"Wait a minute. These, I say, given the right temperament and receptiveness to suggestion, can be cured _instantaneously_." "Instantaneously?" "Certainly--given those conditions. Then there are certain other diseases, very closely related to the nervous system, in which there have been changes of tissue, not only in the brain, but in the organs or the limbs. And these, too, can be cured by mere natural suggestion; but--and this is the point--not instantaneously. In cases of this kind, cured in this way, there is always needed a period, I won't say as long as, but proportionate to, the period during which the disease had been developing and advancing. I forget the exact proportions now, but I think, so far as I remember, that at least two-thirds of the time is required for recovery by suggestion as was occupied by the growth of the disease. Take _lupus_. That certainly belongs to the class I'm speaking of. Well, lupus has been cured in mental laboratories, but never instantaneously or anything like instantaneously." "Go on, father." "Finally, there are those physical states that have practically nothing to do directly with the nervous system at all. Take a broken leg. Of course the cure of a broken leg is affected by the state of the nervous system, since it depends upon the amount of vital energy, the state of the blood, and so on. But there are distinct processes of change of tissue that are bound to take a certain fixed period. You may--as has been proved over and over again in the mental laboratories--hasten and direct the action of the nervous energy, so that a man under hypnotic suggestion will improve more rapidly than a man who is not. But no amount of suggestion can possibly effect a cure instantaneously. Tuberculosis is another such thing; certain diseases of the heart---" "I see. Go on." "Well, then, science has fixed certain periods in all these various matters which simply cannot be lessened beyond a certain point. And miracle does not begin--authorized miracle, I mean--unless these periods are markedly shortened. Mere mental cures, therefore, do not come under the range of authorized miracle at all--though, of course, in many cases where there has been little or no suggestion, or where the temperament is not receptive, practically speaking, the miraculous element is most probably present. In the second class--organic nervous diseases--no miracle is proclaimed unless the cure is instantaneous, or very nearly so. In the third class, again, no miracle is proclaimed unless the cure is either instantaneous, or the period of it very considerably shortened beyond all known examples of natural cure by suggestion." "And you mean to say that such cures are frequent?" The old priest smiled. "Why, of course. There is an accumulation of evidence from the past hundred years which----" "Broken limbs?"