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 has not spoken presumptuously and the people are under obligation to respect his message, since he has furnished them the highest possible evidence of his divine inspiration.