I often took my wife with me when I went to visit the sick, because I believed that "two or three gathered together" literally meant two or three gathered together, and that therefore, when Fay's supplications were added to mine, my prayer was all the more efficacious.
I have found life so much simpler and easier since I learned to take the Bible literally, and not to be always reading between the lines to find out spiritual meanings which might or might not be there. I remember an enlightened and eminent modern Dean once explaining to me that when Christ said, "The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the lepers are cleansed," He meant that those hitherto blind to spiritual visions were enlightened, those hitherto deaf to sacred truths were made to hear them, those who had aforetime stumbled were able to walk in the paths of righteousness, and those steeped in sin were washed clean. "Mr. Dean," I replied, "you, as a dignitary of the Church, probably know better than I what Christ meant; a mere layman such as myself can only deal with what He said: and He didn't say anything at all like that."
I hate "reading between the lines," even in ordinary human correspondence. At least a third of the troubles of this life have their origin in their pernicious habit; for people read a great deal of unintentional enmity—and, still worse, a great deal of imaginary love—into pages actually virgin of either of these extremes. And when they read between the lines of Holy Scripture, they read in all their own prejudices and fads and fancies, until Divine Truth is distorted and perverted.
I can stand many things, but I cannot stand a Bowdlerised Bible.
Fay and I entered the cottage, whither Mrs. Parkins had preceded us.
"It be good of you to come, Sir Reginald, and her ladyship too, but the poor old man be sufferin' something fearful, and all twisted up with the pain in his back and his legs. But he says if only you'll lay your hands on him and say a prayer like as you did before, the pain'll be bound to go."
"Then we'll go up to him at once," I said; and Mrs. Parkins straightway preceded us up one of those steep and dark and narrow cottage-staircases which never fail to arouse in me an undying wonder that the poor ever keep their necks intact. I feel sure that guardian angels are as thick on cottage-staircases as they ever were on Jacob's ladder.
"Good-morning, Mr. Parkins," said Fay as she entered the pretty and spotlessly clean bedchamber of old Parkins; "we are very sorry the pain is so bad this morning, but Sir Reginald has come to cure it."
"Parkins knows better than that," I said as I bent my head to pass through the low doorway, "don't you, Parkins? You know as well as I do that it isn't I who cure the pain, but our Lord working through me."
"Ay, ay, Sir Reginald, I knows that well enough, becos you've told me; and you ought to know for sure and certain. But I'd be glad if somebody 'ud help me quick, for the pain's powerful bad this mornin'," and the poor old soul fairly groaned in his agony.