sat on the pulpit steps, pleading all the time for 
 the success of the sermon. 
 
 Some two years ago a poor woman came to my 
 vestry in deep distress because her husband had ab- 
 
TO HELP PREACHERS. IIt - 
 
 sconded. When her tale was told I said: "All we could 
 do was to kneel and cry to the Lord for the conversion 
 of your husband." We knelt and prayed and when we 
 rose I bade the woman not to fret as I felt sure the 
 deserter would return. Some months later, when I 
 had forgotten the incident, the woman came, accompa- 
 nied by her husband, who had been converted. Inqui- 
 ry showed that on the very day we prayed for him; 
 while he was at sea, he found a stray copy of one of my 
 sermons, read it, and was converted. As soon as pos- 
 sible, he returned to his wife and was admitted to 
 the church. 
 
 I sat side by side with a brother minister not many 
 days^ago, who remarked to me: "I'm afraid many of 
 our people do not believe in prayer." "Oh, dear!" I 
 said, "1 would not be a minister of such a church five 
 minutes." 
 
 An extract from an interview with Spurgeon, taken from 
 the Pall Mall Gazette is to the effect that his faith in the effica- 
 cy of prayer was growing stronger and firmer than ever. 
 
 It is not a matter of faith with me, but of knowl- 
 edge and everyday experience. I am constantly wit- 
 nessing the most unmistakable answers to prayer. 
 * * * Look at my orphanage. To keep it going en- 
 tails an annual expenditure of about 10,000. Only 
 1400 is provided by endowment. The remaining 
 8000 comes to me regularly in answer to prayer. I 
 
XI 6 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 do not know where I shall get it from day to day. I 
 ask God for it and He sends it. 
 
 LUTHER'S BELIEF. 
 
 Martin Luther is often quoted by -those religionists who 
 discountenance belief in miracles, but the compiler of this dic- 
 tibnary has found several extracts from his sayings in support 
 of a belief in the miraculous answer to prayer. Tholuck is 
 quoted to the effect that at the time the diet of Nuremberg was 
 held, Luther was praying at home. At the very hour when 
 the edict granting free toleration to Protestants was granted 
 he ran out of his house crying out: "We have gained the 
 victory!" 
 
 Anecdote 4253 tells of Luther's prayers prolonging Melanc- 
 thon's life. Melancthon was supposed to be on his deathbed 
 when Luther hastened to him and aroused him by a sorrowful 
 exclamation, when Melancthon begged to be allowed to depart 
 in peace. Luther replied: "We can't spare you yet," fell 
 upon his knees and prayed fervently for his recovery. He then 
 ordered some soup and bade Melancthon eat it. When he de^ 
 clined Luther threatened to excommunicate him. ' Melanc- 
 thon obeyed and recovered. When Luther returned home he 
 told his wife: "God gave me my brother Melancthon back, 
 in direct answer to my prayers." Luther is also thus quoted: 
 
 Just as a shoemaker makes a shoe or a tailor a 
 coat, so also ought the Christian to pray. The Chris- 
 tian's trade is praying, and the prayer of the church 
 works great miracles. In our day it has raised from 
 the dead three persons, viz.: myself, having been fre- 
 
TO HELP PREACHBRS. Ix y 
 
 quently sick unto death; my wife. Catharine, who like- 
 wise was dangerously ill, and Melancthon, who was 
 sick unto death at Weimar. And though their rescue 
 from sickness and other bodily dangers be but trifling 
 miracles, nevertheless they must be exhibited for the 
 sake of those whose faith is weak. 
 
 OTHER AUTHORITIES. 
 
 The Christian Age, a religious paper, is credited with an- 
 ecdote 4249. It tells of a pastor who devoted a week to study- 
 ing a sermon, which suddenly, on Saturday, "became to him 
 stale and dry" and "instantly another text lodged into his 
 mind" and rapidly ran into a sermon which he preached Sun- 
 day morning. At the close of the service a lady remained "to 
 confer with the session of the church respecting a profession of 
 faith." She belonged to a Catholic family, but the light re- 
 ceived from that sermon had converted her. In accounting 
 for the change of sermon, the writer in the Age says a friend 
 of the lady had been praying eleven years for her conversion 
 and that on the Saturday when the minister made the change 
 a party of the lady's friends had "united in praying that the 
 pastor might on the next Sabbath say something that would 
 meet the case of the lady who was expected to be present in 
 the church on that morning." 
 
 C. T. Harris is authority for the story that a pious lady in 
 Hereford, England, while praying became impressed that she 
 ought to send 50 to a Mr. Bourne "for carrying on the work 
 of the Lord." After conferring with her mother, she decided 
 to test the correctness of her impression. Her brother was 
 
Hg PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 dispatched to Bemersley to investigate. In an interview with 
 Mr. Bourne he asked that gentleman if he had been praying 
 for ''anything special." Mr. B. promptly responded: "Yes, 
 for 50; for we are in great need of that sum," which was -giv- 
 en him. Mr. Harris seems to have been so deeply impressed 
 with this miracle that he forgot to say in what branch of the 
 Lord's work Mr. Bourne was engaged. He seems to have con- 
 sidered Mr. Bourne and his work to be too well known to have 
 needed description or explanation. 
 
 Krummacher, a somewhat celebrated German writer on 
 religious subjects, is the author of a story of healing through 
 the prayer of a four-year-old child. The child's mother was 
 so ill that the doctors had given her up. When the child heard 
 the verdict "she went into an adjoining room, knelt down and 
 said: 'Dear Lord Jesus, oh make mother well again.' After 
 she had thus prayed she said, as though in God's name, 'Yes, 
 my dear child, I will do it gladly.' " The child then ran* to 
 her mother and assured her she would get well, which she did. 
 Upon this incident, which is here greatly abbreviated Krum- 
 macher comments thus: 
 
 Is it, then, always permitted for me to pray thus 
 
 unconditionally respecting temporal concerns? No, thou 
 
 must not venture to do so, if whilst you ask you doubt. 
 
 From Stephenson's "Praying and Working" is quoted a 
 remark of one who stood by the grave of Gossner and the edit- 
 or says it was not hyperbole, viz.: 
 
 He prayed up the walls of an hospital and the 
 
 hearts of the nurses; he prayed missionary stations 
 
TO HELP PRKACHKIIS. ir g 
 
 into being and missionaries into faith; he prayed open 
 
 thp hearts of the rich and gold from the most distant 
 
 lain 
 
 Dr. Liefchild is given as authority for a case in which a 
 rhristian traveling in Italy heard of a young soldier who was 
 condemned to be shot at 9 o'c.ock of the morning he heard of 
 it while he was at breakfast. He at once retired to pray for 
 the soldier's salvation; that, if he were not prepared to die, 
 his execution might be postponed until he should repent. While 
 on his knees the Christian heard a volley and was soon obliged 
 to hasten from the town. About two months later he read in 
 a paper that, though that volley was fired at the condemned 
 soldier, not a bullet took effect. So miraculous was the es- 
 cape considered that his pardon was granted. 
 
 Archdeacon Farrar is given as authority for this: "More 
 than one saint, like St. Francis, and like Wesley, has left be- 
 hind the record that God has never refused him anything for 
 which he sprionsly prayed. It can gain for us everything, not 
 perhaps, that, we wish, but everything that we want." 
 
 At least half a score of other cases of answers to prayer 
 are given in this book, but they are not authenticated. They 
 include rescue of vessels from destruction; escape from death 
 in battle, from sharks, the raising of wind to turn mills when 
 people were suffering for bread; the capture of a negro and his 
 wife as slaves that they might be converted. 
 
 That these anecdotes have been employed by preachers, is 
 evinced by the fact that the volume I have used has ben well 
 thumbed and has many little crosses marked against para- 
 
J2Q PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 graphs, some of which are here mentioned. Though I have 
 not cited all of the cases which appear miraculous, it is a lit- 
 tle remarkable that only two paragraphs about miracles are 
 noted in the index. One of these stories is attributed to Lu- 
 ther as exposing a fraud and the other is a remark of an Ox- 
 ford professor, viz.: ''If you believe in miracles you will be 
 nothing better and if 3^011 do not, you will be nothing worse." 
 
 Anecdote 4961 is attributed to The Hague Tageblatti. 
 (Newspaper, date not given.) It tells of an infidel paper manu- 
 facturer who said he would have machinery work Sundays and 
 weekdays alike and make more money. The inauguration of 
 the machinery was celebrated by a feast in the works, during 
 which the paper maker scoffingly compared his boilers to hell. 
 Almost at that moment the boilers exploded and killed the 
 scoffer. 
 
 Thte naturally recalls the sensational story that appears 
 semi-periodically in American newspapers of the man who is 
 stricken dumb, blind or deaf for blasphemous revilings when 
 excessive rain, drouth or other untoward conditions have ru- 
 ined his ci'ops or otherwise sent accumulated misfortunes upon 
 him. These stories are nearly always so located that verifica- 
 tion or refutation is difficult, hut the eagerness with which they 
 are utilized by many ministers in their exhortations is abund- 
 ant evidence that there is a very widespread belief in so much 
 of thrt miraculous as suits the purposes or prejudices of those 
 who hear marvelous stories like these. 
 
CALIFORNIA MIRACLES. 
 
 A PRKACHKK MYSTERIOUSLY SUPPLIED WITH MEANS 
 TO DEFEAT AN INFIDEL. 
 
 Rev. W. H. Briggs is a minister of the Christian church 
 who. as this article is being written, is being written about 
 and read aboui. as the minister who turned street railroad con- 
 ductor to make a living rather than whine to be taken back 
 into the church after the hand of fellowship had been with- 
 drawn. Mr. Briggs is an A. M., and has lived in San Joaquin 
 county, California, since childhood and during most of his 
 manhood has been a preacher of the Christian Church, which is 
 generally known as the Campbellite. 
 
 In 1883 he was challenged to discuss with Colonel Kelso, a 
 well-known resident of that county and equally well known as 
 a champion of Colonel Robert G. Ingerscll's views of religion. 
 Briggs accepted without hesitation, but felt hardly equal to the 
 contest as Col. Kelso was regarded as the "boss agnostic" of 
 that region. The debates were to be held at two points in the 
 county, one of which was generally regarded as infidel head- 
 quarters. 
 
 Briggs was not as well equipped for the debate as he de- 
 sired to be. He had never read more than fragments of In- 
 gersoll's lectures, which he assumed would form the basis of 
 Col. Kelso's speeches. He found it impossible to send away 
 for a copy of any of his lectures and prayed earnestly that the 
 Lord would furnish him the information by some means. He 
 
122 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 also prayed for a copy of the works of Wilford Hall, a noted 
 Universalist writer. The time was growing short for answers 
 to his prayers when, as he wa*s driving from Clements to Brand 
 House one dusty day, his horse shied at something in the road 
 and as he passed the object he saw it was a book. He reined 
 iu his horse and found the book not six inches from the track 
 of the buggy wheels. It was brand new and on examination 
 he found it to be a volume of Ingersoll's lectures. Who lost 
 it h> never could discover and it remained long in his library. 
 
 The next Sunday he held services at Woodbridge, when a 
 young lady, who is now the wife of a public officer of San Joa- 
 quiri county, met him just before the services opened and hand- 
 ed him a copy of Dr. Hall's work, saying her father thought it 
 would be of use to him in the forthcoming debate. He had not 
 expressed his wish for either of these works to any mortal and 
 had no opportunity of communicating them to anyone in 
 Woodbridge. 
 
 Mr. Briggs' heart was greatly lightened. He read both 
 works and if the testimony of those who heard the eight days' 
 debate is conclusive evidence, the Lord enabled him to defeat 
 his agnostic adversary. The Lord's intervention did not end 
 with the furnishing of the ammunition for the debate. It 
 resulted in the building of churches at Acampo and Elliott, in 
 San Joaquin county, the latter place -having been regarded as 
 a field in which it would be idle to hope for a church. Very 
 naturally, Mr. Briggs and his friends, who are numerous 
 throughout San Joaquin and neighboring counties, think the 
 Lord wrought at least three miracles in connection with that 
 debate. 
 
NON-RELIGIOUS MIRACLES, 
 
 MARVELOUS WORKS WHEREIN PRAYER OR FAITH HAD 
 NO PART. 
 
 It seems astonishing that many people who doubt that even 
 Jesus of Nazareth performed the miracles attributed to him in 
 the Gospels are very ready to believe accounts of healings quite 
 as marvelous when performed by men who make no pretension 
 to being reformers or even to religious belief. 
 
 Who does not remember or has not heard of Dr. Newton, 
 who, a generation ago, traveled all over the United States and 
 perhaps Europe also, performing instantaneous cures of many 
 forms of disease and "coining" money thereby. He was not 
 attacked by the pulpit or the press because he did not try to 
 organize a new sect, and he did pay well for advertising. 
 
 A quarter of a century later a "Boy Wonder" made tours 
 of the wliole country on a like mission. He was widely ad- 
 vertised and paid handsomely for daily "write-ups" in the 
 daily newspapers. That he performed astonishing cures there 
 are witnesses in nearly every town and city he visited. He 
 was a boy when he set out in his career, but must be nearly 
 thirty-five years old now. After he visited the Pacific coast 
 about 1894, he decided to remain in the East and the company 
 of which he was the star found another boy wonder and, with- 
 out a change in their dead-wall, show-paper or advertising, 
 they made another tour. 
 
124 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 While in Stockton, California, they heard of B. M. Hohen- 
 sbell, a former farmer, who discovered in young manhood that 
 he possessed great magnetic powers which he utilized for heal- 
 ing the sick, but Mr, Hohenshell declined a tempting offer to 
 become a boy wonder abroad. He continued his practice at 
 home, does not advertise but goes about his work much as 
 does a physician, doing all the good he can in a modest way, 
 making plenty of money probably, but doing a vast amount of 
 work without hope of pecuniary reward. He believes in his 
 power and uses it to the best of his ability. I have no words 
 except those of commendation for him though I do not know 
 him personally. I have within a few years heard much of his 
 .almost angelic ministrations and honor him for the good he 
 has done, I do think it strange passing strange, however, 
 that those who firmly believe in "Barney" HohensheH's power 
 should disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and ears in 
 the form of friends and acquaintances who have been restored 
 to health by the aid of Christian Science after the doctors had 
 given them up. Beside these there are all around Mr. Hohen- 
 shell's home many who were given up to die by the drug-doc- 
 tors within from one to three months and who turned to sci- 
 ence and have survived, now, from a few months to several 
 years. 
 
 Some years ago the London Medical Times contained an 
 account of an experiment on four condemned men in Russia. 
 They were put to sleep on beds whereon victims of cholera had 
 died, but were ignorant of the fact. After ample time Demg 
 given for the dread disease to develop not one gave any symp- 
 
NON-RELIGIOUS MIRACLES. 
 
 ton- of the plague. They were subsequently told that they 
 must sleep on beds that had been occupied by cholera patients 
 and. though the beds were perfectly clean and had not been 
 so occupied, three of them were attacked by cholera and died 
 within four hours. 
 
 MIRACLE OF THE MULE. 
 
 One of the most widely believed notions of the laws of nat- 
 ure is that hybrids are barren. So firmly fixed is this idea 
 that efforts to test its truth are rare, if they are ever made. 
 The idea was crystallized by "Josh Billings," I think, in his 
 reference to a temporary political party. He said it was like 
 a mule because it was without pride of ancestry or hope of pos- 
 terity. It is a well-established fact, however, that James 
 Journeay of Stockton, California, is the owner of a mule mare 
 that bore a colt. The animal, now (1899) about seven years 
 old, is on Mr. Journeay's ranch, five or six miles from Stockton. 
 When so young that the motherhood of the mule could be 
 demonstrated by her suckling the colt, both mother and foal 
 were publicly exhibited on the plaza or Hunter-street square 
 in Stockton and the fact is susceptible of ample proof. 
 
 I do not cite this well-attested fact as evidence that a mira- 
 cle has occurred during the last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, but to show that not all of nature's laws are understood 
 by present day philosophers. Though Mr. Journeay's mule is 
 not an exceptional animal in any other way, she is such an ex- 
 ception in that one regard as to break the supposed rule or to 
 show that to supposed laws of nature there can be exceptions 
 which by no means prove the rule. 
 
 
 
126 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 A PHYSICAL MIRACLE. 
 
 In a recent number of McClure's Magazine is an article on 
 the new power derived from the liquif action of air. The 
 accomplishment of this liquefaction would have been pro- 
 nounced a miracle by most scientists as late as the noon of the 
 present century, if not even as late as the last decade thereof. 
 The article shows that liquified air not only solves the supposed 
 insoluble problem of perpetual motion, but actually multiplies 
 its cwn power indefinitely and accomplishes many other won- 
 ders. The discoverer of the process declares that it will solve 
 the problem of aerial navigation and makes his opinion appear 
 very plausible. This notice of the discovery and its wonders 
 is sufficient for my purpose here, but those who are skeptical 
 concerning present day miracles should read the article which 
 appears in the March number for 1899 of McClure's. 
 NEWSPAPER MIRACLES. 
 
 While religious as well as secular newspapers either dis- 
 credit or ignore accounts of non-sensational as well as religious 
 miracles, they both employ the adjective "miraculous" to de- 
 scribe narrow or marvelous escapes from death. So common 
 is the habit that they often tell their readers that occurrences 
 are miracles and then proceed to so describe them that every 
 element of the miraculous is eliminated. That this is but a 
 criticism on the language they employ I admit in part, but not 
 in toto and especially as regards the religious press in which 
 it is comparatively common to find stories of answers to 
 prayers and events that are properly classifiable as miracles. 
 
 I have recently read a newspaper story of the mysterious 
 
NON-RELIGIOUS MIRACLES. 
 
 circulation of news in the prison at Dannemora, N. Y. This 
 story says the convicts often know the result of a prize-fight 
 or other "sporting" event before the officers of the prison know 
 it, though every effort is made to keep the news from reaching 
 them. It also says the convicts know when executions are to 
 take place, though they are not allowed to have newspapers 
 containing the news and every means is employed to keep them 
 in ignorance. 
 
 This naturally recalls the accounts of missionaries in India 
 who first told the world of the mysterious means by which in- 
 formation was transmitted by natives in that country far in 
 advance of the swiftest means known to the whites. During 
 the Sepoy rebellion in that country, this mysterious power was 
 often mentioned and respectable British authority said the dis- 
 aster at Cawnpore was known among the native population of 
 the cities in the possession of the British long before the swift- 
 est horses could bear couriers with reports to the officials. One 
 writer, cited I think by Lecky, says the first accounts of the 
 disaster were received from Parsee merchants. 
 
HYMNS THAT BETRAY. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM PETITIONS IN VERSE, FOR SPECIAL 
 FAVORS FROM PROVIDENCE. 
 
 If Protestantism has rejected the miraculous it should re- 
 vise its hymnology to suit its profession. In opening a little 
 volume of Gospel Hymns, published in 1883, the nrst that ar- 
 rested my nttention was that beautiful poem, "Jesus Lover <jf 
 My Soul." The third verse is a refutation of the pretense. It 
 reads; 
 
 Thou, O Christ, art all I want; 
 More than all in thee I find: 
 liaise the fallen, cheer the faint 
 
 Heal the sick and lead the blind. 
 
 Hymn No. 90 of the same volume, which is a compilation 
 of the songs used by Evangelist Moody, contains this: 
 I leave it. all with Jesus. 
 
 For He knows 
 How to steal the bitter 
 
 From life's woes; 
 How to gil.d the tear-drop 
 
 With His smile, 
 Make the desert garden 
 
 Bloom awhile. 
 Number 107 of these hymns is a rhyming version of that 
 
HYMNS THAT BETRAY. I 
 
 sublime poem Psalm xxiii, which promises many earthly bless- 
 ings and immunities. This may be said to be so strictly poet- 
 ical as not to constitute a basis for a valid argument, but if it is 
 to be so regarded then Holy Writ must be at least half repudi- 
 ated while the poem is taught and will probably always be 
 taught in the Sunday schools as one of the greatest of religious 
 gems. 
 
 Who that ever read Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light" doubt- 
 ed that it was a prayer for inspiration? After it had been ban- 
 ished from the hymnals of the Anglican church for many years 
 after the author became a Catholic, it has reappeared and can 
 now be found in the books of nearly all denominations. 
 
 The hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal church in the 
 United States, of 1874, approved by the general convention of 
 that church in the same year, contains hymns of which the 
 following are extracts: 
 
 No. 264 Star of hope, gleam on the billow, 
 Bless the soul that sighs for thee, 
 
 Bless the sailor's lonely pillow, 
 
 Far, far at sea. 
 No. 267 Eternal Father! strong to save, 
 
 Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, 
 
 Who bid'st the mighty ocean deep 
 
 Its own appointed limits keep; 
 
 Oh hear us when we cry to thee 
 
 For those in peril on the sea. 
 No. 269 To Thee I raised my humble prayer 
 To snatch me from the grave; 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 I found Thine ear not slow to hear 
 
 Nor short Thine arm to save. 
 
 These are all for help to those who go down to the sea in 
 ships, but there are others that pray for divine inspiration, 
 help, etc. The following are from hymns on the ordination of 
 ministers: 
 
 No. 270 Lord, pour Thy Spirit from on high, 
 
 And Thine ordained servants bless; 
 Graces and gifts to each supply, 
 
 And clothe Thy priests with righteousness. 
 No. 271 Clothe then, with energy divine 
 
 Their words and let those words be Thine; 
 To them Thy sacred truth reveal, 
 Suppress their fear, inflame their zeal. 
 Verse 3 of hymn 254 reads: 
 
 Choose Thou for me my friends, 
 
 My sickness or my health; 
 Choose Thou my cares for me, 
 
 My poverty or wealth. 
 Not mine, not mine the choice, 
 
 In things or great or small 
 Be Thou my guide, niy strength, 
 
 My wisdom and my all. 
 
 Hymn No. 249, under the head of "Visitation of the Sick/' 
 bids the patient cast aside fear, assures him that the Lord will 
 provide. The fourth verse reads: 
 
 Did ever trouble yet befall, 
 And He refuse to hear thy call? 
 
HYMNS THAT BETRAY. 
 
 And has He not His promise past 
 That thou shalt overcome at last? 
 
 It will strike the student of Christian Science that those 
 who have endorsed this or who adhere to a church of whose 
 service it is a part, are estopped from denouncing prayer cure, 
 faith cure, or any other form of healing in which prayer is even 
 a part. 
 
 As the Moody hymns represent all whom the Episcopal 
 people group under the general head of "the sects," I do not 
 care to quote more copiously from their hymns. I have quot- 
 ed more freely from the Anglican book because it represents 
 a church that has been most conspicuous in past years for its 
 attack upon the miraculous. 
 
 In a collection of hymns compiled in 1885 by C. C. Cline 
 and published in Covington, Ky., No. 8 contains this as verse 4: 
 Comfort those who weep and mourn; 
 Let the time of joy return; 
 Those that are cast down lift up; 
 Make them strong in faith and hope. 
 
 No. 62, by Isaac Watts, whose orthodoxy will not be dis- 
 puted, contains this verse: 
 
 He pardons all thy sins, 
 
 Prolongs thy feeble breath; 
 He healeth thine infirmities 
 
 And ransoms thee from death. 
 
 The ''Illustrated History of Hymns," by Rev. Edwin M. 
 Long, author of several hymns, contains much that teaches 
 what some Protestants deny. One story, which I found on 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 opening the book, is on page 449 and is in brief this: In 1826 
 five missionaries, the wives of three and several children were 
 in a wreck off the coast of Antigua. When the storm arose 
 the little son of one of the missionaries gave out a verse of a 
 hymn commencing: 
 
 "Though waves and storms go o'er my head." 
 and when it had been sung the child delivered ah address on 
 the shipwreck of Jonah and the author says a holy inspiration 
 come over the child and affected all who heard him. 
 
 The wife of one of the missionaries was the only one 
 who was calm enough to pray and when she had done so she 
 sang: 
 
 When passing through the watery deep 
 
 I asked in faith his promised aid, 
 The waves an awful distance keep 
 
 And shrink from my devoted head. 
 Fearless their violence I dare 
 
 They cannot harm for God is there. 
 
 Sad to say, she was the only one saved out of that party. 
 On pages 303, 304 and 305 is the story of George Neumark, who 
 was reduced to such dire straits in Hamburg in 1651 that he 
 had to pawn his violincello, which had been his chief means 
 of supporting life. Before parting with it he improvised a 
 hymn and accompanied his voice on the instrument, in the 
 pawnbroker's house. A passer-by was charmed with the sen- 
 liment and music and sought a copy. When Neumark had ac- 
 .commodated him the stranger took him to his master, the 
 Swedish embassador, who made him his secretary. His grat- 
 
HYMNS THAT BETRAY. 
 
 itude to God for this interposition he put in the form of a 
 hymn, one verse of which is: 
 
 Leave God to order all thv ways 
 
 , 
 
 And hope in Him whate'er betide, 
 Thou'lt find him in the evil days, 
 
 Thine all sufficient strength and guide. 
 Who trusts in Go-d's unchanging love, 
 Builds on the rock that ne'er can move. 
 When asked if this was his own composition, Neumark 
 answered- "Well, yes. I am the instrument, but God swept 
 the strings ." 
 
 This book contains over 600 pages and is replete with anec- 
 dotes and extracts from hymns in which the miraculous 
 abounds. If these hymns and these anecdotes do not teach 
 that the age of miracles has been extended to the gloaming of 
 the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, what 
 do they mean? If those who wrote the hymns and related the 
 anecdotes do not mean that they believe God sets aside known 
 laws or grants prayer by the operation of laws unknown to 
 man they mean worse than nothing. If they do not believe in 
 what is called the miraculous they are confessedly false 
 teachers who are taking the name of God in vain uttering 
 blasphemy by praying God for favors they do not believe He 
 will grant. I prefer to believe the best of the authors of both 
 hymns and anecdotes and to also believe that those who at- 
 tack Christian Science, on the assumed ground that the age of 
 miracles is past, are endeavoring to obtain religious advan- 
 tages on false pretenses. This is a serious charge, as I make 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 it, because in the school of ethics in which I was trained it is 
 blasphemous in employing sin to further the cause of religion. 
 
 I acquit these zealous brethren of willful hypocrisy, remember- 
 
 /. 
 ing that there are, according to Robert Colyer, the great 
 
 Unitarian, I think, two classes of hypocrites, the conscious 
 and the unconscious. It will remain for any of the attacking 
 party to adjust to himself the accusation of willful hypocrisy 
 by persisting in attacks after his attention has been directed 
 to his own error. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. 
 
 A COLLECTION OF MARVELS THAT RANGE FROM THE 
 SUBLIME TO THE ABSURD. 
 
 Some of the marvels grouped under this head may not be 
 properly classed as Protestant, but all or nearly all indicate 
 some degree of Protestant belief in present supernatural aid 
 to man. 
 
 Dr. Edward Berdoe has an article in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury of October, 1895, descriptive of a visit to the grotto of 
 Lourdes. He says: 
 
 This earnestness on the part of the worshipers, if 
 it do not take heaven by storm, exalts the whole or- 
 ganism and serves, of itself, to explain much of the 
 thaumaturgy. 
 He also says: 
 
 As Christianity has no monopoly of faith healing, 
 we may imagine what it is which underlies all these 
 phenomena. To set them aside as silly talk and priest- 
 ly frauds is to betray the non-scientific mind. So uni- 
 versal a thaumaturgy implies a basis of fact which we 
 must not despise. Professor Charcot has lent the great 
 weight of his authority to the statement that faith-cure 
 is an ideal method, since it of tens attains its end after 
 all other means have failed. 
 Dr. Berdoe then cites M. Littre in "Fragment de Medicine 
 
g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Retrospective/' where he describes seven miracles wrought at 
 the tomb of St. Louis and atempts to give a pathological inter- 
 pretation of them, which Dr. Berdoe does not expressly en- 
 dorse. He closes his article by saying that the scientific view 
 of miracles of healing is no detraction from the power of 
 prayer: "God ever works by natural laws; we use the word 
 'miracles' for the effect of natural laws which we do not un- 
 derstand." His closing lines are these: 
 
 If the cure be wrought, what matters it to the 
 happy invalid who, like Marie in M. Zola's novel, 
 jumps from her wheel chair and, trailing it behind her, 
 joins the procession of thanksgivers whether the 
 cure is wrought by the touch of a divine hand or the 
 overpowering influence of a great idea on the nervous 
 system, 
 
 BOEHME'S MYSTICISM. 
 
 Though mysticism and miracle-ism are not identical, they 
 are nearly so in some cases. Jacob Boehme, the German mys- 
 tic writer of the seventeenth century, did not pretend to per- 
 form miracles but to have witnessed many, and the fact that 
 he had a large following among even well educated non-Catho- 
 lics, shows that Protestants in Germany were not unanimous 
 in the opinion that miracles were things of a past age. Even in 
 England he had followers and his writings were translated by 
 William Law, an eminent English clergyman. Law was an 
 author of the so-called mystic school of his day but, though 
 discountenanced by the established church, the Wesley 
 brothers acknowledge that they derived great benefit from his 
 "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. r -, j 
 
 A biography of Boehme, translated by Franz Hartmann, 
 M. D., and published in 1891 in London, shows that Boehme, 
 while a herder of cattle in his boyhood, had been guided by a 
 vision to a cave where he found a pot of gold. Deeming the 
 gold and the vision the result of a satanic plot, he fled without 
 the treasure. A few years later, while an apprentice to a shoe- 
 maker, a mysterious -stranger appeared to him, paid an extra- 
 ordinary price for a pair of shoes, called him by name and re- 
 vealed to him his future greatness, and admonished him to 
 read the Bible, in which he would find comfort. He continued 
 to have visions and, between 1612 and 1624, he wrote many 
 books describing what he saw in those visions. 
 EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES. 
 
 Bishop Douglas of the Church of England is quoted by a 
 writer in Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1823, as to the 
 rules respecting the evidence of miracles. They are only two 
 in number, but the explanation is somewhat lengthy and the 
 rules, etc., are here presented: 
 
 1. That whenever a fact can be ascribed, however 
 remotely, to natural causes, any reference to Divine 
 interposition is absolutely excluded. 
 
 2. Whenever the testimony affords ground even 
 for a suspicion of fraud, it must be rejected entirely 
 and at once. 
 
 A suspicion of fraud is entertained: 
 
 1. If the accounts of the alleged miracles were not 
 published to the world till long after the time when 
 they are said to have been performed. 
 
 2. If the accounts- were published at a distance 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 from the place where the miraculous agency was sup- 
 posed to be manifested. 
 
 3. If at the time when and the place where they 
 are said to have happened, they have been suffered to 
 pass without due examination. 
 
 AS TO INSPIRATION. 
 
 inspiration is a word over whose meaning a vast amount 
 has been written. It is employed here in the sense of an extra- 
 ordinary or divine agency by which God operates on the minda 
 of teachers, speakers and writers, who are thus taught or 
 guided how to teach, speak and write. This I find to be the 
 sense in which the term is employed by people who attribute 
 to certain preachers or religious teachers more than human 
 power or wisdom. 
 
 Inspiration is a difficult term to define. The definition of 
 the dictionaries will hardly do, because nearly every religious 
 body gives to it a little different meaning. Some regard a 
 preacher as inspired when he becomes excited and gives ex- 
 pression to unusual ideas; some regard the authors of new 
 doctrine and dogma as inspired; some so regard a person who 
 feels impelled to undertake any religious or philanthropic work 
 and brings to his aid such zeal and enthusiasm as awakens like 
 zeal and enthusiasm as well as liberality in others. While 
 these variations of definitions do not vary so widely as to be in- 
 consistent, they serve to illustrate the latitude taken by those 
 who use the word in application to the talents or deeds of those 
 whom they admire or whose cause they espouse. It seems not 
 to make much difference whether the person thus regarded, as 
 inspired be poet, patriot, preacher, soldier, explorer or mere 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. 
 
 politician. If he acts or speaks with fervor on "my** side he 
 is inspired; if on the other, "he hath a devil." In either case 
 the mere notion of inspiration is the same. The only difference 
 of opinion is as to the source. 
 
 Thousands regarded Wesley as inspired and the thousands 
 have grown into millions in the present century. Within the 
 memory of living men, women and children, Moody, Ham- 
 mond, Fay Mills and others have been or are regarded as in- 
 spired, yet followers of each think Mrs. Mary B. Eddy impious 
 because they say she believes her discovery of Christian Science 
 a revelation or the result of inspiration. Mrs. Eddy makes no 
 claim to any inspiration that might not come to any person 
 who would undertake and pursue a course of study such as she 
 underwent in her search for light on the power that healed 
 her. 
 
 SPECIOUS ORTHODOX REASONING. 
 
 A fair example of the reasoning on which is based the as- 
 sumption that the age of miracles ceased with the lives of the 
 apostles, is found in Rev. Richard Watson's Biblical and Theo- 
 logical Dictionary, London, 1861. In that work the age of mira- 
 cles is regarded as having closed, with the second century. The 
 argument is substantially this: Peter and Paul died between 
 the years 66 and 67 of our era and John about the close of the 
 first century. They may have imparted the gift of working 
 miracles to others who may have survived to the end of the 
 century and that the gift was not renewed by its "blessed 
 aAithor." 
 
 The defect of this reasoning is plain. It is reasoning only 
 so far as the transmission by the three apostles named are 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 concerned. From that point it is pure assumption that the 
 successors did not and could not convey to others what had 
 been conveyed to them. 
 
 THE PRAYER GAUGE. 
 
 Some twenty-five years ago Prof. Tyndall proposed a 
 prayer test which was at the time made the subject of much 
 newspaper joking as the "prayer gauge." Tyndall proposed 
 that a certain number of sick persons be selected as subjects 
 of prayer for recovery of health and that the number who re- 
 covered, under certain conditions, should be regarded as show- 
 ing the efficacy or idleness of prayer. 
 
 Among those who took serious notice of this challenge 
 was Rev. R. L. Dabney, Professor of Divinity in the Union 
 Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church of the South 
 and subsequently of the University of Texas. Prof. Dabney de- 
 votes a somewhat lengthy chapter to Tyndall's taunt, in which 
 he shows that his church believes that prayers are answered 
 and the blessings prayed for are granted if the petitioner does 
 not "ask amiss." 
 
 SHAKER MARVELS. 
 
 P. W. Evans is the author of a history of the Shakers in 
 which several miraculous occurrences are recorded. As Shakers 
 are not regarded as Evangelical Christians, to quote their 
 miracles would not be fair in this work if they had not the en- 
 dorsement of 'orthodox Protestants. This endorsement was 
 strikingly given in the case of "Mother" Ann Lee, when ar- 
 raigned for blasphemy in England. She was brought before 
 four ministers of the established church on this charge and at 
 their request spoke for four hours in foreign tongues. The 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. 
 
 clergymen were learned linguists and declared that she 
 employed during those four hours seventy-two different 
 tongues or dialects. The little volume from which this is taken 
 is full of stories of miraculous happenings but, as they all rest 
 on Shaker evidence, they are not cited. 
 
 One is so remarkable, however, that it is given for quantity. 
 Evans says after the ministers had released Mother Ann and 
 those who were arraigned with her the mob of ostensible 
 Christians took them to a convenient spot and, having pro- 
 vided themselves with stones, they began pelting the Shakers. 
 Though within easy range and the mob large, the stones fell 
 harmlessly around the prisoners, not one of whom was hit 
 Some of the mob were terror stricken and fled at beholding 
 the miracle and the rest slunk away. 
 
 CREDULITY OF SKEPTICS. 
 
 It may seem foreign to this work to mention the story of 
 Heinrich Hensoldt, Ph. D., of his visit to the Grand Lama of 
 Thibet. He tells it in the October Arena for 1894. It is only 
 apropos of the credulity of the incredulous; of those who are 
 skeptical on all subjects except their peculiar fads. Hensoldt's 
 story is, in brief, that he found the "incarnate Buddha" to be 
 a boy apparently about eight years old, "certainly not over 
 nine," and he describes him as of wonderful beauty and intel- 
 ligence. He continues: 
 
 The Dalai Lama's gaze was that of an adept of the 
 highest order, and as I encountered those wonderful 
 eyes I knew and felt that I was in the presence of one 
 who could read my innermost thoughts. He addressed 
 me in my native German and moreover in a dialect 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 which I had not heard for many years and which he 
 could not have acquired by any process known to or- 
 dinary mortals. This is all the more remarkable when 
 it is considered that I had taken special precautions to 
 conceal my nationality. 
 
 This is enough of Dr. Hensoldt's wonderful tale, which 
 occupies not only several pages in the number here given, but 
 extends into other numbers of the magazine. It is somewhat 
 remarkable that nobody has to this day questioned Hensoldt's 
 veracity in any publication that I have been able to see. 
 
 THE LORD PROVIDED. 
 
 Members of the Christian Church, commonly called 
 'Campbellite," will recall the case of John Smith, one of their 
 early missionary preachers in what is now the Central West. 
 He told of his reaching Campbell's Ferry, in Kentucky, I 
 think, without money with which to pay for carrying himself 
 and his horse across the river. While he was meditating what 
 kind of appeal he could make to the ferryman, a woman came 
 down a by-path, approached him, handed him a silver quarter 
 dollar without a word of explanation and retired as silently as 
 she came. 
 
 I have been unable to find this anecdote in print, but I 
 have heard it so often that I assume it to be familiar to all the 
 disciples of Alexander Campbell and that some of them have 
 the verified form of the story. Smith always said that the 
 Lord provided that quarter because he was informed that the 
 ferryman hated preachers in general and Campbellites in par- 
 ticular and wouldn't have ferried him without the cash. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. j .- 
 
 DICTATION TO OMNIPOTENCE. 
 
 J. Boyd Kinnear, who is a sufficiently respectable writer to 
 have his matter printed in the Contemporary Review of De- 
 cember, 1879, Vol. XXXVI, page 625, said regarding miracu- 
 lous healing: 
 
 It cannot be a breach of natural laws if God should 
 
 effect it (cure) by any laws as yet unknown to man, 
 
 provided they are brought into play with no other 
 
 agency than the motion of matter. 
 
 This is not quoted here for its logic, but to show that be- 
 lievers in orthodoxy, in which class Mr. Kinnear appears to be, 
 did not all discredit miraculous healing. Mr. Kinnear's logic 
 is principally remarkable for its absence in his attempt to dic- 
 tate to omnipotence that He must work according to his (Kin- 
 near's) specifications and confine himself to the "agency of 
 the motion of matter." After thus attempting to limit the in- 
 finite, Mr. Kiunear enters upon an extensive argument to show 
 that the physical miracles of the Bible were all performed in 
 harmony with laws not yet discovered by man. 
 DISBELIEF AS ATHEISM. 
 
 James Gairdner, who is presumably an orthodox minister, 
 says in the Contemporary Review for June, 1876: 
 
 They who do not believe in a direct personal 
 
 agency in the ordinary uniformity can hardly be said 
 
 to have any genuine belief in God, at all. 
 
 This is said in reply to a Dr. Carpenter, who, in the Janu- 
 ary number of the same periodical, attempted to explain away 
 all supernatural agency in what are considered miracles. Mr. 
 Gairdner asks: 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Is it more superstitious to speak of certain phe- 
 nomena, which none of us can understand, as cases of 
 "demoniacal possession" than to call them lunacy? 
 
 WOULD PILLORY HUME. 
 
 David Hume, in giving reasons to a friend why he wrote 
 his essay on miracles, says the idea occurred to him while 
 conversing with a Jesuit at the college of La Pleche, in France. 
 The Jesuit having told of a recent miracle, Hume disputed him. 
 To his argument the Jesuit replied that it could have no solid- 
 ity because it operated as much against the Gospels as the 
 miracle. This conversation led to a train of thought, of which 
 the essay was the result. 
 
 That the essay was regarded as of peculiar force is evident 
 from an extract from Bishop Warburton's "railings," as an 
 eminent prelate of the Church of England characterized them. 
 Warburton said he was minded to "do justice to his arguments 
 against miracles." What his idea of justice was may be judged 
 from this, which follows closely on the words above quoted: 
 
 But does he deserve this notice? Is he known 
 amongst you? If his own weight keeps him down I 
 should be sorry to contribute to his advancement ex- 
 cept to the pillory. 
 
 What the essay was may be further inferred from the fact 
 that it is difficult, according to apparently good authority, to 
 find an edition of Hume's essays in England, from which that 
 essay has not been omitted, though all good libraries in the 
 United States contain unexpurgated editions. This opposition 
 from people who scoiited the idea that miracles were possible 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. 
 
 in their own day serves to show that their absurdity was as 
 great as their intolerance. 
 
 A MORAVIAN EXAMPLE. 
 
 "Tales and Sketches of Christian Life in Different Lands 
 and Ages" is the lengthy title to a small volume by Mrs. E. 
 Charles, author of "The Schonberg-Cotta Family" and other 
 semi-religious works. It depicts the rise of the sect known as 
 United Brethren or Maravians. That part of the book opens 
 with a conversation between Brother Gregory, the head of the 
 sect in Bohemia, nearly forty years after the martyrdom of 
 John Huss and his uncle, John Rockyzan, a secret leader of 
 the same, though he was, by the choice of the people, arch- 
 bishop of Prague, Bohemia, but unconfirmed by the Pope. 
 Rockyzan desire? to remain in the church the better to help 
 the Brethren, but Gregory argues: 
 
 We have no resource but to recognize those 
 amongst us whom God has endowed with gifts of gov- 
 erning and teaching and to trust Him for the result. 
 Our high-priest, our master, our bishop, our chief, is 
 none else than the living Son of God; our canons His 
 Word: our guide and counselor the Eternal Spirit. 
 
 Mrs. Charles' works were all apparently written for the 
 entertainment and instruction of youth. Though they do not 
 contain much in the way of stories of the miraculous, they con- 
 tain ir.uch that tends to teach Divine interposition in favor 
 of man for what appear to be rewards of righteousness or the 
 promotion of pious purposes. 
 
 Mrs. Charles' works ai e by no means singular in this re- 
 
146 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 gard. Juvenile literature intended for propagation of faith 
 generally contains so much that is miraculous in its nature 
 that it became a by- word among scoffers in the form of jests 
 about the wicked boy contradicting the books by escaping all 
 manner of perils while violating the Sabbath, while the vir- 
 tuous boy of the Sunday school books always died young. 
 
VARIED MARVELS. 
 
 TJNCLASSED WONDERS TAKEN FROM THE WRITINGS 
 OF PIOUS PROTESTANTS AND OTHER AUTHORITIES, 
 
 In "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief" Dr. Christlieb, Who 
 is described elsewhere, relates an account of miracles that 
 may almost be called modern. Dr. Christlieb tells of Hans 
 Egede, the first evangelical missionary to Greenland, healing 
 several natives, of grievous ailments, by miraculous means. 
 He also cites, on a page close to that containing the Green- 
 land story, instances of the miraculous provision for two mis- 
 sionaries in North America, Spangenberg and Zeisgeber. They 
 were nearly famished while traveling through a wilderness, 
 when they came to a clear stream. 
 
 Spangenberg bade his companion get out the fishing tackle 
 and cast a line into the stream. Zeisgeber reminded him that 
 it was the season when the fis-h had gone seaward and pointed 
 to the water, in which not a fish was visible. Spangenberg 
 told him to proceed, nevertheless, and he obeyed. The result 
 was so successful that it is compared to the miraculous draft 
 of fish in the gospel. 
 
 Christlieb also quotes from a memoir of Kleinschmidt, 
 published in lSt>6, an incident of a Christian convert in South 
 Africa, who, in 1858, instantly healed a comrade who was so 
 wounded in both legs that he could not walk. The convert 
 
148 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 bade him, in the name of Jesus, to arise and walk, which the 
 cripple instantly did. 
 
 Orthodox writers, as a rule, seem to have ignored all mod- 
 ern miracles. Ecclesiastical authority having once taken the 
 ground that the age of miracles had passed, the majority of 
 writers and lecturers seem to have bowed to the dogma and 
 closed their eyes to what seem to be well authenticated facts. 
 When one contemplates the studious efforts of even eminent 
 theological teachers and historians to suppress facts which, to- 
 say the least in their support, are as well authenticated as the 
 Gospels, it is no wonder that there is so little in collateral his- 
 tory to corroborate the evangelists. 
 
 Some of the most remarkable cases of miracles or wonders 
 are related by infidel writers, apparently for the purpose of 
 shewing that while they were wonders they were not miracles 
 in the sense that they were the result of Divine suspension of 
 natural laws or were produced by special interposition of 
 Providence for the occasion. In a book entitled "Supernatural 
 Religion," and published by Longmans & Greon, London, the 
 author, whose name is not disclosed in either of the two vol- 
 umes, devotes twenty-five pages to a summary of miracles re- 
 lated <f and by Christians of later days than the apodtles. 
 Those attributed to Gregory are the most marvelous and in 
 some respects far surpass any attributed to Jesus. One is that 
 two brothers, having quarreled over the proprietary right to a 
 lake, Gregory caused it to dry up ar?d become a fertile field. In 
 another he planted his staff at a spot where a river annually 
 overflowed its banks and caused great loss of life and property.. 
 
VARIED MARVELS. 
 
 The stick took root and became a tree, after which the river 
 never overflowed. 
 
 Much space is devoted to the miracles asserted to have 
 been wrought by St. Augustine, but in both cases the author 
 only quotes to discredit these accounts, while such Christian 
 writers as Bruce of Glasgow and Fisher of Yale University re- 
 fer to "Catholic" miracles as unworthy of credit. 
 
 Hume in his essay on "Human Understanding of Miracles" 
 relates several of the Janseriist, Abbe Paris. These he says 
 were proved to the satisfaction of a large number of French 
 cures (pastors) before a bishops' court in Paris under the eye 
 of Cardinal Noailles, but Hume calls them impostures. Hume 
 was an infidel, but in this was in harmony with many, in fact 
 most of Christian authors and preachers. 
 
 The man known as the Abbe Paris was born in 1727 and 
 was not a priest. He had received deacon's orders but was not 
 satisfied with the papal bull "Unigenitus" and deemed it wrong 
 to receive full ordination. He had resigned his patrimony to 
 his brother in anticipation of taking orders and hence was very 
 poor. He retired to a part of the city inhabited by other very 
 poor people and supported himself by making stockings. His 
 scanty earnings he shared with the poor, to whom he minis- 
 tered in every way in his power. It was generally believed 
 that his voluntary privations greatly shortened his life. 
 
 Though history shows that Protestant writers have, ever 
 :since the Reformation, made great efforts to destroy the belief 
 in miracles, that belief has risen among them with great force 
 .and at comparatively brief intervals. The healings attributed 
 to the Abbe Paris may be properly classed as Protestant, as 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 may also the visions and prophesies of Isabel Vincent in 
 France in 1G86. Of those visions and prophesies little need be 
 said here beyond the fact that the pastors of the fugitive and 
 persecuted French Protestants; believed them to have been in- 
 spired, and when a century later the French revolution oc- 
 curred it was hailed as the fulfillment of one of her prophesies. 
 
 A LUTHERAN WITNESS. 
 
 Heinrich Steffens was enough of a literary light to have 
 several pages devoted to him in "Outlines of German Litera- 
 ture/' a book which reviews the work of typical German 
 writers. He was won away from Lutheranism by "that nega- 
 tive school of German philosophy whose tendency is to 
 destroy the foundations of religion," as the compilers of the 
 work say. Steffens was reconverted, however, and in his work, 
 "How I Became a Lutheran Once More," he says: 
 
 Despite all the progress of science, an obscure be- 
 lief in the supernatural underlies all our clearer no- 
 tions, induced from observations respecting only the 
 ordinary course of events. 
 
 * * * 
 
 This experience, founded on acquaintance with 
 the ordinary course of events, and most valuable 
 in its way, does not warrant us in affirming that 
 such laws of nature as we know are absolute 
 and supreme. Where our own reasonings are con- 
 fronted with an event, for which our limited experi- 
 ence can assign no adequate cause, it is fair to con- 
 clude that, as the cause of the event itself is for us mys- 
 
VARIED MARVELS. j c t 
 
 terious, so the circumstances attending that event may 
 be mysterious also. 
 
 * * * 
 
 We cannot destroy faith in the supernatural* 
 Driven from one place it will reappear in another. It 
 might be better to find for it a safe home, a proper 
 sphere, and this home, I would suggest, is found in 
 Christianity. 
 
 MAN ABOVE NATURE. 
 
 Rev. Lucius Curtis had an article in the Andover Review 
 for August, 1892, on ''Man Above Nature," in which he com- 
 bats the positions of Spencer, Huxley et id and, after reviewing 
 the power manifested by man, says: 
 
 We have now seen that the economy of Nature 
 which gives to the highest order of force on a given 
 plane the prerogative to rule all the forces of that 
 plane by its own law, assigns to man, as having rational 
 energy, the prerogative to rule all the forces of his or- 
 ganism by the law of rational life. We have seen also 
 that this is not the law of any natural force, but a 
 spiritual law for the direction of natural forces, and 
 that this has sway only as it is freely accepted and 
 administered by a personal power through functions 
 that transcend those of nature and are spiritual in their 
 character. 
 
INFIDEL TESTIMONY. 
 
 HUXLEY AND LECKY ON THE REALITY OF WONDER- 
 FUL CURES. 
 
 Prof. T. H. Huxley, in the Popular Science Monthly of 
 September, 1889, in an article on the same subject, speaks of 
 the wonderful work of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, 
 whom he compares to the Apostle Paul for what he did and 
 endured and whose veracity and honesty he fully endorses. 
 The most wonderful of his works is quoted from his auto- 
 biography. It is of the healing of an insane woman for whom 
 the medical men could do nothing. She was so violent that it 
 required many persons to hold her and a doctor was about to 
 "let her blood" when Fox interfered, bade people release her 
 and restored her to sanity instantly, it is implied. The woman 
 thus healed is said to have "lived long in the truth. 1 * 
 
 The same magazine in April, 1878, quotes Lecky, the his- 
 torian, thus: 
 
 There is no contradiction involved in the belief 
 that spiritual beings of power and wisdom immeasura- 
 bly transcending our own exist, or that, existing, they 
 might, by the normal exercise of their powers, perform 
 feats as far surpassing the understanding of the most 
 gifted of mankind, as the electric telegraph and the 
 prediction of an eclipse surpass the faculties of a 
 savage. 
 
 This remark of Lecky is applied to a debate in the Prus- 
 sian parliament over the Marpingen miracles, but those mira- 
 cles, being of the discredited Catholic class, only serve here 
 
INFIDEL TESTIMONY. 
 
 to show that Lecky was more liberal than his countrymen in 
 general toward those whose belief differed from their own. 
 
 The London Saturday Review, from which Lecky's words 
 were copied, remarked of miracle-cures that, whatever may be 
 thought of them, the records of cures of supposed hydrophobia 
 by appeal to the imagination by religious relics, were well 
 attested. It quotes Sir James Stephens in attestation of such 
 healings, Lecky on other miracles and even Voltaire to the 
 same effect. 
 
 SKEPTICS TAXING CREDULITY. 
 
 It will not escape the critical reader that these and nearly 
 all other hypotheses advanced by men who wrote several cen- 
 turies after the events, draw as heavily upon human credulity 
 as do the Gospel accounts of miracles. 
 
 Then these critics, who disbelieve the Gospel as to mira- 
 cles, discredit each other by each offering a different hypothe- 
 sis. Some seem willing to believe in some of the miracles or 
 in the miraculous to a degree. This naturally causes the ques- 
 tion: "If a miracle of lesser degree can be wrought, why not 
 of any degree? If one can believe in the supernatural in any 
 degree, why not believe in it to any extent?" It would seem 
 reasonable that if what is viewed as natural law could be sus- 
 pended to permit the immaculate conception and birth of 
 Jesus, it could also be suspended to raise the dead. If the 
 maxim of common law is as good in physics or metaphysics as 
 in jurisprudence, then either all the Gospel accounts of mira- 
 cles are true or none of them are. This maxim, which is the 
 crystallization of the wisdom of lawyers, and is founded on 
 the observations during centuries, says: "False in one thing, 
 false in all." 
 
TRACTARIAN MIRACLES. 
 
 THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY'S "SKETCHES FROM 
 IJFE" CONTAIN THEM. 
 
 A volume of 515 pages, published by the American Tract 
 Society in 1871, and entitled "Sketches From Life," contains a 
 large number of stories illustrative of the efficacy of prayer. 
 In at least two places of the volume the authors of certain 
 articles say the age of miracles is past, even though the inci- 
 dents related are in the nature, at least, of miracles. One story, 
 entitled "The Cut Finger," is either that of a miracle- or else 
 it is a falsehood. 
 
 The story is that a boy four years old had the ill luck to 
 have one of his fingers cut off in a hay cutter. The mother 
 clapped it on and kept it there until a surgeon arrived. The 
 doctor bound up the wound in the hope of saving the finger 
 and directed that the dressing be not disturbed for six days. 
 During that time the child suffered greatly and when the doctor 
 removed the bandages the finger dropped off. The mother re- 
 placed it and the doctor told her he would call with another 
 surgeon soon to see what could be done. They did not arrive 
 until twenty-four hours later, when, directed by his senior and 
 superior in skill, the doctor again dressed the wound, and more 
 skillfully, it is inferred rather than asserted. 
 
 All the while the mother was praying fervently and in- 
 cessantly for the restoration of the child whom she had des- 
 
TACTARIAN MIRACLES. l - - 
 
 tined for the pulpit. When again the bandages were removed: 
 the severed finger was found to have reunited itself to the- 
 hand, but had not healed straight and the surgeon advised that 
 it be amputated. The mother resisted, and when the story was- 
 written the boy had become a man and approved his mother's 
 action. The author of the story intimates the opinion a mira- 
 cle was not wrought, but says none could convince the pious 
 mother that her prayers had not done more than the skill of 
 the surgeons. 
 
 The volume contains in all nearly 200 stories of answers: 
 to prayers by which those who prayed were relieved of sick- 
 ness, debt and other distress; of marvelous conversions of 
 criminals and drur.k'ards and even of a pirate who became so- 
 penitent that he surrendered when, but for hearing a woman 
 at prayer on a vessel he had captured, he would have slain the 
 whole crew and passengers. 
 
 A sketch of the life of Francis Marion, the rough rider of 
 South Carolina, says God saved him from death by shipwreck 
 for his greater work, that of aiding in winning independence 
 for America. 
 
 Another miracle story is that of Jacob Manfred, whose 
 residence and the age in which he lived are unmentioned. 
 While wealthy he adopted a friendless boy, who, when he grew 
 up, disappeared. Manfred lost his wealth when old age made 
 him and his wife decrepit. Just as a rude, unfeeling officer was 
 about to take the poor .old couple to the workhouse, a stranger 
 appeared, announced himself to be the adopted boy who had 
 won wealth abroad and returned to provide for his benefactor 
 and benefactress in their declining years. 
 
156 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Like the majority of the stories related in Mr. Schuh's 
 volume, which is mentioned -elsewhere in this work, those in 
 this sketch book are not so authenticated as to command much 
 attention. Were it published by a less responsible or less well 
 known concern than the American Tract Society, little heed 
 would be paid to them. They are all written in a style that 
 shows them to have been intended for juvenile reading, and as 
 they all inculcate a belief that prayers are answered by the 
 granting of the petitions of suppliants, it seems conclusive evi- 
 dence that the Protestant sects that maintain the American 
 Tract Society are teaching that the age of miracles is not 'past. 
 
A LAYMAN'S MIRACLES. 
 
 VALENTINE GREATRAKES' FEATS AS RECORDED IN 
 
 THE ROYAL SOCIETY MEMOIRS. 
 
 Valentine Greatrakes, who was born in Ireland in 1628, is 
 accredited with the miraculous gift of curing the King's evil 
 (scrofula) by the combined means of laying on of hands and 
 prayer. In the "Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography," 
 edited by a number of men whose learning is attested by the 
 addenda of M. A., LL.D., etc., to their names, Greatrakes is 
 said to have performed many marvelous cures. The article in 
 the dictionary which is credited to Birch's Memoirs of the 
 Royal Society, says Greatrakes was a man of unimpeachable 
 integrity, incapable of perpetrating an imposture. Though he 
 cured vast numbers of poor people he failed to heal Lady Con- 
 way, though he made a journey to England for the purpose. 
 He did not exercise his power for gain, as he had an ample 
 estate, which was generally crowded with people seeking his 
 aid after he made it generally known that he possessed suck 
 wonderful powers. His practice fell into disrepute in England, 
 in 1666, after his examination before the Royal Society, and 
 though he survived until about 1690, the chronicler of the 
 society says no more was heard of him after 1666. The account 
 does not say at what time Greatrakes began to exercise his 
 powers, but leaves it to be inferred, from the fact that he first 
 communicated his belief in himself to his wife. Let it be as- 
 sumed that this was when he was thirty years old, or in 1658,. 
 and it would appear that he must have practiced in the neigh- 
 borhood of eight years. 
 
LIMITING GOD'S POWER. 
 
 PECULIAR THEORY OF FRANCES POWER COBBE ON 
 ANSWER TO PRAYER. 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe, who has published several volumes 
 on moral and religious subjects within a few years, issued in 
 1883 a volume entitled "Religious Duty." In this is a chapter 
 devoted to prayer, in the opening of which she repeats what 
 she said in her "Theory of Morals," viz: "That the law of 
 spirit is that light and strength are bestowed on man by God 
 according as the latter places himself further from or nearer 
 to their source/' She then proceeds: 
 
 The plant which is sickly, weak and white, growing 
 in the darkness, acquires health and verdure when we 
 bring it into the sunshine. The magnetic bar which 
 has lost its power regains it when we hang it in the 
 plane of the meridian. Thus (whatever other prayer 
 may be), the prayer for spiritual good is the direct 
 mode of obtaining assistance to our virtue, in accord- 
 ance with the fixed laws of Providence. 
 * * * 
 
 It will be seen here that I assume it to be proved 
 that there is an actual answer given by God to our re- 
 quests for His assistance. I assume that the strength 
 which comes to us in prayer is not merely a subjective 
 phenomenon, the strength acquired by the will by its 
 own act of excercise. ********* 
 
LIMITING GOD'S POWER. 
 
 There is a natural supply for spiritual as for corporeal 
 wants, so we have spiritual facilities to lay hold on 
 God and supply spiritual wants. 
 This last sentence the lady attributes to Theodore Parker, 
 
 in a footnote. After arguing the correctness of these views 
 
 she says: 
 
 All this is natural, normal". It is not a miracle that 
 the Omnipresent is close to us, that the Omniactive 
 moves our hearts. It is not strange that the Infinite 
 Father, who bears us in his everlasting arms, should 
 supply the cravings of our immortal souls while He 
 feeds the ravens and gives the young lions their prey. 
 It would be a miracle if it were otherwise. 
 
 The argument, then, stands thus: He who doubts 
 that God hears prayer, denies that we have proof of 
 the fact. But what proof would satisfy him? If he say 
 "None/' this would imply that there is an essential 
 absurdity in the case, but we must call on him to point 
 out the absurdity since we cannot see it. But if he ad- . 
 mit that the thing is not, in itself, absurd and self- 
 contradictory, then it seems to me he cannot ask any 
 other proof than exactly that which abounds, name- 
 ly, the unanimous testimony of spiritual persons to the 
 efficacy of prayer. 
 The gifted authoress carries out this idea, but confines it 
 
 strictly to prayer for spiritual gifts the prayer for light and 
 
 grace and says: 
 
 To the soul which has reached that stage of spirit- 
 ual life wherein such culmination of worship takes 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 place, it is revealed that God does actually hear, accept 
 and bless, ay, in a certain sense (if we may dare sym- 
 bolize His awful nature) desire the prayer of His child. 
 After this and much more of evidence that she has a very 
 full appreciation of the majesty, sublimity and omniscience of 
 God, Miss Cobbe on the next page proceeds to put a limit on 
 i he power of Omnipotence thus: 
 
 Does philosophy warrant us to expect that God will 
 grant any prayer for physical good, for abundant har- 
 vests, favorable weather, recovery from sickness or so 
 on? 
 
 This question she answers in the negative in several pages 
 in which she employs arguments that, were one to take the 
 trouble to remodel them, would be equally forcible against her 
 position that God hears and answers prayer for spiritual good. 
 She argues that to answer such prayers would be to make His 
 laws operate unequally and hence unjustly, which is not to be 
 considered. In fortification of this position she says "prayer 
 begins where science stops and as science advances prayer re- 
 treats." 
 
 Miss Cobbe's orthodoxy, in this respect, is very evident 
 and she admits that God made everything and governs every- 
 thing, but still denies that He has any other power over the 
 physical world than that indicated in those laws of nature of 
 which man is informed. That is not her way of expressing the 
 opinion. She employs some very subtle reasoning, based upon 
 what she knows, in an effort to prove that God has no powers 
 of which human philosophers are unaware. Miss Cobbe was 
 not orthodox in the usually accepted sense. She underwent 
 
LIMITING GOD'S POWER. 
 
 great tribulation in consequence of her meditations on religious 
 subjects and, after reading and studying widely on the subject 
 and many phases of it, she became an ardent admirer of the 
 late Theodore Parker and published an edition of his writings. 
 Miss Cobbe is an Irish woman of high education and seems to 
 have inherited ample means to enable her to pursue her studies 
 all her life. Though she is not an orthodox Protestant, these 
 extracts from her writings are quoted for what they are worth. 
 
PHILOSOPHERS' OPINIONS. 
 
 SOME EMINENT SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE REBUKED 
 SCIENTIFIC SKEPTICISM. 
 
 In the course of my researches I have consulted few works 
 that treated of spiritualism, but have avoided them as foreign 
 to my purpose. By a singular error in the transposition of 
 figures in a memorandum of library numbers I got a little work 
 by Alfred Russell Wallace, an English author of some note, 
 "On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism." The first thing that 
 struck me in this book was a page of quotations, which I copy, 
 viz: 
 
 A presumptuous skepticism that rejects facts with- 
 out examination of their truth is, in some respects, 
 more injurious than unquestioning credulity. Hum- 
 boldt. 
 
 One good experiment is of more value than the in- 
 genuity of a brain like Newton's. Facts are more use- 
 ful when they contradict, than when they support, re- 
 ceived theories. Sir Humphrey Davy. 
 
 The perfect observer in any department of science 
 will have his eyes, as it were, opened, that they may 
 be struck at r>nce by any occurrence which,, according 
 to received theories, ought not to happen, for these are 
 the facts which serve as clues to new discoveries. Sir 
 John Herschell. 
 
PHILOSOPHERS' OPINIONS. 
 
 Before experience itself can be used with ad van- ' 
 tage, .there is one preliminary step to make which de- 
 pends entirely upon ourselves: It is the absolute dis- 
 missal and clearing of the mind of all prejudice, and 
 the determination to stand or fall by the result of a 
 direct appeal to facts' in the first instance, and of strict 
 logical deduction from them afterwards. Sir John 
 Herschell. 
 
 With regard to the miracle question, I can only 
 say that the word "impossible" is not, to my mind, ap- 
 plicable to matters of philosophy. That the possibili- 
 ties of nature are infinite is an aphorism with which I 
 am wont to worry my friends. Prof. Huxley. 
 I cannot resist the impulse to here remark that those 
 clerymen and other writers who have employed the methods 
 that skeptical philosophers have used against all miracles, in 
 their battling against the belief in modern thaumaturgy, that 
 it would be better for their reputations as logicians were they 
 to also adopt the liberality of the "infidel philosophers." 
 
 Mr. Wallace devotes much attention to Hume's account of 
 the Jansenist miracles and exposes some glaring contradic- 
 tions in his work. Placing the contradictory passages suffi- 
 ciently near to make their incongruity striking, he shows the 
 "infidel" historian and philosopher to have indulged in what 
 is characterized in the American trick politician as "faking." 
 
DIVINE WRATH. 
 
 WHAT ORTHODOX PEOPLE BELIEVE OF GOD'S VEN- 
 GEANCE ON INFIDELS. 
 
 Take up a volume of sermons by T. DeWitt T'almage and see 
 if you do not find evidences that he believed in modern mira- 
 cles. In a volume published in 1886 is one on the topic: "Why 
 are Satan and Sin Permitted?" In this he expresses the 
 opinion that God's interposition brought about the downfall 
 of "Boss" Tweed of New York City and the death by accident 
 of William the Conqueror. In the same sermon he speaks of 
 the establishment of an infidel college in that indefinite region, 
 "the far West. It languished a short time and then the Pres- 
 byterians gained possession of it, and Talmage attributes the 
 failure and change of ownership to God's influence if not direct 
 interposition. 
 
 This recalls what was uttered from many pulpits after the 
 massacre at New Ulm, Minnesota, during the Indian war in the 
 fifth decade of this century. New Ulm was settled by German 
 infidels, who made a law that no minister of the Gospel should 
 be suffered to remain in that place. When the Indians de- 
 stroyed the town Christian ministers in large numbers, and in. 
 many states, said God used the Indians as instruments of his 
 wrath to rebuke or revenge the infidelity of the people who 
 wouldn't suffer a church to be built or a minister to reside In 
 the town. This sentiment was expressed at the meeting of the 
 Dakota Mission conference of the M. E. Church in 1884, and 
 was Lot disputed by any of the assembled ministers. 
 
MARK OF ARETHUSA. 
 
 A PROTESTANT HISTORIAN ACCEPTS ONE ACCOUNT OF 
 POST-APOSTOLIC MIRACLES. 
 
 Millman's History of Christianity, pp. 25 to 35, contains 
 an account of Mark of Arethusa being accused of having de- 
 stroyed a Jewish temple and being ordered to rebuild it. As 
 Mark was as poor as other early Christian apostles, the order 
 could not be carried out, but the Jews undertook the work 
 themselves. While they were engaged in clearing the ruins a 
 series of explosions occurred which drove the workers out re- 
 peatedly and defeated them in their efforts to rebuild. 
 
 On page 27 the learned historian indulges in reflections on 
 the relative credibility of accounts of miracles addressed to 
 terror and those that appeal to calmer emotions. It is evident 
 that his conclusion is in favor of the latter class, while he does 
 not discredit the other. Further along in his work, page 165 
 and beyond, he quotes Augustine and Ambrose to the effect 
 that miracles had ceased during their early days, but he also 
 shows that both of these fathers professed to have wrought 
 miracles. 
 
 In doing this Millman, like White and some others, seems 
 to forget that they have proved both sides of the question, as 
 he expresses no doubt of the genuineness of the history he 
 quotes. Those who argue after that fashion may never have 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 read the rule that what proves equally well for both sides 
 proves nothing. 
 
 In this case Millman's position is only valuable as the tes- 
 timony of an adverse witness giving unwilling evidence that 
 he and his confreres make an exception to what they would 
 have people believe is the invariable rule, whenever they find 
 miracles that strike their fancy. 
 
A MORMON MIRACLE. 
 
 A DAY OF FASTING RESTORES HEALTH WHERE THE 
 DOCTORS ADMIT THAT THEY ARE POWERLESS. 
 
 As I have included in this collection of wonders a few 
 miracles that I have classed as non-religious and some from 
 the Shakers, who, being Unitarians, are not considered Evan- 
 gelical, I may also be indulged in making a Mormon miracle 
 a feature of the work The story reached me after my first 
 "copy" was in the hands of the printer and I have not had 
 time to get the particulars or have the main story verified by 
 the authorities. My informant is the person who taught the 
 public school in Annabella, Sevier county, Utah; a non-Mor- 
 mon and not a member of any other church. The story in 
 brief is this: 
 
 Mrs. Hattie Stewart had given birth to a child in 1896 and 
 all went apparently well. After she had been confined to her 
 bed six weeks I first heard of the case on the death of the 
 child. I visited Mrs. Stewart at the request of her friends and 
 found her greatly wasted and almost in a state of exhaustion. 
 She lingered under a doctor's care nearly three months and 
 then the physicians gave up the case as one for whom their 
 skill was of no avail. 
 
 At this point the bishop and elders of Annabella began 
 visiting Mrs. Stewart and appointed a fast day for the purpose 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 of benefiting her. I heard of the appointment and gladly joined 
 in the effort, knowing it could do no harm to either patient or 
 f asters and feeling that if prayer could be efficacious it would 
 be as likely to be so in her case as any. I explained the fast 
 day and its purpose to the children and they became enthusias- 
 tic in the cause. 
 
 When the day arrived, I think it was the day after I an- 
 nounced it to them, fully two-thirds of my thirty odd pupils 
 came to school fasting. They didn't even drink water, and out 
 of the 350 adult inhabitants or thereabouts, fully 300 fasted 
 half the day and 250 until 4 p. m., the hour appointed. 
 
 Among the few non-Mormons in the village there were 
 some who secretly scouted the idea that the fasting could have 
 any effect and some declared that the fasters would harm them- 
 selves. Though I remained there several months after the 
 event, I heard of no ill effects, while I know that Mrs. Stewart 
 recovered her health and the people of Annabella know it and 
 believe her recovery is d-ue to their prayers. 
 
 Although the extraordinary events recorded in this chapter 
 cannot be called Protestant, they are so interesting in them- 
 selves and are so nearly miraculous as -to merit a place in this 
 work as contradicting the assumption that the age of miracles 
 is plast. 
 
WHAT ARE MIRACLES? 
 
 SOME DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS OF THE TERM 
 BY DIFFERENT AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Lexicographers define miracles as event* or effects con- 
 trary to the established course of things or the known laws of 
 nature; supernatural events or events transcending the ordin- 
 ary laws by which the universe is governed. 
 
 Among the ablest defenders of the miraculous origin of 
 Christianity is Archbishop Trench of Dublin. On page 9 of his 
 "Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord," a work republished in 
 the United States by the Tibbals Book Company of New York, 
 the Archbishop thus defines a miracle: 
 
 An extraordinary Divine casualty, and not that 
 ordinary whicn we acknowledge everywhere and in 
 everything: belongs then to the essence of a miracle; 
 powers of God other than those which have always 
 been working; such indeed as most seldom or never 
 have been working before. The unresting activity of 
 God which at other times hides and conceals iUeif be- 
 hind the veil of what we term natural laws, does in ihe 
 miracle unveil itself; it steps out from its concealment 
 and the hand which works is laid bare. Beside and be- 
 yond the ordinary operations of nature, higher powers 
 (higher, not as coming from a higher source, but as 
 bearing upon higher end) intrude and make themselves 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 felt even at the very springs and sources of her power. 
 On page 1! he further speaks of miracles thus: 
 
 But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither 
 is it against nature. That language, however uncom- 
 mon, is wholly unsatisfactory, wfcich speaks of these 
 wonderful works of God as violations of natural law. 
 Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we 
 know, they are, but not contrary to it. 
 
 What says Christian Science of miracles? On page 582 of 
 Science and Health they are defined as "divinely natural." On 
 page 28 miracles are treated of as in accordance with God's 
 law, a demonstration of "the superiority of spiritual power 
 over material resistance." On page 249 miracles are said to 
 be impossible in science, which teaches that the highest mani- 
 festation of life or truth is not supernatural, but from the 
 divine nature whose laws are superior to material laws, and 
 miracles are but the natural demonstrations of this Divine 
 power." 
 
 Christian Science holds ttiat the miracles of Jesus did not 
 especially belong to a dispensation that has ended, but that 
 they illustrate a divine principle that is always operative, but 
 which human theories cannot explain or interpret. 
 
 AFRAID OF A WORD. 
 
 In most of the works from which T have quoted or to which 
 I have referred as of orthodox Protestant authority, there seems 
 to be a studied avoidance of .the word "miracle" as applied to 
 modern events that come under the definitions quoted herein. 
 It seems to have become a settled habit with those who defend 
 
WHAT ARE MIRACLES? 
 
 the miraculous origin of Christianity, yet declare that the age 
 of miracles is past. In the course of an argument in support 
 of the miracles of the Gospel against those who assailed them, 
 Archbishop Trench says on page 49 of his work on "The Mira- 
 cles of Our Lord:" 
 
 The existence of false cycles of miracles should no 
 more cast suspicion upon all or cause to doubt those 
 which present themselves with marks of the time, than 
 the appearance of a parhelion fore-running the sun 
 should cause us to deny that he was traveling up from 
 beneath the horizon, for which, rather, it is an evidence. 
 This argument the prelate seems to think powerful against 
 the heathen philosophers and those modern infidels who em- 
 ploy the alleged miracles of Apollonius of Tyana to discredit 
 the Gospel accounts of those performed by Jesus of Nazajreth. 
 The learned prelate does not seem to have foreseen that his 
 argument would ever be employed by those whom the priests 
 of his church now condemn as deluders or the deluded. 
 
WHY THEY ARE INCENSED. 
 
 EVIDENCES THAT FEAR, NOT DISBELIEF, CAUSES AT- 
 TACKS ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 The Church would never have attacked Christian Science 
 if its author had confined her efforts to the healing of disease, 
 .and the doctors would not have assailed it had she simply 
 labored to teach a new theory in religion or organize a new 
 sect. Doctors and ministers do not agree well, as classes, but 
 as Mrs. Eddy has invaded the fields of both they join forces to 
 attack her. The ministers are rather less unmanly than the 
 doctors in their attacks because they generally make open as- 
 saults, while the doctors act covertly, through legislatures, 
 coroners' juries and through the bigotry of the ignorant. 
 
 In this the history of Christian Science resembles the early 
 history of Christianity. If Jesus had not attempted to reform 
 the religion of His day the. priests would not have denounced 
 Him. The priests and lawyers of that day possessed nearly all 
 the learning and they seem to have been afflicted with fear like 
 that which is taking possession of the priests and doctors of 
 to-day. The physicians of apostolic days do not seem to have 
 joined in the persecution of Christ and his followers. The doc- 
 tors with whom Jesus disputed in the synagogue were not phy- 
 sicians, but teachers doctors of the law or lawyers like Saul 
 of Tarsus. It is fajr to assume that Jesus did not interfere with 
 
WHY THEY ARE INCENSED. j-- 
 
 thc-ir financial interests in healing the sick and raising the 
 dead or they would have aided in raising the mob that insisted 
 on Jesus being punished under the civil law for treason, when 
 the real complaint against him was heresy, of which the Roman 
 law took no jurisdiction. The heresy consisted of efforts to 
 make the Jewish religion practical instead of theoretical; to 
 make it a religion of deeds as well as of creed. 
 
 There is nothing your average priest, preacher or minister 
 dreads and hates more than an attempt to reduce religion to 
 practice, unless it is the person who makes the attempt and de- 
 mands that the preachers exemplify their sincerity by their 
 practices. This is about as true of the present as of the past. 
 The reasons they do not instigate mobs to persecute Mrs. Eddy 
 and her followers are that the people are not as easily led as 
 they were in those old days; that the clergy are not united 
 either as to what constitutes heresy or what constitutes true 
 religion, and that the laws of the land forbid. The last reason 
 is the result of the too free exercise of priestly influence in 
 causing persecution for opinion's sake and is not attributable 
 to the reduction to practice of that precept of Jesus that the 
 greatest of virtues is charity. 
 
SCOURGED TO THE PULPIT. 
 
 A NONOGENARIAN MINISTER WHOM GOD CONSTRAINED 
 TO ENTER THE PULPIT. 
 
 Rev. J. C. Holbrook, D. D., LL.D., now over ninety years 
 old. was for more than half a century a Congregational minis- 
 ter. He was the first editor of the Congregational Herald of 
 Chicago, where he was also pastor of a church during two years 
 or more. He issued in 1897 "Recollections of a Nonogenarian," 
 in which is incorporated an autobiography. In this the vener- 
 able divine, who has for several years lived in retirement in 
 Stockton, California, says his mother's prayers caused him to 
 become a minister. He describes his career up to his entry of 
 the ministry and says "though the answer (to her prayers) was 
 delayed awhile, were at last answered and for that I shall be 
 ever grateful to her and to Him. who answers prayer." 
 
 Further along he tells of his success as a young man in 
 politics and the probability of its continuance had he con- 
 tinued. "But God had other and better things in regard to me." 
 And in returning to the subject he repeats: "As I have said, 
 God had something better for me than a political career." 
 
 On page 42 he says of his membership in the church of Dr. 
 Lyman Beecher of Boston: "It was part of God's appointed 
 preparation of me for my subsequent professional career." 
 
 On page 53, in treating of the successful establishment of 
 an insane asylum at Brattleboro, Vt, in which enterprise he 
 was an active agent, he says: 
 
 But this is only one of a multitude of illustrations 
 
SCOURGED TO THE PULPIT. 
 
 which history affords that, in the providence of God, 
 vast and beneficial results have flowed from what 
 seemed to human eyes very insignificant beginnings. 
 Let us not "despise the day of small things." No 
 benevolent act, however small, is performed in vain, 
 and we may confidently expect the blessing of God on 
 any enterprise undertaken for His glory and the good 
 of mankind. 
 
 Dr. Hoi brook has the deep satisfaction of having been the 
 first person to introduce Henry Ward Beecher to the public. 
 That was after his return to Vermont from Boston, when, after 
 engaging O. S. Fowler to lecture on temperance, that gentle- 
 man, who had as yet no fame, recommended his college class- 
 mate, Beecher, to whom Mr. Holbrook paid $10, the first money 
 young Beecher had ever earned as a lecturer. 
 
 Some passages in Dr. Holbrook's book are very affecting, 
 especially those in which he tells of the death of his sons and 
 his first wife; his suffering from nostalgia; his determination 
 to return to the East from Davenport, Iowa, whither he had 
 migrated with the intention of becoming a farmer. Regarding 
 all this, after saying he decided to return to the East, he says: 
 
 But such was not the will of God. He had been 
 preparing me for a life-work different from that I an- 
 ticipated, and in part for this purpose broke up my 
 family. 
 
 And now occurred, in accordance with His plans, 
 one of the most important providential interpositions 
 in my affairs, of which I have so many to record, and 
 which changed my whole subsequent life. 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 Dr. Hoi brook then tells how he was led to Dubuque by a 
 circuitous route and & rare combination of circumstances that 
 culminated in a call to the pastorate of a Presbyterian church; 
 its change to Congregational; his success there from 1842 until 
 1852; his marriage -to his second wife, to whom he says he was 
 "most providentially directed, as fifty-two years of experience 
 in our after united life have abundantly proven." 
 
 The room to give all of the venerable doctor's views on 
 special providences cannot be spared here. These extracts are 
 sufficient to show that one eminently respectable Congrega- 
 tionalist, who has heard two generations of Beechers preach; 
 whose devotion to his church has earned him his learned titles 
 from two different colleges, believes in the miraculous and has 
 left enduring evidence of that belief. As the book was pub- 
 lished at the request of the Monday Club of San Francisco and 
 vicinity, which club is composed of orthodox ministers; which 
 request was supplemented by like requests. from other minis- 
 ters, it cannot but be regarded as sound orthodoxy. One rea- 
 son why so much space is devoted to it here is that a minister 
 of the denomination to which Dr. Hoi brook belongs, and ap- 
 parently an intimate friend of the venerable divine, recently 
 indulged in a lengthy attack upon Christian Science and de- 
 rided its author as "ill-brained and ill-trained" for expressing 
 opinions that to an impartial reader would seem less incon- 
 sistent with reverence for the omniscience and loving kindness 
 of God than Dr. Holbrook's idea that God deprived his first 
 wife and second child of life in order to constrain him to devote 
 himself to preaching the Gospel. 
 
DEBT PAID MIRACULOUSLY. 
 
 It would appear from the character of some books that are 
 published for the use of preachers that they are expected to 
 believe stories of the miraculous even without the verification 
 prescribed by good theological authorities who doubt. "Anec- 
 dotes Illustrative of New Testament Texts" is the title of one 
 volume of the "Clerical Library," published by A. C. Armstrong 
 & Son, New York, "for the clergy and students of all denomina- 
 tions." To judge from the appearance of the volume I found 
 in a public library, it had been thoroughly used by one clergy- 
 man, who marked several passages. No name of author or 
 compiler appears and few of the anecdotes have even the name 
 of those to whom they are attributed as experiences. 
 
 In this volume are numerous stories of answer to prayer 
 wherein the petitioners were delivered from evils of various 
 kinds. One, attributed to Rev. Frederick Robinson, residence 
 not given, tells how he escaped a flogging at school by the 
 power of prayer, and this is attributed to Dr. Krummacher of 
 Elberfeld, Prussia, who has written considerable theological 
 matter: 
 
 A poor man in the neighborhood was sitting at his 
 door early in the morning, weeping. His heart cried to 
 heaven, for he was expecting an officer to distrain him 
 for debt. While thus sitting a little bird fluttered into 
 
178 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 his cottage. The man closed the door and caught the 
 bird, which at once began to sing what he imagined to 
 be the melody of his favorite hymn, "Fear thou not 
 when darkness reigns," and the thought comforted him 
 Suddenly a knock came at the door and a servant 
 of a lady came in to recover the escaped bird. In a few 
 minutes after he surrendered the sweet singer, the ser- 
 vant returned with the thanks of his mistress and a 
 sum of money. When the officer came the debtor 
 handed him the money the exact amount of the debt, 
 saying: "Here is the amount. God has sent it to me. 
 Leave me in peace." 
 
BELIEF IN 1899. 
 
 MOODY AND CALIFORNIAN CLERGYMEN ON PRAYER 
 FOR RAIN, 
 
 The great valleys of California suffered a severe drouth 
 during the grain season of 1898 and farmers lost vast amounts. 
 The winter of 1898-9 threatened another season of drouth. Only 
 five inches of water had fallen for the season 1897-8 and up to 
 the close of 1898 no more had fallen at the point of average 
 precipitation. 
 
 Prayers went up in nearly all parts of the state for rain, 
 but what fell previous to March 15, 1899, was "only enough to 
 aggravate the fears and anxieties of the farmers. On the 15th 
 rain began falling and continued to fall in generous volume 
 until the average was exceeded by about 10 per cent. By the 
 close of March the despondency of the farmers and business 
 men, who are dependent more upon agricultural success than 
 on any other industry, was turned to hope and joy. 
 
 On the 25th of March the Sunday Bulletin of San Francisco 
 published the views of a number of clergymen on the efficacy 
 of prayer for rain. D. L. Moody, the world-renowned evan- 
 gelist, was among those interviewed, he being at that time en- 
 gaged in revival work in the California metropolis. Mr. Moody 
 is thus quoted by Miriam Michelson, a Jewish woman, who is a, 
 very attractive special writer on that paper: 
 
 "My boy wanted a bicycle," said Mr. Moody. "He 
 
 coaxed me for it. He got it. If it had been a racehorse 
 
 he wanted, he should not have had it. God is truly like 
 
i8o 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 a father to us. He likes to be teased. Of course, his 
 judgment is perfect, though, and in that respect my 
 parallel to an earthly father will not hold. You think, 
 perhaps, that if you intend to withhold something from 
 your child, that all his coaxing will be of no avail. But 
 you're mistaken. Ask, ask, of course." 
 
 The great revivalist sat alone upon the platform, 
 facing the audience, at the close of yesterday's meet- 
 ing. For two hours the big church had been filled to 
 overflowing with the crowd. Yet the people filed up 
 and past him, grasping his hand and speaking a few 
 words to him. He was at his best just then, his short, 
 stout body bent forward, his large, fat hand shaking 
 cordially the many hands held up to him, his homely, 
 kindly face in its frame of white hair falling down upon 
 them all, even upon the six little Chinese maidens, new 
 Christians, whom he blessed and told to "go back to- 
 China and spread the light." 
 
 "The thing to do is to pray," he said, returning to 
 the rain question. ''Why not? My little grandson has 
 been at the point of death for nine weeks. All over 
 the United States I have had people praying for him. 
 He is going to recover. Why not pray for rain, then? 
 
 "Pray, I tell you! Why, I pray for everything, for 
 anything I want, spiritual or material. I pray for every- 
 body. I'll pray for you." 
 
 And there was an emphasis on the "you" that 
 made it unnecessary for Mr. Moody to add the word 
 "even." 
 
BELIEF IN 1899. 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN VIEW. 
 
 To Rev. John Heniphill, D. D., of Calvary Presbyterian 
 Church, is attributed the view here set forth: 
 
 Dr. Hemphill declares that it is not a miracle if 
 rain be sent in answer to prayer. 
 
 "It is not the inversion or the change in a natural 
 law. There is no law of Nature, or rather there is a 
 higher law, the law of God, which sends the rain or 
 withholds it. All this modern materialistic bathos of 
 the scientists has nothing, absolutely, to stand upon. 
 Tyndall probed and probed, and at the end of his re- 
 searches he was honest enough to say that he could 
 find nothing in favor of the theory of spontaneous gen- 
 eration. If you admit one miracle, you admit all. There 
 are great minds that refuse to admit the miracles. 
 There are minds as great, such as Minton's that be- 
 lieve in the miracles. I believe with Minton. My faith 
 is absolutely unshaken by such men as Huxley and 
 Renan. I prayed for rain in my church. It was as 
 natural a thing to do as it is 1'or my grandchild to beg 
 me for something he wants." 
 
 John A. B. Wilson, D. D., of Howard-Street M. E. Church, 
 is thus quoted in answer to the inquiry: "Do you believe in 
 prayer for rain?" 
 
 I most certainly believe in praying for rain. "Ask, 
 and it shall be given you." In my church we prayed for 
 rain last week. In my son's church in Pasadena they 
 prayed for rain. There was not the sign of a cloud in 
 
PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 the sky. There was not the slightest indication of 
 
 rain. And yet rain fell, that very night. 
 
 I absolutely believe the rain fell in answer to 
 
 prayer. And I am willing to go on record to that effect. 
 
 "A miracle, doctor." 
 
 "Look here, daughter," said Dr. Wilson. "Either we've got 
 to believe in God and in the Bible, or we do not. If we do, we've 
 got to accept God's word and his directions as given in the 
 Bible." 
 
 Rev. William Rader, pastor of the Third Congregational 
 Church, would not commit himself on the subject. He admitted 
 having prayed for rain in his church, but could not be induced 
 to be more positive than to say the necessity for miracles had 
 passed and with it the age of miracles. Here are what I deern 
 his most positive words: 
 
 I am not prepared to say dogmatically that a mira- 
 cle will be vouchsafed, a complete change in the laws 
 of nature, in answer to our prayers. The miracles of 
 Christ were, so to speak. His credentials. The necessity 
 for miracles and their operation is a thing of the past. 
 Six of the most noted clergymen were interviewed and of 
 these only two, one Jewish Rabbi, Dr. Voorsanger, and one Con- 
 gregationalist, Dr. George C. Adams of the First Church, were 
 positive in discouraging prayers for rain. Only one of those 
 who expressed belief in the efficacy and advisability of prayer 
 for rain would say he attributed the generous precipitation to 
 God having pitied California farmers and granted the petitions 
 of those who importuned him for rain. 
 
WHY DO THEY PRAY? 
 
 A QUESTION THAT MINISTERS OF PROTESTANT 
 CHURCHES SHOULD ANSWER. 
 
 Those \vho attend any orthodox church, if they pause to 
 analyze the prayers offered therein, will wonder why they are 
 offered. If it is true, as the average Protestant authority in- 
 sists, that the age of miracles ceased with the death of the im- 
 mediate successors of Peter and John, prayers are idle. Answers 
 to prayers must come by supernatural mediums and the an- 
 swers must hence be miraculous. Now if the suppliant does not 
 believe that miracles can occur, he wastes his time when pray- 
 ing for the miraculous. 
 
 Do these daily, weekly or semi-weekly prayers call for 
 miracles? If they do not, why does the Rev. Dr. Duguid be- 
 seech the Lord to bless the Sunday School of his church "in an 
 especial manner?" This, according to my experience, is a' 
 favorite form of petition. If they do not believe in miracles, 
 why do they pray to the Lord to endow the revivalist, who 
 conies to re-awaken sluggish Christians and convert sinners, 
 with especial power inspiration for the work? 
 
 If they do not believe God will work a miracle in granting 
 their petitions for relief to the oppressed; for the triumph of a 
 just cause in war or politics; for wisdom and the spirit of jus- 
 tice to pervade the minds of legislators, executive officers and 
 
1 84 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 magistrates, why do they continue to repeat the petitions? I 
 cannot resist the temptation to here comment on the strife 
 that usually occurs before the complete organization of legis- 
 latures, and between ministers of the Gospel, for the appoint- 
 ment as chaplain. If, as many ministers say in private con- 
 versation, that the average legislative body is past praying for, 
 why do they strive for the employment of offering idle, per- 
 functory supplications? If the average impromptu prayers of 
 sectarian ministers do not call for miracles they mean nothing. 
 If the printed prayers prescribed in the book of that church, so 
 many of whose ministers like to be called priests of the holy 
 Catholic Church, do not call for miracles they call for the exer- 
 cise of great charity toward those who repeat them, much as 
 the Thibetan grinds out a prayer from his "mill" just as their 
 forefathers did and largely because they did. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 Lest any should consider this work incomplete because it 
 contains no argument in favor of metaphysical healing as 
 against the agnostics and materialists who discredit all belief 
 in the miraculous, I simply remind readers that it was no part 
 of my object. As a rule skeptics, "liberals," agnostics and 
 other free thinkers have generally shown a willingness to ac- 
 cord to those whose teachings differ from them the same liberty 
 they claim. If any argument is to be made against those whom 
 the orthodox people regard as unevangelical or inndel, it must 
 be made by others, or if made by me it must be done after I 
 have received more light. My opinion is that, so far as mere 
 argument goes, they are far more consistent and logical than the 
 orthodox Christians. The only ground on which the latter argue 
 against the credibility of present-day miracles is that of want 
 of necessity, because the word of God is before men to read and 
 learn for themselves. I simply wish to remind those who make 
 the argument that the word of God was before the Pharisees 
 and the Jews in general when Jesus was working miracles be- 
 fore their eyes. The Pharisees were the best educated of all 
 the Jews and Saul of Tarsus was one of the most brilliant 
 scholars of that sect, yet it required one of the most striking 
 of ail miracles to convert Saul, the persecutor, into Paul, the 
 promoter, of Christianity. I would also remind them that if 
 God is no respecter of persons He will save the poor and ignor- 
 ant as well as the rich and the learned. There are millions of 
 Ignonmt and poor and there are millions more of purse-proud 
 and educated bigots whom nothing short of miracles could de- 
 tach from the systems of worship and the mere mannerisms 
 
i86 
 
 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 
 
 of religion. I would also remind the orthodox believer in 
 ancient and soorner of modern miracles that, according to 
 thtir belief, there is less chance of salvation for those willfully 
 ignorant of the things celestial than for the ignorant who hav$ 
 had less opportunity to learn than have the wealthy, and hence 
 that the wealthy and intelligent bigot needs miracles for his 
 regeneration more than do the lowly. 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to argue the truth of Christian 
 Science here. I am not authorized to speak for the church that 
 teaches it. My argument is that self-styled orthodoxy has no 
 ' warrant for assuming that the age of miracles is past; that its 
 devotees are inconsistent in so doing while they pray for God 
 to interpose His might to confer benefits upon them or free 
 them from evil; that they stultify themselves when they say 
 no miracles are performed now and in the same breath, per- 
 haps, tell of blessings bestowed upon them or others by mys- 
 terious means. I argue that they really believe in miracles 
 while theoretically disbelieving, just as they theoretically be- 
 lieve in taking no heed for the morrow, etc., but practically 
 believe in devoting six days of the week to the acquisition of 
 wealth and generally infringe a little on the other day, taking 
 heed all the time for the future. I argue that they believe in 
 miracles brought about by their own prayers and those of 
 other members of the denominations to which they belong, 
 but discredit those of other churches and especially those which 
 Catholics believe in. Finally I argue that their own acts show 
 that they believe that they disbelieve in present-day miracles, 
 but, as was said by a droll commentator on a similar -subject, 
 "in believing that they believe they only believe they believe." 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Since most of the matter contained in this work was 
 placed in the printers' hands, the anniversary of the capture 
 of Manila by Admiral Dewey's fleet has been celebrated. At 
 the celebrations many of the orations were delivered by clergy- 
 men of orthodox Protestant churches and in nearly all such 
 clergymen offered invocations. In both oration and prayer the 
 extraordinary character of the victory was, in almost every 
 instance, attributed to the interposition of God in favor of the 
 Americans.. It is somewhat remarkable that among the clergy- 
 men so officiating and thus attributing to Dewey's victory the 
 character of a miracle, more than one stultified himself. 
 Among them were men who but a few months or weeks before 
 had denounced Christian Scientists as either frauds or the 
 dupes of a fraud because they believe that God interposes His 
 beneficence and omniscience between man and all kinds of sin 
 and suffering when man complies with God's laws and lives in 
 harmony therewith. 
 
 It may be said that I have only newspaper testimony for 
 this statement of the attitude of the clergy to miracles in this 
 instance. That would be true, but ample time has lapsed since 
 that celebration for those ministers who may have been in- 
 correctly Quoted to have corrected the errors, but no such cor- 
 rections have come to my notice. Newspaper men of experi- 
 ence will accept this as the strongest endorsement that could 
 be given of the correctness of the reports, because it has be- 
 come almost a journalistic proverb that ministers always dis- 
 puted reports of their utterances when their own words were 
 quoted in refuting them or in placing them in inconsistent 
 positions. 
 
RECAPITULATION. 
 
 This book contains the results of several months of dili- 
 gent search among the writings of eminent Protestant clergy- 
 men, authors, teachers and learned laymen who dissent from 
 the opinion that the age of miracles had passed away long 
 before the Reformation. It has been the object of*a class to 
 create the impression that the belief that miracles no longer 
 occurred was general, if not universal, among Protestants of 
 all denominations. 
 
 In this volume I have collected facts and opinions from the 
 writings of men whose names entitle them to respect, which 
 facts and opinions show that events which are usually classed 
 as miracles have occurred in every century and nearly every 
 year since the Reformation. These miracles range from in- 
 spirations for sermons to the averting of disease and danger. 
 Although those who discredit the accounts of what appear to 
 be miraculous healings effected by the Christian Scientists 
 under the teachings of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and who 
 especially revile her claim to have had a revelation of that 
 science, assume to do so on the strength of a pretended dogma, 
 I find them believing in and at least impliedly teaching "special 
 providences." I find also that men eminent in their churches 
 have declared that they, too, were especially inspired for 
 especial and critical occasions; that they have witnessed or ex- 
 perienced divine blessings in the form of rescue from death by 
 
RECAPITULATION. 
 
 189 
 
 freezing, by violence of enemies, by flood, by storm; in battle 
 and in wreck; that men have been raised up or called to the 
 work to fill especial missions; that disease has been healed, 
 poverty alleviated; crime prevented and criminals converted. 
 I find among the leaders of Protestant churches many who 
 teach or have taught in more or less crude fashion the main 
 ideas which Mrs. Eddy has reduced to a science. I find that of 
 those who have most bitterly attacked Mrs. Eddy's system 
 within the range of my knowledge all, or nearly all, continue 
 to petition God for blessings after having denounced Mrs. Eddy 
 for doing the same thing by a different method. 
 
 I also find some very absurd discrepancies and inconsist- 
 encies in the arguments of those who attack Christian Science. 
 Among these is the veneration in which are held some of the 
 eminent teachers of Methodism, Baptism, Congregationalism, 
 Presbyterianism, etc., although nearly every man thus honored 
 taught something essentially miraculous and to that extent, 
 in harmony with Christian Science, though they all groped in 
 the dark as to what they called "the means of grace." 
 
 In contemplating this condition I find but one thing in 
 Mrs. Eddy's system with which they have any logical ground 
 for quarreling. That is what a few are brave enough to 
 acknowledge, viz: The reduction of divine healing to a 
 science. This has been pronounced profanation by a few. Al- 
 though not openly endorsed by the many, it seems the only 
 ground on which they can defend their action. Even this is 
 as absurd as the action of some communities of the "Amish" 
 Menoriites who have forbidden the use of windmills by their 
 members because they deemed it profanation to reduce God's 
 
RECAPITULATION. 
 
 winds to slavery by using machines that would make the ele- 
 ments work for man. 
 
 I find the hymnals of nearly all the churches and sects 
 replete with evidence of either belief in miracles or poetic fic- 
 tions that indicate such a belief, and I have rarely attended a 
 religious meeting in which the prayers failed to ask for bless- 
 ings, the granting of which would involve the working of 
 miracles. 
 
 While many saintly men in the churches have been able 
 to relieve suffering mortals, none have ever been able to teach 
 others how to do the same work or to invest them with the 
 power as Jesus and His apostles did. Now when Mrs. Eddy 
 has accomplished her work, her claims to have been inspired 
 are met by denunciation and ridicule, as presumptuous, if not 
 blasphemous, the healings effected through her and her pupils 
 are declared frauds, impostures or delusions, though neither 
 she nor her students pretend that their wor*k is miraculous. 
 They say it is in conformity with divinely natural law and that 
 by observing that law man may defy disease as easily as all 
 Christians say he may defy sin. 
 
 This work is not authorized by Christian Scientists. No 
 member of the Church of Christ has ever read a page of the 
 manuscript or proof, nor has any of the church authorities, 
 either local or in the headquarters in Boston, been consulted 
 as to the expediency or propriety of publishing it. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbe, Paris 149 
 
 Afraid of the word "miracles" 170 
 
 Age of miracles 7, 139 
 
 Aid to revivalists 40, 45 
 
 Aiken's history of Presbyterianism 98 
 
 Ambrose, St 16 
 
 Anabaptists (see Baptists) 
 
 Anglican miracles 13 
 
 Argyll, Duke of 24 
 
 Arnold, Matthew 77 
 
 Asbury, Bishop Francis 39 
 
 Augustine, St 11, 149 
 
 Bampton lectures 9 
 
 Baptism of the Holy Ghost 97 
 
 Baptists' testimony 64 
 
 Beecher, H. W 11, 175 
 
 Beecher, Toyman 102 
 
 Berdoe, Dr 135 
 
 Bernard, St 79 
 
 Bertram's encyclopaedia 11 
 
 Blasphenier killed 120 
 
 Boehme's mysticism 136 
 
 Boss Tweed 164 
 
 Bowman, Bishop, healed 107 
 
 Boyer's history of Vaudois 20 
 
 Boy, wonder healer 123 
 
 Bruce, Professor A. M 76 
 
 Burke, Edmund 80 
 
 Bushnell, Rev. Horace 34 
 
 Calvanist authorities 17 
 
 California, miracles 121 
 
 Camp meetings, origin of 18 
 
 Carlyle, Rev. Alex 22 
 
 Cartwright, Rev. Peter 41 
 
 Catarrh cured 107 
 
 Caterpillar plague abated 48 
 
192 
 
 Caughey, James, revivalist 56 
 
 Cave on St. Ambrose 16 
 
 Cecil, Rev. Richard " Ill 
 
 Charles, Mrs. E 14& 
 
 Charlatan cures, etc 93 
 
 Christian ago ....- 117 
 
 Christlieb, Professor Theo. . . , 87 
 
 Christian Science 77, 85 
 
 Clarke, Dr. E. H 90 
 
 Cobbe, Francis Power 159 
 
 College professors' views 71 
 
 Communing with God 59 
 
 Combinations of forces 103 
 
 Congregation converted 54 
 
 Conversion like Paul's 96 
 
 Conclusion 185 
 
 Cranmer on divine selections 13 
 
 Credulity and incredulity 33 
 
 Cumberland Presbyterians 18 
 
 Curtis, Rev. Lucius 151 
 
 Cyclone diverted 50 
 
 Dabney, Professor R. L 140 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey 162 
 
 Dead raised 40 
 
 Debt miraculously paid 177 
 
 Deceit attributed to Jesus 78 
 
 Degrees in miracles 153 
 
 Deserting husbands converted 107, 114 
 
 Dictation to Omnipotence 143 
 
 Disbelief and results 7 
 
 Dyspepsia healed 107 
 
 Divine guidance 18, 39, 48, 60, 99 
 
 Divine wrath 164 
 
 Doubt of God's power 98 
 
 Drunkard converted *3 
 
 Duke of Argyll 24 
 
 Duke of Savoy 22 
 
 Dwight, Professor Timothy 81 
 
 Ears do not hear 92 
 
 Eddy, Mrs. Mary B 13 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Edwards, "Sailor" 69 
 
 Egede, Hans 89 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen 13 
 
 Episcopal church 13 
 
 Escape from disease 46 
 
 Evans', history of Shakers 140 
 
 Evangelists' miracles 38 
 
 Evidence of miracles 137 
 
 Eyes do not see 92 
 
 Farrar. Canon 15, 119 
 
 Fasting for miracles 30, 54 
 
 Fed miraculously 69 
 
 Ferriei , Dr. David 92 
 
 Ferriage provided for 142 
 
 Finney, Professor C. G ! . . 18, 95 
 
 Fisher, Professor George P ' 79 
 
 Fiske, Professor John 86 
 
 Fog in aid of Vaudois 21 
 
 Fowler, Bishop C. H 49 
 
 Fox, George 152 
 
 French fleet destroyed 81 
 
 Gairdner, James 142 
 
 George. Bishop, healed 53 
 
 Giles, Rev. Chauncy 45 
 
 Gilly, William Stephen ... 16, 21 
 
 God raises up men 18 
 
 God guided Puritans 29 
 
 God defeats a trickster 31 
 
 God swept the strings 133 
 
 Godet, F 74 
 
 Greatrakes, Valentine 157 
 
 Gregory, St 11, 148 
 
 Gruber, Rev. Jacob 45 
 
 Harris, Professor Samuel 80 
 
 Harvard college 17 
 
 Hatfield, Dr. E. F 108 
 
 Hays' Presbyterian history 17 
 
 Healing by prayer 44, 53, 65, 107, 116 
 
 Healing by royal touch 85 
 
i 9 4 
 
 Hemphill, Rev. John 181 
 
 Henry VIII . . / 14 
 
 Hensoldt, Dr. Heinrich 141 
 
 Hohenshell, the healer 124 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 90 
 
 Holbrook, Rev. J. C 174 
 
 Holy coat of Treves 16 
 
 Hopkins, Professor Mark 103 
 
 Hospital walls prayed up 118 
 
 Howitt, William 11 
 
 Hnmboldt 162 
 
 Hume 144, 163 
 
 Huxley 10, 152, 163 
 
 Hymns for miracles 128 
 
 Illustration by miracle 112 
 
 Indian mortality aids Puritans 32 
 
 Infidel testimony 152 
 
 Inskip, William 108 
 
 Inspiration of preachers 18, 48, 99, 117 
 
 Inspiration for paying cash 117 
 
 Inspiration in general 138 
 
 Jansenist miracles 149, 163 
 
 Jerks (religious contortions) 38, 42 
 
 Jesting to deny fact 36 
 
 Jones, Bishop 107 
 
 Jones, Rev. Sam 47 
 
 Judd, Carrie P 109 
 
 Judgment on sinners 43 
 
 Keach, Benjamin .67 
 
 Kiffen, Rev. William 68 
 
 Killed by imagination 124 
 
 Kinnear, J. Boyd, on cure 143 
 
 Knapp. Elder Jacob 40 
 
 Knollys, Rev. Hanserd 65 
 
 Kostlin, Julius 74 
 
 Krummacher, Rev. Dr 118, 177 
 
 Labor divinely rewarded 100 
 
 ; Lama, Grand, of Thibet .141 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Law, "Reign of 24 
 
 Law above human ken 25 
 
 Law of nature 27, 75 
 
 Law, higher 77 
 
 Law, combination of 50 
 
 Law, William 136 
 
 Lee, Mother Ann 140 
 
 Lecky on doubt 10, 152 
 
 Liefchild, Dr 119 
 
 Life miraculously saved 50 
 
 Life without brain 92 
 
 Limiting Omnipotence 145, 158 
 
 Liquified air 126 
 
 Locke, on natural law 27 
 
 Luther's belief 74, 116, 120 
 
 Lutheran witness 150 
 
 Macaulay on Cranmer 13 
 
 McAdow's revelation 18 
 
 McLeod, Rev. Donald Ill 
 
 Maffitt, J. Newland 44 
 
 Mahaffy, J. P 27 
 
 Mallock on Huxley 10 
 
 Manfred, Jacob 155 
 
 Marpingen miracles 152 
 
 Marion, General Frances 155 
 
 Marriage prevented 59 
 
 Mark of Arethusa 165 
 
 Marbden, Rev. Joshua 39 
 
 Mather, Cotton and Increase 32 
 
 Methodists and miracles 38 
 
 Melancthon healed 89, 116 
 
 Menno, Simon 64 
 
 Mennonites (see Baptists) 
 
 Middleton, Conyers, on disbelief 15 
 
 Millman's history 164 
 
 Minister converted 57 
 
 Miracles, of healing 44, 53, 65, 107, 116 
 
 Miracles, for illustration 112 
 
 Miracles, defined g, 169 
 
 Miracles. Baptists .' 10 
 
 Miracles, Methodists 38 to 61, 69'' 
 
196 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Miracles, miscellaneous 136 to 146 
 
 Miracles and Providences 10 
 
 Miracles, Tractarian 154 
 
 Miracles, non-religious 121 
 
 Miracles, workers expelled 14 
 
 Miracles, in 1899 179 
 
 Moody, Dwight L 110, ITS 
 
 Moravian example 145 
 
 Mormon miracle 167 
 
 Mysterious circulation of news . , 12ft 
 
 Mysticism Boehme's 13ft 
 
 Neumark,. George , 132 
 
 Newman, Cardinal 12, 129- 
 
 Newspaper miracles 12ft 
 
 News mysteriously circulated 126 
 
 New Ulm massacre 164 
 
 Oberlin college 100 
 
 Paris, Abbe 149 
 
 Popular Science Monthly 152 
 
 Porter, Professor Noah 81 
 
 Prayer, Efficacy of 45, 49, 57, 6T 
 
 Prayer, Power of 67, 81, 103, 110 US 
 
 Prayer, Gauge 140 
 
 Prayer, For temporal concerns 118- 
 
 Prayer, Cure (orthodox) 5ft 
 
 Precocious prophet 22 
 
 Presbyterians quoted 17 to 27 
 
 Postscript 187 
 
 Princes divinely appointed 1? 
 
 Protestant repression 14 
 
 Providences and miracles 10 
 
 Providence guides an arrow 20 
 
 Providential immigration 19 
 
 Puritan miracles 28 to 33 
 
 Quaker marvels 34, 152" 
 
 Rader. Rev. William 182 
 
 Rain by prayer 30, 103: 
 
 Recapitulation 188 
 
197 
 
 Reformation a miracle 17, 21 
 
 Relics and miracles , 15, 153 
 
 Rescue from robbers Ill 
 
 Rescue from starvation Ill 
 
 Rescue from pirates 112 
 
 Results of disbelief 7, 35 
 
 Revelations to men 18, 34, 41, 60, 64 
 
 Robinson, Rev. Frederick 177 
 
 Rockyzan, John 145 
 
 Russian miracle workers 86, 
 
 San Francisco clergymen 179 
 
 Saved for the church 51 
 
 Saved from starvation 30, 130 
 
 Saved from wreck 29, 32, 89 
 
 Scientists rebuke skeptics 162 
 
 Scoffer converted 52 
 
 Scoffer killed 43 
 
 Scotch believers 22 
 
 Schu, Karl Gottlob 106 
 
 Schwenkfeldians 14 
 
 Simpson, Bishop, healed 107 
 
 Shaker marvels 140 
 
 Skeptic credulity 141, 148, 153 
 
 Slander refuted 34 
 
 Smith, Jennie 109 
 
 Smith, Rev. John 142 
 
 Soldier's life saved 119 
 
 Specious orthodox reasoning . . ." 139 
 
 Spirit perceived -. 94 
 
 Spurgeon's views 70, 89, 114 
 
 Stephens, Sir James ;J.53 
 
 Steffens, Heinrich t 150 
 
 Sunday school miracles 16 
 
 Talmage, Rev. T. D. . ! 164 
 
 Taylor, Bishop William 107 
 
 Tractarian miracles 154 
 
 Traitor stricken dumb 65 
 
 Trench, Archbishop 169 
 
 Tyndall's views 10, 140 
 
198 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary 74, 77 
 
 Unseen world 86 
 
 Unwelcome preacher 53 
 
 Usher, Archbishop 113 
 
 Vaudois 20 
 
 Visions, marvelous 90 
 
 Vision of Professor Finney 97 
 
 War miracles 80 
 
 Warburton, Bishop 144 
 
 Ware, Dr., of Boston 93 
 
 Wace, Bishop, on Huxley 10 
 
 Waldenses (see Vaudois) 
 
 Wallace, Alfred R 162 
 
 Watson, Dr, James V 52 
 
 Wesley 39, 119 
 
 Weather affected by prayer 49 
 
 Wilson, Rev. J. A. B 181 
 
 Witchcraft 32 
 
 Wonders of science 25 
 
 Williams, Roger 70 
 
 White, Andrew D 83 
 
 White discredits himself 84 
 
 Why do they pray 182 
 
 Why they are incensed 172 
 
 Wreck averted 89 
 
 Yale professors' views : 79 
 
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