I have reserved to the last the passage which Gordon appeals to first, because its application to the present matter raises a question of doctrine which it seemed more convenient to discuss at the end, rather than at the begin- ning of a scrutiny of proof texts. When speaking of our Lord's abounding miracles of healing, Matthew says that He did them "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases" (Matt. 8 : 17). The passage has, of course, no direct bearing on the assertion that miraculous cures continue to be performed in the church. It speaks only of Christ's own miraculous cures, and does not in the remotest way suggest that His followers were to work sim- ilar ones. It can be made useful to the Faith-Healing hypothesis, not directly, but only indirectly, through the doctrine which it is supposed to teach. That doctrine is declared to be this: "That we have Christ set before us as the sickness-bearer as well as the sin-bearer of His peo- ple"; "that Christ endured vicariously our diseases as well as our iniquities"; and, it being true "that our Re- deemer and Substitute bore our sicknesses, it would be natural to reason at once that He bore them that we
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might not bear them." As, then, "we urge the trans- gressor to accept the Lord Jesus as his sin-bearer, that he may no longer have to bear the pains and penalties of his disobedience," so we should urge the sick " to accept Him as his pain-bearer." 31 Otto Stockmayer is quoted as teaching32 "that if our Redeemer bore our sicknesses it is not his will that his children should remain under the power of disease, any more than that, having borne our sins, it is his will that they should remain under con- demnation and disobedience." In enunciating the same doctrine, Stanton makes use of the remarkable expressions,33 "that the Atonement was not only made for sin but for disease, the fruit of sin," and "that in atoning for our dis- eases of body, just as for our sins of soul, Christ took them upon Himself that He might bear them away, and thus re- lieve His people from the need of bearing them."
It would be difficult to find more confused expressions than these. What exact meaning can be attached, for example, to the phrase, "atonement for disease"? Is it intended to suggest that disease is fault for which we are responsible? Atonement can be made only for fault. And why should the phrase, "bear disease away" be em- ployed in connection with this text? Does not the word employed here for "bearing sickness" express not bearing away, removing, but bearing, enduring? And by what right can Stockmayer — the "theologian of Faith-Healing," as he is called — parallel the "power of disease" with "con- demnation and disobedience" as alike taken away by Christ's redemption, unless he means to convey the idea that, as there is now no condemnation to them in Christ Jesus, so there can now be no disease to them that are in Christ Jesus; and as all disobedience is wilful and sinful, so also is all sickness ? If so, we can only infer that none of us are in Christ Jesus: our universal physical decay and death are but the external manifestations of our inward corruption and our eternal doom.34
176 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES