Jesus' Works not Supernatural
The following extract is the closing paragraph of a sermon preached by a prominent clergyman in a Western city and reported in a local paper,—
"We conclude, therefore, that miracles are possible, they are probable, and the evidence that Christ interposed his will in the course of natural law and did things not attributable to such law, is overwhelming. These works were for the authentication of his mission in the world, and while wrought in the material realm, they have their counterpart to-day in the spiritual. Jesus is still opening blind eyes, cleansing leprous hearts, giving strength to the impotent, and making the dumb to sing praise. He is now the Physician of souis, as he was then the Physician of the bodies of men."
This sermon as a whole may fairly be taken as a statement of commonly accepted beliefs concerning the healing ministry of Jesus, and inasmuch as it was intended as an expression of opinion in support of the authenticity of the Scriptural record, and is a plea for the possibility and probability of the miracles of the New Testament, it can be accepted as the utterance of one who is in sympathy with our Master and his teachings. In view of this intention, and with Jesus' words in mind, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do," we naturally might expect this clergyman to urge upon his hearers that the healing work which accompanied the preaching of the Nazarene and his disciples is a vital part of modern Christianity and should be as familiar to Christians to-day as of yore; but he does not do so. On the contrary, he tells them in substance that God, the omnipotent and omniscient creator of the universe, had made a mistake; that in order to correct this mistake it became necessary for Him to employ extraordinary measures, that the miracles of the early Christian era were designed solely to attract the attention of humanity to the Messenger whom He had sent to save mortals from sin, and that when this was accomplished the physical healing ceased. We think this is a reasonable interpretation of the sermon when the above quotation and those which follow are considered.
"In the dim past God pronounced everything that He had made good and very good, but it has not continued ideal, but in a remote epoch in man's history his progress was violently interrupted; his career was checked in its course, and the end for which he was created was suddenly thwarted. His free will, which was the highest endowment of his nature and made him most like God, became the source of his greatest misery. By his own choice, he departed from God into a state of lawlessness and death.
"From this state he had not the power in himself to extricate himself. There was nothing in his nature—no germ of good—that could ever propagate itself into a state of righteousness.
"Nothing in natural law could ever operate upon either his physical or intellectual nature, to effect the desired restoration. But if such a remedy could have been found he would have lacked in himself the disposition to apply it for the accomplishment of the end.
"Under such conditions, what was naturally expected of God? When man sees the ruin of his works, and has in his power the possibilities of repair or reconstruction, he at once sets about the work, and does not confine himself to the processes that were employed at the first, if others meet the ends better.
"And is it not probable, when God should see the work which He had pronounced good, ruined by the volition of His creature, involving the everlasting ruin of man and the loss of a kingdom, that He would interpose for the restoration of the same, and that if it could not be done by natural processes that He would resort to supernatural?
"If God be one we conceive Him to be, certainly there is no other conclusion to be reached."
Since the sermon was intended to convince mankind that Christianity is true, we sincerely hope that it stregthened the faith of those who heard it, but we wish the preacher had grasped the full import of Jesus' ministry, and had told his hearers that these marvelous works of our Lord were not supernatural, but strictly in accord with the divine law, and that they are possible now; and to the extent that the Principle which actuated Jesus is understood and demonstrated, they are being accomplished. Happily the truth of Christianity does not depend upon theory or argument; it is based on Principle, it has a rule capable of demonstration if we follow our great Wayshower. All question of the probability and possibility of the works attributed to Jesus by the Scriptures is eliminated by the accomplishment of similar works to-day through following his teachings, and as we learn sufficient of his method to do these works we will be saved from accusing God of having made a mistake, which, when He had gained greater wisdom through experience, He proceeded to correct by supernatural means.
The teachings of Christian Science are consistent with the omniscience and omnipotence of God, and manitain that He is "without variableness or shadow of turning." As to the healing of sickness in Jesus' time, and to-day, Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (Preface, p. xi.),—
"The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness, and so disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light, and sin to reformation. Now, as then, they are not supernatural, but supremely natural. They are those 'mighty works,' which were the sign of Immanuel or 'God with us,'—an influence ever present in human consciousness, and coming now again, as was promised aforetime,—
To preach deliverance to the captives [of sense],
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised."
M.
