02.05. The Testimony of Theologians

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 5. The Testimony of Theologians

Admitting, with the historians, that miracles ceased to be recognized in the Church, as a whole, after the third century, there have still continued to be witnesses here and there to their occurrence through all the ages. We call to the stand several theologians, who have not only defended the doctrine of the continuance of miracles, but have cited illustrations of what they regarded as credible instances in support of their theory.

Augustine, it has been claimed, denied the existence of miraculous interpositions in his day; and he certainly said some things that give occasion for that opinion. But, on the other hand, he has left on record what cannot but be regarded as the strongest testimony to their continuance in his generation. Archbishop Trench considers that the true solution of this seeming contradiction is, that he held to their cessation in his earlier writings, and, changing his opinion, maintained their continuance in his later. ("In the same chapter he goes on to give instances to corroborate this assertion. We reproduce one, abridging the narrative, which is very extended, but retaining the essential points. The story is exceedingly natural and affecting. It is concerning Innocentius, a devout Christian, and a man of high rank in Carthage. He was suffering from a painful malady, and had submitted to several surgical operations for its removal, but without effect. An eminent surgeon, Alexandrinus by name, being summoned, declared that there was no hope except possibly in another operation. This was decided on, and several officers of the Church were with him the evening before his trial, of whom he begged that they would be present the next day at what he feared would be his death. "Among those present," says Augustine, "was Aurelius, now the only survivor and a bishop: a man ever to be mentioned with the greatest regard and honor, with whom, in calling to mind the wonderful works of God, I have often conversed on the occurrence, and I find that he retains the fullest recollection of what I now relate." -- Trench, Notes on the Miracles, p.59.) If this be so, we must take the last opinion as his true conviction, not that which he had retracted.

How decidedly, indeed, he commits himself to the doctrine of the perpetuity of miracles will appear if we read the heading of one of the chapters of the De Civitate Dei: "Concerning the miracles which were wrought in order that the world might believe in Christ and which cease not to be wrought now that the world does believe." He lived in a time, indeed, when the shadows of superstition had already begun to creep over the Church, and the records of miracles which he makes are occasionally marred by some trace of such superstition: "For even now, he says, ’miracles are wrought in his name whether by the sacraments, or by prayers, or at the tombs of the saints. But they are not proclaimed with the same renown, so as to be spread abroad with the former. For the sacred volume which was to be made known on all sides caused the former to be told everywhere and to hold their place in all men’s memories; but the latter are known of scarcely beyond the whole city or neighborhood where they may happen to be wrought.’" (Work v., p.299). In an early work, Dt Vera Religione xxv.47, he denies their continuance, while in his Retractions he withdraws this statement, or limits it to such miracles as those that accompanied baptism at the first. In De Civ. Dei. xxii.8, he enumerates at great length miracles, chiefly those of healing, which he believed to have been wrought in his own time, and coming more or less within his own knowledge." The rest we give in the words of Augustine: "We then went to prayer; and, while we were kneeling and prostrating ourselves, as on other occasions, he also prostrated himself, as if some one had forcibly thrust him down, and began to pray: in what manner, with what earnestness, with what emotion, with what a flood of tears, with what agitation of his whole body, I might almost say with what suspension of his respiration, by his groans and sobs, who shall attempt to describe? Whether the rest of the party were so little affected as to be able to pray I knew not. For my part I could not. This, alone, inwardly and briefly, I said: ’Lord, what prayers of thine own children wilt thou ever grant if thou grant not these?’ For nothing seemed more possible but that he should die praying. We arose, and, after the benediction by the bishop, left him, but not till he had besought them to be with him in the morning, nor till they had exhorted him to calmness. The dreaded day arrived, and the servants of God attended as they had promised. The medical men made their appearance; all things required for such an occasion are got ready, and, amidst the terror and suspense of all present, the dreadful instruments are brought out. In the meantime, while those of the bystanders whose authority was the greatest, endeavored to support the courage of the patient by words of comfort, he is placed in a convenient position for the operation, the dressings are opened, the seat of the disease is exposed, the surgeon inspects it, and tries to find the part to be operated upon with his instrument in his hand. He first looks for it, then examines by the touch; in a word, he makes every possible trial, and finds the place perfectly healed. The gladness, the praise, the thanksgiving to a compassionate and all powerful God, which, with mingled joy and tears, now burst from the lips of all present, cannot be told by me. The scene may more easily be imagined than described." It will be seen, on careful reading, that aside from the testimony of the writer himself, there is everything in this story to indicate the genuineness and authenticity of the miracle. Its detailed narration shows how unquestionably the writer believes in healing through the prayer of faith.

Martin Luther, "whose prose is a half battle," would be likely to speak strongly on this subject if he spoke at all. Martin Luther, whose prayers were victorious battles, so that they who knew him were wont to speak of him as "the man who can have whatever he wishes of God" would be likely to plead efficaciously in this field if he entered it at all. And so he did. The testimony of Luther’s prayers for the healing of the body are among the strongest of any on record in modern times. He has been quoted, indeed, as disparaging miracles. And the explanation of this fact is perfectly easy for those who have investigated his real opinions. Like the other reformers -- like Huss and Latimer, for example, he revolted violently from the impudent Romish miracles which in his day put forth their claims on every side. This frequently led him to speak in very contemptuous terms of modern signs and wonder-working. And it is not strange that some, lighting on these utterances, should have concluded that he denied all supernatural interventions in modern times. But if we turn from Luther the controversialist to Luther the pastor, we find a man who believed and spoke with all the vehemence of his Saxon heart on the side of present miracles. "How often has it happened and still does," he says, "that devils have been driven out in the name of Christ, also by calling on his name and prayer that the sick have been healed?" And he suited his action to his words on this point; for when they brought him a girl saying that she was possessed with a devil Luther laid his hand on her head, appealed to the Lord’s promise: "He that believeth on me the works I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do," and then prayed to God, with the rest of the ministers of the Church, that, for Christ’s sake, he would cast the devil out of this girl (Seckendorf’s History of Lutheranism, B.III. p.133). Perfect recovery is recorded in this instance as well as in several others where he prayed for the sick. The most notable instance is that of Philip Melancthon. An account of this recovery, which seems to be trustworthy, is given by the historian to whom we have just referred. Melancthon had fallen ill on a journey, and a messenger had been despatched to Luther. The story continues: "Luther arrived and found Philip about to give up the ghost. His eyes were set; his consciousness was almost gone; his speech had failed, and also his hearing; his face had fallen; he knew no one, and had ceased to take either solids or liquids. At this spectacle Luther is filled with the utmost consternation, and turning to his fellow travellers says: ’Blessed Lord, how has the devil spoiled me of this instrument!’ Then turning away towards the window he called most devoutly on God." Then follows the substance of Luther’s prayer: "He beseeches God to forbear, saying that he has struck work in order to urge upon him in supplication, with all the promises he can repeat from scripture: that he must hear and answer now if he would ever have the petitioner trust in him again." The narrative goes on: "After this, taking the hand of Philip, and well knowing what was the anxiety of his heart and conscience, he said, ’Be of good courage, Philip, thou shalt not die. Though God wanted not good reason to slay thee, yet he willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he may be converted and live. Wherefore, give not place to the spirit of grief, nor become the slayer of thyself, but trust in the Lord who is able to kill and to make alive.’ While he uttered these things Philip began, as it were, to revive and to breathe, and gradually recovering his strength, is at last restored to health."

If the reader should conclude hastily that this recovery may be accounted for on entirely natural principles, we have to remind him that the conviction of both parties to the transaction was quite otherwise. Melancthon writing to a friend says: "I should have been a dead man had I not been recalled from death itself by the coming of Luther." Luther speaks in the same manner writing to friends: "Philip is very well after such an illness, for it was greater than I had supposed. I found him dead, but, by an evident miracle of God, he lives." Again, referring to his attendance at the Diet, he says: "Toil and labor have been lost, and money spent to no purpose; nevertheless, though I have succeeded in nothing, yet I fetched back Philip out of Hades, and intend to bring him now, rescued from the grave, home again with joy, etc." Such is the witness of the great reformer, and, if needful, it might be strengthened by reference to other remarkable instances of his power in prayer for the sick. That of Myconius is well known, who wrote of himself: "Raised up in the year 1541 by the mandates, prayers and letter of the reverend Father, Luther, from death." Luthardt furnishes this version of the event: "Myconius, the venerated superintendent of Gotha, was in the last stage of consumption, and already speechless. Luther wrote to him that he must not die: ’May God not let me hear so long as I live that you are dead, but cause you to survive me. I pray this earnestly, and will have it granted, and my will shall be granted herein, Amen.’ ’I was so horrified,’ said Myconius, afterwards, ’when I read what the good man had written, that it seemed to me as though I had heard Christ say, ’Lazarus come forth.’ And from that time Myconius was, as it were, kept from the grave by the power of Luther’s prayers, and did not die till after Luther’s death." (Luthardt, Moral Truths of Christianity, p.198. The stout lion-heart of the Reformer revolted against the grotesque miracles of Anti-christ; but the believing heart of the Christian took the promises of God, and pleaded them and proved them; and he gained what he regarded as the greatest of conquests: that of having demonstrated scripture, so as to be able to say of one text in the Bible: "This I know for certain to be true."

Richard Baxter will be listened to with especial deference on the question before us. He was so bold in uttering his convictions that Boyle said of him that "he feared no man’s displeasure, nor hoped for any man’s preferment;" and he was also so devout that Joseph Alleine was accustomed to preface his quotations from him with the words "As most divinely saith that man of God, holy Mr. Baxter." He wrote very decidedly in defense of present miraculous interpositions for God’s faithful. Speaking of what he calls "eminent providences," he says: "I am persuaded that there is scarcely a godly experienced Christian that carefully observes and faithfully recordeth God’s providence toward him but is able to bring forth some such experiment, and to shew you some strange and unusual mercies which may plainly discover an Almighty disposer, making good the promises of this scripture to his servants; some in desperate diseases of body; some in other apparent dangers delivered so suddenly or so much against the common course of nature when all the best remedies have failed, that no second cause could have any hand in their deliverance." (Saint’s Rest, Part II chap.vi. Sec.V.)

After referring to some remarkable instances in the lives of the reformers he says: "But why need I fetch examples so far off? or to recite the multitude of them which Church history doth afford us? Is there ever a praying Christian here who knoweth what it is importunately to strive with God, and to plead his promises with him believingly, that cannot give in his experiences of most remarkable answers? I know men’s atheism and infidelity will never want somewhat to say against the most eminent providences, though they were miracles themselves. That nature which is so ignorant of God, and at emnity with him, will not acknowledge him in his clear discoveries to the world, but will ascribe all to fortune or nature, or some such idol, which, indeed, is nothing. But when mercies are granted in the very time of prayer, and that when to reason there is no hope, and that without the use or help of any other means or creature, yea, and perhaps many times over and over; is not this as plain as if God from heaven should say to us, I am fulfilling to thee the true word of my promise in Christ my Son? How many times have I known the prayer of faith to save the sick when all physicians have given them up as dead." (Here Baxter subjoins a note to be given presently.) "It has been my own case more than once or twice or ten times, when means have all failed, and the highest art of reason has sentenced me hopeless, yet have I been relieved by the prevalency of fervent prayer, and that (as the physician saith "tuto, cito, et jucunde," my flesh and my heart failed, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.) And though he yet keep me under necessary weakness, and wholesome sickness, and certain expectation of further necessities, and assaults, yet am I constrained by most convincing experiences, to set up this stone of remembrance, and publickly to the praise of the Almighty, to acknowledge that certainly God is true of his promises, and that they are indeed his own infallible word, and that it is a most excellent privilege to have interest in God, and a Spirit of supplication to be importunate with him. I doubt not but most Christians that observe the Spirit and providences are able to attest this prevalency of prayer by their own experiences."

He then gives a detailed account of his own remarkable healing which we quote in full. "Among abundance of instances that I could give, my conscience commandeth me here to give you this one, as belonging to the very words here written. I had a tumor rise on one of the tonsils or almonds of my throat, round like a pea, and at first no bigger; and at last no bigger than a small button, and hard like a bone. The fear lest it should prove a cancer troubled me more than the thing itself. I used first dissolving medicines, and after lenient for palliation, and all in vain for about a quarter of a year. At last my conscience smote me for silencing so many former deliverances, that I had had in answer of prayers; merely in pride, lest I should be derided as making ostentation of God’s special mercies to myself, as if I were a special favorite of heaven, I had made no public mention of them: I was that morning to preach just what is here written, and in obedience to my conscience, I spoke these words which are now in this page, viz: "How many times have I known the prayer of faith to save the sick when all physicians have given them up as dead" -- with some enlargements not here written. When I went to church I had my tumor as before (for I frequently saw it in the glasse, and felt it constantly.) As soon as I had done preaching, I felt it was gone, and hasting to the glasse, I saw that there was not the least vestigium or cicatrix, or mark wherever it had been: nor did I at all discern what became of it. I am sure I neither swallowed it nor spit it out, and it was unlikely to dissolve by any natural cause, that had been hard like a bone a quarter of a year, notwithstanding all dissolving gargarismes. I thought fit to mention this, because it was done just as I spoke the words here written in this page. Many such marvellous mercies I have received, and known that others have received in answer to prayers." At once we imagine the explanations which will be given to this artlessly narrated incident. We do not vouch for its supernatural character. We have introduced it simply to show that Richard Baxter believed in modern miracles of healing, and there we leave it. It is not the authenticity of wonder but the opinion of the man which we wish now to establish. That must be considered unquestionable.

John Albert Bengel is not only greatly esteemed but held in real affection by lovers of God’s word who have studied his commentary. He expounds pithily, but what is far better he believes intensely. "His works," says Dorner, "were the first cock crowing of that new kind of exegesis which the Church so much needed." His is preeminently the exegesis of faith in distinction from the exegesis of reason. If he finds things in the Bible too hard for his critical faculty he finds nothing too hard for his believing faculty. Hence his interpretations are not a sizing and sorting of scripture to the dimensions of human experience, but a frank acceptance of it as God’s truth. The word never appears shrunken as it comes forth from his hand; it does not present a scant weight as though it had paid toll to modern doubt. "Faith takes up all she can get and marches bravely onward," is a saying of his that describes better than any other his conduct in handling scripture. Now by faith Bengel staggered not at the promise of miraculous healing, which he found in the New Testament, but believed it, and confessed it, and rejoiced in it. In speaking of the gift of healing he says: -- "It seems to have been given by God that it might always remain in the Church as a specimen of the other gifts: Just as the portion of manna betokened the ancient miracles" (Comment on James 5:17). "O happy simplicity! interrupted or lost through unbelief," he exclaims. And yet he declares, "even in our day faith has in every believer a hidden miraculous power. Every result of prayer is really miraculous even though this be not apparent; although in many, because of their own weakness and the world’s unworthiness, -- not merely because the church once planted needs not miracles (though no doubt the early New Testament miracles have made for the Lord an everlasting name) -- that power does not exert itself in our day. Signs were in the beginning the props of faith: now they are the object of faith" (On Mark 16:14). And then, for confirming his assertions of his belief in the possibility of modern miracles, he introduces the following instance: "At Leonberg a town of Wirtembergh, A.D. 1644, thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, a girl of twenty-three years of age, was so disabled in her limbs as hardly to be able to creep along by the help of crutches. But whilst the Dean, Raumier was his name, was from the pulpit dwelling on the miraculous power of Jesus name she suddenly was raised up and restored to the use of her limbs." This story the American editor omits as though solicitous for the critics reputation; but Faucett the English translator retains it in its place, and adds from information gathered from other sources that "this happened in the presence of the Duke of Eberhard, and his courtiers and was committed to the public records which are above all suspicion."

Edward Irving is another illustrious confessor bearing witness to the doctrine we are defending. A man of wonderful endowments, ("But I hold, withal and not the less firmly for these discrepancies in our moods and judgments, that Edward Irving possesses more of the spirit and purpose of the first Reformers, that he has more of the head and heart, the life and unction and the genial power of Martin Luther, than any man now alive: yea, than any man of this or the last century. I see in Edward Irving a minister of Christ after the order of Paul." Coleridge; Works v. vi., p.115) his highest gift seems to have been that of faith. He believed, with the whole strength and intensity of his nature, everything which he found written in the Scriptures. Cast upon times of great spiritual deadness, he longed to see Christendom mightily revived, and he conceived that this could only be effected by stirring up the Church to recover her forfeited endowments. "To restore is to revive," was emphatically his motto. He gave great offense by his utterances and had his name cast out as evil. He was accused of offering strange fire upon the altar of his Church, because he thought to relight the fire of Pentecost. Need enough was there of restoration, when teachers had so far made void the word of God by their traditions that in their discussion with him they openly appealed from the Bible to the standards. Have you never read what Jehoiakim the son of Judah did with his penknife upon the prophet’s roll? -- How "it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with his penknife and cast it into the fire!" Alas! that modern theology should have given occasion to be accused of doing likewise with the 12th of I Corinthians and sundry other parts of scripture that tell about "to another the gift of healing by the same Spirit, and another the working of miracles, to another prophecy," etc.

Irving, with a zeal for the Lord not always temperate, accused the Church of having clipped out these portions from the scripture with her exegetical penknife, because she had said "these things do not pertain to the Church of today." And he went farther -- "the Lord commanded Jeremiah to take another roll and to write in it all the former words that were in the first roll which Jehoiakim the son of Judah had burned." And Irving conceived that he had a similar commission or at least permission, -- not to make any new revelation, as he was accused, -- but to retrace the faded lines of the old, wherein it spoke of "spiritual gifts": and so he encouraged his flock to seek for, and if the Lord should permit, to exercise the gifts of prophecy and of healing. This was his chief affront, and that which brought his splendid career under an eclipse, -- a result inevitable indeed considering that he was to be judged by those who knew no distinction between innovation and renovation. But bating any extravagances into which he may have fallen, we confess that our heart has always gone out to him in reverence for his heroic fidelity to the word of God, and his willingness, in allegiance to that word, to follow Christ "without the camp bearing the reproach." And we believe that when the Master shall come to recompense his servants, this one will attain a high reward and receive of the Lord double for the broken heart with which he went down to his grave.

Irving wrote upon this subject with his usual masterly ability. Considering the Church to be "the Body of Christ," and the endowment of the Church to be "the fullness of him that filleth all in all," he held that the Church ought to exhibit in every age something of that miraculous power which belongs to the Head. That as she endures hardness and humiliation as united to him who was on the cross, so she should exhibit something of supernatural energy as united with him who is on the throne. This he conceived to be essential for the Church’s full witness to Christ -- to him "who is now creation’s sceptre-bearer as he was heretofore creation’s burden-bearer." He lamented that the Church in her working has descended so much to the plane of the merely natural, that in preaching, the arts of the logician and the rhetorician have so far supplanted the gifts of the Spirit. "The power of miracles must either be speedily revived in the Church", he says, "or there will be a universal dominion of the mechanical philosophy, and faith will be fairly expelled to give place to the law of cause and effect acting and ruling in the world of mind as it doth in the world of sense." (Works V.: p.479).

He considered miracles to be intended not only for a perpetual demonstration of Christ’s power as now living and glorified, but also as a visible fore-token of his coming kingdom. He has pointed out with marked clearness the significance of the various signs promised in the great commission, showing how these were given as firstfruits of the kingdom of God as it shall appear in its full consummation. As that kingdom was always to be preached, he held that these signs were promised as the perpetual accompaniment of that preaching. He concluded that their withdrawal is due to the Church’s unfaithfulness, and not to any revocation on the part of God. "These gifts have ceased, I would say, just as the verdure and leaves and flowers and fruits of the spring and summer and autumn cease in winter. Because by the chill and wintry blasts which have blown over the Church, her power to put forth her glorious beauty hath been prevented. But because the winter is without a green leaf or beautiful flower do men thereof argue that there shall be flowers and fruits no more? Trusting in the word of God, who hath Created everything to produce and bring forth its kind, man puts out his hand in winter and makes preparations for the coming year: so if the Church be still in existence, and that no one denies: and if it be the law and end of her being to embody a firstfruit and earnest of the power which Christ is to put forth in the redemption of all nature; then, what though she hath been brought so low, her life is still in her, and that life will under a more genial day put forth its native powers." (The Church with her Endowment of Holiness and Power; Works, V. p.101.)

It was from such convictions as these that he reasoned so powerfully and prayed so earnestly for the recovery by the Church of her primitive gifts. If the effort brought pain and persecution to him, we believe it has brought forth some very sweet and genial fruits in others. He was no mere theorist. He not only exhorted his flock "to live by faith continually on Jesus for the body as well as the soul," but he has told us the story of his casting himself on the Lord when mighty disease laid hold of him; and how his faith was tried to the last extremity till with swimming brain and deathly sweat he stood holding on to the sides of the pulpit, waiting for God to fulfill in the eyes of the people his word "the prayer of faith shall save the sick;" and how his Redeemer at last appeared for his help and loosed for him the bands of sickness enabling him to preach on that morning with such demonstration and power of the Spirit as he had rarely known.

Thomas Erskine has written on this subject with rare insight and depth of conviction. Those who have read his writings know what a subtle and intuitive spiritual apprehension he has. A barrister by profession he is far more widely known as a theologian, while he is most deeply revered as a Christian, "who" to use Dr. Hanna’s words in his preface to his letters "moved so lovingly and attractively among his fellowmen and who walked so closely and constantly with God." Speaking of miraculous healing and the other gifts he says: -- "But I still continue to think, that to any one whose expectations are formed by and founded on the New Testament, the disappearance of these gifts from the Church must be a far greater difficulty than their reappearance could possibly be." (Letters, p.408.) In his correspondence with Dr. Chalmers, when the latter argued that we ought not to desire signs from the Lord, but to be satisfied with the ordinary manifestations of the Spirit, he replied that we ought to desire them, if God has ordained them: -- "If the Lord gives these things as means, surely it is not genuine humility which says I am satisfied without them. When the Lord desired Ahaz to ask a sign he answered, ’I will not ask neither will I tempt the Lord:’ but he is severely rebuked for this apparent humility" (Isaiah 7:12-13). His strong conviction was that the miraculous gifts were designed to be a permanent endowment of the Church: -- "The great and common mistake with regard to the gifts is that they were intended merely to authenticate or to witness to the inspiration of the Canon of Scripture, and that therefore when the Canon was completed they should cease: whereas they were intended to witness to the exaltation of Christ as the head of the body, the Church. Had the faith of the Church, continued pure and full these gifts of the Spirit would never have disappeared. There is no revocation by Christ of that word" (Mark 16:17-18) -- Brazen Serpent, p.303. With such views he watched with great interest any indications of a revival of these gifts, and in the movement in that direction going on in his day, he believed he witnessed some genuine instances of miraculous healing, as well as of speaking with tongues. We refer to one case mentioned in his letters: "In March, 1830, in the town of Port Glasgow, on the Clyde, lived a family of MacDonalds, twin brothers, Jaraes and George, with their sisters. One of the sisters, Margaret, of saintly life, lay very ill, and apparently nigh to death. She had received a remarkable baptism of the Spirit on her sick bed, and had been praying for her brothers that they might be anointed in like manner. One day when James was standing by, and she was interceding that he might at that time be endowed with the power of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit came upon him with marvelous manifestations. His whole countenance was lighted up, and with a step and manner of most indescribable majesty he walked up to Margaret’s bedside and addressed her in these words, ’Arise and stand upright.’ He repeated the words, took her by the hand, and she arose. Her recovery was instantaneous and complete, and the report of it produced a profound sensation, and many came from great distances to see her. Mr. Erskine visited the house and made careful and prolonged inquiry into the facts, and put on record his conviction of the genuiness of the miracle." (Letters, pp. 176,182,183.) His whole discussion of the subject in the work referred to, The Brazen Serpent, is deeply instructive, and especially his exposition of the intention and significance of miracles of healing as signs.

Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his well-known work Nature and the Supernatural, not only admits the existence of present-day miracles, but considers that a denial of their possibility would imperil his whole argument for the supernatural. Conceding that the Church as a whole has lost her miraculous faith, and would be inclined to repel it were it offered to her, and admitting that thinking men are not open to conviction on this point, because "the human mind, as educated mind is just now at the point of religious apogee, where it is occupied or preoccupied by nature and cannot think it rational to suppose that God does anything longer which exceeds the causalities of nature," he yet holds that among humble and simple-hearted believers "sporadic cases" of miracles have constantly appeared, and continue to appear. And not only this; he considers that in our time there are signs of a revival of the primitive apostolic gifts; that Christians "feeling after some way out of the dullness of second-hand faith, and the dryness of merely reasoned gospel, are longing for a kind of faith that shows God in living commerce with men such as he vouchsafed them in former times." "Probably, therefore," he continues, "there may just now be coming forth a more distinct and widely attested dispensation of gifts and miracles than has been witnessed for centuries."

Dr. Bushnell’s testimony as a whole is quite remarkable, because it is that of a cultivated reasoner, looking at the question through the eyes of logic as well as through the eyes of faith. His well argued discussion and wide array of facts ought at least to arrest the attention of the savans who toss off this subject with a derisive sneer. That unripe skepticism, which denies before it has even doubted, has nowhere been more arrogant than on this field. Presumptous enough it is to attempt to pick a miracle to pieces with the steel fingers of logic, but to leave it cooly alone is worse. And yet this is the method which reason has too often taken with anything professedly supernatural in these days. Scientific reason and Christian reason have passed by modern miracles as poor relations, to be looked at askance but not to be admitted into the best circles of faith and credence. And it is, therefore, quite gratifying to note the frank and cordial recognition which a thinker like Dr. Bushnell extends to them. Healing, prophecy, and gifts of tongues he admits as possible, and to some extent operative today as in the beginning. From a large array of instances adduced in his work we give place to but one, referring the reader for further information to the fourteenth chapter of the work named, in which he discusses the proposition: "Miracles and supernatural gifts not discontinued." The case cited is from the experience of a friend of his, who had been healed by prayer himself, and had, as he believed, received the gift of healing. He gives the instance to Dr. Bushnell in writing, and the doctor considers his character and veracity to be such as to put his story beyond question: "At length one of his children, whom he had with him away from home, was taken ill with scarlet fever. And now the question was, I give his own words, ’what was to be done? The Lord had healed my own sickness, but would he heal my son?’ I conferred with a brother in the Lord, who, having no faith in Christ’s healing power, urged me to send instantly for the doctor, and I dispatched his groom on horseback to fetch him. Before the doctor arrived my mind was filled with revelation on the subject. I saw that I had fallen into a snare by turning away from the Lord’s healing hand to lean on medical skill. I felt greviously condemned in my conscience; a fear also fell on me that if I persevered in my unbelieving course my son would die, as his oldest brother had. The symptoms in both were precisely similar. The doctor arrived. My son, he said, was suffering from a scarlet fever, and medicine should be sent immediately. While he stood, prescribing, I resolved to withdraw the child and cast him on the Lord. And when he was gone I called the nurse and told her to take the child into the nursery, and lay him on the bed. I then fell on my knees, confessing the sin I had committed against the Lord’s healing power. I also prayed most earnestly that it would please my heavenly Father to forgive my sin, and to show that he forgave it by causing the fever to be rebuked. I received a mighty conviction that my prayer was heard, and I arose and went to the nursery, at the end of a long passage, to see what the Lord had done, and on opening the door, to my astonishment, the boy was sitting up in his bed, and on seeing me cried out, ’I am quite well and want to have my dinner.’ In an hour he was dressed, and well, and eating his dinner, and when the physic arrived it was cast out of the window.

"Next morning the doctor returned, and on meeting me at the garden gate he said, ’I hope your son is no worse?’ ’He is very well, I thank you,’ said I in reply. ’What can you mean?’ rejoined the doctor. ’I will tell you; come in and sit down.’ I then told him all that had occurred, at which he fairly gasped with surprise. ’May I see your son,’ he asked. ’Certainly, doctor; but I see that you do not believe me. We proceeded upstairs, and my son was playing with his brother on the floor. The doctor felt his pulse and said, ’Yes, the fever is gone.’ Finding also a fine, healthy surface on his tongue, he added, ’Yes, he is quite well; I suppose it was the crisis of his disease.’ (Nature and the Supernatural, p.480.)

These testimonies might be increased by the addition of such names as those of Hugh Grotius, the Dutch theologian, and Lavater, the "Fenelon of Switzerland," as he has been called, and Hugh McNeil, the eminent English evangelical minister of the last generation, and Thomas Boys, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and others. (The works of Thomas Boys, The Christian Dispensation Miraculous and Proofs of Miraculous Faith and Experience of the Church in all Ages are full of learning and information on this whole subject, and this book gratefully acknowledges its indebtedness to them for several quotations and translations from rare and inaccessible works.) But we have not space to refer to more. These are a goodly array of witnesses; yet not because of their eminence have we summoned them. We care little for the testimony of a deep thinker except he has thought deeply and devoutly upon the subject in hand. The shorter sounding line, if it has dropped its lead to the utmost limit, has told us more of the depth than the longer one that remained coiled and dry. And so the very mediocre theologian who has studied this question to the extent of his capacity is a better witness than the most profound who has never investigated it, but has rested in unreasoning assent to what Dr. Bushnell calls "the clumsy assumption" that all miracles closed with the apostolic age.