The Lord of Glory; Counterfeit Miracles; Revelation and Inspiration

ing sin, and therefore indwelling sin to struggle against, continues through life. We have not yet obtained, and we are not yet made perfect. It is little that we continue also physically weak, liable to disease, and certain to die. For the removal of these physical evils, too, provision is made in the atonement. But the benefit here too is not received all at once. For us, as in the broader sphere of the world's salvation, death is the last enemy to be conquered. Though the redeemed of the Lord and no longer under the dominion of sin, the results of sin remain with us: inwardly we are corrupt, outwardly we are the prey of weakness and disease and death. We shall not escape from either in this life. Who is there that sins not? And who is there that does not suffer and die? But ultimately we are relieved from both. Of indwelling corruption when our sanctification is completed and, having been made holy, we depart, which is far better, to be with the Lord, the Holy One. Of outward weaknesses, at that redemption of the body which, while here below, we only, groaning and travailing in pain, wait for in its due season — that is, at the resurrection, when death shall be swallowed up in victory. This is the teaching of the Bible; and this is what Christ illustrated when He healed the sick in His ministry on earth that men might see, as in an object-lesson, that provision was made in His substitutionary work for the relief of every human ill. There is included in this, however, no promise that this relief is to be realized in its com.pleteness all at once, or in this earthly life. Our Lord never permitted it for a moment to be imagined that the salvation He brought was fundamentally for this life. His was emphatically an otherworld religion. He constantly pointed to the beyond, and bade men find their true home, to set their hopes, and to place their aspirations, there.

But, we are asked, are there not to be prelibations here? Is there no ''intermediate work of healing and recovery for the body" here as there is "a vast intermediate work of cleansing and renewal effected for the soul?"^^ Assuredly. The good man will not fail to be the better for his goodness even in his bodily hfe. Of course we may make an absurd application of even so obvious a maxim. That devout physician whom we had occasion to quote a while ago, warns us against such an absurd application. He is unwise, he declares,^^ who teaches "Obey the commandments, the laws of spiritual Hfe, and you will thereby attain physical health." "That does not follow," he declares. "As well say, 'Obey the commandments and you will become large possessors of this world's goods,' or, 'Obey the commandments and you will therefore be exempt from the law of gravitation.'" What he means to say is that the Lord, in placing His people in this complex of forces whose regular working constitutes what we call the laws of nature, subjects them, of course, to these laws. We cannot expect to be emancipated from the laws which govern the action of the forces in the midst of which our hfe is cast. That would be to take us out of the world. No matter how holy we are we must expect, if we cast ourselves from a tenth-story window, to fall with the same certainty and with the same rate of accelerating velocity as other men. The law of gravity is not suspended in its action on us by our moral character. We cannot grow rich by simply rubbing some Aladdin's lamp and commanding supernatural assistance; economic law will govern the acquisition of wealth in our case as in that of others. When typhoid germs find lodgment in a body, even though it be the body of a saint, they will under favorable conditions, grow and produce all their dreadful effects, with the same certainty with which the seeds of corn which you cast into the ground grow and bring forth their harvest. The same laws on which you depend for the harvest of corn, you may equally depend on for the harvests of disease which you reap year after year. We Uve then in a complex of forces out of which we cannot escape, so long

as we are in this world, and these forces make for disease and death. We are all left here, like Trophimus at Mileturn, sick. And if we insist upon being relieved of this sickness we can expect only the answer which was given to Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you."

All this is true, and yet it too is not incapable of exaggeration in its application. And that for two very obvious reasons. In the first place it also is a law of nature that the pure in heart and clean in conduct escape many evils, among which must be ranged multifarious sicknesses. We need not labor so obvious a point.^^ We find even Matthew Arnold remarking on this law in his allusive manner.

"Medical science," says he,^^ "has never gauged — never perhaps set itself to gauge — the intimate connection between moral fault and disease. To what extent, or in how many cases, what is called illness is due to moral springs having been used amiss, whether by being overused or by not being used sufficiently — we hardly at all know, and we too Uttle inquire." But we do not found here solely on a

law of nature. Even the laws of nature are under the control of God in their operation, and we point to the good providence of our God. The Lord is rich in mercy to them that trust in Him, and it would be strange indeed if there were no visible and tangible fruits of this His mercy perceptible in our bodily hfe. There is a promise for this life as well as for that which is to come, and it is definitely said that to those who seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things shall be added. Are not the providence and grace of God enough for us in this "our little journey in the world"? Or, dissatisfied with these, are we to demand that the laws of nature be suspended in our case; that, though in the world, we shall, in this sense too, be not of it? What scriptural ground is there for expecting miraculous healings of the body through these ages of our earthly pilgrimage, in addition to that benefit which the body obtains from its animation by a renewed and sane- tifying soul, from our Lord's watchfulness over it as His purchased possession, from the indwelling in it of the Holy Spirit as His Temple, from the Father's listening to the prayers of His saints for its keeping and healing, and from all God's goodness to it in fulfilment of His word that godliness has the promise of the life that now is as well as that which is to come? None has been pointed to, and we are constrained to believe none exists. For soul and body we are in the Lord's loving keeping. We trust in Him and He keeps us. There is no specific promise that He will keep us otherwise than by His providence and grace. Do not these suffice for all our needs?

We have examined all the scriptural passages formally appealed to by Gordon. The considerations which he places under the heading of "the testimony of reason," however, are closely related to the scriptural argument, and no doubt require a passing word. They are these: (i) that, "if miracles should cease, they would form quite a distinct exception to everything else which the Lord introduced by His ministry"; and (2) that "the use of miracles of healing as signs seems to argue strongly for their permanency; if the substance remains unchanged, why should the sign which was originally chosen to exhibit it be superseded?" The force of the argument here lies in its assumptions. If we begin by assuming that miracleworking was instituted by our Lord as an ordinance of the Christian religion; was established, like Baptism and the Lord's Supper, as a visible, permanent sign of the invisible reality; why, of course, their cessation becomes a striking exception to the rule and calls for explanation. But clearly there is nothing to justify these assumptions. And if there were, too much would be proved to suit the case. For Gordon proceeds at once to argue that only miracles of healing abide. But surely it cannot be contended that only miracles of heahng were introduced by our Lord by His ministry, and only His miracles of healing were "signs." If Gordon's argument is worth anything it proves that all

forms of miracle-working practised by Christ were continued as the permanent possession of His church. It is not even claimed that that is the fact.

It might not be absolutely fatal to the assertions of the Faith-Healers that the scriptural grounds on which they base them prove too precarious to bear their weight. It is conceivable that the fact of the continuance of miraculous healing could be made so clear that we should be compelled to confess its continuance though no Scripture had promised it. Stanton prefers to take this attitude toward the matter. He deprecates beginning with scriptural *' theory" and thence proceeding to investigate "fact," as essentially an a priori method. He insists that " the question is pre-eminently one of fact"; which can only be fairly tested by a ''process of rigid induction." "Facts are never heresies," he says, "either in science or religion." Accordingly he proposes to begin with facts and argue back from them to their true cause. He opens his discussion, therefore, with a collection of selected cases which he represents as undeniable in point of fact and details, and as of such inherent character, being immediate healings by prayer of organic diseases, that they necessitate the conclusion that they are veritable miracles. From the fact of miracleworking, thus established, he turns back to the Scripture,- to see whether it is possible that it contains no warrant for such great transactions. There is a certain apparent strength in this mode of procedure. It involves, however, a confession of the weakness of the scriptural evidence. If the evidence of Scripture were felt to be in itself conclusive, its consideration would scarcely be postponed until facts were accumulated to guide in its interpretation. Gordon's method of appealing to Scripture first, certainly does more honor to Scripture and gives the impression that in dealing with it he feels himself on soHd ground. The scriptural evidence having failed, however, his case too falls back on the bald facts of experience.

The titles of the chapters in which Gordon adduces the testimony of the alleged miraculous facts, have already been enumerated. He calls in turn upon the witness of the church, of theologians, of missions, of the adversary, of experience, and of the healed. There is an almost too great completeness in this accumulation of sources of testimony. There is nevertheless observable a certain eclecticism in dealing with it. The testimony of the church, for instance, does not mean the testimony of the church speaking as an organized body — whether as a whole or in some one or other of its organized sections. It means the testimony of Christians of the past, the record of which is found in what is called "church history." It is a very eclectic "church history," however, which is appealed to. The testimony of the first three centuries is adduced, and partly that of the fourth. Then comes a sharp break, at the age of Constantine, at which time, as we have shown, really explicit evidence only begins. Later, it is true, under the caption of "The Testimony of Theologians," Augustine's opinion is cited — with what consistency we may judge when we observe that all the miracles of "the Apostate Church," which is said to have begun with the age of Constantine,^ ° are declared to be "the testimony of the Adversary," working counterfeit miracles, and only so bearing witness to the currency of the true. In this chapter on "The Testimony of the Church" we are carried over at once to the testimony of the Waldenses, Moravians, Huguenots, Covenanters, Friends, early Baptists and Methodists. With reference to these the remark is made that, in every revival of primitive faith, "we find a profession of chaste and evangelical miracles." How far this description applies to the marvels it has professedly in view we must let the reader of the annals of those troubled movements himself decide. We think ourselves that a remark made by Gordon at an earlier point is far more applicable to them: when he spoke of the likelihood of every true upstirring of genuine emotion being accom-