Miracles of Our Lord

by George MacDonald

There seems to me nothing unreasonable in the supposition of the existence of spirits who, having once had bodies such as ours, and having abused the privileges of embodiment, are condemned for a season to roam about bodiless, ever mourning the loss of their capacity for the only pleasures they care for, and craving after them in their imaginations. Such, either in selfish hate of those who have what they have lost, or from eagerness to come as near the possession of a corporeal form as they may, might well seek to enter into a man. The supposition at least is perfectly consistent with the facts recorded. Possibly also it may be consistent with the phenomena of some of the forms of the madness of our own day, although all its forms are alike regarded as resulting from physical causes alone.

The first act of dispossession recorded is that told by St Mark and St Luke, as taking place at Capernaum, amongst his earliest miracles, and preceding the cure of Simon's mother-in-law. He was in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, teaching the congregation, when a man present, who had an unclean spirit, cried out. If I accept the narrative, I find this cry far more intelligible on the old than on the new theory. The speaker, no doubt using the organs of the man, brain and all, for utterance, recognizes a presence—to him the cause of terror—which he addresses as the Holy One of God. This holy one he would propitiate by entreaty and the flattering acknowledgment of his divine mission, with the hope of being left unmolested in the usurpation and cruelty by which he ministered to his own shadowy self-indulgences. Could anything be more consistently diabolic?

What other word could Jesus address to such than, "Hold thy peace, and come out of him"? A being in such a condition could not be permitted to hold converse with the Saviour; for he recognized no salvation but what lay in the continuance of his own pleasures at the expense of another. The form of the rebuke plainly assumes that it was not the man but some one in the man who had spoken; and the narrative goes on to say that when the devil had thrown him down and torn him and cried with a loud voice—his rage and disappointment, I presume, finding its last futile utterance in the torture of his captive—he came out of him and left him unhurt. Thereupon the people questioned amongst themselves saying, "What thing is this? It is a teaching new, and with authority: he commandeth even the unclean spirits, and they obey him;" [Footnote 8: St Mark, i. 27. Authorized Version revised by Dean Alford.] thus connecting at once his power over the unclean spirits with the doctrine he taught, just as our Lord in an after-instance associates power over demons with spiritual condition. It was the truth in him that made him strong against the powers of untruth.

Many such cures were performed, but the individual instances recorded are few. The next is that of the man—dumb, according to St Luke, both blind and dumb, according to St Matthew—who spake and saw as soon as the devil was cast out of him. With unerring instinct the people concluded that he who did such deeds must be the Son of David; the devils themselves, according to St Mark, were wont to acknowledge him the Son of God; the Scribes and Pharisees, the would-be guides of the people, alone refused the witness, and in the very imbecility of unbelief, eager after any theory that might seem to cover the facts without acknowledging a divine mission in one who would not admit their authority, attributed to Beelzebub himself the deliverance of distressed mortals from the powers of evil.

Regarding the kingdom of God as a thing of externals, they were fortified against recognizing in Jesus himself or in his doctrine any sign that he was the enemy of Satan, and might even persuade themselves that such a cure was only one of Satan's tricks for the advancement of his kingdom with the many by a partial emancipation of the individual. But our Lord attributes this false conclusion to its true cause—to no incapacity or mistake of judgement; to no over-refining about the possible chicaneries of Beelzebub; but to a preference for any evil which would support them in their authority with the people—in itself an evil. Careless altogether about truth itself, they would not give a moment's quarter to any individual utterance of it which tended to destroy their honourable position in the nation. Each man to himself was his own god. The Spirit of God they shut out. To them forgiveness was not offered. They must pay the uttermost farthing—whatever that may mean—and frightful as the doom must be. That he spoke thus against them was but a further carrying out of his mission, a further inroad upon the kingdom of that Beelzebub. And yet they were the accredited authorities in the church of that day; and he who does not realize this, does not understand the battle our Lord had to fight for the emancipation of the people. It was for the sake of the people that he called the Pharisees hypocrites, and not for their own sakes, for how should he argue with men who taught religion for their own aggrandizement?

It is to be noted that our Lord recognizes the power of others besides himself to cast out devils. "By whom do your children cast them out?" Did you ever say of them it was by Beelzebub? Why say it of me? What he claims he freely allows. The Saviour had no tinge of that jealousy of rival teaching—as if truth could be two, and could avoid being one—which makes so many of his followers grasp at any waif of false argument. He knew that all good is of God, and not of the devil. All were with him who destroyed the power of the devil.

They who were cured, and they in whom self-worship was not blinding the judgment, had no doubt that he was fighting Satan on his usurped ground. Torture was what might be expected of Satan; healing what might be expected of God. The reality of the healing, the loss of the man, morally as well as physically, to the kingdom of evil, was witnessed in all the signs that followed. Our Lord rests his argument on the fact that Satan had lost these men.

We hear next, from St Luke, of certain women who followed him, having been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, amongst whom is mentioned "Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils." No wonder a woman thus delivered should devote her restored self to the service of him who had recreated her. We hear nothing of the circumstances of the cure, only the result in her constant ministration. Hers is a curious instance of the worthlessness of what some think it a mark of high-mindedness to regard alone—the opinion, namely, of posterity. Without a fragment of evidence, this woman has been all but universally regarded as impure. But what a trifle to her! Down in this squabbling nursery of the race, the name of Mary Magdalene may be degraded even to a subject for pictorial sentimentalities; but the woman herself is with that Jesus who set her free. To the end of time they may call her what they please: to her it is worth but a smile of holy amusement. And just as worthy is the applause of posterity associated with a name. To God alone we live or die. Let us fall, as, thank him, we must, into his hands. Let him judge us. Posterity may be wiser than we; but posterity is not our judge.

We come now to a narrative containing more of the marvellous than all the rest. The miracle was wrought on the south-eastern side of the lake—St Matthew says, upon two demoniacs; St Mark and St Luke make mention only of one. The accounts given by the latter Evangelists are much more circumstantial than that by the former. It was a case of peculiarly frightful character. The man, possessed of many demons, was ferocious, and of marvellous strength, breaking chains and fetters, and untameable. It is impossible to analyse the phenomena, saying which were the actions of the man, and which those of the possessing demons. Externally all were the man's, done by the man finally, some part, I presume, from his own poor withered will, far the greater from the urging of the demons. Even in the case of a man driven by appetite or passion, it is impossible to say how much is to be attributed to the man himself, and how much to that lower nature in him which he ought to keep in subjection, but which, having been allowed to get the upper hand, has become a possessing demon. He met the Lord worshipping, and, as in a former instance, praying for such clemency as devils can value. Was it the devils, then, that urged the man into the presence of the Lord? Was it not rather the other spirit, the spirit of life, which not the presence of a legion of the wicked ones could drive from him? Was it not the spirit of the Father in him which brought him, ignorant, fearing, yet vaguely hoping perhaps, to the feet of the Son? He knew not why he came; but he came—drawn or driven; he could not keep away. When he came, however, the words at least of his prayer were moulded by the devils—"I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not." Think of the man, tortured by such awful presences, praying to the healer not to torment him! The prayer was compelled into this shape by the indwelling demons. They would have him pray for indulgence for them. But the Lord heard the deeper prayer, that is, the need and misery of the man, the horror that made him cry and cut himself with stones—and commanded the unclean spirit to come out of him. Thereupon, St Mark says, "he besought him much that he would not send them out of the country." Probably the country was one the condition of whose inhabitants afforded the demons unusual opportunities for their coveted pseudo-embodiment. St Luke says, "They besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep"—to such beings awful, chiefly because there they must be alone, afar from matter and all its forms. In such loneliness the good man would be filled with the eternal presence of the living God; but they would be aware only of their greedy, hungry selves—desires without objects. No. Here were swine. "Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them." Deprived of the abode they preferred, debarred from men, swine would serve their turn. But even the swine—animals created to look unclean, for a type to humanity of the very form and fashion of its greed—could not endure their presence. The man had cut himself with stones in his misery; the swine in theirs rushed into the waters of the lake and were drowned. The evil spirits, I presume, having no further leave, had to go to their deep after all.

The destruction of the swine must not be regarded as miraculous. But there must have been a special reason in the character and condition of the people of Gadara for his allowing this destruction of their property. I suppose that although it worked vexation and dismay at first, it prepared the way for some after-reception of the gospel. Now, seeing him who had been a raving maniac, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and hearing what had come to the swine, they were filled with fear, and prayed the healer to depart from them.