would have to go as he was six or seven weeks, and must be very patient; and when the little fellow told him that Jesus had made him well, he said, ' Pooh ! pooh ! nonsense ! ' and sent him away. The next morning the poor boy came to me and pleaded with so much sincerity and confidence, that I more than half believed, and went to my brother and said: 'Had you not better undo his arm and let him see for himself?' . . . My brother yielded, took off the bandages and the splints, and exclaimed, 'It is well, abso- lutely well ! ' and hastened to the door to keep from faint- ing." Could anything be more conclusive? Here is ex- pert medical testimony to the fracture and to the cure also. Here is the testimony of the father himself, a chief actor in the scene, to all its details. We have the additional guarantee of the repetition of it as authentic by a series of the chief advocates of Faith-Healing. And it is a case of a broken bone, and must be a miracle. But here comes the trouble. "The case was thoroughly investigated by Doctor J. H. Lloyd of the University of Pennsylvania, and in The Medical Record for March 27, 1886, Doctor Lloyd published a letter from this very child, who is grown up and become a physician. Dear Sir:" it reads, "The case you cite, when robbed of all its sensational surroundings, is as follows: The child was a spoiled youngster who would have his own way ; and when he had a green stick fracture of the forearm, and, after having had it bandaged for several days, concluded he would much prefer to go without a splint, to please the spoiled child the splint was removed, and the arm carefully adjusted in a sling. As a matter of course, the bone soon united, as is customary in children, and being only partially broken, of course all the sooner. This is the miracle. Some nurse or crank or religious enthusiast, ig- norant of matters physiological and histological, evidently started the story, and unfortunately my name — for I am the party — is being circulated in circles of faith-curites, and is given the sort of notoriety I do not crave. . . .
INCURABLE CASES 191
Very respectfully yours, Carl H. Reed." 54 Conscious fraud here is not to be thought of for a moment. But all the more powerfully the lesson is driven home to us that in matters of this kind testimony to details requires the closest scrutiny. There is scarcely an item in this case which is correctly reported in the current story.
It seems to be the experience of every one who has made a serious attempt to sift the evidence for miraculous healing that this evidence melts away before his eyes. Many remarkable cures are wrought, but nothing which compels the inference of miraculous healing seems to be unambiguously established. What emerges as final re- sult is that a sharp line is drawn between the class of cures which can be obtained and the class of cures which cannot be obtained by faith, and that this line is drawn approxi- mately at the exact spot where the line runs which sepa- rates cures which can from those which cannot be ob- tained by mind-cure, mesmerism, Perkins's tractors, and other similar practices. There are classes of sickness which Faith-Healing can cure, and there are classes of sickness which it cannot cure. In particular, for example, it is powerless to heal broken bones, to renew mutilations, to do so little a thing as to restore lost teeth. Doctor Charles Cullis is reported as saying: "In no case in God's word is there a promise that we may pray over a broken bone and anoint the sufferers with oil ; only the sick. A broken bone is not sickness, and should be put in the hands of a sur- geon." And "he has repeatedly and publicly, in the pres- ence of thousands at Old Orchard Beach and elsewhere, disclaimed all attempts by the prayer of faith to secure from God the restoration of an amputated hand or the setting of a broken limb." 55 This is, of course, only a confession that there is no question of miraculous action in Faith-Healing. What is the use of invoking miracle to do work equally well done without miracle, and repudiating all effects for which miracles are required? If a man as-
192 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
serts that he controls the motion of the sun by miraculous power, I want some better proof that he does so than his pointing to the rising and setting of the sun every day at its appointed time. And I want no better proof that he works no miracle in the case, than that the sun under his incantations moves no otherwise than it moves without them.