Genre:

Short Fiction, Reminiscences

Subjects:

Medical Treatment, Human Development, Miracle, Morality, Faith

    Recalling her childhood, the narrator observes: 'It is certain that parents can no more give a new nature to a child than a physician can give a new constitution to a patient. No mere man can say to the leper, Be thou cleansed, but he may use the means supplied by nature for relieving the sufferer, and consequently may withhold swine's flesh from the infected person; and so far would parents do well to imitate the wise physician: whilst humbly and piously awaiting from above the descent of the regenerating spirit on the children whom God has given them, they may use the appointed means for their conversion' (148).