the whole, at once the most readable and the most rational presentation of the views of the Faith-Healers, is Doctor A. J. Gordon's The Ministry of Healing, or Miracles of Cure in All Ages. The copy of this book at my disposal belongs to the second, revised edition, issued in 1883. Gordon writes in a straightforward, businesslike style, in excellent spirit, with great skill in arranging his matter and devel- oping his subject, and with a very persuasive and even ingenious disposition of his argument, so as to present his case in the most attractive way. He expresses his pur- pose as "to let the history of the church of all ages answer to the teaching of the Scriptures on this question, without presuming to dogmatize on it himself." 3 Already we get the impression that he knows how to present his matter so as not only to please readers, but also to remove such prejudices against his cause as may be lurking in their minds, and to predispose them to follow his guidance. We do not lose this impression as we read on. After an in- troductory chapter on "The Question and Its Bearings," we are at once given a series of chapters on "The Testi- mony of Scripture," "The Testimony of Reason," "The Testimony of the Church," "The Testimony of Theo- logians," "The Testimony of Missions," "The Testimony of the Adversary," "The Testimony of Experience," "The Testimony of the Healed." You will observe the power of such a disposition of the matter ; it almost convinces us to read over the mere titles of the chapters. At the end there come two chapters on the "Verdict" — called respec- tively the "Verdict of Candor" and the "Verdict of Cau- tion"— and finally the "Conclusion." We must now look a little more closely into the contents of this full and ad- mirably marshalled argument.
Our logical sense meets with a shock at the first opening of the volume. On the very first page the author rep- resents asking the question, What is a miracle? as "evading the issue"; and toward the close of the first chapter he
160 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
formally declines to define a miracle. This, as the outcome of a chapter on "The Question and its Bearings," beginning a volume undertaking to give proof of the existence of "miracles of cure in all ages," is far from reassuring. We open our eyes wider, however, when we observe that this method of dealing with the subject is not peculiar to this author, but is somewhat characteristic of the advocates of Faith-Healing. Robert L. Stanton, for example, in an able essay printed in The Presbyterian Review, takes up the same position.4 "It is well in the outset," he says, "to have a definite conception of the topic to be handled." He then proceeds by way of rendering the subject more definite to express a preference for "the category of the supernatural, instead of that of the miraculous." Such methods can bear only one of two meanings. They either yield the question in debate altogether — for no one who is a Christian in any clear sense doubts that God hears and answers prayer for the healing of the sick in a generally supernatural manner — or else they confuse the issue. The former is certainly not their intention; these writers do not mean to yield the point of the strict miraculousness of Faith-Healing. Stanton's selected instances, on which he rests his defense of Faith-Healing, are all such as are meant to demonstrate specifically miraculous working. Everywhere the use of means naturally adapted to bring the cure about, such as the surgeon's knife or the articles of the materia medica, are, if not forbidden, yet certainly discouraged by the practitioners of Faith-Healing, and represented as a mark of lack of trust in God ; and depen- dence on God alone, apart from all use of natural means, is represented as the very essence of the matter.5 After re- fusing at the outset to define a miracle, we observe Gordon, accordingly, showing no hesitancy later on in defining it sharply enough, and asserting that it is just this which is wrought in Faith-Healing. When the testimony is all in, and he comes to deliver the verdict, he declares decisively,6
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"a miracle is the immediate action of God, as distinguished from His mediate action through natural laws" — than which no definition could be clearer or better. This, he now says, this and nothing else, is what we pray for in Faith- Healing. It is plain, therefore, that these writers do not mean to yield the question when they decline to define a miracle at the beginning of their arguments. Precisely what they contend for is that express miracles of healing — ■ healings by the "immediate action of God, as distinguished from His mediate action through natural laws" — still take place in numerous instances. The only effect of their re- fusal of definition at the outset, therefore, is to confuse the issue.