IN a recent issue of the New York American, a leading lawyer of New York City is reported to have addressed to the New York Synod a note over a discussion that had arisen in regard to admitting two candidates to the ministry who disavowed their belief in miracles. One of the paragraphs from this note says:
"If a poll were taken of yourselves it would be found that hardly a fraction of our own ministers under forty would say that they believed in miracles. Separately, we can not say to the congregations that we do not believe, because it would be used as a handle of offense by captious members. It is true that our church is not gaining in proportion to population, and it is true that heretical bodies who deny the miracles are gaining. Let us have done with this tomfoolery of dogmas as a means of salvation, and get down to the serious business of life, which is to help mankind to live."
A sentence from another one of the lawyer's paragraphs says, "The object of Jesus' coming was 'to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound'—and to teach men to love one another."
This last quotation indicates that the attorney claims to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but he thinks his church would make great gains if it would disavow the miracles which he claims that "hardly a fraction of our own ministers under forty would say that they believed." How an individual could claim to believe in Christ, and disavow miracles, and still have the logical mind that a lawyer is supposed to possess, is certainly a conundrum. In the first place, the birth of Christ itself was one of the greatest miracles recorded in the sacred volume. One of the first stories about Christ as He entered upon His ministry was of a miracle that He performed at a marriage feast. And we might read the accounts of His raising the dead, healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, and so on to the end of the great list of miraculous things that occupied His busy and devoted life.
The trouble with that poor New York attorney is that he is an infidel and does not know it. And that is the trouble with the greater part of the ministry in this day and age; for as the attorney says, only a fraction of them believe in the miracles of Christ. The individual who has ever had performed on his own heart the miracle of salvation that is brought into the life through Christ, knows in himself that the blessed Lord does perform miracles; for does not His word record that "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature"? 2 Cor. 5:17.
The miracle of the new birth, which makes the new creature, opens the way for an individual actually to understand and know by experience the great miracles that Jesus performed. And having experienced the miracle of conversion, and that having been led to a place where he really accepts God's sacred word, the individual can understand the meaning of such statements as those made by the New York attorney; for He who is the Author of man's salvation asks the significant question, "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8.
In other words, the Master predicts that true faith in Him will be rare when He comes; and if one considers the expressions of infidelity that are heard among those that profess His name, he recognizes the fact that the Master was able to foretell the conditions of this very time in which we are living.