If we believe the Word of God, we will say at least that He once healed by faith. Repeatedly the sick came to Jesus; repeatedly He said, “According to thy faith be it unto thee,” or words of similar import; and the invariable result was that the petitioner was made whole. (See Matt. 9: 2, 22, 29; 15: 28; Mark 5: 34; 10: 52; Luke 18: 8; Acts 3: 16.) Jesus healed the sick, opened blind eyes, unstopped deaf ears, made the dumb to speak; the lame man leaped as an hart; the dead were raised. After His ascension His apostles carried on the same work. And it was all wrought through faith. If then, why not now? “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” “I am the Lord; I change not.” He declared, as He sent out His apostles with the Gospel commission: “And these signs shall follow them that believe: In My name shall they cast out devils; . . . they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” These were manifest in the early part of the Christian dispensation; why not now? Moreover, among the gifts which the Lord has “set” in the church, in addition to apostles, prophets, teachers, etc., are “miracles,” and “gifts of healing.” 1 Cor. 12: 28. If God has set them in His church, they are there now, covered, buried, hidden, mayhap, by rubbish of superstition and unbelief; but they are there awaiting the eyes and hands of faith. Still further, God has given direction to His people: “Is any among you suffering? let him pray. . . . Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.” James 5: 13–15, R.V. “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases.” Ps. 103: 3. Why, then, may not the child of God believe now in the healing power of the Lord as applicable to His body? We take the following from a noted conservative Christian paper of the East; it is a paper which we have greatly admired in the past for its staunch Protestant principles, and its faithfulness in holding to the Word as against the destructive higher criticism. The following quotation from one of its leading editorial writers will serve to illustrate how far from simple primitive Gospel faith the best among the churches have wandered. We refer to it not for controversy, but to better teach the truth. Altho quoted by the editor, it is with hearty approval:— Faith in the efficacy of mysterious and miraculous means for curing diseases is the legacy of centuries of superstition, of mistaken religious teachings, fostered in later days by the pretensions of ignorant or designing persons, by the half-implied sanction of some religious bodies, and by the teachings, as well as the manners, of many physicians of the age just preceding ours. . . .
The doctrine of the faith healers, or those who employ the prayer cure, seems to be based upon a misconception of the meaning of certain isolated passages of Scripture regarding the efficacy of prayer. Now the intelligent religious world believes in prayer, its necessity for the good of the subject, its efficacy in the manner appointed by God, but it does not believe that fervent prayer, with faith, without any other effort, can, or ever does, or ever has since the time of the apostles, changed the fixed and wise laws of nature, solely to please and possibly to benefit any individual. If it be admitted that these great laws may be changed, that the order of nature may be reversed in a single case, then it is fair to assume that the laws were and are defective, or that personal solicitation may accomplish what God is unwilling to do for the race, either proposition being abhorrent to any orthodox Christian man. The egotism and assumption of those who promise cures by this means is simply appalling. . . . Carried to its logical conclusion, faith cure would prevent any such thing as death, and similarly if men set about it, the laws of gravitation, of light and heat, could be changed. The whole economy of nature was not set in motion to minister to the personal wish or comfort of any individual or set of individuals, not even men of great faith. The life or the health of any human being can not be said to be of greater consequence in the universe than the fulfilment of the great purposes of creation for which laws are perfected, among which are the laws of disease and the inevitability of death. . . . The claim of faith healers that Christ came into the world to save both the body as well as the soul, is nowhere warranted by the Scriptures. The Scriptures teach that He hallowed our sufferings and took away the sting of death, but not death itself. The above assumes: (1) That all the laws of nature, including those of sickness and disease, are fixed, wise, and unchangeable; that they are “perfected” laws in “the fulfilment of the great purposes of creation;” (2) that these laws are not defective; (3) that God does not set in motion the economy of nature to minister to any individual or set of individuals; (4) that the Bible does not warrant the claim that Christ came to save both body and soul; (5) that Christ “took away the sting of death, but not death itself.” 1. The laws of nature as we see them are not in every respect the normal laws of God. God is love and light and life. He is the living7God. His law is a living law. It was ordained for life. Rom. 7: 10. “In the way of righteousness is life.” Prov. 12: 28. And God’s law in its original, normal giving is “the law of the Spirit of life.” “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Sin is the cause of every perversion of good and life and truth and health, and “when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Continued transgression will inevitably bring death to the transgressor, not life to His people, as God designed. 2. These perverted laws are, therefore, defective; and the man who yields to them or is subject to them is also defective. He becomes subject to death, because defective. 3. It is God’s wish and will to give life and health. Disease and death are no part of God’s purpose. He could have carried out His purpose without disease and misery and death; but these having entered through sin, He will carry out His purpose in spite of them. He will use death to destroy death and give life. Heb. 2: 14. Jesus Christ in His own flesh by righteousness, not only took away the sting of death, but “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” It was not His will that any should die. It is His will that, tho they die in consequence of original sin, or their own, all shall be saved. Eze. 33: 11; 1 Tim. 2: 4. Yet free men may resist God’s will and die. It is God’s will that His people be sanctified (1 Thess. 4: 3), yet men may refuse to be. It is also His desire that they may prosper and be in health, even as the soul prospers (3 John 2)—for “God is no respecter of persons”—but men will not yield to God’s wish. He desires to quicken our mortal flesh by His indwelling Spirit until man’s work for Him is done (Rom. 8: 11; 2 Cor. 4: 10, 11); but men take the sickness as a dispensation from the healing Father. If men will not learn the lessons God wishes to teach them, He will let affliction teach them. Sometimes He sees that the heart is such that men can glorify Him in feebleness better than in health, and He permits the feebleness; yet all the time He prefers the health. 4. Now remembering that God’s law, which He ordained to life, perverted by sin becomes death (Rom. 7: 10–13), and that Christ died to restore us to that law in its normal working, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” is it not reasonable that when faith lifts the soul above the realm where perverted law is operative, into that realm where God’s life flows free through an unperverted law,—is it not reasonable that the inflowing life of God will give power over sin, and healing to body and soul? It is not the faith which does the work; it is the power of the Spirit of God. Faith forms the channel through which the unperverted life-current flows from God into the diseased soul and body. It is the trolley which connects the helpless human car with the live wire overhead. To deny this, it seems to us, is to deny the regeneration of soul by the miraculous power of God. But if God heals and restores the soul, because faith puts that soul in the channel of God’s working, then God will heal and restore the body if faith will put that body in the great life-current of God. The great Physician of soul and body will, therefore, change, or set aside, or work above and over and through, the whole perverted economy of nature to save a single soul or heal a single body; for working in this way is the normal operation of His laws of life; and life is greater than death. It is only in the operation of life forces, regenerating, building up, healing, that we can read “the great purposes of creation.” Of sin and disease and death it may truly be said, “An enemy hath done this.” 5. Christ came to save both soul and body. He saves the soul, and when character is finally developed, and His elect number made up, He will forever save the body. So it is in a sense true that faith eventually saves from death, tho in the wisdom of God it does not prevent it, yet there have been such instances. In the case of Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus, God showed His transcendent power over sin; and in human wisdom, contrary to the law of gravitation, all ascended to heaven. But in all these cases there was not so much the setting aside of God’s law as there was the manifestation of the greater power of God’s perfect law of life through Christ over and above the perverted laws of sinful earth. We know not how better to close this article than by a quotation credited to the late S. Irenaeus Prime, for a long time one of the editors of the New York Observer: “Then let us pray. Whatsoever we want, let us pray for it. Health, life, eternal life, salvation for our friends, whatsoever things we have need of, let us go with our desires to God, who giveth liberally. His will ought to be our will, and asking in submission to it, we have whatever we ask.” O child of sin and sorrow and death, Jesus Christ forgives, and changes, and regenerates, and saves, and heals! Let faith lay hold of His power. It awaits you.