Prayer Found The Remedy For The Disease.
"A correspondent of _The Illustrated Christian Weekly_, states that a
mother of her acquaintance had a child taken alarmingly ill. She sent
for the physician. The child was in convulsions. The doctor began at
once vigorously to apply the customary remedies--cold water to the head,
warm applications to the feet, chafing of the hands and limbs. All was
in vain. The body lost nothing of its dreadful rigidity. Death seemed
close at hand, and absolutely inevitable. At length he left the child,
and sat down by the window, looking out. He seemed, to the agonized
mother, to have abandoned her darling. For herself, she could do nothing
but pray; and even her prayer was but an inarticulate and unvoiced cry
for help. _Suddenly the physician started from his seat. 'Send and see
if there be any jimson weed in the yard_,' he cried. His order was
obeyed; the poisonous weed was found. The remedies were instantly
changed. Enough of the seeds of this deadly weed were brought away by
the medicine to have killed a man. The physician subsequently said that
he thought that in that five minutes every kindred case he had ever
known in a quarter century's practice passed before his mind. Among them
was the one case which suggested the real, but before hidden, cause of
the protracted and dreadful convulsions. And the child was saved.
"Now, is there anything inconsistent or unphilosophical in the belief
that, at that critical moment, a loving God, answering the mother's
Helpless cry, flashed on the mind of the physician the thought that
saved the child? Is it any objection to that faith to say, the age of
miracles is past? If the mother, may call in a second physician, to
suggest the cause and the cure, may she not call on God? What the doctor
can do for a fellow-practitioner, cannot the Great Physician do? Though
the doctor had often tried and thought, yet it was not till the last
prayer and call on God, brought the remedy to his mind."