Ann Calcut and Others

By WARREN POSTBRIDGE

Cs ROM that hour the fever left her, and she arose and walked,

glorifying God." The words have a familiar ring. Peter's

wife's mother, most people who know their New Testa- ment well, but not quite well enough, would be likely to say. It was not Peter's wife's mother, but Ann Calcut, of an address unspecified in London ; the date was not A.D. 27 or 28 but A.D. 1742; and the narrator of the incident was the Rev. John Wesley.

But here let us leave Ann Calcut for a moment, for in the maser of miracles—and if the healing of St. Peter's mother-in-law was a miracle so was ihe cure of Ann Calcut—an entry in Mr. Wesley's Journal a couple of months earlier deserves attention. At a village called Wenvo, in South Wales, he records, " The church was thoroughly filled while I explained the former part of the second lesson, concerning the barren fig-tree." It is very much to be regretted that Mr. Wesley's sermon at Wenvo has (so far as I know) not survived, for if there is any miracle-story in the New Testament which calls for explanation it is this—not because the event was, in the common phrase, contrary to Nature, but for the more decisive reason that it was utterly contrary to the character of Christ.

Consider the story Christ, walking from Jerusalem to Bethany at the close of the day with his disciples, saw a fig-tree and hoped to pluck some fruit and eat it as He went. But there was no fruit, because, as Mark, most dependable of the Synoptists, explicitly mentions, "the time of figs was not yet." Whereupon Christ says, "No man eat fruit of thee for evermore." The fig-tree "imme- diately," according to Matthew, "in the morning" according to Mark, withered away. To believe that this happened, and in this way, would involve ascribing to Christ not merely, what is of small importance, a strange ignorance about the season of fruits, but something almost like petulance at not finding what He wanted where it could not be. How the story originated—whether, as it filtered down the thirty-five or forty years before the first Gospel was written, some parable (" When his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves ye know that summer is nigh ") had got perverted into guise of a miracle—no one can say. But as a record of fact it cannot be accepted.

There are those, no doubt, who do accept it, for there are those v.ho would feel it blasphemous to reject any story included in the Gospels, just as at the other end of the scale there are those, like the Bishop of Birmingham and Charles Christian Hennell, who reject all miracles on principle. (Hennell, the centenary of whose death might have been celebrated last September if anyone had thought of it, was chiefly responsible for George Eliot's abandon- ment of orthodoxy ; his inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity ante-dated Bishop Barnes' The Rise of Christianity by over a century, and reached very similar conclusions.) Between the extremes are those who, studying the miracle stories one by one, do not feel it necessary to take an identical view of all of them. If it be contended that to accept the miraculous in one case is to remove all objection to accepting it in all, the answer is that men were given minds to discriminate with, and it is a good thing to use them for that purpose.

In any case the question—at all events; the question here—is not Whether the Gospel miracles could happen, but what miracles recorded in the Gospels did happen. That is largely a question of evidence, for as Sir John Seeley observed in Ecce Homo (and a great many other people have observed before and since), "miracles are, in themselves, extremely improbable tt.ings, and cannot be admitted unless supported, by a great concurrence of evidence." And there is a prior consideration still. That miracles were incidental rather than essential to Christ's mission seems perfectly clear. He might multiply loaves to feed a hungry company of His listeners ; He put sternly from Him the thought of turning stones to bread for His own sustenance. He wrought miracles out of pity, not to impress the crowd (His answer to John's disciples had another meaning), and a miracle involving destruction cannot easily be accepted. That He cured two demoniacs in the country of the Gadarenes need not for a moment be doubted, but that He was in any way responsible for the stampede of a herd of swine (which, after all, were somebody's property) down a declivity into the lake cannot easily be credited. The swine may have so behaved, if they did so behave, for various causes. Pigs are unaccountable creatures.

If Christ was not primarily a miracle-worker, and if the fact that most needs emphasis is that He took our humanity upon Him, nothing is gained by attempting to multiply miracles—which may for this purpose be defined as events which cannot reasonably be ascribed to human agency or human powers. When, for example, the Nazarenes threatened Christ after He had preached in their synagogue, and "He, passing through their midst went His way," it is possible, but by no means necessary, to see a miraculous element here. There are many cases on authentic record of a personality so impressing itself as to bring menacing assailants to a standstill. Wesley's Journal is full of them.

But to return to Ann Calcut. Put her case beside that of Peter's wife's mother.

"Now Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever' and straight- way they tell him of her ; and he came and took her by the hand and raised her up ; and the fever left her and she ministered unto them:.

"In the evening I called on Ann Calcut. She had been speechless for some time ; but almost as soon as we began to pray, God restored her speech. She then witnessed a good confession indeed. I elpected to see her no more ; but from that hour the fever left her, and in a few days she arose and walked, glorifying God."

The points of difference—corporate prayer in the one case,

absence of the necessity for formal prayer in the other—need not be emphasised. The resemblance substantially outweighs any difference. And what John Wesley, whose good faith is not to be seriously challenged, relates at first-hand in the matter-of-fact days of George II and Robert Walpole disposes of all reason for doubting the story which the evangelists gleaned from current hearsay years after the event.

It is the same with the many cures of demoniacs. Precisely what

the physical or psychical nature of possession was either in the first century or the eighteenth could be argued at some length, but it is pretty clear that the type was the same. Consider another parallel: "And in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, Let us alone, what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? Art thou come to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art, the Holy one of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him and hurt him not."

That from Luke IV. This from Wesley's Journal, May 2nd, 1739,

concerning one J—n H—n, who had "fallen raving mad ":

"Two or three men were holding him as well as they could. He immediately fixed his eyes upon me, and stretching forth his hand cried "Aye, this is he who I said was a deceiver of the people. But God has overtaken me. I said it was all a delusion. But this is no delusion." He then roared out "0 thou devil ! thou cursed devil I yea, thou legion of devils ! thou canst not stay. Christ will cast thee out. I know his work is begun. Tear me to pieces if thou wilt ; but thou canst not hurt me." He then beat himself against the ground again ; his breast heaving at the same time as in the pangs of death, and great drops of sweat trkkling down his face. We all betook ourselves to prayer. His pangs ceased and both his body and soul were set at liberty."

Here the parallel is less close than in the case of Ann Calcut, but there is a fundamental identity.

But supposing it is, what conclusion floes it .indicate? Certainly not that Christ's " mighty works" were not miraclei after all. Only those can maintain that who have found explanations for the feed- ing of the five thousand, the conversion of water into wine, the raising of Jairus' daughter and, above all, His Resurrection.

About these there is no argument here. But many persons find much in the Gospels hard to believe—much of it is hard to believe— and where what is difficult can be shown to be not difficult at all, because similar events, adequately attested, have taken place in relatively modern times, the demonstration is worth while. And to reduce the " wonder-working " element in the Gospel story is in no way to diminish the stature of Christ. Far from it. To ascribe to Him indeed an extensive exercise—exercise, not possession— of supernatural powers would change Him into something other than one who "emptied Himself and took the form of a servant" and lived as a man among men. The miracle stories are arresting, and there is some danger of their assuming an undue proportion in the general picture of the personality of Christ. He healed bodies and souls because He was what He was ; but the healing of diseases would have done little in itself to convey His essential message. The Gospel without miracles would still be the Gospel.