another?" In that hour, St. Luke tells us, he cured many people; and he turned to the messengers with the simple reply "Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them." 1 Did our Lord regard his cheering message to the poor as the greatest evidence of all? It comes last in what seems to be an ascending scale; and it makes the stress of the evidence lie on the mercifulness rather than the wonderfulness of the works. When the Scribes and Pharisees asked for a sign 2 in the ordinary sense, they were sternly refused; and Herod, too, hoped for a sign, but in vain.3 Our Lord also recognised the converting power of his works when he denounced Chorazin and Bethsaida: "for if the powers had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." "94 In the case of the Paralytic, too, he instanced the cure as a sign that "the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins." Yet these instances are few; and three sayings quoted by St. John show that our Lord tolerated rather than enforced the evidential value of his miracles: the rebuke, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe." 6 The remark: "The very works that I do, bear witness of me," and -Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in 1 Lk. 72 "7 22. See p. 148, for Harnack's comment on this. 5 No. 6. me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.” 1 It has been said, indeed, by many writers on the subject, that St. John, looking back after many years, appealed to the miracles which he records to prove Christ's Divinity: "These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name." 2 But this is to mistake the whole point of the statement. St. John is speaking- not of the miracles in general, still less of the healing works but of the special " signs" by which our Lord manifested his Resurrection to the disciples, and the remark is called forth by the appearance to Didymus. We may, therefore, safely say that our Lord did not heal men in order to prove his own Divinity, though his healing them "by the finger of God or by "the Spirit of God" did indeed show that the kingdom of God was come upon them. On one occasion truly -that of the Gadarene Dæmoniac he did command the healed man to publish the fact, but it was only to make known the mercy of God. "Go to thy house unto thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how he had mercy on thee." 5 Modern scholars do indeed now appreciate the true significance of these healing miracles. That significance could not in this aspect be better expressed than in the words of Dr. Harnack, whom again I would quote as an independent witness of 1 Jn. 14 4 Mt. 12 28. 5 Mk. 5 19 6 As on p. 149. great sanity and strength. He says of our Lord "He sees himself surrounded by crowds of sick people; he attracts them, and his one impulse is to help them. Jesus does not distinguish rigidly between sicknesses of the body and of the soul; he takes them both as different expressions of the one supreme ailment in humanity. But he knows their sources. He knows it is easier to say, 'Rise up and walk,' than to say, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee.' And he acts accordingly. No sickness of the soul repels him. he is constantly surrounded by sinful women and taxgatherers. Nor is any bodily disease too loathsome for Jesus. In this world of wailing, misery, filth, and profligacy, which pressed upon him every day, he kept himself invariably vital, pure, and busy. 66 -- In this way he won men and women to be his disciples. The circle by which he was surrounded was a circle of people who had been healed. They were healed because they had believed on him, i.e., because they had gained health from his character and words. To know God meant a sound soul. This was the rock on which Jesus had rescued them from the shipwreck of their life. They knew they were healed, just because they had recognised God as the Father in his Son. Henceforth they drew health and real life as from a never-failing stream." 1 The healing miracles are indeed invaluable to the Church, and rightly are they classed in Christian Liturgies among the "epiphanies or manifestations. They show at once both the power and the loving kindness of the Master; but they also precisely show this- that a like power and a like loving kindness is expected from his disciples today, as it was expected during his own earthly ministry — a like albeit a lesser power; and the 1 A. Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity (Tr. J. Moffat, 2nd ed., 1908), I, pp. 101-2. main evidential value of the miracles is, as we shall say later, the proof they afford of the power of religion as such, the power in all ages of spirit over matter, the power-gathered into its fulness in Christof goodness over evil, of grace over sin, and of virtue over disease. Men believed because they saw the evidence of this. Have they no right to ask for some evidence now? Ought not the Christian priest and the Christian doctor, the saint, and the gifted, and the humblest communicant of the Body of Christ- ought not these each to be a strong man armed, fighting, not to hew himself a way into some heavenly mansion, nor like a Mohammedan to secure himself delights in the world that is to come; but willing even himself to be a castaway, and to save his soul only by losing it, so that he may fight for the afflicted and the oppressed, the poor and him that hath no helper; fighting in God's name and in the Master's service against the many-headed dragons of the world's miseries, against suffering and disease, in the whole armour of God — the armour of head, and hands, and heart? And, fighting thus, shall not each humblest warrior of the Red Cross be in some sure measure victorious? There is, indeed, evidential value of such a kind as this in works and signs and powers. And the world asks for evidence to-day. CHAPTER XVI THE METHODS EMPLOYED BY CHRIST Word, Touch, Telepathy, Suggestion If we try to get an idea of the methods employed in these forty-one miracles of our Lord, we shall find they fall into certain definite classes, omitting those of which nothing is said as to the manner of healing.1 At the outset we may observe that, though our Lord enjoined unction on the Disciples, he is never related to have used oil himself, although on one occasion (No. 40) he “ anointed " a blind man's eyes with clay. The laying-on of hands is occasionally mentioned (Nos. 3, 12, 16, 32), and I should suppose this was his general method, omitted in most accounts just because it was the natural and obvious way of conveying spiritual power. 66 Word None the less it is remarkable how often our Lord healed simply by Word of Command. He ordered the dæmons in Nos. 1 and 9 to come forth: to the Paralytic at Capernaum (No. 6) and the Impotent Man at Bethesda (No. 39) he said, "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk "; and a similiar salutary call 1 Viz., Nos. 4, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37. |