Now, this confusion of the issue is a very serious matter. It has first of all the effect of permitting long lists of un- sifted cases to be pleaded as proofs of the proposition de- fended, although a large number of these cases would be at once excluded from consideration on a closer definition of exactly what is to be proved. Thus the verdict of the simple reader is forced, as it were: he is led to look upon every instance of answer to prayer as a case in point, and is gradually led on through the argument in the delusion that these are all miracles. It has next the effect of un- justly prejudicing the reader against those who feel con- strained to doubt the reality of specifically miraculous Faith-Healing as if they denied the supernatural, or any real, answer to prayer, instead of merely the continuance through all time of the specific mode of answer to prayer which comes by miracle. The confusions thus engendered in the reader's mind are apt, moreover, to eat pretty deeply into his own modes of thinking, and to end by betraying him into serious errors. He is likely, for example, to be led to suppose that in the cases adduced for his considera- tion he has examples of what real miracles are; and thus to reduce the idea of miracles to the level of these Faith- Healings, assimilating the miracles of our Lord, for exam-
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pie, to them and denying that miracles in the strict sense have ever been wrought, even by our Lord. Or, on the other hand, under a more or less vague consciousness that the instances of Faith-Healing adduced do not prove what they are really adduced to prove, he may gain the impres- sion that they do not prove what they are ostensibly ad- duced to prove, that is to say, the supernatural answer to prayer; and thus he may be betrayed into doubting the reality of any answer to prayer whatever. Readers of the literature of Faith-Healing will not need to be told that no merely hypothetical effects of this confusing way of arguing the question are here suggested. Each of these effects has actually been produced in the case of numerous readers.
So far is confusion between things that differ pressed, in the attempt to obtain some petty argumentative ad- vantage, that, not content with refusing to discriminate miracles (the continued recurrence of which some deny) from special providences (which all heartily recognize as continually occurring), some writers make a vigorous effort also to confound the miraculous healing of the body with the supernatural regeneration of the soul, as not merely analogous transactions, but transactions so much the same in essence that the one cannot be denied and the other affirmed. Gordon permits himself, for example, to write: "Is it right for us to pray to God to perform a miracle of healing in our behalf? 'The truth is,' answers an eminent writer,7 'that to ask God to act at all, and to ask Him to perform a miracle are one and the same thing. . . .' We see no reason, therefore, why we should hesitate to pray for the healing of our bodies any more than the renewal of our souls. Both are miracles. . . ." 8 The effect of writing like this is obviously to identify miraculous Faith- Healing with the cause of supernaturalism in general ; and thus the unwary reader is led, because he believes in the regeneration of the soul by the immediate operation of the
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Holy Spirit and in a prayer-hearing God, to fancy that he must therefore believe in miraculous Faith-Healing. A very unfair advantage is thus gained in the argument.