02.10. The Verdict of Candor

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 10. The Verdict of Candor In summing up what has been brought forward in the preceding chapters, we wish to review briefly the theory, the testimony and the practice, which our discussion has involved. As to the theory: -- Is it right for us to pray to God to perform a miracle of healing in our behalf? "The truth is," answers an eminent writer, "that to ask God to act at all, and to ask him to perform a miracle are one and the same thing." (Jellett: Efficacy of Prayer, p.41.) That is to say, a miracle is the immediate action of God, as distinguished from his mediate action through natural laws. We see no reason, therefore, why we should hesitate to pray for the healing of our bodies any more than for the renewal of our souls. Both are miracles; but both are covered and provided for by the same clear word of promise. Our hesitancy to ask for physical healing we believe to rest largely on a false and widespread error in regard to the relation of the human body to the redemption of Christ. It is taken for granted by many that this house of clay was never intended either to be repaired or beautified by the renewing Spirit. The caged-eagle theory of man’s existence is widely prevalent -- the notion that the soul is imprisoned in flesh, and is beating its bars in eager longing to fly away and be at rest -- all of which may be very good poetry, but is very bad divinity. The scripture teaches indeed that "we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened;" but it does not therefore thrust death’s writ of ejection into our hands as our great consolation, and tell us that our highest felicity consists in moving out of this house as quickly as possible. "Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life," is the inspired testimony concerning our highest hope of existence. The redemption of the body, not its dissolution, resurrection not death is set before us in the gospel as the true goal of victory. But because that great promise of the gospel, "Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory," has been so largely supplanted by the notion of a spiritual elimination taking place at death, in which a purified soul is forever freed from a cumbering body, all this has been changed in the creed of many. The heresy of death-worship has supplanted the doctrine of resurrection, with a multitude of Christians, because they have allowed the partial felicity, the departing to be with Christ, to take the place of the final victory, the coming of Christ, to quicken our mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in us.

It is easy to see now that when death gets established in the high esteem of Christians, sickness, his prime minister, should come to be held in great regard also. And so it is, that while very few enjoy being sick, very many are afraid seriously to claim healing, lest it should seem like rebellion against a sacred ordinance, or a revolt from a hallowed medicine which God is mercifully putting to their lips for their spiritual recovery. Those who have such a feeling should search the scriptures to learn how constantly sickness is referred to as the work of the devil. From the day when "Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils," to the hour when the deliverer came and loosed "a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound lo these eighteen years," -- he that "hath the power of death, that is the devil," has been compelling our wretched race to reap the first fruits of mortality, disease and pain and bodily decay. Alas, if the Lord’s people shall be so deceived by him that they shall willingly accept sickness, the first fruits of death, as their portion, instead of seeking for health, the first fruits of redemption! If any shall insist indeed, that God often allows his servants to be sick for their good; or that he sometimes permits them to fall into sin for their chastening, on that account we shall not admit that sickness is God’s agent any more than that sin is. An old divine probably spoke as truly as he did quaintly when he said that "the Lord sometimes allows his saints to be sharpened on the devil’s grindstone," but we believe that in the comprehensive petition, "Deliver us from the evil one" is contained without question a prayer for rescue from all the ways and works of Satan -- from sickness as well as from sin; from pain, the penalty of transgression, as well as from transgression itself. But, it is asked, if the privilege and promise in this matter are so clear, how is it that the cases of recovery through the prayer of faith are so rare?

Probably because the prayer of faith itself is so rare, and especially because when found it receives almost no support in the church as a whole. Prayer for such matters should be the outcome of the faith and intercession of the whole body of believers. So it was in the beginning. When Peter was delivered from prison it was because "prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him." And when Paul knelt alone in the chamber of Publius to intercede for his father’s recovery, it was equally true that his petition was an expression of what was the unanimous and concurring faith of the whole Church. But it is not easy for an individual prayer to make headway against the adverse sentiment of the great body of Christians. For example let an earnest soul pray for a revival in a church where the prevailing view is that of indifferent unbelief, or positive disbelief in revivals, and would he be likely to obtain the coveted blessing? The promise stands fast, indeed, "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask him;" but the condition, "They were all with one accord in one place," is wanting. How shall one man move the great ship before the wind by holding up his pocket handkerchief to the breeze, when all the mariners refuse to spread the sails? And how shall one Christian’s faith prevail against the non-consent of the whole Church? There may be scattered instances of blessing in such circumstances, but there can be no widespread exhibitions of divine power. They tell us that all the heat communicated to a cake of ice short of that which would bring it to the melting point becomes latent and disappears. Faith, likewise, may become inoperative and fruitless in the Church when multiplied a hundred fold by unbelief. But there is another answer also to the question. It is as true here as in any other field that God acts sovereignly and according to his own determinate counsel. He sees it best to recover one person at the instance of his people’s prayers, and he may see it best to withhold such recovery for the time from another. ("Nor are signs wrought continually, but as often as it shall have pleased God and seems necessary; whence it is evident that to work signs depends not on the option of man, but on the will of God." Bullinger.) And we would most strongly emphasize the importance of offering our supplications for this as for all mercies in the most loyal and hearty and unreserved submission to the will of our Father. He has told us that "all things work together for good to them that love God," but we are not to conclude that they all work in one direction. There are blessings and trials, joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, sickness and health, falls and recoveries, advances and retrogressions, but the final issue and resultant of all these experiences is our highest good. This we conceive to be the meaning of the promise. And when we remember that God superintends all this complex system of providences, and foresees the final effect of each separate element in it, we see how becoming it is that we should bring every petition into subjection" to the will of the Lord. When Augustine was contemplating leaving Africa and going into Italy, his pious mother, fearing the effect which the seductions of Rome might have upon his ardent nature, besought the Lord with many tears and cries that he might not be permitted to go. He was suffered to go, however, and in Milan he found his soul’s salvation. "Thou didst deny her," says Augustine in his confessions, "thou didst deny her what she prayed for at that time that thou mightest grant her what she prayed for always." This is a perfect illustration of the point which we are emphasizing. God may withhold the recovery which we ask today because he will give to us that "saving health " which we ask always. He may permit temporal death to come, in order that he may preserve his child unto life eternal. How little we can know what is best for us and what shall work our highest good! Isaac Barrow, the eminent and devout theologian was so wayward and wicked while a lad that his Christian father confessed that he had prayed "that if it pleased God to take away any of his children it might be his son Isaac." What would the Church have lost had this prayer been granted? On the other hand, the mother of Charles I, it is said, bent above the cradle of her infant boy when he had been given up to die, and refused to be comforted unless God would spare his life. His life was spared; but how gladly would that mother have had it otherwise could she have looked forward to the day when his head fell bleeding and ghastly beneath the stroke of the executioner’s axe? Such illustrations open a broad field for reflection, and suggest the real limitation of the prayer of faith as related to healing, viz., the gracious and all wise will of God. And this is the same limitation which belongs to the entire realm of intercessory prayer. "Holding such views in regard to the efficacy of prayer for recovery from disease, why should you have any sick persons in your flock?" is the question which a clerical critic propounds. We shall answer by propounding a much harder one. Holding such views in regard to the efficacy of prayer for the conversion of souls, and resting on the plain declaration of scripture concerning God our Saviour that he "will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," why should our questioner allow any sinner to remain unconverted under his ministry? And yet is it not his sorrowful experience that of all that come under his word and prayers, only a few comparatively give evidence of being regenerated? Alas! that we must all concede that this is our observation. But because I have to admit that all will not hear, and all will not repent and be converted, shall I therefore refuse to persist in preaching and warning and rebuke and intercession, "that I might by all means save some?" Indeed not! And since the sure word of promise is given to us on this matter also, let us hold fast our confidence without wavering, so that whether there be few or many who shall be recovered we may by all means heal some. Such we believe to be a candid verdict in regard to the promise concerning prayer for the sick. And now what shall be said in regard to the testimony brought forward? It would be considered very weighty, we venture to believe, were it adduced in support of a generally accepted theory. When evidence and established conviction are put in the same scale they tip the beam very easily, but testimony against a heavy make-weight of unbelief and prejudice makes slow headway. If the story of Augustine, or Luther, or Livingston, or Fox, or Dorothea Trudel were found in the gospels how we should fight for its genuineness. "Ah, yes," you say, "because the gospels are inspired, and we should not dare to question any statement recorded on their pages." But miracles were given to accredit inspiration, and not inspiration to accredit miracles. The first miracles got themselves credited simply on human testimony, on the evidence of men and women like ourselves, who saw, and believed and reported. And when they had become established as facts, then their weight went to prove the divine origin of Christianity. It is easy for us to say that the works recorded in the gospels are supernatural, because the system to which they belong is supernatural. That is true; but it is reading backward. The first Christians could not reason in that way, because the premise from which we argue was not established in their day. No! The miracles of the New Testament became established in precisely the same manner as any alleged fact is proved today, by the evidence of honest, candid and truthful witnesses, who saw and bare record. If, therefore, our theologians choose to treat the narratives of such godly and truthful men as Augustine, and Luther, and Baxter as "silly tales" they must be careful that they do not build a portico to "the school of Hume," from which their pupils will easily and logically graduate from the denial of modern miracles to the denial of all miracles. Nor does age have anything to do with determining the value of signs and wonders. A young miracle is entitled to the same respect as an old one, provided it bears the same credentials. And if we give way to the subtle illusion that the marvelous is to be credited just in proportion to its distance from us; if we show ourselves forward to admit that the Lord wrought great and mighty signs eighteen hundred years ago, and utterly averse to conceding that the same Lord does anything of the kind today, then we must be very careful again that we do not give countenance to the mythical theory of miracles, which has been so strongly pushed in this generation. Do we believe that the credibility of miracles depends on the magnifying power of distance; that antiquity must stand behind them as a kind of convex mirror to render them sufficiently large to be distinctly seen? How we revolt from such an imputation! Yet let us be cautious that we do not give occasion for it, by emphasizing, as we cannot too strongly, the great things that the Lord did by our fathers, while we utterly refuse to believe that he does any such things by their sons. Let us not forget that the Jews in Christ’s day were condemned for denying the wonderful works wrought in their own generation, and not for disbelieving those done by Elijah and Elisha nine hundred years before. The defenders of New Testament miracles are numbered by hundreds, and there is no special danger of a breach in the ramparts of Christianity at that point. The question of God’s supernatural working today and tomorrow is the one where havoc is being wrought. Unbelief shading off from rationalism to liberal evangelicism is doing its utmost to give away our most precious heritage. With how many is regeneration merely a repairing of the old nature by culture, instead of a miraculous communication of the divine life! How many regard the promised coming of Christ in glory as simply a new phase of providence effected by the turning of the kaleidoscope of history! To how many is Satan only a concrete symbol of evil, so that their denial of the reality of the infernal has issued in a disbelief in the Supernal! To how many is inspiration only a higher state of intellectual exaltation; and resurrection an elimination or spiritual release, effected by the dissolving chemistry of death! To read the utterances put forth by Christian teachers in these directions within the last few years is enough to startle one and make him cry out in the strong words of Edward Irving: "Oh the serpent cunning of this liberal spirit, it is killing our children; it has already slain its tens and thousands; this city is sick unto death, and dying of the mortal wounds which she hath received from it." Therefore, let us be cautious that by taking up the current sneer about prodigies and wonders we do not get our eyes blinded and our ears dull of hearing so as to be utterly unable to discern any divine manifestations in case they should be made. As to the practice involved in this discussion: Can it be of any service for authenticating the truth of Christianity today to show examples of men and women healed of sickness through faith in the Great Physician? So far as our observation goes, the most powerful effect of such experiences is upon the subjects themselves, in the marked consecration and extraordinary spiritual anointing which almost invariably attend them. We can bear unqualified testimony on this point. Of a large number within the circle of our acquaintance, who have been healed, or who have imagined themselves healed, we have never seen one who did not give evidence of having received an unusual enduement of spiritual power. It has seemed as though the double blessing of forgiveness and health had been followed by the bestowment of a double portion of the Spirit. If we could let the objectors to our doctrine witness some of the examples of alleged healing which have been under our eyes for several years -- inebriates who, after half a lifetime wasted in desperate struggles for reform, declare that their appetite was instantly eradicated in answer to intercessory prayer; invalids lifted in an hour from couches where they had lain for years; and now their adoring gratitude, their joyful self-surrender, their burning zeal in the service of the Lord -- if we could let our critics witness these things we believe that the most stubborn among them would at least be willing that these happy subjects of -- something should remain under the illusion that they have had the Saviour’s healing touch laid upon them.

Such we believe to be the verdict of candor upon this whole question. We do not ask that the highest place in Christian doctrine be given to faith in supernatural healing. We readily admit that grace is vastly more important than miracles; but miracles have their place as shadows of greater things. We urge that they may hold this place, that we may be helped thereby the better to apprehend the substance. When the Emperor Theodosius had on a great occasion given release to all the prisoners confined within his realm he exclaimed: "And now would to God I could open all the tombs and give life to the dead!" If we could sometimes see the Lord unlocking the prison-house of sickness and giving reprieve from the impending penalty of death to those long in bondage it might be a salutary pledge and reminder of our Redeemer’s purpose to bring forth the prisoners from the tomb in that day when he shall quicken our mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in us; it might sound in our ears with repeated emphasis the Lord’s word, "turn ye to the stronghold ye prisoners of hope; even today do I declare that I will render double unto thee."