Strahan, where he went sometimes for the benefit
of good air, which, notwithstanding his having formerly laughed at the
general opinion upon the subject, he now acknowledged was conducive to
health.
One morning afterwards, when I found him alone, he communicated to
me, with solemn earnestness, a very remarkable circumstance which had
happened in the course of his illness, when he was much distressed by
the dropsy. He had shut himself up, and employed a day in particular
exercises of religion--fasting, humiliation, and prayer. On a sudden
he obtained extraordinary relief, for which he looked up to Heaven with
grateful devotion. He made no direct inference from this fact; but from
his manner of telling it, I could perceive that it appeared to him as
something more than an incident in the common course of events. For my
own part, I have no difficulty to avow that cast of thinking, which by
many modern pretenders to wisdom is called SUPERSTITIOUS. But here
I think even men of dry rationality may believe, that there was an
intermediate interposition of Divine Providence, and that 'the fervent
prayer of this righteous man' availed.
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