The passage does not stand off by itself in isolation: it has a context. And the context throws fight upon the simplicity of the meaning. " Is any among you suffering ? " asks James, and advises, "let him pray. Is any cheerful? let him sing praises. Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up ; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him." Is there anything here that is not re- peated before our eyes every day, whenever any Christian
170 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
is sick — except that we have allowed the formal churchly act of intercession for him to fall into desuetude ? Here is really the gravamen of the passage to us. The explicit promise is to the official intercession of the church, the Apostolic enforcement, I take it, consonant to the entrance into history of the organized church, of our Lord's gracious promise, that "when two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst of them." Even nature itself should have taught us the value of this organic sup- plication; does not Emile Boutroux, for example, declare21 that "a collective will has nothing to do with the mathe- matical sum of the individual wills"? And can we wonder that our Lord should honor the same principle? Apart from this failure, we have nothing in the passage that transcends universal Christian experience. Where is there any command in it to exclude the ordinary medicinal means? Where is there any promise of a specifically mi- raculous answer? When James says, "If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him," are we to understand him to forbid that wisdom should be sought in the natural way of thoughtful consideration, and to promise that God will bestow it after a specifically mi- raculous fashion ? When our Lord says, with complete ab- sence of any hint of limitation as to the field in which the request moves, "Ask and ye shall receive," are we to under- stand Him to forbid all effort in any sphere of life, and to promise specifically miraculous provision for all our needs? Are we to expect to be fed with manna from heaven, or are we not rather to learn to work with our own hands, that we may have wherewith to give to the necessities of others as well as to supply our own wants? There seems to be no more reason in our present passage to exclude medicinal means from the healing of the sick, or to expect a miraculous answer to our prayers in their behalf, than there is in our Lord's promise to exclude the use of all
ANOINTING REMEDIAL 171
means of seeking to supply our daily necessities and to depend wholly on miraculous gifts from heaven.
It is probable that the common impression received from this passage of the promise of a miraculous healing in large part arises from what seems the extreme formality of the transaction recommended. The sick man is to send for the elders of the church to pray for him, and they are to anoint him with oil. We are apt here to get the emphasis misplaced. There is no emphasis on the anointing with oil. That is a mere circumstantial detail, thrown in by the way. The emphasis falls wholly on the sick man's getting himself prayed for officially by the elders of the church, and the promise is suspended wholly on their prayer, on the supposition that it is offered in faith. The circumstantial clause, thrown in almost incidentally, "anointing with oil in the name of the Lord," is susceptible of two interpretations.22 The reference may be to the use of oil as a symbol of the power of the Spirit to be exercised in the healing ; or it may be to the use of oil as a medicinal agent. In neither view is the employment of medicinal agents excluded; but in the latter view their employment is distinctly alluded to. The circumstance that oil was well-nigh the universal remedy in the medical practice of the day favors the latter view, as does the employment of, as Archbishop Trench puts it, "the mundane and pro- fane" instead of the "sacred and religious word" for the act of anointing.23 The lightness of the allusion to the anointing points in the same direction. It scarcely seems that so solemn an act and so distinct an act as cere- monial anointing could be alluded to so cursorily.24 If, on the other hand, the allusion is to the use of oil as a medicinal agent, everything falls into its place. The meaning then is in effect, "giving him his medicine in the name of the Lord." The emphasis falls not on the anoint- ing, but on its being done "in the name of the Lord," and the whole becomes an exhortation to Christians, when they
172 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES