ASCETIC TENDENCIES
of keeping the body clean, and this can be done without scrubbing the whole surface daily. Water is not the natural habitat of humanity." "Is civilization," she exclaims,^^ "only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? " But she has a deeper feeling. " Bathing, scrubbing,
to alter the secretions, or remove unhealthy exhalations from the cuticle," she declares in her earlier editions at least, received a "useful rebuke from Jesus' precept 'Take no thought... for the body.'" "We must beware," she adds, "of making clean only the outside of the platter." ^^
It is with respect to marriage, however, that the asceticism intrinsic to Mrs. Eddy's philosophy pushes nearest to the surface. She discourages marriage and prefers celibacy. "Is marriage more right than celibacy?" she asks, and answers,^" "Human knowledge indicates that it is, but Science indicates that it is not J' And so far from marriage involving children, childless marriages are the best and are to be sought after.^^ To the objection that, if every one followed this advice, the human race would soon perish, she has a ready answer. The propagation of the species, she intimates, does not depend on marriage; sex is an error of the mortal mind. "The butterfly, bee and moth," she says,^^ — we are afraid that Mrs. Eddy's knowledge of natural history was defective — even now are reproduced in an asexual manner, and this may — nay, will — be true of man when he attains more nearly to his true being. Meanwhile, these are times of ignorance; and during these times of ignorance, she counsels, let marriages continue.'^ Thus Christian Science makes its concession to "mortal mind." "^^
We observe that Mrs. Eddy has an eschatology. She is looking forward to a better time to come, when all that Christian Science dreams should be shall be. Why her dreams of the future should take the form of this golden age we do not quite understand. If all is mind and mind is God, we should think Mrs. Eddy's eschatology would point forward to a time when all the wavelets which fret the surface of the infinite deep should have sunk to rest in its depths. But no, the paradise she looks forward to is, apparently, a material paradise.^^ There are men in it, and they increase and multiply and replenish the earth — though after an asexual manner. They are in it but not of it. They tread the adder under foot; and though they drink deadly things, they will suffer no harm — for there will be no "mortal mind" then to make it harm them. They will walk on the water, it seems, and turn water into wine, and multiply loaves and fishes, as Jesus once did, but men cannot do now. At least Herman S. Hering, first reader of the church at Concord, seems to promise this
to us, "eventually." "It is claimed by some opponents," he writes,^® "that because Christian Scientists do not walk on the water, turn water into wine, multiply loaves and fishes, as did Jesus, and because they still have to do with matter at every turn, the doctrines of Christian Science, especially that of the unreality of matter, must be fallacious. Such an argument is Uke that which declares that, because a school-boy, who is Just learning to add and subtract, cannot work out a problem in cube-root, therefore the claims of greater possibilities in the science of mathematics are fallacious, and the school-boy is badly deceived by the promise of being able eventually to solve such higher problems."
There is a good time coming, then, and we may confidently look forward to it. It contains for us, no doubt, nothing beyond what we ought to have here and now, and would have here and now were it not for the interference of "mortal mind." In enumerating the benefits which Christian Science confers on us, Frances Lord includes in
the list such items as these:" "6. We do not need to fear any climate.... 7. We do not need to travel or go away for a change of air.... 8. We know that we do
A GOOD TIME COMING
not really live by eating, and this mere knowledge — without any effort to do without food, or lessen it, or indeed interfere with our ordinary simple habits at all — has the effect of making us less dependent on our meals both as to what and when to eat. 9. And in the same way we grow less dependent upon clothing, warmth and coldness, for comfort." But she immediately adds: ''Here let us say emphatically that we neither enjoin, nor encourage, any experiments about food or clothing. Experience shows us that any changes, to be worth anything, must and do come about of themselves, in persons who, having learnt the truth of life, accepted and begun to Uve by it, demonstrate it naturally and spontaneously." This is, of course,
only a repetition of Mrs. Eddy's constant manner. For example: '^ "Food does not affect the real existence of man... but it would be foolish to venture beyond present understanding, foolish to stop eating until we gain more goodness, and a clearer comprehension of the Hving God."^^ But what about the success, in actual healing, of this system which describes "a mental cure" — this is the way that Luther M. Marsdon puts it — as "the discovery of a sick person that he is well," and the practice of which consists^'simply in the transference of this thought from the practitioner to the patient? It is just as successful as any other of the many systems of mental practice; no more and no less. Its list of cures is long, and many of them are remarkable.^*^ We have no reason to doubt the reality of large numbers of these cures. But by now, we surely understand that there are limitations to them which are never overpassed. These limitations are brought sharply into view by a challenge cast out by Professor L. T. Townsend.^^
He made this proposition: "If you or the president of your college, or your entire college of doctors, will put into place a real case of hip or ankle dislocation, without resorting to the ordinary manipulation or without touching it, I will give you a thousand dollars. Or if you or your president,
or your entire college, will give sight to one of the inmates' of the South Boston Asylum for the Blind, that sightless person having been born blind, I will give you two thousand dollars." The money was never called for. But in
the Journal of Christian Science this reply appeared: "Will
the gentleman accept my thanks due to his generosity, for if I should accept his bid he would lose his money. Why, because I perfonned more difficult tasks fifteen years ago. At present I am in another department of Christian work, where 'there shall be no sign given them,' for they shall be instructed in the principles of Christian Science that furnishes its own proof." We have observed that in a similar
vein a Faith-Healer, Doctor Cullis, explained that "a broken bone is not sickness, and should be put into the hands of a surgeon." Mrs. Eddy does not thus curtly refuse, she only postpones, the treatment of such cases. "Until the advancing age admits the efhcacy and supremacy of Mind," she writes, ^^ "it is better to leave the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while you confine yourself chiefly " — that "chiefly " is very good! — "to mental reconstruction or the prevention of inflammation or protracted confinement." Even while saying this, however, she asseverates that cures of this kind have nevertheless already been actually performed both by herself and her pupils.
It was not the magnitude of the task asked by Professor Townsend which led Mrs. Eddy to palter thus. It was the nature of it. The drawing of a tooth is not a great thing, but Mrs. Eddy's Science was not equal to it. We do indeed hear here too of "more difficult tasks" already performed. We hear, for example, of " the 'good-sized ca\dty' of an aching tooth filled up by mental treatment, ' not with foreign substance, but the genuine, white and perfect.'" ^^ But when Mrs. Eddy herself had a troublesome tooth, she employed the good ofiices of a dentist to obtain relief, and even availed herself of his "painless method" to guard her-
LIMITATIONS IN PRACTICE
self from suffering in the process. ^^ The explanation she
gives runs as follows: ''Bishop Berkeley and I agree that all is Mind. Then, consistently with this premise, the conclusion is that if I employ a dental surgeon, and he believes that the extraction of a tooth is made easier by some application of means which he employs, and I object to the employment of this means, I have turned the dentist's mental protest against myself, he thinks I must suffer because his method is interfered with. Therefore, his mental force weighs against a painless operation, whereas it should be put into the same scale as mine, thus producing a painless operation as a logical result." This is very ingenious.
The application of the anaesthetic to Mrs. Eddy's tooth was to operate not on Mrs. Eddy, directly, but on the dentist; it was not to keep the extraction of the tooth from hurting Mrs. Eddy, but to keep the dentist from thinking that its extraction would hurt Mrs. Eddy. But the real question of interest is, Why did Mrs. Eddy have recourse to a dentist at all? ^^ The toothache and the tooth, Mrs. Eddy and the operator, the soothing appHcation and the cruel forceps were one and all illusions. It is safe to say that the extraction itself — the act of a nonentity on a nonentity — did not happen.
Sir WiHiam Osier tells us in a few direct words why Mrs. Eddy went to a dentist. "Potent as is the influence of mind on body," he writes, "and many as are the miraclelike cures which may be worked, all are in functional disorders, and we know only too well that nowadays the prayer of faith neither sets a broken thigh nor checks an epidemic of typhoid fever." ^^ That is to say, directly, by its own power. It may do either, indirectly, through the gracious answer of the Almighty God who has infinite resources at His disposal; who, as the old writer to whom we listened at the beginning of this lecture told us, creates physicians and medicines and gives them their skill and efficacy, that He, the Lord, may be honored in His marvellous works. But Mrs. Eddy had no Lord to pray to, and no faith in which to appear before Him, and no hope in His ahnighty succor. Let us be thankful that she at least had a dentist. ^^
1. W. Yorke Fausset, for example, unduly restricts the number of our Lord's miracles, speaking of the "severe economy with which He exercised such supernatural, or extranatural, powers." (Medicine and the Modern Church, edited by Geoffrey Rhodes, 1910, pp.
3. Charismata: it is a distinctively Pauline term, occurring elsewhere than in Paul's writings only once in Philo [De Alleg. Leg., 2: 7s) and once in the First Epistle of Peter (4: 10), an epistle which, both in doctrine and language, is of quite Pauline character.
4. Cf. C. F. G. Heinrici, Das erste Sendschreiben des Apostel Paulus an die Kormther, 1880, p. 452: " Mosheim says that Paul sketches in this section a kind of Church Directory. That goes too far: but it at least contains the outlines of a Directory of Worship in his community, for which it was at once made clear that in all matters which concern the value and effect of the worshipping assemblages, caprice and confusion are excluded." W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 1913, p. 106, describes very vividly, though on the naturalistic hypothesis explained in note 6 below, what their assemblies were for the Christians of the Apostolic times. "Here in
the assemblies of the fellowship," he writes, "there arose for the believers in Christ the consciousness of their unity and peculiar sociological individuality. Scattered during the day in pursuit of their daily callings, subject in an alien world to derision and scorn, they came together in the evening (no doubt as often as possible) for the common sacred meal. They then experienced the miracle of fellowship, the glow of the enthusiasm of a common faith and a common hope, when the Spirit flamed up and encompassed them with a miracle-filled world: prophets and tongues, visionaries and ecstatics began to speak, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs soared through the room, the forces of brotherly charity awoke in an unsuspected fashion, an unheard of new life pulsated
through the crowd of Christians. And over this whole surging enthusiasm the Lord Jesus reigned as the head of His community, immediately present in His power with a tangibiUty and a certainty which takes the breath away."
5. J. H. Bernard, in an essay on "The Miraculous in Early Christian Literature," published in the volume called The Literature of the Second Century, by F. R. Wynne, J. H. Bernard, and S. Hemphill (New York, James Pott & Co., 1892), p. 145, gives a useful but incomplete exhibit of the references to the exercise of these gifts in the Acts and Epistles: (i) Tongues: Pentecost (Acts 2) and frequently alluded to by Paul in his epistles; (2) Prophecy: frequently called a "sign" of an Apostle, and also alluded to in the cases of Agabus (Acts 11: 28, 21: 10), the twelve Ephesian disciples on whom Paul laid his hands (Acts 19: 6), and the four daughters of Philip (Acts 21: 9); (3) Poison: Paul's viper (Acts 28: 3); (4) Exorcism: by Paul (Acts 16: 18); (5) Healing: by Paul in the case of Publius (Acts 28: 8), by Peter in that of ^neas (Acts 9: 33), by Peter's shadow (Acts 5: 15), by Paul's clothing (Acts 19: 12), by Peter and John (Acts 3:7); (6) Raising the dead: by Paul, in the case of Eutychus (Acts 20: 9), by Peter, in the case of Dorcas (Acts 9: 36); (7) Punitive: in the cases of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5: 5), and Elymas (Acts 13: 8); (8) General references to signs and wonders: attesting Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14: 3), Stephen (Acts 6: 8) and Philip (Acts 8:6).
6. Theologians of the "Liberal" school, of course, deny the miraculous character of the charisms on principle, and are prone to represent them as the natural manifestations of primitive enthusiasm. "We, for our part," says P. W. Schmiedel (Encyclopedia Biblica, col. 4776), "are constrained to" "deny the miraculous character of the charisms," "and to account for everything in the phenomena to which a miraculous character has been attributed by the known psychological laws which can be observed in crises of great mental exaltation, whether in persons who deem themselves inspired, or in persons who simply require medical treatment." From this point of view the charismata belong to the primitive church as such, to the church not merely of the Apostolic age, but of the first two centuries. This church is spoken of in contrast to the staid, organized church which succeeded it, as a Charismatic Church, that is to say, in the old sense of the word, as an Enthusiastic Church, a church swept along by an exalted state of mind and feeling which we should look upon to-day as mere fanaticism. "It is easily intelligible," says Schmiedel (col. 4775), "that the joy of enthusiasm over the po.ssession of a new redeeming religion should have expressed itself in an exuberant way, which, according to the ideas of the time, could only be regarded as the miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit." Or, as Adolf Harnack {The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, E. T. I., pp. 250 ff.), puts it, Christianity came into being as "the religion of Spirit and power," and only lost this character and became the religion of form and order toward the end of the second century. A rather sharp expression of this view is given in an (inaugural) address delivered in 1893 by A. C. McGiffert, on Primitive and Catholic Christianity. " The spirit of primitive Christianity," he says (p. 19),
"is the spirit of individualism, based on the felt presence of the Holy Ghost. It was the universal conviction of the primitive church that every Christian believer enjoys the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit, through whom he communes with God, and receives illumination, inspiration and strength for his daily needs. The presence of the Spirit was realized by these primitive Christians in a most vivid way. It meant the power to work miracles, to speak with tongues, to utter prophecies (cf. Mark 16: 17- 18, and Acts 2: 16 ff.)." McGiffert is not describing here some
Christians, but all Christians; and all Christians not of the Apostolic age, but of the first two centuries: "By the opening of the third century all these conceptions had practically disappeared." An attempt to give this general view a less naturalistic expression may be read at the close of R. Martin Pope's article, "Gifts," in Hastings's Dictionary of the Apostolic Church. "To sum up," he
writes (vol. I, p. 451), "an examination of the passages in apostolic literature which treat of spiritual gifts inevitably brings us to the conclusion that the life of the early church was characterized by glowing enthusiasm, simple faith, and intensity of joy and wonder, all resulting from the consciousness of the power of the Holy Spirit; also that this phase of Spirit-effected ministries and service was temporary, as such 'tides of the Spirit' have since often proved, and gave way to a more rigid and disciplined Church Order, in which the official tended more and more to supersede the charismatic ministries."
It has always been the characteristic mark of a Christian that he is "led by the Spirit of God": "if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." It has never been the mark of a Christian that because he is "led by the Spirit of God" he is a law to himself and free from the ordinances of God's house. It is very clear from the record of the New Testament that the extraordinary charismata were not (after the very first days of the church) the possession of all Christians, but special supernatural gifts to the few; and it is equally clear from the records of the sub-Apostolic church that they did not continue in it, but only a shadow of them lingered in doubtful manifestations of which we must say, Do not even the heathen so? How little this whole representation accords with the facts the progress of the present discussion will show. For an examination of McGiffert's position, see The Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 1895, pp. 185-194. For a vivid popular description of conditions in the early church as reconstructed from the "Liberal" view-point, and brought into relation to the "enthusiasm" of later centuries, see The Edinburgh Review for January, 1903, pp. 148 ff.
7. R. Martin Pope, as cited, p. 450, speaks of modes of ministry, "in addition to the more stable and authorized modes" mentioned in I Cor. i: 4-12, 28, which were of "a special order, perhaps peculiar to the Corinthian Church, with its exuberant manifestations of spiritual energy, and certainly, as the evidence of later Church History shows, of a temporary character, and exhausting themselves (c/. H. B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the N. T., London, 1909, p. 320) in the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic age." In contrast with these special modes of ministry, he speaks of "the charisms of miracle-working as lasting down to the second century, if we may trust the evidence of Justin Martyr {ApoL, 2:6)." In the passage of Justin appealed to, as also in section 8, and in Dial., 30, 76, 85, it is said only that demoniacs are exorcised by Christians; cf. G. T. Purves, The Testimony of Justin Martyr to Early Christianity, 1889, p. 159. We shall see that the evidence of the second and subsequent centuries is not such as naturally to base Pope's conclusion. When he adds of these "charisms of miracle-working" that "they never were intended, as the extreme faith-healer of to-day contends, to supersede the efforts of the skilled physician," he is of course right, since they were confined to the Apostolic age, and to a very narrow circle then. But when he goes on to say, "they represent the creative gift, the power of initiating new departures in the normal world of phenomena, which is rooted in faith (see A. G. Hogg, Christ's Message of the Kingdom, Edinburgh, 1 91 1, pp. 62-70); and as such reveal a principle which holds good for all time" — he is speaking wholly without book, and relatively to the charisms of the New Testament equally wholly without meaning.
not appear like the sun in tropical lands, which rises without a dawn and sets without a twilight, but, as millenniums of prophecy
preceded Him, so miracles followed Him, and the forces which He first awoke were active in a greater or less measure for a subsequent period. Down into the third century we have credible testimonies of the persistence of the miraculous forces which were active in the first century." A mechanical conception of the miracle- work-
ing of both Christ and His followers lurks behind such figures; Christ let loose forces which naturally required some time to exhaust their energies.
13. On the literary form of Hermas, see Kerr Duncan Macmillan in Biblical and Theological Studies, by the Faculty of Princeton Seminary, 191 2, pp. 494-543. The Didache tells of "prophets" who spoke "in the Spirit," as apparently a well-known phenomenon in the churches for which it speaks, and thus implies the persistence of the charism — or rather of the shadow of the charism — of "prophecy." Papias is reported by Philip of Side as having stated on the authority of the daughters of Philip that Barsabas (or Justus) drank serpent's poison inadvertently, and that the mother of Manaim was raised from the dead, as well as that those raised from the dead by Christ lived untU the time of Hadrian (c/. Eusebius, H. E., Ill, 39, 9; below, note 25); these events belong, in any event, to the Apostolic age.
15. J. B. Lightfoot discusses these miraculous features of the letter in The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, vol. I, pp. 598 ff.; cf. Bernard's exhibition of their natural character op. cit., p. 168. H. Giinter, Lcgenden-Studien, 1906, pp. 10 ff., remarks: "thus, out of the entire series of authentic Passiones there remains as an outspoken miracle-martyrdom only the Acts of Polycarp: and even they are not unquestionably such."
19. Cf. what is said of Justin's and Irenasus's testimony by Gilles P:son Wetter, Charis, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des altesten
Christentums, 1913, p. 185: "We can still hear of xap'o'MaTa in the church, in Justin and Irenseus.... Justin and Irenaeus are probably the latest witnesses of a prophetic gift of grace in the church.... It is generally wholly uncertain whether we can still really find 'gifts of grace' in the church in great amount in the time of Justin and Irenaeus. A declaration like that in Justin, Dial., 82, i,
irapa yap tj/mv Kal M^XP' ''i'*' "TpocprjTiKa xapicr/MiTa iariv, testifies rather tO
the contrary. If both steadily speak of 'we' or of the 'church' or the hke, yet it is possible that they refer by this to the great spiritual operations in the earliest period of Christianity, of which we read in the Gospels, in Acts, and perhaps in some of the Apocrypha. These were to them certainly valuable 'proofs' of the truth of the divine origin of Christianity (c/. for this e. g., Justin, ApoL, I, 58; Theophilus, ad Aut., Ill, 16 and 26; Minucius Felix, Ociavius, 20 and 23)."
,' 20. Bernard, as cited, p. 147, remarks that "with a few notable exceptions," "there is no trace up to the end of the second century" — and the same, we may add, is true of the third — "of any miraculous gifts still existing in the primitive church, save those of prophecy and healing, including exorcism, both of which are frequently mentioned." With reference to prophecy he adduces the warning against false prophets in Hermas (Com. 11) and the Didache, together with Justin's assertion that prophetic gifts continued even — the "even" is perhaps significant — to his day {Dial., 315 B). As to healing, he adduces the general assertions of Justin (Dial., 258 A) and Origen {Conl. Cels., Ill, 24). With respect to exorcisms, he appeals to repeated references by Justin {ApoL, 45 A; Dial., 247 C, 302 A, 311 B, 350 B, 361 C) and Tertullian {ApoL, 23, 37, 43; De SpecL, 2; De Test. Anim., 3; Ad Scap., 2; De Corona, 11; De Idol., 11). He remarks that these Fathers all believed in magic and betray a feeling that the miracles of their day were not quite the same kind of thing which happened in the New Testament times (TertuUian, De Rud., c. 21; Origen, ConL Cels.,
21. The prominence of exorcisms in the notices of marvellous occurrences in these Fathers belongs to the circumstances of the times, and would call for no special notice except for the use which has been made of it in recent discussions {cf. S. McComb in Religion and Medicine, by Elwood Worcester, Samuel McComb, and Isador H. Coriat, 1Q08, pp. 295-299). In point of fact, Christianity came into a world that was demon-ridden, and, as Harnack remarks {The Expansion of Christianity, E. T., 1904, vol. I, p. 158), "no flight of the imagination can form any idea of what would have come over the ancient world or the Roman Empire during the third century had it not been for the church." In conflict with this gigantic evil which dominated the whole hfe of the people, it is not to be wondered at that the Christians of the second and subsequent centuries, who were men of their time, were not always able to hold the poise which Paul gave them in the great words: "We know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no God but one." Accordingly, as Harnack points out, "from Justin downwards, Christian literature is crowded with allusions to exorcisms, and every large church, at any rate, had exorcists" (p. 162). But this is no proof that miracles were wrought, except this great miracle, that, in its struggle against the deeply rooted and absolutely pervasive superstition — "the whole world and the circumambient atmosphere," says Harnack (p. 161), "were filled with devils; not merely idolatry, but every phase and form of life was ruled by them: they sat on thrones; they hovered over cradles; the earth was literally a hell" — Christianity won, and expelled the demons not only from the tortured individuals whose imagination was held captive by them, but from the life of the people, and from the world. The most accessible discussion of the subject (written, of course, from his own point of view) may be found in Harnack, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 152-180. An article really on the Christian doctrine of angels has somehow strayed into the bounds of the comprehensive article, "Demons and Spirits," in Hastings's Encyclopcedia of Religion and Ethics, and thus deprived the reader of the description which he would naturally look for in that place of the ideas of demons and spirits which have been prevalent among Christians.
22. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, ed. 1884, vol. II, 117 ff., sums up the testimony of this period as follows:
"It is remarkable that the genuine writings of the ante-Nicene church are more free from miraculous and superstitious elements than the annals of the Nicene age and the Middle Ages.... Most of the statements of the apologists are couched in general terms, and refer to the extraordinary cures from demoniacal possession... and other diseases.... Justin Martyr speaks of such occurrences as frequent... and Origen appeals to his own personal observation, but speaks in another place of the growing scarcity of miracles.... Tertullian attributes many if not most of the conversions of his day to supernatural dreams and visions, as does also Origen, although with more caution. But in such psychological phenomena it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line of demarcation between natural and supernatural causes, and between providential interpositions and miracles proper. The strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in contending against the heretics, mentions, besides the prophecies and miraculous cures of
demoniacs, even the raising of the dead among contemporary events taking place in the Catholic Church; but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be remembered also, that his youth still bordered almost on the Johannean age."
When Schaff cites Origen as speaking of a "growing scarcity of miracles," his language is not exact. What Origen says, is: "But there were signs from the Holy Spirit at the beginning of Christ's teaching, and after His ascension He exhibited more, but subsequently fewer. Nevertheless, even now still there are traces of them with a few who have had their souls purified by the gospel." Here, there is a recognition of the facts that miracles were relatively few after the Apostolic age, and that in Origen's day there were very few indeed to be found. But there is no assertion that they had gradually ceased; only an assertion that they had practically ceased. "The age of miracles, therefore," comments Harnack justly, "lay for Origen in earlier days." "Eusebius is not the first (in the third book of his History) to look back upon the age of the Spirit and of power as the bygone heroic age of the church, for Origen had already pronounced this judgment on the past from an impoverished present." {The Expansion of Christianity, as cited, p. 257, and note 2.)
24. These points are accordingly duly intimated by Milman in his note on Gibbon's passage. For the former of them he appeals to Middleton {Works, I, p. 59) as sponsor; for the latter to Douglas {Criterion, p. 389).
26. Bernard, op. cit., p. 159, remarks justly that Papias "virtually implies that he himself never saw any such occurrence, his only knowledge of 'miracles' of this kind being derived from hearsay."
27. Cf. Bernard, as cited: "If they were frequent, if he had ever seen one himself, he would have told us of it, or to speak more accurately, Eusebius would not have selected for quotation a second-hand story, if the direct evidence of an eye-witness was on record." How did Eusebius, then, understand Irenaeus? As testifying to a common occurrence in his time? Or, even to a single instance within his own knowledge? This seems unlikely.
29. I: 13: "Then, as to your denying that the dead are raised — for you say, 'Show me one who has been raised from the dead, that seeing I may believe' — first, what great thing is it if you believe when you have seen the thing done? Then, again, you believe that Hercules, who burned himself, lives; and that ^sculapius, who was struck with lightning, was raised; and do you disbelieve the things that are told you by God? But, suppose I should show you a dead man raised and alive, even this you would disbelieve. God indeed exhibits to you many proofs that you may believe Him. For, consider, if you please, the dying of seasons, and days, and nights, how these also die and rise again," etc.
30. De Pudicitia, 21: "And so, if it were agreed that even the blessed Apostles had granted any such indulgence, the pardon of which comes from God, not from man, it would have been competent for them to have done so, not in the exercise of discipline, but of power. For they both raised the dead, which God alone can do; and restored the debilitated to their integrity, which none but Christ can do; nay they inflicted plagues, too, which Christ would not do, for it did not beseem Him to be severe who had come to suffer. Smitten were both Ananias and Elymas — Ananias with death, Elymas with blindness — in order that by this very fact it might be proven that Christ had had the power of doing even such (miracles)."
31. Adv. Hceer., II, 31: 2: Speaking of the followers of one Simon, and their inability to work miracles, Irenasus proceeds
(Bernard's translation): "They can neither give sight to the blind, nor hearing to the deaf, nor put to flight all demons, except those which are sent into others by themselves, if they can, indeed, even do this. Nor can they cure the weak, or the lame, or the paralytic, or those that are troubled in any other part of the body, as often happens to be done in respect of bodily infirmity. Nor can they furnish effective remedies for those external accidents which may occur. And so far are they from raising the dead as the Lord raised them, and the Apostles did by means of prayer, and as when frequently in the brotherhood, the whole church in the locality, having made petition with much fasting and prayer, the spirit of the dead one has returned {itrecTpi-^e), and the man has been given back {exapheT}) to the prayers of the saints — (so far are they from doing this) that they do not believe that it can possibly be done, and they think that resurrection from the dead means a rejection of the truth of their tenets." Adv. Ha;er., II, 32: 4: "Those who are in truth the Lord's disciples, having received grace from Him, do in His name perform (miracles) for the benefit of other men, according to the gift which each one has received from Him. For some certainly and truly drive out demons, so that those who have been cleansed from the evil spirits frequently believe and are in the church. Others have foreknowledge of things to come, and visions, and prophetic warnings. Others heal the sick by imposition of their hands, and they are restored to health. Yea, moreover, as we said, even the dead were raised and abode
with us many years {-^^pdrjffav Kalirap^fieivavffip TjnTvlKavoiseTeffi).
What more shall I say? It is not possible to tell the number of the gifts which the church throughout the world has received from God in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and which she exerts day by day for the welfare of the nations, neither deceiving any, nor taking any reward for such. For as freely as she hath received from God, so freely doth she minister." It is quite clear that in II, 32: 4 Irena^us throws
the raisings from the dead well into the past. This is made evident not only from the past tenses employed, which are markedly contrasted with the present tenses used in the rest of the passage, but also from the statement that those who were thus raised had lived after their resuscitation a considerable number of years, which shows that recent resuscitations are not in view. The passage in II, 31: 2, ambiguous in itself, is explained by II, 32: 4, which Irenaeus himself represents as a repetition of it ("as we said"). It appears, then, that in neither passage has Irenajus recent instances in view — and there is no reason why the cases he has in mind may not have occurred during the lifetime of the Apostles or of Apostolic men.
33. Th. Trede, W under glaube ivi Heidentum und in der alien Kirche, 1901, pp. 83-88, brings together the instances from the literature. No doubt the heathen did not really believe in these resuscitations, at least when they were instructed men. It did not require a Lucian to scoff at them: Minucius Felix (Odavius, chap. II ad fin.) makes his Caecilius remark that despite the long time that has passed away, the innumerable ages that have flowed by, no single individual has returned from the dead, either by the fate of Protesilaus, with permission to sojourn even a few hours, or to serve as an example to men. The Christians, he asserts, in teaching a resurrection from the dead, have but revamped the figments of an unwholesome belief with which deceiving poets have trifled in sweet verses.
34. Cf. Erwin Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorldufer, 1900, p. 287, note I. Also Origen, Contra Celsum, 2: 16, 48-58. The famous physician Asclepiades is said to have met a funeral procession and detected that the corpse was still living (Pliny, Nat. Hist., 7: 124; cf. Weinreich, p. 173). Apuleius, Flor., 19, relates this as an actual resuscitation. The texts may be conveniently consulted in Paul Fiebig, Antike Wundergeschichten, etc., igii.
39. Cf. E. von Dobschiitz, "Der Roman in der Altchristlichen Literatur," in the Deutsche Rundschau, vol. CXI, April, 1902, p. 105. He remarks: "To that we owe it that so many of these legends have been preserved."
model of the Christian Acts of the Apostles was supplied by the Aretalogies of prophets and philosophers. We should not think merely of the few which accident has preserved for us — and that exclusively in literary reworkings or parodies; a certain importance attaches to the connection of one of these essentially anonymous miracle-stories already with Athenodorus, the Stoic teacher of Augustus."
41. Perhaps we may roughly represent these two things by "romance" and "fable."
45. On Greek and Latin fiction, the short article by Louis H. Gray in Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. VI, pp. 6-8, may be consulted, and the work on which Gray chiefly depends, F. M. Warren, History of the Novel Previous to the Seventeenth Century, 1890, pp. 21 ff. A good brief account of Greek and early Christian novels is given by T. R. Glover, in the last chapter of his Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, 1901, pp. 357-386. The German replica of this is Von Dobschiitz's essay already mentioned. The great work on the Greek romances is Erwin Rohde's, already mentioned, by the side of which should be placed E. Schwartz, Fiinf Vortrdge iiber den Griechen Roman, 1896, and A. Chassang, Histoire du Roman dans I'Antiquite Grecque et Latine, 1862. Reitzenstein, in the book already mentioned, seeks to introduce more precision into the treatment of literary forms. See also the concluding chapter on Die Bekenner-vitce in E. Gunter's Legenden-Studien,
46. The use to which this opinion, become traditional, is put, may be illustrated by its employment by Charles Herman Lea, A Plea... for Christian Science, 1915, p. 58, and its similar employment by Samuel McComb, Religion and Medicine, 1908, pp.
295 ff. The former writes: "In the early years of the Christian Church, this command to heal the sick appears to have been fulfilled to a considerable degree, and history records that Christian healing was practiced untU the end of the third century. Then it appears to have been gradually discontinued, as the spiritual life of the church declined, until the power was entirely lost sight of in the gross materialism that culminated in the union of Church and State. That the power to heal is not generally possessed by the 'Christian' Church to-day is certain; nor could anything be more misleading than the idea, sometimes propounded from the pulpits, that the ability to heal was withdrawn because it became no longer necessary for the church to give such evidence of God's power, and of their understanding of Him. For this very power was the evidence that Jesus Christ himself gave as proof of the truth of his teaching. Hence, one of the questions that the churches of Christendom need to face to-day is, 'Why are we unable to fulfil our Lord's clear and express command?' Is it because they do not correctly understand his teaching, or because they do not consider obedience to him, in this respect, necessary? Or has the church not yet risen above the materialism that marked its decadence in the early centuries of its history?" "Perhaps nowhere in history," writes McComb, "can we find the power of faith to heal disorders of a semi-moral and semi-nervous character so strikingly illustrated as in the early centuries of the church's existence. The literature of the ante-Nicene period is permeated with a sense of conquest over sickness, disease, and moral ills of every kind.... Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth chapter, mentions as the third cause of the spread of Christianity, 'the miraculous powers of the primitive church,' among which he names the expulsion of demons, but he dismisses the whole matter with a scoflf as a product of superstition. Wider knowledge now shows that the historian's skepticism was quite unjustified. There is abundant testimony that one of the most important factors of the early propaganda of the Christian faith was an especial power which Christians seemed to have over various psychical disturbances.... Even so late as the time of Augustine, we find a belief in the healing power of faith stiU existent. In his City of God he describes various healing-wonders of which he was an eye-witness, and which were done in the name of Christ." The entire angle of vision here is unhistorical.
47. John Lightfoot (Works, Pittman's 8 vol. ed., vol. Ill, p. 204) suggests as the reason for these two exceptions: "The Holy Ghost at this its first bestowing upon the Gentiles is given in the like manner as it was at its first bestowing on the Jewish nation, — namely, by immediate infusion; at all other times you find mention of it, you find mention of imposition of hands used for it."
48. Acts 9: 12-17 is no exception, as is sometimes said; Ananias worked a miracle on Paul but did not confer miracle-working powers. Paul's own power of miracle-working was original with him as an Apostle, and not conferred by any one.
50. The connection of the "signs and wonders and manifold powers of the Holy Ghost" in some particular fashion with the first generation of Christians — "them that heard" the Lord, that is to say, at least the Apostolic generation, possibly specifically the Apostles — seems to be implied in Heb. 2:4. That Paul regards the charismata as " credentials of the Apostolic mission" (possibly even Rom. i: 11 may be cited here) is clear even to J. A. MacCulloch (Hastings's ERE., VIII, p. 683 b), although he himself doubts the soundness of this view. A. Schlatter (Hastings's Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, I, 577 a) says with great distinctness: "The Gospels, the Book of Acts, and the utterances of St. Paul Regarding his 'signs' (II Cor. 12: 12), all show distinctly that miracles were intimately related to the Apostolic function."
51. The Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, Illustrated front the Writings of Tertullian, 1825; 2d ed., 1826; 3d ed., 1845, PP- 98 ff.
52. Bernard, as cited, p. 130, gives his acceptance to Kaye's view, speaking of "that power which in the days of the Apostles was confined to them and those on whom they had laid their hands." B. F. Manire, in an article on the "Work of the Holy Spirit," in The New Christian Quarterly, IV, 2, p. 38 (April, 1895), gives exceptionally clear expression to the facts: "The matter of
imparting the Holy Ghost through the laying on of their hands, belonged exclusively, as it appears to me, to the Apostles, and therefore passed away with them.... Others besides the Apostles could preach the Gospel 'with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven,' and could work miracles in confirmation of their testimony; but only the Apostles by the imposition of their own hands could impart the Holy Spirit to others in its wonder-working power.