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CHAPTER IX

THE MIRACLE-WORKER

THE arrival of Jesus at Cana was signalised by one of His best authenticated acts of mercy. At Cana He was met by a certain ruler, or Roman official of some rank, whose son lay sick in Capernaum of a fever. The distressed father believed his child to be at the point of death, and as a last resource sought help of One who had already achieved the reputation of a thaumaturgus. Jesus expresses in the clearest language consistent with sympathy and courtesy His disinclination to interfere. It is only when the ruler exclaims in an agony of love and vehemence, "Sir, come down ere my child die," that Jesus melts toward him. He does not return with the ruler to Capernaum; He contents Himself with the definite assurance that the sick child will not die. This assurance the father receives in perfect faith. He returns to Capernaum; meets upon the way his own servants, who have ridden out with the glad tidings that his son is convalescent; inquires at what hour the amendment had begun, and finds that it synchronises with the hour when Jesus said unto him, "Thy son liveth.” A coincidence so remarkable was naturally interpreted as a miracle. Its immediate effect was greatly to enhance the reputation of Jesus in Galilee, and to add to the growing circle of His disciples one household of considerable social eminence in Capernaum.

So far as this particular story goes it offers no difficulties. We are told that the illness from which the child suffered was a fever, the symptoms of which were no doubt described by the anxious father, and the nature of which was probably quite familiar to Jesus, to whom the local maladies of Galilee had been a natural subject of observation. From these data it would be easy to deduce a prophecy of the child's recovery. The modern physician, trained by long experience in habits of intuition and deduction, often ventures on such a positive verdict, and is rarely mistaken. Jesus in this case did nothing more than such a physician in the course of a wide practice often does. Nor is it necessary to depart from the relatively rational ground of coincidence in noting that the child's turn for the better happened at the very hour when Jesus dismissed the father with an assurance of his recovery. Such a coincidence would have a certain occult value with the ignorant, but in itself it is of slight importance. Things as startling have happened many times in history and in individual experience. A mind predisposed to faith in the supernatural is always prepared to interpret a coincidence as a miracle; and it was in entire accordance with the spirit of the times that this singular case of healing should have been so interpreted.

The last consideration is of vital importance in any serious review of the alleged miracles of Christ. The world of Christ's time had no system of medicine, and still less had it any scientific knowledge of natural law. Disease was commonly regarded as the work of evil spirits, and hence exorcism was common. Natural law, as an inevitable sequence of cause and effect, was not so much as apprehended, except by a very few superior minds of Greece and Rome. The average Roman was in most things fully as superstitious as the Oriental. Lucretius, the greatest philosophic poet of antiquity, who was the

first to outline the superb order of the universe, was regarded by his contemporaries as an atheist. As for the Jew, his entire history had trained him to a fixed belief in supernaturalism. The occult was interwoven at all points in the national history, and ordinary events were habitually interpreted in relation to spiritual forces.

necromancers.

The East has always had a peculiar power of producing Thus, when Moses essayed to work miracles in the presence of Pharaoh, he soon discovered that the magicians of Egypt were able to rival him on his own ground. Elijah and Elisha were regarded as magicians. Elisha was supposed to have made iron swim-a piece of pure magic in the sense in which an Indian juggler would use the term; and tradition further stated that both these great prophets had raised the dead. Curiously mingled in the history of Elijah and Elisha are indications that some of their acts were conditioned

by a superior knowledge of nature. Elisha, by a very simple knowledge of chemistry, was able to sweeten a brackish spring, and to destroy the effects of poison in a pot of broth by an antidote. Each of these acts, however, passed for a miracle. It would be tedious to enlarge the category. The point to be observed is that the world had not in Christ's day attained a rational attitude toward phenomena. Any act out of the common was esteemed miraculous, and miracle was demanded from a great teacher as an evidence of his authority. It naturally follows that many acts of such a teacher, in themselves quite explicable, became rapidly distorted by the common faith in the miraculous; and having once taken the dye of miracle the original texture is no longer discernible.

In dealing with the vexed question of miracle it is a safe rule to seek a natural explanation of any act described as miraculous, where such an explanation is possible. It does not follow, however, that the account of the act given

by a contemporary historian is insincere, fraudulent, or meant to deceive, because it furnishes us with a supernatural instead of a natural explanation. Nothing is clearer in Gospel history than that Christ was universally credited with the power of working miracles. He believed in His own power of miracle-working; His disciples, who had every opportunity of knowing the facts, believed in this power; and, what is of yet greater significance, His enemies, who had every reason to deny His miracles, accepted them as indubitable. Nicodemus, in his famous interview with Christ, began by expressing the opinion that no one could do the wonderful works that Christ did, if God were not with him. The Pharisees on a subsequent occasion attributed these same wonderful works to collusion with demons and evil spirits; but in neither case was there any attempt to deny that acts had been done which could only be described as miraculous. The old dilemma proposed to the Christian thinker was this: either these statements which attributed miracles to Christ were true or false; if true it was blasphemy to question them; if false, the whole cause of Christianity stood discredited. But there is a middle course, at once more rational and more reverent. Christianity is not discredited unless it can be proved that Christ wilfully deceived Himself and others, and played the part of a charlatan in these acts. Nor is the story of an alleged miracle false because it contains incredible statements. The story may contain both absolute truth and unconscious misrepresentation. A full and just allowance must be made for the mental characteristics of the narrator and of the time in which he lived. If we can settle the main question, which is the absolute sincerity of the history with which we are dealing, we are then perfectly free to apply the tests of criticism to the history; and in doing this, it is, as I have said, a safe rule to seek a natural

explanation of any act described as miraculous, where such an explanation is possible.

But it will be asked, Is a natural explanation of these astonishing deeds possible? We have seen that the recovery of the ruler's son, which is specifically described by St. John as "the second miracle that Jesus did," was not necessarily a miracle at all. Christ Himself makes no such claim. His own words are plain: "Go thy way, thy son liveth." He states a fact of which He is inwardly assured, and the event proves that He is right. The modern thinker is content to let the story stand thus, as an instance of profound premonition. The actual spectator, living in an age which was filled with faith in supernaturalism, could hardly help himself in introducing an element of the occult into the story, and describing it as a miracle. What each does is simply to reduce the same factors to the intellectual terms of his time. The wise man, in contemplating these widely different processes, would say that each should be free to believe as he pleases, as long as his belief in the sincerity of Christ and of his biographers remains untouched.

If it be a safe rule to prefer a natural to a supernatural explanation of any alleged miracle, a yet higher axiom of wisdom is that no temper is so fatal to research as invincible incredulity. One of the greatest masters of science in our own day has laid down the rule that the true scientist should show himself extremely reluctant to deny any kind of phenomenon, merely because it appears unintelligible. "Scientific sagacity consists in being very careful how we deny the possibility of anything," says Flammarion. Such a counsel is of especial value in relation to the miracles of Christ. We have already seen that the closer we come to the personality of Jesus the more does the conviction grow that there was an element in that personality which transcends all that we know of ordinary human nature. With

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