02.03. The Testimony of Reason

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 3. The Testimony of Reason

"Nowise contrary to scripture and very agreeable to reason" is the opinion with which Archbishop Tillotson closes his observations on the recurrence of Christian miracles in modern times.

It may be asked, what reason has to do with such a question; Nothing except as corroborating the testimony of faith. Miracles have not been generally defended on the ground of their intrinsic reasonableness, but on that of their scriptural authority; and that in us which first assents to their reality is not so much the logical mind as the docile heart -- "the heart proffering itself by humiliation to inspiration" as Pascal expresses it. And yet we hold that to believe in miracles is reasonable, after it is faithful. That supreme miracle, the resurrection of our Lord, was first credited and published by loving and devoted believers; but it has since been defended again and again by Christian philosophers. So then, reason is not forbidden to look into the empty tomb and see the folded grave clothes and therefrom to conclude that Christ is risen, only she must be accompanied by faith and not be surprised if faith like that "other disciple" shall outrun her and come first to the sepulchre (John 20:4).

Believing miracles to have existed in the days of Christ and the Apostles, is it reasonable to conclude that they may have continued to exist until our own time? It seems to us that it is. For in the first place if they should cease they would form quite a distinct exception to every thing which the Lord introduced by his ministry. The doctrines which he promulgated and which his apostles preached, atonement, justification, sanctification and redemption, have never been abrogated or modified. The ordinances which he enjoined, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, have never been repealed. The divine operations in the soul, which he ordained for man’s recovery from the fall, "the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost" have never been suspended. These belong to the dispensation of Grace which Jesus Christ introduced and which is to span the whole period between his first and his second advents. All orthodox Christians hold them to be perpetual and unchangeable. And not only so, there was to be a development of these doctrines and operations of Christianity under the administration of the Spirit, so that the stream which started with Christ’s ministry was to widen and deepen under the ministry of those who should come after him. "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now, howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth" -- an enlargement of knowledge and a development of doctrine under the ministry of the Comforter rather than a decrease!

"Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12; John 16:13) -- A reinforcement of power for service rather than an abatement! And all intelligent Christians admit that these promises were fulfilled in the wider unfolding of truth and the more extensive work of regeneration which have occurred under the administration of the Spirit. The law of Christianity is from less to greater, and not from greater to less. "Of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up" are the significant words with which the Acts of the Apostles opens; and as the beginnings are less than the unfoldings, we may conclude that the Lord was to do more through the Spirit’s ministry than through his own. And so far as works of regeneration and salvation are concerned this undoubtedly proved true and is proving just as true today. The conversion of three thousand souls in a single day under Peter’s preaching surpasses any thing which occurred in the earthly ministry of Christ; and the conversion of ten thousand in a year on a single mission field in India, also surpasses the results of any single year in the Saviour’s ministry.

Now as the "works" of Christ are among the things which He "began to do," miracles of healing stood side by side with miracles of regeneration and therefore we say that the theory of the "gradual cessation" of miracles contradicts all analogy. We have read of certain South African rivers which instead of beginning as tiny brooks and flowing on deepening and widening as they go, burst out from prolific springs and then become shallower and shallower as they flow on until they are lost in the wastes of sand without ever reaching the sea. Two streams of blessings started from the personal ministry of our Lord, a stream of healing and a stream of regeneration; the one for the recovery of the body and the other for the recovery of the soul, and these two flowed on side by side through the apostolic age. Is it quite reasonable to suppose that the purpose of God was that one should run on through the whole dispensation of the Spirit and that the other should fade away and utterly disappear within a single generation? We cannot think so.

If miracles were abnormal manifestations of divine power, against nature as well as above nature, they might indeed be expected to cease; for the abnormal is not as a rule perpetual; The earthquakes and volcanoes, nature’s agues and fever fits are soon over; but the sunshine and the rain, the breezes and the blossoms, nature’s tokens of health are perennial. And miracles of healing are manifestations of nature’s perfect health and wholeness, lucid intervals granted to our deranged and suffering humanity. They are not catastrophes, but exhibitions of that divine order which shall be brought in when our redemption is completed. We cannot for a moment admit the complaint of skeptics that miracles are an infraction of the laws of nature. Alas! for them that they have so lost their ear for harmony that they cannot distinguish earth’s wail from Heaven’s Alleluiah; and know not the difference between the groans of a suffering creation and the music of the spheres, as it was on that day when "the morning stars sung together and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

Miracles of healing and dispossession are reminiscences of an unfallen Paradise and prophecies of a Paradise regained. Though we call them supernatural, they are not contranatural. "For surely" as one has said, "it is plainly contrary to nature and indeed most unnatural that one should have eyes and not see, ears and not hear, organs of speech and not speak, and limbs without the power to use them; but not that a Saviour should come and loose his fetters. It was contrary to nature that ruthless death should sever the bands of love which God himself has knit between mother and son, between brother and sister but not that a young man of Nain or a Lazarus should be released from the fetters of death through a mighty word! And that was the climax of the unnatural that the world should nail the only righteous one to the cross; but not that the holy bearer of that cross should conquer undeserved death, should rise and victoriously enter into his glory" (Christlieb).

If then miracles of healing are exhibitions of divine recovery and order in nature and not rude irruptions of disorder, why having been once begun should they entirely cease? We are under the dispensation of the Spirit which we hold to be an unchangeable dispensation so long as it shall continue. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was installed in office to abide in the church perpetually. Exactly as the first disciples were under the personal ministry of Christ we are under the personal ministry of the Comforter. Having begun his miracles at Cana of Galilee, Jesus never permanently suspended them. His last gracious act before he was delivered into the hands of wicked men was to stretch forth his hand and heal the ear of the high priest’s servant. And having wrought the first notable miracle after Pentecost by the hand of Peter at "the Beautiful gate" why should the Holy Ghost in a little while cease from his miraculous works? We know that the Lord "did not many mighty works" in a certain place "because of their unbelief" and that the place where he was thus hindered was "in his own country and in his own house." But we know not that he would not do mighty works in any place if faith were present; and were it not a simpler solution of this whole question to say that possibly Christ through the Holy Ghost will not do many miracles today on account of man’s unbelief, than to say that he wills not to do them?

Then again the use which was made 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?

It is said, indeed, with some show of reasonableness, that Christianity being a spiritual system, physical miracles were but the staging employed for the erection of that system, destined to fall away and disappear so soon as it should be completed. That certainly might be so. But how do we regard the argument of those who have reasoned precisely thus about the ordinances of Christianity? The Friends and other bodies of religionists have said that the rites of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are too physical to be perpetuated in connection with a spiritual religion; that whatever place they may have had in the founding of Christianity they are not demanded for its continuance. To which we reply at once -- first, that they constitute a vivid sign and picture-writing of the great foundation facts of Christianity, the death and resurrection of our Lord; that they are a pledge and earnest of those great things to come at the resurrection of the just and the marriage supper of the Lamb, and that by the constant and glowing appeal which they make to the senses, they tend to keep these facts in perpetual remembrance; and, secondly, that however we may reason about it, these are ordinances, established for continual observance by the Lord until he come, and therefore we are forbidden to terminate them. This reasoning would be accepted, doubtless, as sound by all orthodox believers. But we can argue in precisely the same way about the "signs" which attested the first preaching of the Gospel. In the great commission we have them solemnly established as the accompaniments of preaching and believing the Gospel. In James’ epistle we find healing recognized as an ordinance, just as in Paul’s epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians we find Baptism and the Supper recognized as ordinances. As signs they could never loose their significance till the Lord comes again; they pointed upward and told the world that Christ who had been crucified was alive and on the throne; they pointed forward and declared that he would come again and subdue all things unto himself. This last we believe to be the chief testimony of miracles as signs: They were given to be witnesses to the "restitution of all things" which Christ shall accomplish at his coming and Kingdom. For notice how invariably our Lord joins the commandment to heal the sick and to cast out devils with the commission to preach the Kingdom, thus: "Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease amongst the people." "And as ye go preach, saying: the Kingdom of Heaven is as hand. Heal the sick; cleanse the lepers; raise the dead; cast out devils." (Matthew 4:23; Matthew 10:7; read also Luke 9:1; Luke 10:9.) Healing and resurrection and the casting out of demons were a kind of firstfruits of the Kingdom, to be presented along with its announcement. As, to use a familiar illustration, the commercial traveler carries samples of his goods as he goes forth soliciting trade, the Lord would have his ministers carry specimens and tokens of the Kingdom in their hands as they went forth to preach that Kingdom. ("The devil is said to be he who has the power of death: he is the author of death; he introduced sin into the world, and through sin death; and as he is the author of death, so he is the author of disease, which is just a form of death, and which, as well as death, is the work of the devil. And, therefore, Jesus while he was upon the earth healed the sick and raised the dead, not merely to typify a spiritual healing and quickening, but to prove that he was indeed the promised Deliverer by destroying the works of the devil, and also to give a foretaste and a shadow of the ultimate effect of his redemption upon the whole man, body and soul. And thus we find in the New Testament that the healing of the sick and the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom are almost always co-joined, and are so spoken of as though they meant the same thing" -- Thos Erskine; Broun Serpent, p.272.) This seems to be what is referred to in that picture of the groaning creation which we find in the eighth chapter of Romans: "But ourselves, also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of the body" (Romans 8:23). As though it were said: we have witnessed the works of the Spirit in healing the body of its sicknesses, in dispossessing it of the evil spirit, in quickening it from the power of death; and this makes us long only the more for that crowning and consummated work of the Spirit, of which these things are but an earnest; when "he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." These signs were the fore-tokens of the body’s redemption which the Lord at the first bid his messengers carry with them as they went forth preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Even dumb, suffering nature would be made glad by the sight of them. Goethe beautifully says, "Often have I had the sensation as if nature in wailing sadness entreated something of me, so that not to understand what she longed for cut me to the heart." But we understand what she longs for, "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." And they who "have tasted the powers of the world to come" were bidden to go forth and preach the Kingdom, bearing in their hands the grapes of Eschol, which they have brought from that Kingdom, that they may show what a goodly land that is where "The inhabitant shall no more say I am sick." Thus, not only our wounded and pain-stricken humanity shall be cheered with the hope of better things, but even dumb nature shall be comforted by these fore-gleams of that millennium wherein "the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." ("Sickness is sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption. Disease of every kind is mortality begun. Now, as Christ came to destroy death, and will yet redeem the body from the bondage of corruption, if the Church is to have a firstfruits or earnest of this power it must be by receiving power over diseases which are the first fruits and earnest of death." -- Edward Irving. Works. V. p.464.)

Now why, if these credentials were so rigidly attached to the first preaching of the Kingdom, should they utterly disappear from its later proclamation? There is the same groaning of creation to be answered; the same coming of the King to be announced; the same unrepealed commission of the Master to be carried out. The answer given by the majority to this question is: "Signs are no longer needed." If reason can be satisfied with this answer, faith cannot. For "faith has its reasons, which reason cannot understand." Among these is this: "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever." Miracles we hold to be a shadow of good things to come. The good thing to come for the soul is its full and perfect sanctification at the appearing of the Lord. The work of regeneration and daily renewal by the Holy Ghost is the constant reminder and pledge and preparation for that event; and regeneration is a "perpetual miracle." The good thing to come for the body is "glorified corporeity," resurrection and transformation into Christ’s perfect likeness when he shall appear. Healing by the power of the Holy Ghost is the pledge and foretoken of this consummation. Was it in God’s purpose that we should never again witness this after the apostolic age was past?

Here let us answer three or four objections which have been urged against our position. "If you insist that miracles of healing are possible in this age, then," it is said, "you must logically admit that such miracles as raising the dead, turning water into wine, and speaking in unknown tongues are still possible." But it requires only a casual glance to see that healing through the prayer of faith stands on an entirely different basis from any of these other miracles.

Raising the dead is nowhere promised as a privilege or possibility for the believers of today. There is, indeed, in one instance, Matthew 10:8, a command to raise the dead; but this was given specifically to the twelve and in a temporary commission. It therefore differs very materially from the promise in Mark 16:1-20, which was to all believers, and is contained in a commission which was for the entire dispensation of the Spirit. That the Lord did this miracle, and that his apostles did it, in one or two instances is not enough. Unless we can show some specific promise given to the church as a whole we are bound to concede that such works are not for us or for our age. Healing the sick, on the contrary, rests on a distinct and specific promise to believers.

Miracles on external nature, like the turning of water into wine, and the multiplying of the loaves, belong exclusively to the Lord; we do not find them perpetuated beyond his own ministry either in fact or in promise. Miracles of cure, on the contrary, being in the direct line of the Lord’s redemptive work, abound in the ministry of the disciples as they do in that of the Lord, and have the clear pledge of scripture for their performance. The discrimination which Godet makes between miracles of healing and those performed on the outward world we believe to be strictly accurate. He says: "One consequence of the close connection of soul and body is that when the spirit of man is in this way vivified by the power of God it can sometimes exert upon the body, and through it upon other bodies, an influence which is marvelous. This kind of miracle is therefore possible in every age of the Church’s history; it was possible in the middle ages, and is possible still. That which would seem to be no longer possible is the miraculous action of the divine power upon external nature. The age of such miracles seems to have closed with the work of revelation, of which they were but the auxiliaries" (Defence of the Christian Faith, p.208). As to miracles of prophecy, we see no reason to believe that they were strictly limited to apostolic times. We recall, indeed the one important text on this question, "But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away; for we know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Thus speaks the Spirit in the Epistle to the Corinthians. By this scripture some have attempted to shut up all miracles within the apostolic era as belonging to the things which were "in part," and therefore destined to pass away. But, in the first place, let it be noted that it is only prophecies, tongues and knowledge that are specified, not healings. And we are to put no more within this limitation than the word of God has put there. And, in the second place, the bounds set to the exercise of these gifts is "when that which is perfect is come" which scholarship has generally held to mean, when the Lord himself shall return to earth. (1 Corinthians 13:10. "This verse shows by the emphatic ’then’ that the time when the gifts shall cease is the end of this dispensation. The imperfect shall not cease till the perfect is brought in." -- Ellicott.) The gifts of tongues and of prophecy therefore do not seem to be confined within the first age of the church. We cannot forget, indeed that the utterances of prophecy and knowledge culminated and found their highest expression when the Canon of the New Testament Scriptures was completed; so that some thoughtful expositors have conjectured that this may have been the coming of that which is perfect so far as prophecy and knowledge are concerned. But in either event this does not touch the gifts of healing. These cannot have culminated so long as sickness and demonical possession are unchecked in the world; nor until the great Healer and Restorer shall return from above. To sum up these observations then; is it reasonable to conclude that the office of healing through faith, resting on the same apostolic example, and held by the same tenure of divine promise and precept as the other functions of the Christian ministry, was alone destined to pass away and disappear within a single generation? With the advance in power and knowledge which was to take place under the administration of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, is it reasonable to believe that in this one particular instance there was designed to be a signal retarding of supernatural energy? Is the Lord less likely to heal those who extend to him the touch of faith now that he is on the right hand of God, having all power in heaven and earth given to him, than he was while on earth? ("Is the truce broke? or cause we have A Mediatour now with thee, Dost thou therefore old treatyes wave, And by appeales from him decree? Or is it so, as some green heads say, That now all miracles must cease? Though thou hast promised they should stay The tokens of the Church, and peace." -- Harry Vaughan, 1654.) Is it reasonable to believe that the administration of the Comforter has changed since its first inauguration, so that, while his mission and his offices were to continue till the end of this age, it is found that one of his ministries has entirely disappeared since the days of the apostles? With sin and sickness still holding sway in the world, is it reasonable to consider the latter as entirely beyond the redemptive work of Christ, while the former is so entirely met by that work, which was not the case in the beginning? And, finally, until the harvest shall come, is it reasonable to suppose that we are to be left entirely without the firstfruits of our redemption? Until we can answer these questions, perhaps caution is becoming us, at least, in denying that miracles of healing are still wrought.