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The Healing of Mercy Wheeler: Illness and Miracles among Early American Evangelicals
Thomas S. Kidd
| ON January 5, 1744, evangelical minister Nicholas Gilman of Durham, New Hampshire, noted in his diary that he had "read the Wonderfull Narrative of Mercy Wheeler her Miraculous recovery—Glory to God." The same day in Westborough, Massachusetts, the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman recorded in his diary that "after Meeting relating the Story of Mercy Wheeler of Plainfield her wonderful Recovery, Mrs. Whitney Scarcely Contains." The healing of invalid Mercy Wheeler of Plainfield, Connecticut, caused a great stir in the late stages of the Great Awakening and raised questions about the Holy Spirit's work in a postapostolic age. For two centuries Reformed theologians had generally agreed on the doctrine of cessationism, which held that miracles such as instant physical healings had ceased after the apostolic era. There were a few examples of dramatic healings during the Reformation, perhaps the most famous being Philip Melanchthon's deathbed healing by the prayers of Martin Luther. In the 1740s, however, leaders of the evangelical movement placed a new emphasis on the Holy Spirit's workings, and many began to believe that the Spirit's indwelling presence could have powerful bodily effects. A few even thought that the Spirit might instantly heal physical ailments. An examination of Wheeler's healing, and other cases like it, illuminates tensions within the developing evangelical belief in the Holy Spirit's power in the bodies of believers. Radical evangelicals, eager to link their experiences to the wonders of the apostolic era or the glories of the coming millennial age, embraced dramatic bodily effects, including instant healings. Moderates hesitated to call the remarkable miraculous, since to do so deviated from the orthodox Reformed position concerning God's workings in the world and smacked of Catholic superstition (Figure I).1 |
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Figure I
Diary of Nicholas Gilman, 1740–44. Gilman's entry on Mercy Wheeler is on January 5. Courtesy, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord.
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Protestant theologians, especially Puritans, were fascinated with what they called "special providences," yet usually did not accept claims of modern miracles. The line between special providences and miracles was blurry, but a special providence commonly referred to the unusual or surprising intervention of God through natural means to accomplish some specific purpose. God might curse a sinful couple with a deformed or monstrous child, or send a sudden fierce storm to defeat a fleet of ships. Miracles, on the other hand, interrupted the natural order. Had Wheeler more slowly regained her ability to walk, all observers would have likely called her recovery a special providence. But the instantaneous nature of her healing suggested, to some, the miraculous. Protestants, however, often associated modern miracles with Catholic trickery. A 1725 Boston newspaper, for instance, reported that human blood issuing from a Catholic icon in Poland—an obvious interruption of the natural order, if true—turned out to be the "Juice of Cherries."2 |
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