It is observable, further, that the cases which are suc- cessfully treated in the Faith-Houses have their natural limits. Not every one is cured. The brother of Samuel Zeller, who succeeded Dorothea Triidel in her House in Switzerland, sought cure there for years in vain. Doro- thea TriidePs own health remained throughout her life "very feeble" ; she suffered from curvature of the spine from an early age and died at forty-eight of typhus fever. Zeller himself "strongly repudiated the whole system of doctrine" of the typical Faith-Healers, especially "the idea that sick- ness in God's people is the result of unbelief"; and sharply reprobated the practice of holding public meetings and ex- pecting cures at them, attributing failure to lack of faith. He did not require that medical treatment should be re- nounced ; he merely put his own dependence on rest, quiet, and prayer to God.43 The failures of cure on this system cannot be accounted for merely by an appeal to the sover- eignty of God in answering prayer. They find their ac- count also in the nature of the diseases treated. We quote the following from the pen of one of the most eminent aurists of the last generation. "The avoidance of tangible affections by faith-curers," says Doctor St. John Roosa,44 "is a circumstance that tells unanswerably against their doctrines. I was once sent for to see a lady who was living in what was called a faith-cure establishment in this city, in order that I might, if possible, relieve her from impair- ment of hearing. This I found to be chiefly caused by a
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collection of wax in the outer canal of the ear, which was easily removed. The removal caused great improvement in the hearing. I had never seen a faith-cure establish- ment before, and I confess I was somewhat surprised that I was sent for. I asked, 'How is it possible, that, if without the use of any means except prayer to God, internal dis- eases are cured, affections of the organs that we cannot see, those that we can see, and that are susceptible of relief by the ordinary physician, believing or unbelieving, cannot be cured by prayer? . . .' It is a terrible shock to the believer in this system to think that God can cure a case of disease of the liver or of the nerves, and will cure it by the use of the prayer of faith alone, but (and I mean to speak reverently) He will have nothing to do with a case of deafness."
We think it fair to urge also that the sifting of cases must exclude all those cures which can be paralleled by cures that have, in similar circumstances, been effected obviously without miracle. If we are seeking instances which demon- strate that a miracle has been wrought, surely we must have cases essentially different from those which are known to be curable without miracle. Obviously, for example, we cannot confidently infer miracle to account for a cure which "the Apostate Church" can perform as well as we; which mind-cure can equally readily work on a pantheistic, the Buddhist on an atheistic, and the mesmerist on a purely materialistic basis. These cures may seem to us startling, but they cannot be thought by us to be mirac- ulous. It is, however, no exaggeration to say that the great mass of the cures wrought by Faith-Healers are closely paralleled by some or all of these sister practitioners. Your time need not be taken up by descriptions here of the wonders worked by Doctor Perkins's metallic tractors, by mesmerism, mind-cure, the waters of Lourdes.45 Let me give you but a single partial illustration of how com- pletely they repeat one another's triumphs.
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