y strange supposition that there may be
such properties inherent in our bodies or in certain particles, whether
particles of matter or not, belonging to our bodies, that in certain
special circumstances these particles will return to life. And if this
be so the general resurrection may be no miracle, but the result of the
properties originally inherent in our bodies and of the working of the
laws of those properties. And as the general resurrection so our Lord's
Resurrection may in this way turn out to be no breach of the uniformity
of nature.
But this new discovery, if then made, would not affect the place which
our Lord's Resurrection holds in the records of Revelation. It is not
the purpose of Revelation to interfere with the course of nature; if
such interference be needless, and the work of revealing God to man can
be done without it, there is no reason whatever to believe that any such
interference would take place.
Or, take again any of our Lord's miracles of healing. There is no
question at all that the power of mind over body is exceedingly great,
and has never yet been thoroughly examined. We know almost nothing of
the extent of this power, of its laws, of its limits. Marvellous
recoveries often astonish the physician, and he cannot account for them
except by supposing that in some way the powers of the mind have been
roused to interfere with the working of the nervous system. And some
men, on the other hand, have died or their health has been shattered by
mere imaginations. Some men of note have attributed the recoveries
claimed for homoeopathy to this cause. Some have assigned to this
cause the extraordinary cures that have been undeniably wrought at the
shrines, or on sight or touch of the relics, of Roman Catholic saints.
The different impostures that have on many occasions prevailed for a
time and then lost their reputation and passed out of fashion, are
generally supposed to have owed their short-lived success to the same
obscure working of unknown natural laws. They have been tested by their
successes and their failures. They have succeeded, and for a time
continued to succeed; but at last they have ceased to work because faith
in them for some reason or other has been shaken down. Their falsehood
has thus been detected; but nevertheless their genuine success for a
time has been enough to show that they rested on a reality, and that
reality seems to have consisted in the strange power of mind over bo
|