HEALED OF BLINDNESS.
As near as I can remember, it was in the month of June, 1879, that I was engaged in building a rock cellar for Vernee Halliday, in Provo City. About noon, after finishing the walls as high as I could from the inside, before drawing my lines off to go outside, I looked along the wall to see if every rock was in keeping with the line, when I saw a small corner of a rock a little out of place. With my hammer I tapped it very lightly to bring it to its proper position, keeping my eye along the line to see when it came to its place. While doing this I felt as if something had touched my eye, but nothing to cause me any uneasiness. At the time I did not think more of the affair.
I worked all the afternoon and the next forenoon, but felt my eye beginning to get very hot, and water came therefrom. In the afternoon my eye became worse, and was inflamed to such an extent that I could not see; my head also became so affected that about four o'clock I was obliged to cease work and go home. Arriving there my wife, seeing my eye in such an inflamed condition, got me into a dark room, and from that time till very early the next morning she used about two packets of tea in making strong lotions to bathe my eye to keep down the inflammation. At four o'clock in the morning I got a handkerchief on my eye, and went away to arouse Dr. W. R. Pike. When I arrived at his house he was attending a man from Payson. This done, he asked me what he could do for me. I told him of the inflammation of my eye and the pain in my head, and said I wanted him to examine it and see what was the matter with it, or to tell the cause of my suffering. After examining my eye he said there was one-third of the lens of my eye entirely destroyed. The center of the lens was gone and only a little on each edge remained. He said it had been struck with something rough like a rock, and that I would never see again with that eye. He described the transparency of the eye, and assured me that it could not by nature be restored. He said it was likely to take away the use of my other eye at any time, and that a white opaque substance would grow over my eye so that I could never see any more.
After leaving his office, I met on the street a Mr. Harrison, who had formerly lived in Salt Lake City. He told me of Dr. Pratt, who had just returned to Salt Lake from the East, where she had been studying the eye, and had done a great deal of good. I therefore went the same day to see her, but had then to be led by my wife. When we arrived in Salt Lake it was too late for her to do anything with my eye that day, and she told us to come back the following morning at ten o'clock. We did so, and after hearing my story she examined my injured member by the aid of many glasses, and told me the same as Dr. W. R. Pike had done. She allowed my wife to look through the glass at my eye, and she described its appearance as that of a wound from which a dog had bitten a piece. Dr. Pratt then took me by my front hair, and pushing my head back, was about to take my eye out. I inquired what she was about to do, and she answered me that she was going to take it out and put in a glass one.
My wife seized her arm, and I scrambled out of the chair saying, "No you don't, or you will shoot me first."
I then asked if she could give me a lotion to check the pain. She took a small vial and put one drop of its contents in my eye, which immediately took away all pain. She then gave me a prescription, which I had filled, and then went home.
Just as both doctors had said, the opaque matter gradually grew on my eye for three or four weeks, at the end of which time I could not distinguish my own wife standing so that her dress touched my clothes, unless she spoke. Up to this time I had not been able to work, and I was getting dissatisfied.
About that time the quarterly conference took place in Provo. On the Sunday morning I found my way to conference, still with the napkin on my eye. There were present of the general authorities, Presidents George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith and Apostle John Henry Smith. During the morning meeting I made up my mind to have them administer to me for my sight, and at the close of the services I went to the vestry where they were attending to this ordinance for many who were there before me. When I entered Brothers Joseph F. and John Henry Smith came and shook hands with me, enquiring what was the matter, and what I wanted them to do. They introduced me to Brother George Q. Cannon, whom I had never before known. I knew the Brothers Smith in the old country. I was told to take a seat, and when they had attended to the rest they would administer to me, and that I would get my sight. After they got through with the others they came to me. I cannot now call to mind who anointed, or who confirmed it, but this I do know that from that very hour the white, opaque matter that had gradually grown over my eye as gradually began to disappear, until my eyesight was completely restored and has remained to this date as perfect as it ever has been. To this fact myself and family, and others yet living in Provo can testify.
While suffering with this affliction I reasoned that as God made the eye He also knew how to repair and restore a damaged one, and I testify to all to whom this may come that He did restore sight to the blind one.
ROBERT McKINLEY.13
Let me assure the reader that these cases of healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, etc., are but as a handful of earth to a mountain. It would require volumes to contain the testimonies of the Saints to the fulfillment of the promises of the Lord made through the great modern prophet; but what is set down in this chapter will doubtless be sufficient to prove the fulfillment of his promises. The church has taken little or no pains to publish accounts of "miracles." But the fact that more than sixty years after these promises of the gifts of healing, etc., were made to the church, the chief reliance of the Saints in times of sickness is upon the anointing with oil and the laying on of hands by the Elders—and this throughout all the branches of the church—it must be evident even to the most skeptical that the promises of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith have been realized, or else long ago the faith of the firmest would have failed them.
Footnotes
1. Doc. and Cov. Sec. lxxxiv: 62-64.
2. i.e. in the name of Jesus Christ.
3. Doc. and Cov. Sec. lxxxiv: 65-73.
4. Hayden's History of the Disciples, pp. 250-I.
5. Hist. Joseph Smith, Mill. Star, vol. xvii, p. 355.
6. The same event is spoken of at some length in Parley P. Pratt's Autobiography, p. 325.
7. Mill. Star vol xi: p. 301-2
8. Mill. Star vol. xi: p. 188-9.
9. Mill. Star, vol. xi, p. 337.
10. Mill. Star, vol. xi, p. 202-3.
11. Mill. Star. vol. xi, p. 187.
12. Mill. Star, vol. xii, p. 312.
13. Juvenile Instructor, vol. 29, p. 434.
CHAPTER XX.
THE EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY
Of all the means by which the claims of a prophet may be tested, it seems to me that an inquiry respecting the fulfillment of his prophecies is at once the most direct and positive. Has he prophesied; and have his prophecies been fulfilled? If they have, who can doubt the prophet's inspiration, or the revelations of God to him? This was the means which the Lord suggested to ancient Israel for the testing of the genuineness of a prophet's claims: "And if thou shalt say in thy heart," said the Lord to Israel, "How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him."1 And conversely, if the thing which the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord comes to pass, then the prophet has spoken the thing commanded him by the Lord—he