Heal Thy Enemy

"Expect a miracle," Faith Healer Oral Roberts exhorts his TV congregations, and he practices what he preaches. When he quit the gospel big top to build himself a university (TIME, Feb. 7), Roberts set his heart on a national basketball championship. Lo, last week there was Oral Roberts University in the quarter-finals of the National Invitation Tournament at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. During the game between O.R.U. and St. John's University, St. John's star Mel Davis had to be carried off the courts with torn tendons in his right knee. Good Samaritan Roberts strode into the St. John's dressing room to offer a three-minute prayer. "He's a great player, but above all he's a human being that needs Your help," he intoned with his hand on Davis' knee. "I ask You to restore him to the game."

But for Roberts, the evening's results were less than miraculous all the way around. Davis was whisked away in an ambulance, and St. John's went on to whip O.R.U. 94-78. Davis, a Baptist, later mused from his hospital bed: "I believe what I've heard about Oral Roberts. If I had been more conscious of what was happening, maybe it would have worked."

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