To recur to the narrative,--Hezekiah's appeal was not without results. As he lay there tearfully communing with his own heart and with God, Isaiah returned to his chamber with a message of healing assuring him that he should go up to the temple on the third day, and directed him to take a lump of figs and place it upon the boil. This simple direction goes to refute and correct some errors very common in our day. The one is that remedies are to be absolutely tabooed, that they do no good; faith and prayer alone are to be resorted to to effect a cure. The theory, and the heresy that has prompted it, are set at naught by this one direction, in which God's prophet, under the direction of the almighty Physician, specified the remedy to be used. And the other error which it sets at naught is, that medical remedies have, in themselves, aside from God, any virtue or value. Too much does suffering humanity rely upon medicine; the drug bottle has become with many a veritable idol; that is their god who is going to help them. The application of figs to boils was a remedy known before Isaiah suggested it, in all likelihood it had been tried in Hezekiah's case without result; now, at the prophet's injunction, it is tried again and effectively. In other words, this time God worked through it, and so it proved of value. All the medicine in the world is worthless if He does not put divine properties into it. And so let us beware of idolizing the medicine, and forgetting over it Him who put the good into it, and when we take it, let us not fail to offer up with it prayer to Him who can and must make it efficacious.