Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/55

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FAITH-HEALING
41

Some allege that even the apostles could not restore limbs that had been cut off, or that had been wanting from birth. The record shows that the apostles made no distinction in cases. Ananias prayed for Paul, and "straightway there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." When Tabitha lay dead, Peter, after prayer, "turning to the body said, 'Tabitha, arise,'" and he "presented her alive." The chains fell off Peter in the prison, and "the iron gate opened for him and the angel of its own accord." As Peter had, in the first miracle after Pentecost, given strength to a man who had been lame from his mother's womb, so Paul, seeing a man at Lystra, "a cripple from his mother's womb who had never walked," said, "with a loud voice, 'Stand upright on thy feet,' and he leaped up and walked." They cast out devils wherever it was necessary, and when Eutychus fell from the third story, and "was taken up dead," Paul restored him to life again. On the island of Melita, a viper hung upon the hand of Paul, and "when the barbarians saw the beast hanging from his hand, they said one to another, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped from the sea, yet justice hath not suffered to live"; but when they remained long in expectation and beheld nothing amiss come to him, they changed their minds and said he was a "god." We are informed that after that the diseases of the entire population of the island were healed.


CLAIMS OF "CHRISTIAN FAITH-HEALERS," TECHNICALLY SO CALLED, EFFECTUALLY DISCREDITED

In examining the healing works both of Christ and the apostles, it appears that there is not a uniform law that the sick should exercise faith, and that it was