Luxurious living is not healthy. The second generation of kings and
queens and of lords and princes is apt to be brainless and invalid.
The second crop of grass is almost always short.
Royal blood is generally scrofulous. You will not be surprised, then, to
hear that King Hezekiah had disorders which broke out in a carbuncle,
virulent and deathful. The Lord told him he must die.
But Hezekiah did not want to die. He turned his face to the wall, so that
his prayer would not be interrupted, and cried to God for his life.
God heard the prayer and answered it, saying: “Behold, I will heal thee.”
But there was human instrumentality to be employed.
This carbuncle needed a cataplasm. That is a tough word that we use to
show how much we know. If in the pulpit we always used words the people
understood, we never should have any reputation for learning.
Well, this carbuncle needed a cataplasm, which is a poultice. Your old
mother, who doctored her own children in the time when physicians were
not as plentiful as they are now, will tell you that the very best
poultice is a fig, and that was what was used upon the carbuncle of King
Hezekiah. The power of God, accompanied by this human instrumentality,
cured the king.
In this age of discovery, when men know so much it kills them, and write
so wisely it almost kills us, it has been found out that prayer to God is
a dead failure. All things are arranged according to inexorable law.
Ah, my friends, have we been so mistaken? Does God hear and answer
prayer, or does He not? Why come out with a challenge in this day, and an
experiment, when we have here the very experiment?
Hezekiah was sick unto death; he prayed for his life; God heard him, and
added fifteen years to that lifetime. The prayer saved him, the lump of
figs applied being merely the God-appointed human instrumentality.