Miracles of Our Lord

But it is very noteworthy that he sent the man to his own house, to his own friends. They must be the most open to such a message as his, and from such lips—the lips of their own flesh and blood. He had been raving in tombs and deserts, tormented with a legion of devils; now he was one of themselves again, with love in his eyes, adoration in the very tones of his voice, and help in his hands—reason once more supreme on the throne of his humanity. He obeyed, and published in Gadara, and the rest of the cities of Decapolis, the great things, as Jesus himself called them, which God had done for him. For it was God who had done them. He was doing the works of his Father.

One more instance remains, having likewise peculiar points of difficulty, and therefore of interest.

When Jesus was on the mount of transfiguration, a dumb, epileptic, and lunatic boy was brought by his father to those disciples who were awaiting his return.

But they could do nothing. To their disappointment, and probably to their chagrin, they found themselves powerless over the evil spirit. When Jesus appeared, the father begged of him the aid which his disciples could not give: "Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son, for he is mine only child."

Whoever has held in his arms his child in delirium, calling to his father for aid as if he were distant far, and beating the air in wild and aimless defence, will be able to enter a little into the trouble of this man's soul. To have the child, and yet see him tormented in some region inaccessible; to hold him to the heart and yet be unable to reach the thick-coming fancies which distract him; to find himself with a great abyss between him and his child, across which the cry of the child comes, but back across which no answering voice can reach the consciousness of the sufferer—is terror and misery indeed. But imagine in the case before us the intervals as well—the stupidity, the vacant gaze, the hanging lip, the pale flaccid countenance and bloodshot eyes, idiocy alternated with madness—no voice of human speech, only the animal babble of the uneducated dumb—the misery of his falling down anywhere, now in the fire, now in the water, and the divine shines out as nowhere else—for the father loves his only child even to agony.

What was there in such a child to love? Everything: the human was there, else whence the torture of that which was not human? whence the pathos of those eyes, hardly up to the dog's in intelligence, yet omnipotent over the father's heart? God was there. The misery was that the devil was there too. Thence came the crying and tears. "Rescue the divine; send the devil to the deep," was the unformed prayer in the father's soul.

Before replying to his prayer, Jesus uttered words that could not have been addressed to the father, inasmuch as he was neither faithless nor perverse. Which then of those present did he address thus? To which of them did he say, "How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you?" I have thought it was the bystanders: but why they? They had not surely reached the point of such rebuke. I have thought it was the disciples, because perhaps it was their pride that rendered them unable to cast out the demon, seeing they tried it without faith enough in God. But the form of address does not seem to belong to them: the word generation could not well apply to those whom he had chosen out of that generation. I have thought, and gladly would I continue to think, if I could honestly, that the words were intended for the devils who tormented his countrymen and friends; and but for St Mark's story, I might have held to it. He, however, gives us one point which neither St Matthew nor St Luke mention—that "when he came to his disciples he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them." He says the multitude were greatly amazed when they saw him—why, I do not know, except it be that he came just at the point where his presence was needful to give the one answer to the scribes pressing hard upon his disciples because they could not cast out this devil. These scribes, these men of accredited education, who, from their position as students of the law and the interpretations thereof, arrogated to themselves a mastery over the faith of the people, but were themselves so careless about the truth as to be utterly opaque to its illuminating power—these scribes, I say, I do think it was whom our Lord addressed as "faithless and perverse generation." The immediately following request to the father of the boy, "Bring him unto me," was the one answer to their arguments.

A fresh paroxysm was the first result. But repressing all haste, the Lord will care for the father as much as for the child. He will help his growing faith.

"How long is it ago since thus hath come unto him?"

"From a child. And oft-times it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him; but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us."9 "If thou canst?"10 All things are possible to him that believeth."

"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

Whether the words of Jesus, "him that believeth," meant himself as believing in the Father, and therefore gifted with all power, or the man as believing in him, and therefore capable of being the recipient of the effects of that power, I am not sure. I incline to the former. The result is the same, for the man resolves the question practically and personally: what was needful in him should be in him. "I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

In the honesty of his heart, lest he should be saying more than was true—for how could he be certain that Jesus would cure his son? or how could he measure and estimate his own faith?—he appeals to the Lord of Truth for all that he ought to be, and think, and believe. "Help thou mine unbelief." It is the very triumph of faith. The unbelief itself cast like any other care upon him who careth for us, is the highest exercise of belief. It is the greatest effort lying in the power of the man. No man can help doubt. The true man alone, that is, the faithful man, can appeal to the Truth to enable him to believe what is true, and refuse what is false. How this applies especially to our own time and the need of the living generations, is easy to see. Of all prayers it is the one for us.

Possibly our Lord might have held a little farther talk with him, but the people came crowding about. "He rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose."

"Why could not we cast him out?" asked his disciples as soon as they were alone.

"This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting."

What does this answer imply? The prayer and fasting must clearly be on the part of those who would heal. They cannot be required of one possessed with a demon. If he could fast and pray, the demon would be gone already.

It implies that a great purity of soul is needful in him who would master the powers of evil. I take prayer and fasting to indicate a condition of mind elevated above the cares of the world and the pleasures of the senses, in close communion with the God of life; therefore by its very purity an awe and terror to the unclean spirits, a fit cloud whence the thunder of the word might issue against them. The expulsion would appear to be the result of moral, and hence natural, superiority—a command resting upon oneness with the ultimate will of the Supreme, in like manner as an evil man is sometimes cowed in the presence of a good man. The disciples had not attained this lofty condition of faith.

From this I lean to think that the words of our Lord—"All things are possible to him that believeth"—apply to our Lord himself. The disciples could not help the child: "If thou canst do anything," said the father. "All things are possible to him that believeth," says our Lord. He can help him. That it was the lack of faith in the disciples which rendered the thing impossible for them, St Matthew informs us explicitly, for he gives the reply of our Lord more fully than the rest: "Because of your unbelief," he said, and followed with the assertion that faith could remove mountains.

But the words—"This kind"—suggest that the case had its peculiarities. It would appear—although I am not certain of this interpretation—that some kinds of spirits required for their expulsion, or at least some cases of possession required for their cure, more than others of the presence of God in the healer. I do not care to dwell upon this farther than to say that there are points in the narrative which seem to indicate that it was an unusually bad case. The Lord asked how long he had been ill, and was told, from childhood. The demon—to use the language of our ignorance—had had time and opportunity, in his undeveloped condition, to lay thorough hold upon him; and when he did yield to the superior command of the Lord, he left him as dead—so close had been the possession, that for a time the natural powers could not operate when deprived of the presence of a force which had so long usurped, maltreated, and exhausted, while falsely sustaining them. The disciples, although they had already the power to cast out demons, could not cast this one out, and were surprised to find it so. There appears to me no absurdity, if we admit the demons at all, in admitting also that some had greater force than others, be it regarded as courage or obstinacy, or merely as grasp upon the captive mortal.

In all these stories there is much of comfort both to the friends of those who are insane, and to those who are themselves aware of their own partial or occasional insanity. For such sorrow as that of Charles and Mary Lamb, walking together towards the asylum, when the hour had come for her to repair thither, is there not some assuagement here? It may be answered—We have no ground to hope for such cure now. I think we have; but if our faith will not reach so far, we may at least, like Athanasius, recognize the friendship of Death, for death is the divine cure of many ills.

But we all need like healing. No man who does not yet love the truth with his whole being, who does not love God with all his heart and soul and strength and mind, and his neighbour as himself, is in his sound mind, or can act as a rational being, save more or less approximately. This is as true as it would be of us if possessed by other spirits than our own. Every word of unkindness, God help us! every unfair hard judgment, every trembling regard of the outward and fearless disregard of the inward life, is a siding with the spirit of evil against the spirit of good, with our lower and accidental selves, against our higher and essential—our true selves. These the spirit of good would set free from all possession but his own, for that is their original life. Out of us, too, the evil spirits can go by that prayer alone in which a man draws nigh to the Holy. Nor can we have any power over the evil spirit in others except in proportion as by such prayer we cast the evil spirit out of ourselves.

VIII. THE RAISING OF THE DEAD

I linger on the threshold. How shall I enter the temple of this wonder? Through all ages men of all degrees and forms of religion have hoped at least for a continuance of life beyond its seeming extinction. Without such a hope, how could they have endured the existence they had? True, there are in our day men who profess unbelief in that future, and yet lead an enjoyable life, nor even say to themselves, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" but say instead, with nobleness, "Let us do what good we may, for there are men to come after us." Of all things let him who would be a Christian be fair to every man and every class of men. Before, however, I could be satisfied that I understood the mental condition of such, I should require a deeper insight than I possess in respect of other men. These, however numerous they seem in our day, would appear to be exceptions to the race. No doubt there have always been those who from absorption in the present and its pleasures, have not cared about the future, have not troubled themselves with the thought of it. Some of them would rather not think of it, because if there be such a future, they cannot be easy concerning their part in it; while others are simply occupied with the poor present—a present grand indeed if it be the part of an endless whole, but poor indeed if it stand alone. But here are thoughtful men, who say, "There is no more. Let us make the best of this." Nor is their notion of best contemptible, although in the eyes of some of us, to whom the only worth of being lies in the hope of becoming that which, at the rate of present progress, must take ages to be realized, it is poor. I will venture one or two words on the matter.

Their ideal does not approach the ideal of Christianity for this life even.

Before I can tell whether their words are a true representation of themselves, in relation to this future, I must know both their conscious and unconscious being. No wonder I should be loath to judge them.

No poet of high rank, as far as I know, ever disbelieved in the future. He might fear that there was none; but that very fear is faith. The greatest poet of the present day believes with ardour. That it is not proven to the intellect, I heartily admit. But if it were true, it were such as the intellect could not grasp, for the understanding must be the offspring of the life—in itself essential. How should the intellect understand its own origin and nature? It is too poor to grasp this question; for the continuity of existence depends on the nature of existence, not upon external relations. If after death we should be conscious that we yet live, we shall even then, I think, be no more able to prove a further continuance of life, than we can now prove our present being. It may be easier to believe—that will be all. But we constantly act upon grounds which we cannot prove, and if we cannot feel so sure of life beyond the grave as of common every-day things, at least the want of proof ought neither to destroy our hope concerning it, nor prevent the action demanded by its bare possibility.

But last, I do say this, that those men, who, disbelieving in a future state, do yet live up to the conscience within them, however much lower the requirements of that conscience may be than those of a conscience which believes itself enlightened from "the Lord, who is that spirit," shall enter the other life in an immeasurably more enviable relation thereto than those who say Lord, Lord, and do not the things he says to them.

It may seem strange that our Lord says so little about the life to come—as we call it—though in truth it is one life with the present—as the leaf and the blossom are one life. Even in argument with the Sadducees he supports his side upon words accepted by them, and upon the nature of God, but says nothing of the question from a human point of regard. He seems always to have taken it for granted, ever turning the minds of his scholars towards that which was deeper and lay at its root—the life itself—the oneness with God and his will, upon which the continuance of our conscious being follows of a necessity, and without which if the latter were possible, it would be for human beings an utter evil.

When he speaks of the world beyond, it is as his Father's house. He says there are many mansions there. He attempts in no way to explain. Man's own imagination enlightened of the spirit of truth, and working with his experience and affections, was a far safer guide than his intellect with the best schooling which even our Lord could have given it. The memory of the poorest home of a fisherman on the shore of the Galilean lake, where he as a child had spent his years of divine carelessness in his father's house, would, at the words of our Lord my Father's house, convey to Peter or James or John more truth concerning the many mansions than a revelation to their intellect, had it been possible, as clear as the Apocalypse itself is obscure.

When he said "I have overcome the world" he had overcome the cause of all doubt, the belief in the outside appearances and not in the living truth: he left it to his followers to say, from their own experience knowing the thing, not merely from the belief of his resurrection, "He has conquered death and the grave. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" It is the inward life of truth that conquers the outward death of appearance; and nothing else, no revelation from without, could conquer it.

These miracles of our Lord are the nearest we come to news of any kind concerning—I cannot say from—the other world. I except of course our Lord's own resurrection. Of that I shall yet speak as a miracle, for miracle it was, as certainly as any of our Lord's, whatever interpretation be put upon the word. And I say the nearest to news we come, because not one of those raised from the dead gives us at least an atom of information. Is it possible they may have told their friends something which has filtered down to us in any shape?

I turn to the cases on record. They are only three. The day after he cured the servant of the centurion at Capernaum, Jesus went to Nain, and as they approached the gate—but I cannot part the story from the lovely words in which it is told by St Luke: "There was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier; and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother."

In each of the cases there is an especial fitness in the miracle. This youth was the only son of a widow; the daughter of Jairus was his "one only daughter;" Lazarus was the brother of two orphan sisters.

I will not attempt by any lingering over the simple details to render the record more impressive. That lingering ought to be on the part of the reader of the narrative itself. Friends crowded around a loss—the centre of the gathering that which was not—the sole presence the hopeless sign of a vanished treasure—an open gulf, as it were, down which love and tears and sad memories went plunging in a soundless cataract: the weeping mother—the dead man borne in the midst. They were going to the house of death, but Life was between them and it—was walking to meet them, although they knew it not. A face of tender pity looks down on the mother. She heeds him not. He goes up to the bier, and lays his hand on it. The bearers recognize authority, and stand. A word, and the dead sits up. A moment more, and he is in the arms of his mother. O mother! mother! wast thou more favoured than other mothers? Or was it that, for the sake of all mothers as well as thyself, thou wast made the type of the universal mother with the dead son—the raising of him but a foretaste of the one universal bliss of mothers with dead sons? That thou wert an exception would have ill met thy need, for thy motherhood could not be justified in thyself alone. It could not have its rights save on grounds universal. Thy motherhood was common to all thy sisters. To have helped thee by exceptional favour would not have been to acknowledge thy motherhood. That must go mourning still, even with thy restored son in its bosom, for its claims are universal or they are not. Thou wast indeed a chosen one, but that thou mightest show to all the last fate of the mourning mother; for in God's dealings there are no exceptions. His laws are universal as he is infinite. Jesus wrought no new thing—only the works of the Father. What matters it that the dead come not back to us, if we go to them? What matters it? said I! It is tenfold better. Dear as home is, he who loves it best must know that what he calls home is not home, is but a shadow of home, is but the open porch of home, where all the winds of the world rave by turns, and the glowing fire of the true home casts lovely gleams from within.

Certainly this mother did not thus lose her son again. Doubtless next she died first, knowing then at last that she had only to wait. The dead must have their sorrow too, but when they find it is well with them, they can sit and wait by the mouth of the coming stream better than those can wait who see the going stream bear their loves down to the ocean of the unknown. The dead sit by the river-mouths of Time: the living mourn upon its higher banks.

But for the joy of the mother, we cannot conceive it. No mother even who has lost her son, and hopes one blessed eternal day to find him again, can conceive her gladness. Had it been all a dream? A dream surely in this sense, that the final, which alone, in the full sense, is God's will, must ever cast the look of a dream over all that has gone before. When we last awake, we shall know that we dreamed. Even every honest judgment, feeling, hope, desire, will show itself a dream—with this difference from some dreams, that the waking is the more lovely, that nothing is lost, but everything gained, in the full blaze of restored completeness. How triumphant would this mother die, when her turn came!

And how calmly would the restored son go about the duties of the world.11

He sat up and began to speak.

It is vain to look into that which God has hidden; for surely it is by no chance that we are left thus in the dark. "He began to speak." Why does not the Evangelist go on to give us some hint of what he said? Would not the hearts of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, children, husbands—who shall say where the divine madness of love will cease?—grandfathers, grandmothers—themselves with flickering flame—yes, grandchildren, weeping over the loss of the beloved gray head and tremulously gentle voice—would not all these have blessed God for St Luke's record of what the son of the widow said? For my part, I thank God he was silent.

When I think of the pictures of heaven drawn from the attempt of prophecy to utter its visions in the poor forms of the glory of earth, I see it better that we should walk by faith, and not by a fancied sight. I judge that the region beyond is so different from ours, so comprising in one surpassing excellence all the goods of ours, that any attempt of the had-been-dead to describe it, would have resulted in the most wretched of misconceptions. Such might please the lower conditions of Christian development—but so much the worse, for they could not fail to obstruct its further growth. It is well that St Luke is silent; or that the mother and the friends who stood by the bier, heard the words of the returning spirit only as the babble of a child from which they could draw no definite meaning, and to which they could respond only by caresses.

The story of the daughter of Jairus is recorded briefly by St Matthew, more fully by St Luke, most fully by St Mark. One of the rulers of the synagogue at Capernaum falls at the feet of our Lord, saying his little daughter is at the point of death. She was about twelve years of age. He begs the Lord to lay his hands on her that she may live. Our Lord goes with him, followed by many people. On his way to restore the child he is arrested by a touch. He makes no haste to outstrip death. We can imagine the impatience of the father when the Lord stood and asked who touched him. What did that matter? his daughter was dying; Death would not wait.

But the woman's heart and soul must not be passed by. The father with the only daughter must wait yet a little. The will of God cannot be outstripped.

"While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further?" "Ah! I thought so! There it is! Death has won the race!" we may suppose the father to say—bitterly within himself. But Jesus, while he tried the faith of men, never tried it without feeding its strength. With the trial he always gives the way of escape. "As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken"—not leaving it to work its agony of despair first—"he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid; only believe." They are such simple words—commonplace in the ears of those who have heard them often and heeded them little! but containing more for this man's peace than all the consolations of philosophy, than all the enforcements of morality; yea, even than the raising of his daughter itself. To arouse the higher, the hopeful, the trusting nature of a man; to cause him to look up into the unknown region of mysterious possibilities—the God so poorly known—is to do infinitely more for a man than to remove the pressure of the direst evil without it. I will go further: To arouse the hope that there may be a God with a heart like our own is more for the humanity in us than to produce the absolute conviction that there is a being who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and the fountains of waters. Jesus is the express image of God's substance, and in him we know the heart of God. To nourish faith in himself was the best thing he could do for the man.