ON THE

REVIVAL OF MIRACULOUS POWERS

IN THE CHURCH.

It is a fact generally admitted, that miraculous powers have for many ages been withdrawn from the church. Supernatural answers to prayer have indeed been expected, and some such have been recorded, which it would be found very hard either to disprove or to explain away. These, however, were the immediate and sovereign work of God; and in this respect totally distinct from the effect of a gift to be habitually exercised by men. When miraculous powers were in the church, men habitually spoke with new tongues, cured the sick, cast out devils, and wrought wonders. They were habitually agents, under God, to accomplish effects beyond the ordinary course of nature. But for many ages miracles, if wrought at all, have been wrought immediately by God: and that not systematically, but in insulated cases; not by promise, but in a sovereign way, beyond promise. Men have not, as in the primitive church, received the power to work them: nor could it be certainly known before-hand that they would be wrought; for God might answer prayer without them, as well as by their aid; or the thing asked might be withheld, as injurious to the person asking it. Whether God ever works miracles now, in answer to prayer, is not the question I wish to examine; nor does that seem to me of much importance to determine. The promises are very large : "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you:" "If we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us. The believer who receives these in simple faith

B

will feel sure that God will, in answer to prayer, give to him at all times the best blessings, in the best way. What is really best in temporal matters he cannot certainly say; he will therefore leave it to God. If a miracle be necessary to accomplish what is best for him, it will assuredly be done; if it be not necessary, and the best result can take place without it, why should it be desired? To expect with certainty any temporal event to take place in answer to prayer, though by natural means, is presumptuous, because it is to assume a knowledge that such event is certainly good for us, which is not revealed. On the other hand, to expect such event to take place, though by a miracle-if with absolute submission to God, and with confession that we may be mistaken in our expectation, because we know not whether the event may be for our good or not-will do us little mischief: on that question, therefore, a believer in a right state of mind cannot greatly err.

Let it be admitted, then, that some supernatural answers to prayer have been known in all ages: still few can doubt that miraculous powers have been withdrawn. No such powers-with the exception, perhaps, of the power to eject devils, in which there is obviously wide room for imaginationhave, as I believe, been claimed in the church since the second century. If ever such a claim has been preferred, it has only been by persons sunk in abject superstition, as was the case with the miracle workers of the eighth century*; or by those who had purposes to serve by the imposture, and whose cases need not now be considered, because sufficiently explained by the prophecy that the coming of the man of sin should be with lying wonders (2 Thess. ii. 9).

How, then, shall we account for this generally admitted fact, that miraculous powers have long since ceased? Have they been lost through the unbelief of the church, and are they to be recovered by the revival of faith? Or were they withdrawn. by their Sovereign Author, not penally, nor in any way as the effect of sin, but because He saw it to be best for His church, however persecuted, to be without them? And is it, therefore, presumptuous to expect their restoration, till a new reve

* See Mosheim's Church History.

lation warrants the expectation, or the actual exercise of them demonstrates them to be restored?

Your candid attention is requested to the following remarks, which will, I trust, prove sufficient to help you to what appears to me a right decision on this subject.

If the supernatural gifts of God's Holy Spirit have been lost through unbelief, they ought to have been retained by the exercise of faith. But faith is not a blind persuasion, however strong, built on no evidence, and of which no rational account can be given. Such a persuasion God has never made it our duty to acquire; nor does he ever produce it in the mind. All Christian faith is the hearty acceptance of some declaration of God (Rom. x. 17): and that particular act of faith by which we receive any blessing from God must be founded on some promise; otherwise the sober confidence of the believer can never be distinguished from the wild presumption of the enthusiast. The strongest faith cannot go further than to be fully persuaded that what God has promised he is able also to perform (Rom. iv. 21). Is there, then, any promise to the believer that he shall receive miraculous powers, by faith on which he may and ought to work miracles? It is maintained that there are several, and we are directed to Psal. lxviii. 18; to Joel ii. 28, 29; to Isai. viii. 18; to Mark xvi. 17, 18; Rev. vii. 2,3; and 1 Cor. xiii. 8-10; which are said to be so plain as to render it the proof of a criminal unbelief that we do not enter at once on the exercise of supernatural gifts. But these texts require examination.

1. The words in Psal. lxviii. are these: "Thou hast ascended on high thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also; that the Lord God might dwell among them" (compare Eph. iv. 8).

Our right to the gifts is sometimes deduced from the last clause of the verse, "That the Lord God might dwell among them;" which some would translate, "For an habitation of Jah-Elohim;" on which new translation I will make only one remark. The words are not "for an habitation," as though

the rebellious were to be the habitation, but "for the inhabiting" of the Lord, i. e." that the Lord may inhabit;" this being the consequence of the gifts: which is, I think, precisely the sense of our translation; for the words to "dwell in" his people and to "dwell among" them, express in fact the same thing. I therefore prefer our old translation; but do not contend against the statement that God is here said to dwell within his people. But if God dwells within his church, it is said, then He must be "heard in his manifold wisdom, and seen in his various actings, by this church, which is his body, possessing the gift of healing, the discernment of spirits, the gift of tongues," &c. &c.* But God may as certainly dwell within his church, and within each of his servants, without miraculous displays of power as with them; and, unless the most blessed promises are to be rudely snatched from believers in general, He certainly does. Our Lord promised that the Comforter should abide with his disciples for ever (John xiv. 16): has He for more than sixteen hundred years retired from them? Our Lord promised also, that He, with his Father, God, would come and abide with each one of his disciples who loved him (John xiv. 23); have all believers, who for sixteen hundred years have laid no claim to miraculous powers, been destitute of love to Him? or, though they loved Him, has he left the promise unfulfilled? Neither part of the alternative can be true; and therefore God may dwell in his church, according to Psalm lxviii., without communicating to it any supernatural gifts.

Perhaps our right to look for the gifts may be preferably derived from the expression "Thou hast received gifts for men:" for why should the term "men" be limited to mean some believers in the primitive church; or the term "gifts," which often means the supernatural gifts, be taken here to mean grace

?

Let it be remembered, that supernatural gifts were neither the proofs of conversion, nor the means of it (Matt. vii. 22, 23); and, therefore, any unconverted persons, to whom such gifts were communicated, might continue unconverted. If, then, such gifts are here exclusively intended, they are promised to the rebellious, continuing rebellious, as much as to real be

Morning Watch, No. VIII. p. 857.

lievers; and if the passage proves that such gifts belong in all ages to real Christians, it proves them to belong in all ages to nominal Christians too. Indeed, as we have no more right to limit the word "men" to mean the nominal Christians of all periods, than to limit it to mean the nominal Christians of any one particular period; if the first limitation is disallowed, the promise must extend to all men, in all times; which cannot be intended. And that such gifts were not exclusively intended, is plain from St. Paul's expressions in Eph. iv. 7,8: "Unto every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the gift of Christ: wherefore," &c. (compare Rom. v. 18, 19); whence it appears that the gifts of grace were those principally intended. I do not deny that all other gifts communicated in fact by our blessed Lord-such as inspiration, the tongues of fire, the power to drink poisons unharmed, &c.—may be included; but I deny that their continuance forms so essential a part of the promise that it cannot be said to be still accomplishing in the continuance of the gifts of grace. No argument to the contrary can be drawn from the words which follow, Eph. iv. 11-13: "He gave some apostles, and some prophets.... for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come.... unto a perfect man.” For if the prophetic office, and by inference all other supernatural gifts, are here promised to the church till it reach its entire perfection; then is the apostolic office also, not in some of its functions, but (on precisely the same reasoning) in all of them, promised to continue too. But who can seriously think that this office is continued? Where is the man who can now, as the Apostles once did, convey the Spirit authoritatively by imposition of hands; or could (except as supported by plain texts of Scripture, which would extend the privilege to all private Christians also) venture to address to the church such language as the following: "If any man think himself to be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord" (1 Cor. xiv. 37); "If any man obey not our word, note that man, and have no company with him" (2 Thes. iii. 14)? But if the Apostolic office and power have ceased, then all other offices and powers which have accomplished their ob