A TYPICAL SERVICE
began to read the twenty-second chapter of Revelation. If I were to live a hundred years I should never forget the reading of that chapter. I believe it exceeded in effect the finest speech and most eloquent sermon ever uttered. The exquisite musical intonation and modulation of voice, the deep and intense pathos of delivery, as if the speaker felt every word entering into his own soul, and that he was pouring it out to create a sympathy with his own feelings in others — all this was very wonderful, and totally absorbing every thought of the audience. But when he came to that verse, 'I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and Morning Star/ the effect of the last five words was electrical. The people could not cheer nor applaud, nor in any way relieve their feelings. There was a kind of hard breathing, a sound of suppressed emotion, more striking than the loudest plaudits could have been. The reader himself stopped for a moment as if to allow his unwonted emotion to subside. Before he could resume there came from a woman who was two or three seats behind me, a sound so loud that I am sure it might have been heard on the opposite side of the square. I have been trying to find a word by which to describe it, and the only word I can think of is the word 'yell.' It was not a scream nor a shriek; it was a yell so loud and so prolonged that it filled the church entirely, and as I have said, must have been heard far beyond it. It was at first one single sound, but it seemed in a short time to resolve itself into many separate sounds — not into articulate words by any means. They were far more like the sounds uttered by a deaf and dumb child modulating its tones, but wholly innocent of speech. This was the beginning and the ending of the so-called 'unknown tongues' in Regent Square, by which I mean they never varied from nor improved upon this type. How any one could be so deluded as to fancy in them any words or syllables, to say nothing of any language, I could never understand. There was no articula-
tion, and no attempt at it. Had there been now and then something like a word, it was mixed up in such a jargon of sound, it was uttered with such rapidity, and in such a long continued and prolonged yell that, led up to it as I had been by the adjuncts of the scene, by the weirdness and obscurity of the building, I was never deceived by it for one moment. After a few minutes' utterance of these 'unknown tongues/ the excited woman began to speak in articulate English words. It was still in the same loud yell, slightly subdued by the necessity of speech. The utterances were chiefly texts of Scripture of an exhortative kind — the first word being uttered three times over, each one louder than the last, the last calling forth the woman's powers to the utmost, her breast heaving and straining with the exertion. On this occasion the English began oddly enough, with the word, * Kiss! ICiss!! Kiss!!! the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way.' This morning there was only one manifestation. Generally there were two; on several occasions I heard three, and once four. They proceeded, however, from the same women, for while the second was speaking the first recovered her strength, and as her companion's voice died away in subdued murmurs, she burst out anew, as if a dozen spirits were contending in her. When I look back on that first morning, I feel moved with the deepest pity and regret for poor Edward Irving. He was greatly excited and overcome. In his honest heart, he believed that God had honored him and favored him above aU the ministers in London. I can see him now before me, as I saw him then, meekly and humbly saying, 'I will now finish reading the chapter in which I was interrupted by the Holy Spirit, speaking by this young woman.' Yes I heard him say this with my own ears. Already the charm of the service was gone. He seemed glad to conclude it, as if he were afraid his own gentle words could detract from and injure the holy impression that had been produced...."
Edward Irving himself "never received the power, nor attained to any supernatural utterance, though no one more earnestly sought after it." ^^ As Erskine in Scotland, so Irving in London, had to be content with the role of observer of others' endowments. Nor was the actual number of those who enjoyed the gifts at any time very large. "Of the many hundred individuals who for the first twelve months attended in London upon these utterances, and who were, one and all, praying for the same gifts, not so many as twelve attained to the utterances." "The leading persons who, for many months gave forth the utterances, and wrought the strong conviction of the work being of God were two ladies" ^^ — and one of them (Miss Hall) was not only declared by her sister prophetess (Miss Cardale) to be a false prophetess,^^ but was constrained to confess that on some occasions at least she was herself the author of her utterances.^®
Of course we are in the presence here of hysteria.^'^ There are those who take occasion from this fact to exonerate Irving, in whole or at least in large part, for his vagarious course. "Oh," cries an appreciative biographer, "that the whole sad tribe of prophetic pedants and hysterical pietists had gone their own way, leaving him to go jj|gi»68 j)^^ ^gy j^Q|. gQ |.|^gjj, Q,^,^^ way? And was it their fault that Irving never had a way of his own? Why burden "the Albury sages" or the crowd of hysterical women which surrounded him, and to whom he gave all too willing an ear, with "the shipwreck of Irving's genius and usefulness"? Is not their own shipwreck burden enough for them to bear? Were it not juster to say simply that this was the particular kind of fire Irving chose to play with, and that, therefore, this is the particular way in which he burned his fingers? It is altogether probable, being the man he was, that if it had not been in these, he would have burned them in some other flames.^^
I HAVE called your attention to the discrediting which befell the Irvingite gifts. This discrediting was wrought not only by the course of history which confounded all the expectations based on them, but also by the confession which was made by one and another of the "gifted" persons that they had suffered from delusion. Let me remind you of this, and at the same time point out that all the gifts are involved in this discrediting. The characteristic Irvingite gift was the *' tongues," and the accompanying "prophecy." Robert Baxter introduced a new manifestation of authoritative and predictive deliverances, which was assumed to belong to the "Apostolic" gift. But all the "prophets" committed themselves, when speaking in "the power," to the genuineness of his inspiration. Their credit falls thus with his. But again, their gifts are inextricably bound up with the gift of "healing." You will remember that Mary Campbell "spoke with tongues" before she was healed; and that the descent of the "power" on Margaret Macdonald was preliminary to its descent on James Macdonald, who by it was made the first faithhealer of the movement. By him both Margaret Macdonald's and Mary Campbell's healing was performed — the initial steps of the restoration of the "gifts."
It is impossible to separate these cases of healing from the other gifts with which they are historically connected. And in general the several "gifts" appear on the pages of the New Testament together, and form so clearly connected a body that it would be difficult to separate them from one another. Nevertheless many attempt their separation, and, discarding or at any rate neglecting the other gifts revived in the Irvingite movement, contend vigorously that the gift of healing the sick is a pennanent endowment of the church, and has been illustrated by numerous cases essentially like those of Margaret Macdonald and Mary Campbell down to to-day. This assertion is very clearly made by a clergyman of the church of England, Joseph William Reynolds, in a book dealing with what he calls The Natural History of Immortality. " Many facts, attested
by honest, capable, painstaking witnesses," he says,^ "show the reality in our own days of healings which exceed the limits of all known natural and human means, so that no reasonable doubt ought to exist as to their being given of God in confirmation of our Christian faith. Clergy and laity of the English church, various non-conforming ministers, medical men, lawyers, and professors of physical science, with a large number of healed persons, present indisputable evidence that the Gift of Healing is now, as in the Apostolic Age, one of the signs which follow those who believe." The claim is precise, and the belief which it
expresses is somewhat wide-spread. Already thirty years ago (1887)^ there were more than tliirty *' Faith-Homes" established in America, for the treatment of disease by prayer alone; and in England and on the European Continent there were many more. International conferences had already been held by its advocates, and conventions of narrower constituency beyond number. It counts adherents in every church, and, if for no other reason than its great diffusion, it demands careful attention.
I am a little embarrassed to know how to take up the subject so as to do it justice and to bring the full truth out clearly. On the whole, I fancy it will be fairest to select a representative book advocating this teaching, and to begin with an analysis of its argument. The way being thus opened, we shall probably be able to orient ourselves with reference to the problem itself in a comparatively brief space. The book I have selected for this purpose as, on
GORDON'S METHOD
the whole, at once the most readable and the most rational presentation of the views of the Faith-Healers, is Doctor A, J. Gordon's The Ministry of Healing, or Miracles of Cure in All Ages. The copy of this book at my disposal belongs to the second, revised edition, issued in 1883. Gordon writes in a straightforward, businesslike style, in excellent spirit, with great skill in arranging his matter and developing his subject, and with a very persuasive and even ingenious disposition of his argument, so as to present his case in the most attractive way. He expresses his purpose as "to let the history of the church of all ages answer to the teaching of the Scriptures on this question, without presuming to dogmatize on it himself." ^ Already we get the impression that he knows how to present his matter so as not only to please readers, but also to remove such prejudices against his cause as may be lurking in their minds, and to predispose them to follow his guidance. We do not lose this impression as we read on. After an introductory chapter on ''The Question and Its Bearings," we are at once given a series of chapters on "The Testimony of Scripture," "The Testimony of Reason," "The Testimony of the Church/' "The Testimony of Theologians," "The Testimony of Missions," "The Testimony of the Adversary," "The Testimony of Experience," "The Testimony of the Healed." You will observe the power of such a disposition of the matter; it almost convinces us to read over the mere titles of the chapters. At the end there come two chapters on the "Verdict" — called respectively the "Verdict of Candor" and the "Verdict of Caution"— and finally the "Conclusion." We must now look a little more closely into the contents of this full and admirably marshalled argument.
Our logical sense meets with a shock at the first opening of the volume. On the very first page the author represents asking the question. What is a miracle? as "evading the issue"; and toward the close of the first chapter he formally declines to define a miracle. This, as the outcome of a chapter on "The Question and its Bearings," beginning a volume undertaking to give proof of the existence of "miracles of cure in all ages," is far from reassuring. We open our eyes wider, however, when we observe that this method of dealing with the subject is not peculiar to this author, but is somewhat characteristic of the advocates of Faith-Healing. Robert L. Stanton, for example, in an able essay printed in The Presbyterian Review, takes up the same position."* "It is well in the outset," he says, "to have a definite conception of the topic to be handled." He then proceeds by way of rendering the subject more definite to express a preference for "the category of the supernatural, instead of that of the miraculous." Such methods can bear only one of two meanings. They either yield the question in debate altogether — for no one who is a Christian in any clear sense doubts that God hears and answers prayer for the healing of the sick in a generally supernatural manner — or else they confuse the issue. The former is certainly not their intention; these writers do not mean to yield the point of the strict miraculousness of Faith-Healing. Stanton's selected instances, on which he rests his defense of Faith-Healing, are all such as are meant to demonstrate specifically miraculous working. Everywhere the use of means naturally adapted to bring the cure about, such as the surgeon's knife or the articles of the materia medica, are, if not forbidden, yet certainly discouraged by the practitioners of Faith-HeaKng, and represented as a mark of lack of trust in God; and dependence on God alone, apart from all use of natural means, is represented as the very essence of the matter.'^ After refusing at the outset to define a miracle, we observe Gordon, accordingly, showing no hesitancy later on in defining it sharply enough, and asserting that it is just this which is wrought in Faith-Healing. When the testimony is all in, and he comes to deliver the verdict, he declares decisively,®