XVI
C. Of the two main trials we bring on ourselves I suppose it would be only right to put sickness first.
Under sickness I include everything that makes for age, decay, and the conditions commonly classed as "breaking up." It is becoming more and more recognised, I think, that physical collapse has generally behind it a mental cause, or a long series of mental causes too subtle for tabulation.
I shall not dwell on this, for the reason that during the past fifty years so much has been written on the subject. A number of movements for human betterment have kept the whole idea in the forefront of the public mind. It is an idea only partially accepted as yet, arousing as much opposition among the conservative as hope on the part of the progressive. Since, however, science and religion are both, in their different ways, working on it together, some principle which can no longer be questioned is likely to be worked out within the next few generations.
All I shall attempt to do now is to re-state what seems to me the fact—stated by others with knowledge and authority—that God, rightly understood, is the cure of disease and not the cause of it. There is something repugnant in the thought of Universal Intelligence propagating harmful bacteria, and selecting the crises at which we shall succumb to their effects. The belief that God sends sickness upon us amounts to neither less nor more than that. The bacilli which we try to destroy He uses His almighty power to cultivate, so that even our efforts to protect ourselves become defiances of His Will.
Surely the following incident, which gives our Lord's attitude toward disease, affords a reasonable basis for our own.
"Once He was teaching on the Sabbath in one of the synagogues where a woman was present who for eighteen years had been a confirmed invalid; she was bent double, and was unable to lift herself to her full height. But Jesus saw her, and calling to her, He said to her, 'Woman, you are free from your weakness.' And He put His hands on her, and she immediately stood upright and began to give glory to God. Then the Warden of the Synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured her on the Sabbath day, said to the crowd, 'There are six days in the week on which people ought to work. On those days therefore come and get yourselves cured, and not on the Sabbath day.' But the Lord's reply to him was, 'Hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath day untie his bullock or his ass from the stall and lead him to water? And this woman, daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan had bound for no less than eighteen years, was she not to be loosed from this chain because it is the Sabbath day?' When He had said this all His opponents were ashamed, while the whole multitude was delighted at the many glorious things continually done by Him."[25]
It was not God, in His opinion, who had afflicted this woman; it was Satan, the personification of all evil. But in order that such references should not be misunderstood He had said of Satan, only a short time before, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."[26]
Heaven, I take it, is creation as its Creator sees it. "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good."[27] And from this creation, with the rapidity of the quickest thing we know anything about, a flash of lightning, our Lord saw the personification of evil blotted out. What thought had formed thought could destroy. The spectre which misunderstanding of God had raised in a life in which everything was very good became nothing at the instant when God was understood.
The occasion of His speaking the words I have quoted is worth noting as bearing on the subject.
A little earlier He had sent out seventy of His disciples to be the heralds of the Kingdom. "Cure the sick in that town, and tell them the Kingdom of God is now at your door."[28] By this time the seventy had returned, exclaiming joyfully, "Master, even the demons submit to us when we utter your name."[29] It was apparently the use of this word demons which called forth from Him that explanation, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." In other words, Satan is the creation of wrong thought; the demons are the creations of wrong thought. Where the Universal Good is all there can be no place for evil or evil spirits. Banish the concept and you banish the thing. The action is as quick as thought, and thought is as quick as lightning. "I have given you power," He goes on to add, "to tread serpents and scorpions underfoot, and to trample on all the power of the Enemy; and in no case shall anything do you harm."[30]
This was no special gift bestowed on them and only on them. God has never, as far as we can see, dealt in special and temporary gifts. He helps us to see those we possess already. What our Lord seems anxious to make clear is the power over evil with which the human being is always endowed. It is probably to be one of our great future discoveries that in no case shall anything do us harm. As yet we scarcely believe it. Only an individual here and there sees that freedom and domination must belong to us. But, if I read the signs of the times aright, the rest of us are slowly coming to the same conclusion. We are less scornful of spiritual power than we were even a few years ago. The cocksure scientific which in its time was not a whit less arrogant than the cocksure ecclesiastical is giving place to a consciousness that man is the master of many things of which he was once supposed to be the slave. In proportion as the wiser among us are able to corroborate that which we simpler ones feel by a sixth or seventh sense, a long step will be taken toward the immunity from suffering which our Lord knew to be ideally our inheritance.