rived great benefit; and when asked why she did not tell of that, she replied, in substance, that she did not wish to divert attention from the great work that God had really wrought in her. Often the account of the cure has been exaggerated: relapses have not been published, peculiar sensations still felt, and resisted, have been omitted from the description, and the mode of the cure has been restricted to one act or a single moment of time, when in response to questions it appeared that it was weeks or months before the person could properly be said to be well. In all such cases it is obvious that the written testimony is of little value; indeed, it is seldom that a published account in books supporting marvels of this kind shows any signs of being written by a person who took the pains, if he possessed the capacity, to investigate the facts accurately. Frequent quotation of such accounts adds nothing to their credibility or value.
But after all deductions have been made, that most extraordinary recoveries have been produced, some of them instantaneously, from disease in some cases generally considered to be incurable by ordinary treatment, in others known to be curable in the ordinary process of medicine and in surgery only by slow degrees, must be admitted.
The object of these remarks is not to discredit all testimony, but to show the conditions upon which its value depends.
EXPLANATION OF THE FACTS
Have these facts a common cause? To solve the problem requires us to ascertain whether the effects are the same, and the limitations of the cause or causes are the same? Do recoveries under the prayers
