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Show NOT A MIRACLE. :1 A story comes from York, Pa., that sounds very like those St. Ann Beaupre miracles. That the cure was not completed at a shrine will make some pious people wonder; that the person cured was not a Catholic will increase their astonishment. It may not be a miracle at all, yet it stumps the doctors. In brief, the story relates that a daughter of Edward F. Vandersloat, who had not walked in twelve years, 'the other day said to her father: "Papa, I want to get up and walk." To the surprise of those present, the girl straightened up, raised her feet and proceeded to cross the room unaided. The best physicians in York had pronounced her ease hopeless, and the father had spent thousands of dollars in the effort to effect a cure. Yet here it comes in a second's time, in spite of doctors, money and medicine. It is presumed by this time the girl is walking about on the street. The story is not complete without giving the- assigned cause of the cure. Mr. Vandersloat said it was the result of family prayer and the prayers of friends. He could, he says, give no other reason. It is noticeable that in all or nearly all instances in-stances of alleged miraculous cures doctors beforehand before-hand confessed inability to cure the patient or even diagnose the disease. This happened in the York girl's case. Was hers a miraculous cure, therefore, under such presentation of fact? If the girl had been in the last stages of tuberculosis and recovered the strength of her lungs as suddenly as she regained re-gained the use of her legs, such might be called a miracle, because such restoration was against every principle, of medical knowledge and experience. There is no such evidence of miraculous intervention interven-tion because the girl walked when doctors said she would never be able to do so. Medical knowledge has been greatly enlarged of late years, but most of it remains to be discovered through experiment. Much of what is applied in practice now will be dropped for something newer and better next year and the next. Doctors appear little inclined to experiment ex-periment along psycological lines. Therefore, taking tak-ing all things into consideration, we must conclude that the York girl was made whole through her firm faith in the efficacy of prayer. But that does not make the cure a miracle. . This conclusion does not upset but upholds the theory that constant thought generates a mental power great enough to overcome the physical and so cause disease to yield to its will. How it is done none can answer, no more than man can analyze the properties of electricity. But we cannot conceive of thought having such power unless it be based on the strong faith that what is to be must come through constant, earnest prayer. : t |