Miracles, past and present

Front matter

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Preface

HE subject of the Supernatural has engaged my attention, as a student, during many years. It grew upon me as to importance, and deepened as to interest, while I was at Rome, where, lke St. Paul, I dwelt two years in my own hired house. This book, which I offer to the public, was written simply because the times seemed to be asking for some such work. And, as nobody else was answering to the call of the times, it occurred to me suddenly, one morning, some sixteen months ago, that perhaps I might myself be not quite clear of the summons. Doubtless a better man than I am was called upon, and a better book was asked for than what I have to offer. I confess that I feel so. And let this acknowledgment be accepted as an apology for such a venture as this is upon such a theme.

Some persons have wondered that I should have attempted to strengthen my argument by availing myself of the phenomena of Spiritualism as evidence of there being about us a sphere of life. altogether different from this of nature, and for which science has no methods nor instruments, and for which, therefore, it should not have even one word of denial, or even of doubt. Those phenomena may be called ridiculous, or they may be called demoniac ;

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but at least and certainly they are cosmical. And, indeed, if I had ignored the subject of Spiritualism because of its being unpopular, how could I ever have borne afterwards to think of Henry More, or of Richard Baxter, or of John Wesley, or his dear brother Charles? Or how could TI ever again have consulted Ralph Cudworth, as to the Intellectual System of the Universe? Or how could I have remembered, thenceforth, without shame, the Christian writers from Hermas to Augustine? Or how could I have endured a life among books, when ail those, with the greater names, would have seemed to be saying, with: one voice, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

Perhaps I ought to say that I sympathize with the early Christians and their faith as to the Spirit, rather than with anything which I may have seen or heard in Rome, at Whitsuntide. St. Chrysostom says, in one of his homilies, delivered at Constantinople, probably towards the end of the fourth century, that there had been used to be a pause, during the service in the church, wherein for persons to rise, who were moved by the Spirit, and that that space had been, closed, almost within his own time. Also after saying that many of the miraculous gifts of the early Church had been withdrawn, he says: “And among the rest, the gift of prayer, which was then distinguished by the name of the Spirit. And he that had this gift prayed for the whole congregation. Upon which account the apostle gives the name of, the Spirit, both to this eift and to the soul that was endowed with it, who made intercession with groanings unto God, asking of God such things as were of general use and ad-

PREFACE. Lye v vantage .to the whole congregation; the image and symbol of which now is the deacon, who offers up prayer for the people.” Into that customary ancient place in the service, that deacon ought never perhaps to have been intruded. For even when there was in it nothing but silence, it was a place wherein for people to wonder, and to feel conscious of there having been something lost or suspended, as between the Church and its invisible Head.

However, that solemn significant ~pause, which anciently there was in the public services of the ~ Church, would not have been endured in this present century. Of a certain period in the history of the Israelites, it is written that, in those days, “There “was no open vision.” But than the frankness of such a statement as that, spiritually, there is nothing which is more foreign to the world as it now is; for the _ world to-day thinks that, on account of its high civilization, the universe must surely be pledged to its support, in every way which is possible. And it thinks, also, that never could any age previously have been as open to light from every quarter as this present time is. However, the way, according to Chrysostom, in which the Church was closed against the Spirit, during the services on the Lord’s day, should hint for us that there may have been also many other ways, by which Christians may have been discouraged from waiting on God, for the Spirit.

Earlier in the Church than Chrysostom, by some four or five generations, was Origen, and he wrote that “all who can say truly that they have risen with Christ, and been seated with him in the kingdom of vi PREFACE.

heaven, live always in Pentecostal days.” And as to public worship, very noteworthy is his opinion; for he says that the special advantage of public worship is, that individuals are thereby in communion with those who worship in the Spirit, and in the presence of the Lord and the holy angels; and he adds, “and as I think also of the spirits of the departed.” That is, a thought akin to the age, wherein originated the phrase of “the communion of saints.”

The Church of the Future will be, of course,in some . degree, a continuation of the Past; but it will specially be, earlier or later, a revival of the early Church, at its best. And this book has been written and is published under the persuasion that the voice of the early . Church is as distinctly audible to-day as it ever was ; and that, as far merely as the miraculous is concerned, the Scriptures, when fairly considered, at this present time, are as credible as ever they were.

WM,

Boston, February 22, 1870.