Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/114

 all know of instances where it must have been thought that death would be preferable to life; but apart from the presumptuous thought of mere human beings, look how often the maimed bodily frame 'rises on stepping stones of its dead self to higher things.' A man struck with blindness, for example, may be living a full and perfect and whole life, in spite of his maimed condition, because he puts out all his powers and lives at the top of his bent. Such a man is in the highest state a healthy being. The unwhole man is one who is always in terror of his life, and who does not accept with faith and cheerfulness, and in a life of prayer, the ills that are laid upon him by a wise and Divine Providence. It is true that there are more things wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Yes, but even our prayers have necessary limitations arising from our imperfect knowledge, and when St. James declared that the prayer of faith shall save the sick, he spoke at a time when scientific investigation was non-existent, and when people must have been sorely distressed by their total inability to overcome the diseases from which those around them were suffering. But for us, whose physical knowledge is so much more exact, to refuse to accept the remedies which hard and patient toil has