Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/216

 'His will He knoweth which way to accomplish.' Prayer is the act of resignation of our individual desires and thoughts into His all-*wise hands. Prayer universalises a personal longing; and so wonderful is the magic of true prayer, fetching up from the deep of our being suggestions, inspirations, forces unperceived by man, that it can never fail to induce a sense of calm, the most favourable for a physical recovery; and many a time it has effectuated that recovery itself. Science may teach the 'reflex action of prayer'; religion will always find authentic answers to prayer.

Prayer is the spiritual instrument on which our Lord in His Human Nature relies, and on which He encourages His Church to rely—'a mighty engine of achievement.' His method was grounded in prayer, the prayer of that Divine fellowship, which is His, as it cannot belong to any of the sons of men, and yet in Him, 'in the Name of Christ,' the Church must still expect to accomplish the miracles of faith, in proportion to the degree of her own spirituality. Who, indeed, would have looked for miracles of healing in the English Church of the eighteenth century, unless it were among the non-jurors, who actually revived the