rl zie tas v gage ere Fp babe epee Sapp G44 pana Te ; papi alptp inne Subp heb ipa Pstcs POT. sak ry tite a wp id ” MAR 17 1932, A, & ection yar ue | a te “ agai Yj ; Liga Aree ls 2 ed be > ph f : et > ie , Cl hs ‘ A iva A PRG ., . vey! PY al Pig 2 "hy . ‘1 ‘ i BS AS pis ue * a PUG AE Tle mt j ik le atk , RT ak eas ma are iy AR Rae oo \Mes neta HEALING IN THE CHURCHES Healing in the Churches by FRANCIS M. WETHERILL, M.A., D.D. Rector of the Church of St. John the Baptist, Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. Introduction by Rt. Rev. Ethelbert Talbot, D.D., LL.D > Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church New York CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1925, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street } To My People in the Church of St. John the Baptist, Germantown, Pa. Introduction HE subject of the ministry of healing is well presented in this volume in a sane and sen- sible manner. On account of a long and close friendship with the author I am pleased to commend it to the public, and trust it will have the wide reading this study of so timely and important a phase of the work of the churches deserves. The author’s research, experience, and interests equip him to handle this topic in a way that will prove instructive and spiritually stimulating to many. I have enjoyed reading the manuscript before pub- lication and believe there are within and without the Church countless numbers who are seeking just the help and knowledge this examination of the history and progress of faith-cures will supply. Bible and bibliographical references are copious and illuminating, which lend authority to the work. As to the author, I may say that as my former Warden of Leonard Hall, and his associations with men of letters at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Lehigh and Columbia he has had exceptional op- portunities to investigate the modern health move- ments from a scholar’s viewpoint, combined with a shepherd’s relation to his flock. His work in the 7 8 INTRODUCTION Red Cross Hospitals overseas, and assignment as Prison Chaplain in the First Army, American Ex- peditionary Force, furnish him with a rich fund from which to illustrate his thesis that the ministry of faith is a function of the Church in combating sin. His sincerity of purpose cannot be questioned; nor his evidences of the influence of Jesus Christ among us denied. That my friend’s presentation may be helpful to a closer understanding among all Christians, and may hasten the day when they all shall be one, and visualize their common and uni- versal heritage in their Lord and Master; that the prayer of faith shall save the sick, is my reason for the commendation of this book. ETHELBERT TALBOT. Bethlehem, Pa. Contents CHAPTER I PAGH FaItH HEALING THROUGH THE AGES . . .. 15 I 2 3 4 I. Antiquity of Healing New Testament Power and Authority Cures of Christ in New Testament CHAPTER II METHODS OF CHRISTIAN HEALING . . . . 37 In the Acts . Anointing . Liturgies oO ONT DN BW N . Prayer of Faith . Laying-on-of-Hands Relics . Healing in the Historic Church . Idealism . Present-Day Practices IO. . Emmanuel Movement . Coué, Preaching, and the Nancy School . Suggestive Therapeutics . Modern Miracles Christian Science 9 10 CONTENTS CHAPTER III HEALING IN Its SPIRITUAL ASPECTS . 1. Combating Sin 2. Conversion 3. Disease a Source of Sin CHAPTER IV HEALTH AS AN AID TO CHARACTER FORMATION . 1. Health and Feeling Well . Commonsense Therapeutics . Mental Hygiene and Morals . Heart to Heart . The Tyranny of the Past bs . God Our Supply Om Bh W bp PAGE II5 Preface HEN strangers stop me on the street and inquire: “Do you have Christian Science in your church?” I always and invariably reply: “Yes.” It certainly would mislead them if I said: ‘‘No.” The man on the street, or the man about town, or the woman in the pew, all from the same homeless boarding-house I suppose, generally indulge in comprehensive titles, and in this respect “Christian Science” is to them an all-inclusive term for modern health movements with a religious twist to them. Quite erroneously, but nevertheless pop- ularly, Christian Science is held responsible for more sins than it ever dreamed of. Faith-cures, suggestive therapeutics, the psycho- analysis of Freud, Jung or Coué, and the ecclesias- tical pioneers like Worcester, Hickson, and Wilson represent types of healing which command a unity of respect among psychologists, but a diversity of classification and names. From the most sensa- tional revivalism of Echo Park to the dignified and churchly Society of the Nazarene I have heard (by the uninformed, of course) this whole gamut of psychotherapy termed “Christian Science.” Mrs. Eddy, if living, would disclaim that. So would all the other healers in their several churches and Il 12 PREFACE schools. Most of these persons refuse to be called healers, pointing to Jesus Christ as the Great Physician. In America, most of this work is being done under the auspices of the Churches. Therefore it is Christian. The methods employed in these Churches and other institutions are based upon scientific investigations and observations. It there- fore seems opportune to entitle our findings of what Christians are doing to combat sin through their cures as Christian Healing. By this title I do not infringe upon any of the lectures given by Divine Science, Christian Science, New Thought, Centers of Truth and Unity, Ethical Culture, Zionism and Theosophy, with all of which I am quite familiar in theory and practice. I am not entering this subject in any controversial spirit. I do desire to show very clearly and convincingly one need not leave the Church to receive benefits of healing according to the principles of the New Testament. It is my earnest desire that the readers of these chapters may comprehend the significance of the fact that no miraculous cures are on record where the subject was living in sin (darkness, lawlessness, unhappiness) at the time of healing. The chief purpose of this study, Healing in the Churches, is to explain the ministry of the Church in combating sin. Hence these pages are arranged in such se- quence as will aid individuals in holding to their PREFACE 13 Churches and cooperating with them for the pro- motion of personal and social conquest of true light and happiness in body, mind and morale. This discussion of healing, as God gives us aid to exercise the curative and corrective principle of the Gospel herein explained, has the support of F. T. Mayer-Oakes, Ph.D. (Clark University), a professor of research psychology, trained by Dr. G. Stanley Hall. In an unsolicited approval, he says: “You have a splendid foundation for the study of this special work. You have done exceed- ingly fine work. It has been examined with par- ticular care, and we want to offer you just com- mendation for your grasp of the field in which you have been working. I am sure this treatise would be popular and useful in groups and guilds of health and life.” The experiences, statistics and conclusions herein included are the outcome of participation in healing- missions, bedside-prayers and health classes. A personal expression of gratitude is due to Mrs. Ernest Moses, leader of the Health Class in my own Church, and, above all, to the ever-present Lord of life and glory who has answered our pray- ers and filled, satisfied and redeemed hungry souls through the laying-on-of-hands at our monthly healing services. F. M. W. Church of St. John the Baptist, Germantown, Pa. ry i es 4 ( eo A> ay I FAITH HEALING THROUGH THE AGES I. ANTIQUITY OF FAITH HEALING O one need suppose that healing by faith and prayer originated with any Christian or scientist of modern times. The thera- peutic value of faith and religion is clearly evi- denced in the Old Testament. The earliest refer- ence to faith healing in the Bible is in the seven- Perna teenth verse of the twentieth chapter of Genesis? ~~ “So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed « Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants.” God answered that prayer of faith more than four if thousand years ago. | Moses healed his sister Miriam from leprosy by the power of prayer. More strictly speaking, we should say the healing power of nature (God) caused her to be cured. . By the same means, Elijah and Elisha cured the sick and brought back the dead to life. The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews rehearses a long line of events in ancient times of the revitalizing power eS of their extremity. As the flower turns its face ar fe 16 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES toward the sun for life and growth, so does normal man appreciate the presence and unseen source of all life and creation. But the flowers have not been in the custom through the ages of turning toward God only one morning in the week or solely in the hour of pain, ill-health and danger. The Old Testa- ment throws the searchlight on characters who have been trained by prayer in utilizing the presence and the power of God to cooperate with their fuller and more harmonious life. The God of the patriarchs was not a new God, but a newer revelation to the spiritually awakened consciousness of Him who breathed into man the breath of life. Abraham conceived the idea of the oneness of the universe, or the unity of causation. The Talmud informs us his father was a maker of idols for pagan deities. The boy saw there many “gods” in the workshop. Gods of war, harvest, fertility, love, etc., caused the friend of Jehovah to revolt against polytheism. So he left his native land and journeyed to a far country where he could worship one true God. Abraham instructed his son Isaac in the same unifying conception of deity. In one God his son Jacob, also, could have implicit faith. Not only do we read in the Old Testament of the operation of faith upon the welfare of the individual, but its effect on the saving of life and control of the animal kingdom as exhibited in the story of Daniel in the furnace and the den of lions. The Psalms are peculiarly rich in literature re- FAITH HEALING 17 lating to our subject. The twenty-third, usually termed the Shepherd Psalm, contains extracts in almost every phrase and line revealing the remedial and sustaining value of faith in God. “He shall restore my soul” and thereby assist me to go forth “paths of righteousness for his name’s sake’’ is the victory over sin through the ministry of healing faith. Again, the ninety-first Psalm is pregnant with fundamental ideas respecting faith. Whoso retains faith in God shall not be afraid nor suffer from (verse 6) “the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday.”’ Not only long life but a one expect- ant of honors in this world by virtue of their faith is assured us in this psalm. In Psalm 103: 3: We | read of One “who forgiveth all thy iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases.” In every psalm of the one hundred and fifty I can find some reference, | either direct or indirect, to the effect of faith upon morals, or, in other words, the Church’s work in restoring health and combating sin. Here we may add that scarcely any worship is ever held in any public place under the auspices of the Protestant Churches but what a psalm, or portion of a psalm, is read by the people. Hence, in this way the Churches are functioning to create in the minds of | the people the source of health and morals “ih oie : Supreme Being. The religion of philosophy and study of com-~ parative religions such as the recent compilation i 1 q { | \ | \j \ \ \ \ I ; ; ; 18 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES of essays by Dr. J. A. Montgomery in his Religions of the Past and Present discloses the antiquity of faith healing. Although it is not written in any sense for that purpose, we glean information from Confucius, Zoroaster, and Buddha how to make the soul dominate and transcend the body. Fur- thermore, these religious leaders trained their fol- lowers before our Christian era in the paths of peace and mental balance, and to a state of mind beneficent to health and normal life superior to self-indulgence and sins of the flesh. ‘The religions © of Greece, Rome, Scandinavia and Islam, although widely contrasted types, have a common denomi- nator in the power of religion to create and effect the welfare of the body through belief in their primitive teachings. The famous quotation from Job, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him,” is typical of the abiding faith resident in the re- ligion of the Hebrews sufficient to carry the patient through all ills and adversities. The ancient re- ligions of Egypt and India we might suppose would be the least productive of faith to sustain life and health, for they are primarily concerned with im- mortality. Nevertheless, we have authority for the fact in Perrin’s Religion of Philosophy, in the chap- ter on mysticism and idealism, that faith not only assuages sorrow, cures the broken heart, but creates life. Speaking of the antiquity of faith healing, we therefore refer to the oldest religious story in the world—that of the myth of Osiris. Five thou- FAITH HEALING 19 sand years before the beginning of our era Osiris, a mythological king of Egypt, was worshiped after his reign of goodness and plenty. He suffered tem- porary death, and while absent his wife, Isis, the maternal goddess of Egypt, sought him, sorrowing, until upon finding the dead body after a long trip around the world, the recovery of the king’s body by faith in its divine power miraculously conceives ason. Thus Horus, begotten and born after death through tears and faith, is the living image of his father and becomes the Egyptian savior of human- ity. He was born in winter, and the celebration of this miracle of faith was the time taken over by the Egyptian Christians for the celebration of Christ- mas. We are not here concerned with myth and legend so much as the antiquity and vital urge of faith. Primitive religions such as belong to our American Indian and the aboriginal tribes of Australia abound in superstition and mystery. Faith in an unseen power, which is negative in character, results in superstition. Relics of this survive in charms re- sorted to by the Negro race, the fear of ghosts and spirits relegated to certain localities, and the statuette of St. Anthony or Scapula of the Latin Church which, if worn on the person, drives away all dangers from the faithful and keeps one out of accidents and free from plagues and epidemics. I do not vouch for the scientific evidence of this, but merely offer it as a negative result in primitive 20 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES religions provocative of superstition. The positive result of faith in ancient religions is mysticism and morality, which are conducive to health and human welfare. 2. NEW TESTAMENT The The Gospels contain seventy-four references to where - ‘Jesus Christ - healed either multitudes or in- dividuals. To my_t best ability I can count two hundred and seventy-six persons who are reported to have been cured, if we grant that a “multitude” consisted of at least ten persons. Doubtless it had the same signification that the word crowd has today. Hence there were innumerable people whom Christ healed. Some were not in His presence when they received the cure. ‘Twenty-three maladies were overcome. | These numbers convince us of the importance which our Lord placed upon faith and the effects of faith upon the body and soul. | Sickness and suffering are, in the teaching of the. New Testament, alien to God’s mercy. ‘They are not primarily designed for our moral and spiritual progress. Christ never shows it is good for us to be sick. He cures Peter’s wife’s mother, for ex- ample, that she may attend to her duties. Others were cured by Him, apparently, that they might fulfill their religious obligations in the Temple and elsewhere. He showed forth His love by stimulat- ing sufficient faith to heal. | The spiritual value of FAITH HEALING 21 suffering and ill health is ficticious, a theory built up ip outside the ‘facts a and experiences recorded in the Gospels. H. B. Wilson, in Does Christ Still Heal? has well said: “It is not by virtue of the pain, nor through the value of the deformity that they develop and grow. It is in spite of it. God is vindicated in many cases by His power over evil and pain when the patients use their ‘cross’ as a ladder to mount to sweeter character and resilient faith.” Sickness enters our life from an evil source con- trary to God’s love for man. But God’s power is greater than that of all opposing forces. From accidents to martyrdom God’s power to restore life proclaims his power over pain and evil. Those who suffer deformity may do good in other ways than they had set out to do. The Federal Board of Vocational Occupation, in rehabilitating the vet- erans, demonstrates the moral value of surmounting bodily handicaps for the greater good of the indi- vidual soldier and of the nation. Likewise, the Church has an opportunity to redirect the disabled and the sick to perform duties,and render service to the community for the common good. We can- not b believe God produces good through cruelty. Can we imagine him doing evil and causing lives ¢ of pain that good might result? The means would not “justify the end. God does not want crushed bodies nor maimed intellects. He says: “Son, give.me thine heart.” The New Testament through Christ 22 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES reveals God as spoken of in I John 4:4: “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Only in one instance does Christ employ any material aid. This was the making of clay with spittle and dust and placing it on the eyes of the blind man. In another case He moistens His fin- gers with saliva, touches the tongue and inserts His fingers in the. ears. He tells the disciples His method, and that theirs should be that of prayer and fasting.{ Although He nowhere orders the dis- continuance of drugs, in all the: _these cases. their_1 “use becomes no longer necessary. Nor does Christ find fault with those who take medicines. One of the best authorities upon the subject of miracles is Archbishop Trench. He is very fair and candid in his literal treatment of these miracles of healing as actual occurrences. His footnotes symbolize and sermonize by giving a moral inter- pretation. Many preachers do the same in such phrases as “palsy of conscience,” “dumb to sing His praises,’”’ “deaf to His word,” “the leprosy of sin.” has an illustrative value in the combat against sin. We are not here concerned with superficial preach- ing, but with the profound moral change of the ‘whole man. In an expositor’s dictionary of texts I find such an outline of the current attitude toward the ministry of healing. I shall briefly summarize St. Matt. 11:4-5: reo hjckor-Cu By type and symbol the ministry of healing FAITH HEALING 23 Blind: Mind left to itself. without the touch of Christ is in darkness. Lame: Free from sensuality we walk in newness of life. Lepers: Be cleansed from the leprosy of pride. Deaf: Spiritual deafness follows from desire for things of the world. Dead: Spiritual death pursues deadly sins. The Poor: The worldly poor ofttimes are the spir- itually rich. This is the popular way of treating miracles of healing of the New Testament. I accept the truth of it in so far as it goes. Its function is to be accredited by those in the ministry who strive to eradicate sin by this method of figurative exposi- tion. |With no desire to condemn the metaphorical aspect of these lessons, I may say they divest the Bible students’ minds from a literal perception of the healing miracles. “In In_this world ye shall have tribulation” is_a statement which some take as show wing God’s p PUDT Ny ishment. Many innocent people have suffered through the faults of others nd considered their Chastisement from the Lord. Such a doctrine is ~ absolutely contradictory to the teaching of Christ. It cannot be brought out from Christ’s teaching that God punishes us by sending sickness. The beatitude does not say our Heavenly Father blesses us by being reviled and persecuted. If that were so, then it would be a religious art to seek such punishment. Physical punishment is not even threatened the 24 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES sinful. “He is kind to the unthankful and to the evil.” God does rebuke us by bringing before us matters of the soul which are wrong. Hebrews 12:5 does say: ‘“My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him,” and the writer goes on to say: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” Ex- amine the context. The Hebrew Christians were being exhorted, in the eleventh chapter, to works of faith through example. In the twelfth chapter they are told to carry on this faith with perseverance in the face of persecution and shame and martyr- dom.| They had no application to ill health nor - diseaSe, nor can these texts be twisted from their contexts to infer their meaning has aught to do with sickness or pain or divine punishment. Such an interpretation as rendered by the early schoolmen is an assault upon reason, and the inserting of _ theories contrary to the author’s purpose. Pain and sickness have often been related to Christ’s suffering on the Cross. Devout souls, since the days of the early hermits dwelling on lonely isles and in monasteries, have thought they did God service by inflicting pain and hardship upon them- selves. Christ’s command to heal the sick by and through faith contradicts all false theology that , Christ sends sickness upon us. In teaching this the ' Church can perform a valuable function in off- setting the malicious practice of torturing penances still exercised by certain priests. Christ did not jf FAITH HEALING 25 desire sanctification through suffering, but holiness through health. In spite of suffering faith does sanctify the believer, but pain tends to embitter. Those whom our Lord healed glorified God, _not. because they had ¢ d endured, but because e they were. freed_ from from misery. ~ They stretched out to touch Him. “They were inspired by His 3 presence. He does not make an example of their fortitude through sicknéss, but of their public testimony of their faith in the Son of Man. This faith brought peace to their souls, vigor to their bodies, character to their distorted minds. True it is, that we are called upon to bear our cross like the Master. Christ, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, not for the sake of getting sick over it. The Gospels declare the disciples go forth with boldness to preach the word “with signs following.” ‘Their work, similar to that of Jesus Christ, was directly in opposition to disease and distress. The text that we are to take Christ’s yoke, as well as His Cross, upon us, does not refer specifically to disease, but to the burden of bearing and carrying His message of love and healing of body, mind and soul to all the world. Spurgeon well says, in a sermon on the Wise Men: “He has not come to put away our sins, and yet to leave us ungodly and self-willed.”’? God in Christ becomes allied to our nature to take away the sin and suffer- ing of mankind. He who strengthens the feeble knees and stands men upright by the power of His 26 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES personality, by His very mercy persuades and pleads with men to show forth their gratitude in works of repentance and of charity. By word and precept Christ builds a loftier con- ception of God upon the Hebrews’ idea of Jehovah. The teaching of the Book of Job, for example, is not complete in our Savior’s revelation of God. Many of Christ’s teachings were contrary to the Temple doctors. We are to love our enemies, bless those that despitefully use us in order to prove our divine sonship. Disease is not necessarily a visitation ~ from God, as witness Jesus’ reply to His question- ers, John 9:3: “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents.” That disasters are not sent upon the sinful only is taught by Christ in that instance of the eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell (Luke 13:4), in order to show that God is not punishing the evil or rewarding the innocent in this life. 3. POWER AND AUTHORITY To the curing of the sick, the casting-out of devils (those mentally afflicted), to the forgiveness of sin, and thereby to the building of character, the Gospels give authority in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us go carefully into this authority as it is presented by the four evangelists. {7 Mat- thew 10:1, 7, 8: “And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal FAITH HEALING 27 all manner of disease. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.’ Luke 9:1 and_6 are quite similar in their authority. Mark 6:12-13 _ says: ‘They went out and preached that men should repent, and they cast out many devils and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.” St. John 20:21: “As my, Father hath sent me, ‘even so send I you. . . .; Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted es them.” The Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s Epistles and the Epistle of James testify, as we shall later take up, the in- controvertible commission and authority for the ministry of healing. Combined with this commis- sion are authorizations for two acts—healing and forgiving: The value of these two functions is — compared in the text where He says: ‘For whether it is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, arise, take up thy bed and walk?” Thereupon Christ healed the young man. This healing fol- lows the act of repentance. Christ bestows these powers upon those whom He chooses to be His disciples. The healing of the sick and the curing of a soul are in this saying very intimately united. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the well-known neurologist, said of one of his patients: “His organs are all well, the man is sick.” Christ recognized this relation- ship between the soul of a man and bodily and men- tal phenomena. Physicians are trying more and 28 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES more, as they put it, to give nature a chance. They bind up the wounds but they acknowledge that the vis medicatrix naturae (the healing power of na- ture) cures them. The disciples were commis- sioned to give the sick the benefit of three of the best medicines in God’s pharmacy—confidence, cheerfulness and hope. No better materia medica is composed in these respects than that created by Christ’s teaching. Jesus Christ gave this power to His followers that thereby they might be won to a better life and win others. He came to seek and to save the lost and bids His Church do the same by the methods which He employed. Thus we see the ministry of healing, for which we have abundant New Testa- ment authority, is a process for stirring the will and awakening the conscience to the reality and rule of God. He who can restore health can re- deem a soul and lead one on to self-control, to the higher faculties of Christian ethics, to the love and service of God and mankind. 4. CURES OF CHRIST IN NEW TESTAMENT Jesus Christ did not emphasize but rather tried to conceal the fact that He was a healer. Exam- ine the pages of the Gospels and we find He has a deeper purpose than curing the body. He is es- tablishing a kingdom of love, health, peace and joy—the reign of God triumphant over sin. In FAITH HEALING 29 Him the divine and eternal are manifest for moral and spiritual ends. The Gospel narratives portray the Great Physician as the Saviour of the soul as well as a worker of signs and wonders. The word used in the Greek Testament is “sozein”—to save. In other contexts it is used to signify heal, make whole, restore. Salvation, according to the New Testament, therefore means wholeness, complete- ness and soundness. To be in good health is to be in good spirits also; it means that a healthy per- son is loving, pure, helpful and, in so far as it is possible, approaching to Christlikeness. The man who took up his couch or pallet when Christ said “Thy faith hath saved thee” could not only walk, but began to walk, we may presuppose, in ways of pleasantness and paths of peace. | The identical power which cures the body also cures the soul in Christ’s miracles. His person- ality, His challenge to faith, function through the heart’s sincere desire, confidence and expectant vic- tory. In all cases and cures the life-giving energy which aids the physical sufferer, or aids the spir- itually penitent, to come to a realization of all his bodily and ethical faculties comes from the same source.) Cures of the body in the Gospels react upon character. In these Bible episodes there is harmony between what happened and the laws of nature as we know them. Christ does not break any laws of nature in His miracles of healing. “The fact is continually authenticated by those who were 30 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES disinterested eye witnesses that “He healed many that were sick of divers diseases.” Jesus refers to these acts of mercy as signs and works. In other words they were signs pointing the way to spiritual entities, to a more abundant life. These miraculous cures were used quite often in Christ’s early ministry. Later, they were prac- ticed quite seldom. ‘Then He is pointing the way of those whom He had already attracted by means of these miracles to a nobler, more unselfish life in companionship with God. It is quite apparent that Jesus knew more about these hidden forces for the regaining of health and strength, and of the way in which He could translate these into moral victories. What did Christ do to work these cures? He uses spiritual and mental forces of which psychol- ogy and psychoanalysis is only sparingly aware. Those who wrote these accounts were not scien- tifically trained. In many cases they were not so much interested in wonder-cures as they were in some theological dispute—healing on the Sabbath. It was unlawful to heal on the Sabbath. In all these cures Jesus emphasizes the matter of subjective faith. Where there was little faith we read: ‘He could there do no mighty work be- cause of their unbelief.”’ On the other hand the Roman soldier says: “Speak the word only and my servant will be healed.” Jesus asks the blind if they believe He can cure them? They answer FAITH HEALING 31 in the affirmative, and Christ touches their eyes and they receive their sight. Faith aroused by mercy, compassion and command restores the use of the withered hand. In the case of the woman with the issue of blood, Edward R. Micklem says in Mira- cles and the New Psychology, page 122: ‘‘Psy- chologists would say that He [Jesus] thus saved her from a morbid complex arising out of her il- legal art, and so very likely from another disease or the recurrence of her old one. Because faith is not mentioned in a few cures it does not deny the fact that it there existed. Dr. C. R. Brown in his chapter on The Healing Miracles of Christ says: “His ordinary method was to enlist the co- operation of expectant faith on the part of the suf- ferer with the redemptive action of his own strong, wise and sympathetic personality to the end that recovery might come.” While on earth Christ expressed the pity of God for suffering humanity and proclaims His deity thereby. All but one of these cures appear to be immediate, although it is possible many of them took place between the time of Christ’s resurrec- tion and the date of the writing of the Gospels. The one exception where the cure is progressive is that recorded in Mark 8:22-25. In the Acts of the Apostles the cures were performed to attest the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, chaps. 3:12-18; 4:10, 33; 5:29-32. In these days faith has to battle for its own existence ofttimes by 32 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES wearisome and gradual restoration, but those who were with Jesus on earth, or succeeded Him, wrought instant faith-cures. St. Paul endeavors to explain the beneficence of faith in Ephesians 2:1-10, and particularly in verse eight where he says: “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” The key to faith’s medicine-chest is love. Where perfect love enters there is no door which cannot be unlocked. This is why Christian faith is defined as a faculty of the affection. Intellectual faith is little more than the knowing how to solve a prob- lem. Only those in the Gospels who were bound to our Lord in the intimacy of love and trust ex- perienced the dynamics of faith. To His disciples He appeals in John 14:15: Tf: ye love me keep my commandments.” Only when they confessed and professed that love could they carry on His acts of mercy by a faith which worketh by love. These patients and penitents first surrendered to the will of the Lord with an overflowing love and desire of expectant victory which gains.for them sound- ness of body and newness of life. | Forms of faith which appear extremely super- stitious in these days-of-scientific usage were pri- vately employed by Christ. In one instance, for example, we read that the Saviour took a deaf and dumb man aside from the crowd, put His fingers into his ears and spat and touched his tongue. In another place Christ spits on the patient’s eyes, FAITH HEALING 83 lays His hands on him, and sight returns. Still again Christ spits on the dust, makes clay of the saliva and with it anoints the eyes of the blind, telling him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. “He went his way therefore and washed and came seeing.” The use of saliva was as unsanitary, as it was a popular remedy, among the people of Pal- estine and other ignorant races of that day. Again we observe many of Christ’s cures were of neurotic cases. Hysteria—fixed ideas—cause mala- dies. Demoniacs were supposed by the supersti- tious people to be mastered by some internal evil spirit. “He has a devil” they exclaimed. These cases may be summarized in three cate- gories: First, there was what we term the insane —the mentally unbalanced, like the man who made a freak of himself calling out during the religious service in the Temple: “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth! Let us alone.” Then there is the man of Gadara, outside Capernaum, who cut himself and was “exceeding fierce,” going about nude making incoherent remarks. After coming in contact with Jesus, “he was clothed and in his right mind.” A second category would include the boy near Mount Tabor who was afflicted with epilepsy. Sometimes he would fall into the fire or into the water. Epilepsy is a nervous disorder, all the symptoms of which were manifested by this lad. A A third category | includes tl those cases of avin SSRN UO eee Aneta cesar 34 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES sis—a man with a dumb spirit; he was a mute. Another was a woman too broken in spirit to get out of bed for eighteen years. Dr. Du Bois, author of Psychic Treatment of Nervous Diseases, says: “The conditions of paralysis form part of the symp- tomatology of hysteria. Everybody knows that these paralyses, as localized in a functional mus- cular group and appearing in the wake of a known or unknown auto-suggestion, may disappear as if they were caused by suggestive influence.” Jesus treated these sufferers in a way which they with their limited knowledge would understand—by the vitalizing of His own attractive personality. So likewise does the success of many modern practi- tioners depend upon the confidence they inspire. Jesus rebukes, exorcises the unclean spirits to come out and flee. Still another baffling problem has been the cure of lepers until it was discovered that this is) disease was largely due to a neurosis and increased by a depressed mentality. J. F. Schamberg, M.D., says: ‘There are two forms of modern eproae the tubercular or modular, and the anesthetic or nervous; generally both forms are present.” The , : | \ ten ies were healed as they went along the road- \ side to show themselves to the priests. Many he treatment, notably “shingles.” \\ \\ forms of skin diseases are curable through mental | { a \ \ The Gospel narratives show that Jesus appreci+~ ated the origin of some diseases in the perverted FAITH HEALING 35 moral nature. The palsied man let down through the roof had obviously been an evil-doer, for at once Christ says: ‘Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” A man must be morally straight before faith-cures can take effect. Likewise Jesus says to the man at the pool of Bethesda: “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.” The plan of Christ was to make the people who believed in Him completely well in mind and body, but especially in their soul, that there might be in them no root of bitterness, no lurking place for Secret sin, no spite, malice, hatred or uncharitable- ness. To receive His benefits the patients must stand in proper relations with Him and their fellow men. When He could say to them “Great is thy faith” then He could also proclaim: “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Unlike those who exalt the founder of their cult (Mrs. BIG. e Eddy), to be ‘coequal with Christ, and take for their-own services all the pay they can get, the earthly re- wards of Jesus are conspicuously absent from the New Testament records. Christ never coveted ‘notoriety, fame or fees. “See that thou tell no man.” But He did long and yearn for the hearts of the people. He wanted them to love Him as He loved them and was willing to die to obtain their love. He had more eternal consequences at stake than any outward show, praise or compensation. He desired to be their guide through life, and even unto death. He wished to give to mankind a 36 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES knowledge and a faith in Himself, who could con- quer death and sin, that would assuage the grief and suffering, not only in that day, but in all the ages that should follow. Cures of Jesus Christ may be tabulated in the order of their appearance in the Gospels, thus: Patient Place PRL Veet hs octal e Jerusalem Wife hie sos Bethsaida Unclean ....... Capernaum Devils... ise ee Capernaum Leprosy .:.... Galilee PRISV iain eceiaie Galilee TRATION Bethesda .. PLAN ein Uy Capernaum JOarus cae. bs Capernaum Tastio yi yes Gennesaret. PRU S ee be Bethsaida Blind: sk co Jericho Pub wee Capernaum Cragys oii tn. Tabor’... Woman ...... Jerusalem . DTOpsy sso a Jerusalem . Matt. —__oOOOO | Ud | Mark 6:55 4:40 be" 11:1 9:1 6:2 II METHODS OF CHRISTIAN HEALING I. IN THE ACTS N the Acts of the Apostles there are twenty references to miracles of healing with state- ments concerning the persons who were healed, the methods used and through whom the cures were effected: Acts 2:43: Many wonders and signs were done by the Apostles; 3:2: The lame man; 5:12: Signs and wonders wrought among the people; 5:15: The shadow of Peter; 6:8: Stephen; 8:7: The palsied and lame; 8:13: Philip; 9:17: Ananias and Paul; 9:3: Aeneas; 9:37: Dorcas; 14:34: Paul and Barnabas; 14:8: At Lystra; 14:19: Paul; 15:12: Gentiles; 16:18: Ex- orcism; 19:11: Handkerchiefs and aprons; 20:9: Eutychus; 28:3: Fever; 28:8: Publius; 28:9: Paul on the island. This list_reveals that_others than_the Apostles performed miraculous cures—namely, the deacons Stephen and Philip and Ananias, a disciple. Faith is mentioned or implied_as_ prerequisite for healing. For example, Peter says: “By faith in His name hath His name made this man strong, whom ye be- hold in the faith which is through Him hath given 37 38 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES Him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.” Healings of the Acts occurred in the name and by belief in Jesus Christ. ‘I charge thee, in the name of Jesus Christ”—Acts 4:29-30. | There is no record of anointing in the Acts, but the ‘laying-on-of-hands” is spoken of in chaps. 9:17 and 28:8. By command, by faith, by use of a loud voice, by “fastening his eyes upon him,” by touch and suggestion were these afflicted healed. | utychus was restored by prayer and embrac- ing. Peter’s passing by those on beds and couches stirred up the faith of the sick by an enthusiastic community of interest. These methods were em- ployed for the purpose revealed in the text, “be- lievers were thus more added to the Lord.” (The use_of tokens, pieces_of garments, handkerchiefs, may_be_classified as a symbol of esteem and love in the Christian fellowship for those holy men. This_ love for the saints ‘of God revived faith,and through that faith God healed them. This method intensified the respect and love among the early believers for those who went forth to teach and to heal in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 2. ANOINTING The New Testament contains only two references to Unction, Mark 6:7; and James 5:13-15. We note that in James this is for the purpose of eradi- cating sin to heal the body. The Douay or Roman CHRISTIAN HEALING 39 Catholic translation is slightly incorrect in using the Latin Vulgate word “‘alleviabit” for the Greek word “egerei’”’ in place of the actual word in the earliest manuscripts “egeirein,” which means to raise up. The copyists in misreading or inserting a word of quite similar spelling have caused the Roman Church to draw out a misinterpretation in the translation: ‘The Lord shall comfort the soul of the sick man.” Hence Unction among them is used more for comfort and consolation and preparation for death than forgiveness of sins. The best treatise on this erroneous development is displayed in F. W. Puller’s Anointing of the Sick in Scripture and Tradition. Father Puller says that during the first seven centuries anointing of the sick with holy oil continued without intermis- sion. During these centuries anointing was solely for the removal of disease, not for the remission of sin. No record is extant of persons being anointed as a preparation for death. In the year 800 A.D. Bishop Theodulph of Orleans issued an instruction ordering Unction to be used in articulo mortis. When Peter Lombard, in 1151, limited the official sacraments of the Church to seven he included Unction among them. The Council of Trent, 1551, established Unction as a sacrament to pre- pare the sick for death. To this day the Roman- ists adhere to the decrees of the Council of Trent in this respect, as in others. With them, there- fore, Unction ceased to be a means of healing, but 40 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES is to the present time a consolation for the dying. Etymologically the word “presbyter” in James is contracted to our modern word priest, which signifies elder. The proper person to send for when one is sick, we see in the text above cited, is the officer of the Church. Others are possessors of the gift of healing as we may read in I Corinthi- ans 12:9. No exclusion of them, because of office or lack of office is implied by James. Others than the priests or presbyters might bless and use the holy oil. In the Greek Orthodox Church the priest separately blesses oil for each sick person. Among the Roman Catholics the Bishop alone blesses the oil. In the Anglican Church the rubric directs: “The priest (or the Bishop if he be pres- ent) shall let them depart with his blessing.” From the foregoing we may conclude that bodily healing was, and is conveyed by the application of. oil blessed with prayer and faith. Local customs differ, but the command to anoint the sick still prevails. 3. LITURGIES The formal prayers of the primitive Church demonstrate the belief of the early Christians in the efficacy and perseverance of prayer for the sick. The Liturgies prescribe the laying-on-of-hands. In the earliest mention outside the New Testament made in the year 180 A.D., Irenzus, Bishop of Lyons, says: “Others again heal the sick by laying CHRISTIAN HEALING Ay their hands upon them and they are made whole without taking reward from them.” ‘Tertullian, in the year 211 A.D. speaks of formal prayer with Unction having been used successfully for the Roman Emperor, Septimius Severus. The earliest liturgical quotation, 350 A.D., containing prayers for Christian Healing is that of the Sacramentary of Serapion. The formal prayer therein prescribed for blessing the oil is: ‘We bless through the name of Thy only begotten, Jesus Christ, these creatures. We name the name of Him who suffered, who was crucified, and rose again, and who sitteth on the right hand of the uncreated, upon this oil. Grant healing power upon these creatures, that every fever and every devil and sickness may depart through the anointing in the name of Jesus Christ through whom to Thee are the glory and the strength in the Holy Spirit to all the ages of the ages. Amen.” ‘Thus Unction was used under set forms of prayer in the fourth century. The Pray- ers of St. Jerome (390) also contain a Service of Unction. Hilarion in a biography of Jerome tes- tified that this bishop blessed oil and it was found to be a cure for wounds. Other liturgies, namely the Apostolic Constitutions (about 375 A.D.) and the Testamentum Domini (400) and in Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert, 687 A.D., we find forms for. anointing. Many of the post-Nicene Fathers used anointing, and their formal liturgy is mentioned in © Westcott. Among these are Chrysostom, Par- 42 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES thenius, Macarius, Sozomenus, Clement of Rome and numerous others. Today, Unction is practiced by the Anglican, Greek and Roman Churches but neglected by most Protestant bodies. The first Prayer Book of the Anglican Church contains this rubric: “If the sick person desires to be anointed, then shall the priest anoint him upon the forehead or breast only, mak- ing the sign of the cross.” The Second Prayer Book prepared in the reign of Edward VI, omitted Unction entirely. This was under an extreme Protestant régime. The Nonjurors (1781) drew up a service which they titled Extreme Unction which they claimed was commanded by the Apostle James. The present English and American Books of Common Prayer do not contain a Service of Unc- tion. In the Protestant Episcopal Church there is now a commission to investigate the subject and to draft a Service; and that Service for the past three years has had permissive use. The conse- cration of a bishop provides that he heal the sick after the pattern of our Lord’s charge to the disci- ples as recorded in the eighth verse of the tenth chapter of Matthew. When the Lord’s Supper is administered to the people in the Protestant Episcopal Church the fol- lowing words are said to each individual: ‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlast- CHRISTIAN HEALING 43 ing life. The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.’ Thus the office of Holy Communion in the Anglican Church, today, has a more pertinent reference to the health and preservation of the body than its prayers for the Visitation of the Sick or any other prayers in the liturgical services. However, Unction is practiced by approximately one-third of the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in no diocese in America is its use forbidden. cate Bie af St. James says, “The prayer of faith shall save the sick,” and Jesus Christ says: ‘All things what- soever ye ask in prayer, believing ye shall receive.” Matt. 21:22. | The condition we must satisfy then to obtain healing is that of faith. A prerequisite of faith in God is a knowledge of His unchangeable love and good will toward us. In II Timothy 2:13 this idea is stated in the following words: “Tf we believe not, yet he abideth faithful; he can- not deny himself.” Christ does not violently force Himself upon us to any. greater extent than He did upon the peo- ple in the villages and towns of Galilee. People remained sick there because they did not ask Him to be made well; they did not believe in Him; they did not-seek His touch. They “had not be- Ady HEALING IN THE CHURCHES cause they asked not,” to use the words of St. James. Some faithful friends did seek and gain relief for their diseased kindred. Faith requires effort, a battle against fear, preju- dice and doubt. Faith involves more than belief; it is more than mere intellectual acceptance of a proposition. Devils believe and tremble, but that does not drive them away nor cure them. Some describe faith as a constant wish, whereas it is a ‘continual act of will. Faith is the accumulation of the substances of things hoped for, the being will- ing to gather evidence and the collection of testi- mony creating a hope for things unseen. Hartley Coleridge well defines faith in the lines when he writes: It is an affirmation and an act That bids eternal truth be present fact. soem SS ne SS RE ST be andor and harder to ‘stop. _ We expect by faith what must be possible, for what would be the will of God for us. Therefore as we experience benefits of faith in the healing of the body it tends to promote our spiritual progress and the elimina tion of sin. Our Lord’s miracles were performed where doubt was utterly banished from heart and. { mind, where reverence and faith in His sacred per- \ son were paramount. None were cured who were | f f f & CHRISTIAN HEALING 45 not resolved to live in accordance with His divine will. Expectancy can be willed and won through prevailing prayer. We shall expect that He who can say: “Thy sins be forgiven thee” can also say: ‘Arise, and walk.” Faith to be healed calls forth the spirit of ad- venture. We are required to act out our ex- pectancy, to achieve by venture. This spirit of adventure is illustrated in the woman who said: “Tf I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole.” And she took the venture. Her touch was the only one Jesus mentions. ‘Thy faith hath made thee whole.” Adventurous faith is but the law of cause followed by effect of healing. “According to your faith be it unto you.” Our Lord wills us to be well in body as He does in soul. | Faith is related to every phase of life and character. The effect of faith upon the body and the health is to stimulate the will and the spirit of adventure and to create expectancy and hope in the realm of the soul’s sin- cere desire to resist evil and all effects of sin. ' Furthermore, faith stimulates_imagination. It_ holds_up. before us the Image of what we should become and can become. The Lord’s Prayer “Thy will be done” is a . daily reminder of the possibility of achieving the purposes of God. The vision of what ought to be is transcendently visualized as what can and will be through energizing faith. Morbid deification of pain vanishes where that prayer | springs from faith in the curing Christ. 46 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES The Nancy School of Suggestive Therapeutics has developed the curative factors of imagination to a high degree, but no higher than the faith of any sin- cere believer in Jesus Christ, and the promises of Christ. He came into the world not to tease us or ridicule us, but to give us, with the aid of imag- inative faith, life more abundant as He proclaims in the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to John. We are created to possess the truth as it is in Him, He tells us, and that truth we see by the most meager use of the imagination shall make us free; free from the control of sin and the sins of the flesh and the ills to which flesh is heir. Imagination, stirred up by faith, sees no limit to the possibilities of the healing, forgiving Powel of Christ. “Whatsoever ye ask in My name” conveys imagery without limit. “I will, be thou clean” creates in the imagination a sense of the possibility and source of a pure life, a life hid in Christ with God, cleansed from all sin. In the fifth verse of the fourth chapter of his first Epistle, John writes: EThis is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” Here we confront the conquering power of faith upon the mind which reflects its power upon the whole character and body of him who possesses it. “There’s nothing either good or bad, but_thinking. makes it Soi says a poet.| The Crusaders were inspired ‘to overcome thei hardships and enemies by the faith they possessed in the Cross of Christ. CHRISTIAN HEALING AT In hoc signo vinces thrilled them to see beyond the falseness and fleetingness of the affairs of the world. They, trusting in Jesus Christ, were more than con- querors by the might of His victory. Their faith brought into their soldiering the grandest, most solemn and spiritual realities. Likewise, the indi- vidual of the present day masters his body and its unseen enemies by a revitalized strength in the inner man or soul. Faith is the _anzesthesia__ of the soul—the thing which de deadens it to the pains which come from the world. If a man does not believe the world’s pains are of much consequence, then they are not so. He who sees by faith through the encompassing smoke of the fires which would cause his martyr- dom, or hears through the din of this world’s un- rest the calm voice of His Savior, will dare not deny Christ’s power to care for him. ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” All _the tor- ments of the nerves or of germs cannot defeat the soul. which has faith in a healing Savior. A flicker of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the presence of Jesus Christ will dispel all dark- ness and shadows, and sighing will flee away be- fore the faith which shall overcome the world. Cul- tivating the habit of thinking of Jesus Christ as present in the midst of all the world’s distress gives poise to the Christian consciousness, stability, trust, hope and other qualities of mind which quicken every vital factor in the one who possesses 48 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES faith and who, as a Christian, understands and grasps the same. Faith operates by aiding us to “get out of our- selves.” Faith implies the acceptance of a chance, and not the denial of its existence. In the case of poison, for example, an antidote used in faith will serve to bring the afflicted one’s powers of resist- ance into action against the bad effects. Our self- limitation has much to do with our bodily ‘suffering. Faith works by drawing us out of ourselves by set- _ting free our forces of body and mind which become a healing power. Escape from self gives us a fuller freedom to permit the healing power of nature to have free course. ‘The most effective faith is that by means of which we acquire the broadest free- dom. It is in this setting at liberty new forces of a therapeutic character, and in the opening of new ‘pathways that we test the distinguishing efficacy o _of faith. This explains many so-called cures which 7 are accomplished with equal results by faith in different means of application, some of them scien- tifically and medicinally obviously devoid of any curative potency. ‘This includes many physiolog- ical disorders both functional and organic as well || There are many cures with definite external hates | in which the deciding factor is the patient’s own | inner force (élan vital) and when this is vigorously | called forth by faith in some person, e.g., to the Ras Jesus Christ, or some treatment, He or CHRISTIAN HEALING | 49 _it_proves sufficient for the requirement, irrespec- tive of the value of the the medicaments. As we progress in our ur study we shall see, in Chap- ter III, the effect of Christian Healing upon the life of sin. But we may say in passing that when such a moral philosopher as St. Paul classifies faith (I Corinthians 13:13), as one of the three cardinal virtues, we are dealing with a quality of mind of superlative value in the conquest of evil. It is peculiarly the function of the Church to promote all reasonable measures for the growth of faith in its twofold endeavor to help body and soul. There are extremes on either side. Faith healers stress bodily healing in their several “cults at the expense of the spiritual life. On the other hand, the Church, in modern days, is “quite universally miss- ing its opportunities in neglecting the nervous and ‘physical prophylaxis of its members. The proper function of the Church is to embrace a happy mean inclusive of both spiritual and bodily welfare and health of those whom it serves. Faith is a cumulative asset which remedies the moral faculties and “strengthens them. Hence those who have been physically benefited by faith are, in consequence, enabled to employ faith in the sphere of motivation and behavior. Therefore _ the Church which provides.a_ministry of healing “and ‘effects cures by means of Christian faith is thereby taking a step forward in intensifying faith that shall be effective in producing Christian con- 50 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES duct, and eliminates in that measure the dominance of sin corresponding to the benefits which have been received upon the mind and body. 5. LAYING-ON-OF-HANDS As an act of blessing, consecration and ordina- tion not a few religious bodies at one time and another, and with diverse intentions, have practiced the laying-on-of-hands. This simply means the placing of the hands of him who would bestow a blessing upon the head of him who is to receive the same. We see the same custom or ritual in the story of the Old Testament patriarchs in the nar- ratives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus Christ employed this method of touch combined with command and prayer and fasting. “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity,” then He laid His hands upon her. Wecan scarcely differentiate the touch of Christ from the laying- on-of-hands. The process is the same. However, touch may not be as formal, ceremonious and liturgical as that which is implied by the laying- on-of-hands. Christ touched the ear of Malchus and it was healed after Peter’s sword-thrust (St. Luke 22:49). Christ takes Peter’s wife’s mother by the hand and raises her up. He touched the leper (Matt. 8:2; Mark 1:40; Luke 5:12), at Gennesaret. ‘Thus in a few cases ceremonial was employed by the act of touch. CHRISTIAN HEALING 51 I would define the laying-on-of-hands as a re- ligious and prayerful ceremonial with formal touch or placing of the hands upon one who seeks a bene- fit through faith. Christ took the deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:32) away from the crowd, “put his fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.’ The blind man at Bethsaida He took out of the hamlet, moistened his eyelids with spittle, laid His hands on him and asked (Mark 8:32) “Seest thou aught?” This cure was gradual and progressive. St. John 9:1 records a more elaborate ceremonial in the case of a man born blind. Many who had plagues pressed forward in the crowds (Matt. 12:15) that they might touch Christ and be healed, and in varying formal ways, through prayer, exor- cism and command His touch healed them as a re- sponse to their faith. The laying-on-of-hands brought to St. Paul his sight (Acts 22:13), and in Acts 28:8, we find Paul healing Publius by the same method. In a few instances we find an expression or prayer similar to “Jesus Christ healeth thee” as in Acts 9:34; where Peter cures the palsied Aeneas combined with the laying-on-of-hands. That this ceremony was perpetuated after New Testament times we may learn from Irenzeus who, in the year 180 A.D., writes: “Others heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they 52 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up, and remained among us for many years.” (Ireneus’ Heresies, Book II, Chapter 32). Origen, who lived 185-253, testifies in his treatise on Celsus, Book I, Chapter 46, that the laying-on-of-hands wrought cures “some of them more remarkable than any that ex- isted among the Jews, and these we ourselves have witnessed.” 6. RELICS Ce eee One encounters more fiction than fact in the records of cures by means of relics. Little can we encourage belief in cases which are not scientifically diagnosed, reported or substantiated. If we can establish the fact that cures have taken place from | touching relics and blessed objects we might save many pious writers of ecclesiastical history before the Reformation from an ignominious libel. The first authenticated cures from relics are mentioned by Ambrose (340-397), Bishop of Milan. He was a prominent and respected citizen, lawyer and mag- istrate, and one of the four Doctors in the Latin Church. In one of his letters (22) he testifies that a butcher, Severus, in Milan, was cured from blind- ness by touching the shroud covering the bodies of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius. Those who had been giving this blind butcher charity after he could no longer work were present and witnessed to the certainty of the cure. St. Chrysostom (347- CHRISTIAN HEALING 53 407) in his sermons disparages the days in which he lives, because so few healing miracles happen; but this implies that a few do occur, and he further- more verifies the fact that spiritual healing results from his preaching. At Lourdes for the past three-fourths of a cen- tury we note from the investigation of Dr. Percy Dearmer in Body and Soul that healing miracles have been examined and verified by disinterested physicians of repute both within and without of the Church. About one hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims visit this shrinesevery year. The annual certified cures average two hundred and twenty. A charitable opinion may presuppose that some are not cured at once. The vast majority will not sub- mit to medical examination before, or after their visit. Symptoms of almost every sort are allevi- ated, but we observe nervous diseases are in a minority, whereas pulmonary tuberculosis has the highest. number of curés (217) of any one specific malady. Among the bureau of investigators of these cures in Dr. Bertrin’s report there are three members of the Academy of Medicine of Paris, fourteen medical professors of foreign faculties, one hundred and twenty-four house-surgeons of hos- pitals and forty other eminent physicians. Some days there are as many as sixty, and usually fifty, physicians present who make thorough examina- tions. A Protestant doctor from England writes: “As regards the medical examination of the cures, 54 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES I am happy to express my complete satisfaction with the manner in which medical certificates are dealt with. Nothing can exceed the conscientious care with which the value of each certificate is dis- cussed. The sick person remains some days after at Lourdes. He has to appear every morning and evening before the committee in order to prove that the cure is permanent.” It may rightfully be questioned what has all this to do with the function of the Church in bring- ing salvation any more than the cures accomplished by Christian Scientists have to do with morals and the defeat of sin. These certificates have to do with bodily cures, and are not testimonials of char- acter. In Chapter IV we shall discuss the topic of health as an aid to character. In all fairness we may listen to critics of Lourdes. Mr. F. W. Myers, psychologist, and his brother, A. T. Myers, a physician, acknowledge that cures were made but in the cases they examined they say there was nothing miraculous about it, for this-was purely_a result of auto-suggestion intensified by religious enthusiasm. Dr. Dearmer went to Lourdes to gather some statistics from the authori- ties there and such were not obtainable. In his book entitled Body and Soul in a footnote on page 328 he states: ‘What the proportion [of cures] really is I have been unable to ascertain even after personal inquiry at Lourdes. If we more than double the highest recorded number of cures, and CHRISTIAN HEALING 55 estimate them at five hundred, counting improve- ments as cures, and if we assume that only a small proportion—one in five—of the pilgrims are pa- tients, me still only get just over one per cent. of cures.’ If, at the most celebrated place in the world for cures by relics, we are informed that ninety-nine per cent. of all cases are failures, and we know that at St. Anne’s, outside Montreal, and other noted shrines, cures are less plentiful, we may conclude we are investigating a source of little value to medi- cine or morals. Here and there is reported chi- canery in miraculous cures of relics, images and other sacred objects. For example, a woman who could not stop the flow of her tears in her great sorrow went to a foreign church in Philadelphia, and, praying before the statue of the Virgin, saw tears flow from the marble eyes of the figure. The Virgin’s sympathy dried the suppliant’s tears. Later a report was authenticated that an attendant in the church pressed a bulb behind the statue and caused drops to exude through a concealed pipe to the eyes. I would judge that relics therefore cause those who have them to claim more for their cura- tive properties than is in them. Yet we see that _ even deception, when wholeheartedly accepted. and. _ believed, is an element in faith healing even though Pre ne: ee SS RUE rE Se ‘it promote the sin of falsehgod, a seer race 56 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 7. HEALING IN THE HISTORIC CHURCH The testimony of ecclesiastical history makes it Ky quite futile for the uneducated to say that miracles | | of healing do not happen nowadays, or that miracles | ceased in the apostolic age. The words of our Savior refute such a statement. When we turn) | to the twelfth verse of the fourteenth chapter of | John’s Gospel we read: “He that believeth on\ me, the works that I do shall he do also; indy | greater works than these shall he do, because I go) | unto the Father.” History in the Acts of the Apos- | tles, or in later records, never states that the | power to heal and forgive has been withdrawn by our Savior from His true believers. When we” find there is no termination of miracles of healing “then we may y fairly . raise e the question why or when should there occur such termination so long as men > believe i in _Christ and the ministry of God’s holy spirit as conveyed through the Church. Witnesses whose integrity is above question or suspicion state and prove conclusively that the miracles of healing of the apostolic age continued to happen as late as the Council of Nicza in the year 325 A.D. Such is the conclusion of Dr. Ger- hard Uhlhorn in his Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. Since miracles took place after the death of those who had lived with Jesus there is no reason for doubting their possibility in the years after the second century. / CHRISTIAN HEALING 57v There are many references to spiritual or Chris- tian Healing among the early fathers. It will bea - source of strength to the faith in later day mira- cles if we collect only a few of these. In the twelfth Epistle of Clement we read: “Let them therefore, with fasting and prayer, make their in- tercessions, and not with the well arranged and fitly ordered words of learning, but as men who have received the gift of healing confidently, to the glory of God.” In his treatise against Celsus, Chapter 24, I find in Origen such a statement as this: “Some give evidence of their having received through their faith a marvelous power by the cures which they perform, invoking no other name over those who need their help than that of the God of all things and of Jesus, along with a mention of His history.” Irenzeus says: “The disciples receiving grace from Him do in His name perform miracles so as to promote the welfare of others according to the gift which each has received from Him. Others still heal the sick by laying their: hands upon them, and they are made whole.” So the age of mira- cles did not end with the apostles, we may be sure. The translator of Cyprian says: “There are successive evidences of miracles of healing down to the age of Constantine.” As late as 429 A.D. Theodore of Mopsuestua states: “Many heathen amongst us are being healed by Christians from whatever disease they have.” The time of Con- 58 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES stantine’s conversion marks a distant epoch in Church history from an age of faith in Christ to trust in princes and worldly resources. Less de- pendence is placed upon Christ and more upon riches and political favor. Miracles were signs of the glorified Christ. When the Christians began to magnify Him by their architecture, pomp and worldly dominance, the age of miracles ceased. It is related of one of the popes that he declared that no longer need he say: ‘Silver and gold have I none,” to which a listener replied: “Neither can you say, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise and walk.’ ” Where we find a return and abundance of the primitive faith in any group of Christians there is evidence of the reoccurrence of the evangelical miracles. Note what is said by those Protestant heroes of Italy, the Waldensians: ‘‘As an article of faith, we hold and profess that persons may be anointed by one who joins in prayer that it may heal the body according to the design and effect mentioned by the apostles.” This religious body condemns Unction as a papal ordinance of death contrary to the practice of the vitalizing min- istry of Christian Healing. The Moravian Brethren catch the spirit of New Testament. healing as expressed by their pioneer and leader, Count Zinzendorf: “I owe this testi- mony to our Church that apostolic powers are there manifested. We have had undeniable proofs CHRISTIAN HEALING 59 thereof in the unequivocal healing of maladies in themselves uncurable all by means of prayer or of a single word.” Our great and growing Presbyterian bodies have a heritage of healing unsurpassed in Church history as contained in the chronicles of the Scots Worthies ‘and the lives of Kirk, Welch, Baillie, Craig and Knox. Miracles relating to both body and mind together with conversions and moral transforma- tions apparently incredible, are authenticated by disinterested witnesses of the prayers of Robert Bruce. The prayers of Patrick Simpson relieved a Scots Worthy’s wife of a demoniacal possession so violent that she raved and-tore her hair, for on the sixteenth day of; August, » 1607) she came into, and stayed in her rig lind through no other treatment than prayer. The-Baptists, as well as the Covenanters, retain records of their great evangelists exercising the ministry of healing. Vavasor Powell, styled “the “Morning Star of the Welsh Baptists,” relates his faith and practice in prayers for the sick and the laying-on-of-hands. Besides the many conversions and happy and reborn men created by his pulpit oratory it is said that he accepted the promise con- tained in the fifth chapter of James literally and “many persons recovered from dangerous sickness through prayer of faith which he offered.’ In Ivimy’s History of the Baptists we read the dec- laration of this preacher that “for the Elders to 60 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES anoint the sick in the name of the Lord is.a gospel ordinance.”’ In the same history we read of two other equally eminent leaders among this denomi- nation, Henry Jessey and Hansard Knollys, offer- ing prayer and pronouncing over a blind member: “The Lord Jesus restore thy sight.” We find that the Church of England included in its first Prayer Book of 1549 a Service for Anointing. Whereas, in later years, it has taken on the sacramental idea of the last rights for the dying this Church has never contradicted the mes- sage of the sixteenth verse of the fifth chapter of the Epistle of James. We shall cover this point more fully in the subject af anointing. There are references to the wholesomeness and health of body, soul and spirit contained in the order for the Holy Communion, and particularly to the exhorta- tions to attend and partake of the same in a worthy manner. Until the days of Rev. H. B. Wilson in America and Mr. James Hickson in England there are no outstanding miracles of healing. Yet there are pertinent references to the idea that he that hath the Son hath life and those who partake of the Sacrament unworthily do so to their spiritual and bodily death, or as St. Paul terms it: ‘‘fall asleep.” In the early history of the Church in England there are not a few records of pilgrimages to shrines and holy relics of the saints and miraculous cures resulting thereby. Credence was given to these at CHRISTIAN HEALING 61 the time, but the scientific mind of today would not accept the diagnosis of those afflicted. In the journals, letters and writings of early Methodists, such as those of Joseph Benson, we find instances of healing as the result of prayer. Rev. James McDonald testifies to the efficacy of prayer in the case of restoring strength to the im- potent limbs of a paralytic young mother. The London Methodist Magazine gives cases where the denomination it represents yields fruit in the heal- ing of individuals. Primitive piety has effected apostolic benedictions and faith-cures in the min- istry of the Wesleys, and Whitfield has manifested the power to heal in the Methodist Church. The long line of cures wrought by various re- ligious bodies is, in the work of the orthodox Churches, a means to an end. Healing has never been the primary consideration of the Church any more than it was to Peter when his shadow passing by restored the ill to health once more. The annals containing cures and the biographies of saints with their legends, traditions and cases of cures are, aS we said, of secondary consideration and very largely a by-product in the work of the Church, although healing is observed to be an ex- press command of the Savior. Because the func- tion of the Church is to combat sin and save souls therefrom, it has employed healing in many in- stances aS a means to this end. On the way to this goal and through the cure and salvation of the 62 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES soul the under-mind has so dominated and led the cerebro-spinal and the vaso-motor systems as to restore normalcy to every tissue. Hence, the op- eration of the soul, as revived by the gift of heal- ing, has stimulated the sympathetic ganglia, put poise in cases of neuroses and psychoses and, in consequence, eliminated many of the bodily and lustful tendencies and temptations that would otherwise have been factors influencing the patient toward sin. The ministry of healing has thus strengthened the will to combat sin within the in- dividual. We may now survey the opinions and doctrines of a few of the more eminent theologians in re- spect to this subject of the Church’s function of the overcoming of sin through the agency of healing in the Church. The Roman Catholic Church vouches for the writings of Augustine in De Cevitate Det. There we read a caption concerning the miracles which were wrought in order that the world might believe in Christ “and which cease not to be wrought now that the world does believe. For even now miracles are wrought in His name.” Then follows a case of healing vouched for by sur- geons who discover healing had taken place upon a man whom they were to operate upon but found unnecessary after prayer. Martin Luther turned in disgust from flagrant lies about miracles of healing. He rebukes priests who claim cures from relics and other sacred ob- CHRISTIAN HEALING 63 jects, which he knew by observation did not, and could not take place. Yet speaking as a pastor rather than the arch-controversialist that he was, Martin Luther says: ‘How often has it happened and still does, that devils have been driven out in the name of Christ, also by calling on His name and prayer that the sick have been healed?” In Seckendorf’s History of Lutheranism we are told of a complete recovery of an insane girl by prayers of a few of Luther’s clerical friends and the impo- sition of his own hands while he repeated the text: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do.” ‘There is the case of Luther’s prayer for Philip Melancthon who sent for the leader of the Saxon Reformation when this great scholar lay a-dying. Luther hurried to him and with his cus- tomary vehemence prayed that Christ would re- store Melancthon’s health if He ever wanted the petitioner to trust in the Savior again. Then he took Melancthon by the hand and said to him that he should have courage and not pass away. God had good reason to slay him for his sins, but he would be pardoned, converted and live. And so it was. Later Melancthon, in a letter to a friend, says: ‘I should have been a dead man had I not been recalled from death itself by the coming of Luther.” Referring to the same episode Luther writes: “T fetched back Philip out of hades. I found him 64 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES dead, but by an evident miracle of God he lives.” Myconius relates he was kept from the grave by the power of Luther’s prayers—so Luthardt states in his Moral Truths of Christianity. Among well-recognized commentators on the Bible who believe in Christian Healing in the Church for the remedial value of the soul, we may list Richard Baxter, John Albert Bengel, Edward Irving, Bishop Westcott, Harnack, Simpson, Illing- worth, Batten, Allen, Gould, Plunber, Gore, Horace Bushnell; and none of any reputation disprove the efficacy of Christ’s power to heal or deny that He bequeathed this power to the Church. But that the Churches have neglected to use this power, they all agree. 8. IDEALISM Among persons who are struggling for physical existence and the necessaries of life their thoughts and ambitions are centered upon food, health and shelter and how to procure them. When these are obtained there is opportunity for the bido or vital urge to concentrate about some other interests of a more idealistic concern. When a person has no health obviously his mind and ideals will be di- rected toward himself and those things which will aid him in building up a sound constitution. After this is obtained his interest is free to exert itself in creative and idealistic enterprises. Here the ministry of healing through the agency CHRISTIAN HEALING 65 of the Church steps in to hold before the person restored to health ideals to stimulate the will to al- truistic occupations thereby combating sin within and without the patient. One of these ideals is the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The pa- tient is not left to the haphazard activities of his impulses. This ideal governs conduct because, as psychologists term it, this ideal is an adequate stimulus to one who believes in Christianity. His happiness and self-realization then depend not only upon health but upon achieving this higher ideal. How is it that the good man sometimes goes wrong although he be well in body? His mind has accepted the stimulus of an inadequate ideal. What we may term an adequate stimulus are those ideals or that form of idealism which can produce wholesomeness and happiness. Right and wrong action therefore depend upon the belief of the doer as such as will produce happiness to him. A Christian conscience awakened by Christian Heal- ing inculcates ideals of Christ. These take no de- light in the sufferings of others, nor in ideals em- bracing less than the whole man in the fulfillment of all his God-given powers and capacities. Having obtained health there is now more to do than simply let our organs function harmoni- ously. The quest for happiness is an ideal which will fill life so full that there will be no room for sin. One of the chief aims of the preacher is to start and restart the people of this pleasure-seeking 66 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES age on this quest where true joy may be found. Happiness is not the aggregation or cumulative value of all pleasures as the hedonistic ethics teach. Rather is it the state of mind which senses the ex- pression of all the instincts operating in harmony. There is no conflict of ideals in true happiness. The Church upholds the ideal of a sound mind in a sound body cooperating in a sound soul or under- mind focussed on the Saviour of the world. Complete happiness cannot exist where health is lacking. For the ideal often will not transcend the desire for health. Having produced the foundation for happiness by establishing health there is a pro- gressive idealism toward goodness. ‘Those who strive to be good and complain continually of ill health or other matters neither enjoy health nor goodness. A psychological ideal cannot be accom- plished if ethical ideals are withdrawn. Our ma- ternal and paternal instincts, our selfish and our social instincts crave right relations with cthers. Such relationships imply and require happy asso- ciation between God and man. A Christian has other duties than that of keeping well. The ministry of healing liberates him to per- form these duties. As members of the Church we strive to do right regardless of the pleasures in- volved or lost. Not infrequently we do our duty from a sense of self-approbation or desire for thanks or reward for meritorious conduct. Many a French soldier in the line of duty has laid down CHRISTIAN HEALING 67 his life for the chance of sporting a Croix de Guerre ora palm leaf. It is said of Christ: “For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross”— the joy, no doubt, of performing His duty. Doing one’s duty, therefore, among Christians is a quali- fication for attaining the ideal of happiness. To receive health of God is thereby binding one by no less an obligation than to perform his duties on the highest plain of happiness to himself and others with the same broad vision of Jesus Christ to com- bat the sin of the world, the flesh and the devil. Q. PRESENT-DAY PRACTICES A A vast amount_of Christian | healing | is being at- by: over fifty nega | preachers and pastors. among a constituency of more than one-third of the popu- lation of the United States.” By this I mean pas- toral and sick calls, religious services, revivals, mis- sions and other offices of the Churches which are holding up Jesus Christ as the physician of the soul, the forgiver of sin and the emancipator of the effects from sin which flesh is heir to. Ask any one of these regularly constituted or ordained pas- __tors. if he believes i in the healing miracles of Christ and we find they are accepted as fact but preached as a source of inspiration for the conduct of the ‘merbers:~ These-members. quite--consistently be- lieve in the efficacy of prayer. When they are 68 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES a _seriously ill a large proportion are pleased to re- (/ ceive the pastor at their bedside, and he is fre- | quently sought that as James says (chap. V), “the ] effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avail- \ eth much.” All this is far removed from any defi- nite, organized function of Christian Healing. The / ‘most popular, universal and specifically systema- | tized and incorporated organization for this prac- / ' tice are the disciples of Mrs. Baker G. Eddy. AG More of her we shall learn later. The first accredited organization in the United States to specialize in Christian Healing began its work about 1880 under the leadership of Rev. A. B. Simpson, of Brooklyn. ‘This man, formerly a Presbyterian minister, founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance. His members called them- selves ‘Fourfolders.” They accepted Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King. I shall refer to them again under modern miracles. The main tenet of their beliefs, however, concerned itself with Christ’s speedy return to this world. Later, John Alexander Dowie originated the “Zion Movement.” Propaganda came forth like snowflakes in a storm in a publication he called Leaves of Healing. ‘This movement has since increased and is established in Illinois, radiocasting at W.C.B.D. Under the patronage of certain influential clergy- men of the Church of England, James Moore Hick- son began to hold missions for the revival of Chris- CHRISTIAN HEALING 69 tian Healing about 1900. He continues to travel about the English-speaking world holding missions for Christian Healing. His efforts are largely cen- tered in his winning and spiritual personality and in a fair-sized magazine published by himself called The Healer. Those who subscribe to this are called members of the Healer Prayer Circle Union. Mr. Hickson is a layman of the Anglican commun- ion and his work is vouched for by the many clergy who lay hands on the sick together with him in the revivals which he is holding continually. I have attended three of his missions, spoken with him personally and have been impressed with the con- vincing sincerity and Christlike unselfishness of his merciful errand. Unlike some of those above-men- tioned, this healer will accept no fees or compensa- tion for his services, but says in grateful acknowl- edgment, ‘Thank the Father.” His assertions and affirmations about the possibility of bodily health are most astounding as we may read in his book, The Healing of Christ in His Church. He deals with all the cases in wholesale fashion in the Church gathering, placing the responsibility of their recovery upon their own faith. He makes his strongest appeal for health in the forsaking the life of sin and henceforth walking in the embrace of Christ and harmonizing behavior with Christian idealism. In rehearsing the results of these healers we may confidently affirm that less than one per cent. of 70 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES those who attend the meetings give proof of per- manent cure or removal of their disabilities. Yet we cannot brush the testimonies aside as fraud and deception in all cases, for I am personally ac- quainted with two persons who were benefited. One could hear better. The other was partially paralyzed by electric shock in the street car serv- ice, wore his head in an iron brace, and, after at- tending Hickson’s mission the second time, could turn his head by his own volition and went back to the job he had been forced to relinquish after the accident and remained cured. No testimonies are sought by Mr. Hickson or Rev. Dr. A. J. G. Banks, of the Guild of the Naza- rene in the Protestant Episcopal Church, from those innumerable seekers for health who go away from Missions ungratified. If such were the case these sufferers would be reluctant to state their failure to obtain faith cure. What they testify and what the so-called cured testify would not be worth much anyway in medical jurisprudence with- out diagnosis before and after the prayer or treat- ment. Taking all these failures into consideration, and the absence of a diagnostician’s evidence, there still remains a residuum of success for which we can account only by Christian faith of an organized body of believers, or of faith of individuals aided by prayer. The Society of the Nazarene has between six and seven thousand members loosely federated in parish CHRISTIAN HEALING rf groups or prayer circles throughout the English- speaking world and in the foreign mission field. Their principal efforts are to pray for the sick, to visit them and to study The Nazarene, a monthly magazine issued by the Director. These issues con- tain testimonials of cures authenticated in many instances by eye witnesses. One notable case was that of a bishop in Australia whose wife was to be operated upon for cancer, but upon examination five surgeons attested that she was not subject to this dread malady as they had previously diagnosed. Dr. Banks is getting testimonies of this sort con- stantly, and a month does not pass but that two or three dozen well-authenticated cures are reported to him. This organization is indorsed and has the formal approval of over two-thirds of the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It is noteworthy that where these Guilds of the Society of the Nazarene have been established, the congregations desire to elect a rector who is sym- pathetic with the work, that it may be continued. Furthermore, Dr. Banks finds unprejudiced persons not interested in the Society, but who declare there is a deeper spirituality and harmony in the parishes where these Guilds are meeting. I mention this because I have observed it in St. John’s the Baptist Church, Germantown, Philadelphia, and believe that the results of prayers for the sick deepens the respect and love of the members for one another and for the Church, Therefore, they are perform- 72 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES ing the twofold work of Christian Healing and Christian Service, uniting to drive out evils of the body and of the soul. This organization was founded by Rev. H. B. Wilson in 1914, and incor- porated after his death in 1923 by the present Director, A. J. Gayner Banks, of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. Dr. C. R. Brown, Dean of Yale Divinity School, on page 55 of his Faith and Health, published » in 1924, states that a man of private means in- vestigated one hundred of the cases who claimed to be healed by Mr. Hickson’s laying-on-of-hands. He found that over two-thirds of the patients died in less than two years from the very diseases which physicians had pronounced incurable, but from which the patients themselves professed to have been triumphantly cured by faith. The patients were honorable, no doubt, but they were not capa- ble of making a competent diagnosis. They felt better, so they declared themselves healed. Under the excitement of a crowd, the personal attention of this earnest and prayerful healer, and the exalta- tion of the moment, they testified to cures, and we may presume that, for a time, their general health was what they claimed it to be. My aim is to establish the truth and present facts, and what I have above said is not in any way disparaging the present-day practice of carrying out the Savior’s command: “Into whatsoever city or village ye enter, heal the sick that are therein, and ‘CHRISTIAN HEALING 73 say The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” This He said to the seventy disciples. Faith-cure depends today, as it did in New Testa- ment times, upon the attitude of the mind and the intellectual training of the people of the present as well as the concentration and enthusiasm of their religious motives. I0. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Christian Science, strictly speaking, is not a church, if we define the word to mean an institu- tion to present the entire Gospel to the entire peo- ple. For example, St. Paul did not mean he was making Christian Scientists when in the Acts of the Apostles he proclaims: “The Lord added daily unto the church those who were being saved.” Yet this admirable body of men, women and children numbering, by their own calculation, over one and one-half millions in the United States, and approxi- mately one million in the 1916 United States Re- ligious Census, are performing in their own ways a function of the Church. Before the bar of reason, let us take Christian Science in all fairness and impartiality, judge its merits from exact quotations from Science and Health. If Mrs. Eddy’s statements are contradic- tory, illogical or unscientific, that is something for which she must be accused, not I. I use her own words from her Key to the Scriptures, now read twice on Sundays in every temple of her followers, 74: HEALING IN THE CHURCHES and nothing else zs read or preached but a few irrelevant passages of the Bible. “Man is never sick, for mind is not sick and matter cannot be. If the lungs are disappearing, this is but one of the beliefs of mortal mind” (page 392). ‘The less we know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness” (page 388). ‘‘Physicians examine the pulse, tongue, lungs to discover the condition of matter; when, in fact, all is mind and the body is the substratum of mortal mind to whose higher mandate it must respond” (whatever that may mean) (page 370). “Treatises on anatomy, physiology and health, sustained by what is termed material law, are the promoters of sickness and disease” (page 72). “Christian Science is the pure evangelistic truth. Outside of this truth, all is un- stable error” (page 202). ‘‘Obedience to those so- called laws of health has not checked disease” (page 66). “The dream of disease is like the dreams we have in sleep, wherein everyone recognizes suffer- ing to be wholly in mortal mind” (page 416). “Christian Science heals organic disease as well as functional. It handles the most malignant con- tagion with perfect assurance. One disease is no more real than another.” In a later edict Mrs. Eddy proclaims to her healers: “For the present C. S. are counseled to obey the law in regard to contagious diseases.” This statement gives away her whole case in ad- mitting there are contagious diseases in existence. CHRISTIAN HEALING 75 In her textbook she denies the reality of all disease, explaining it is ‘an illusion of mortal mind.” Neither the founder nor most of the followers have been competent to diagnose contagious diseases. See what atrocious sins, therefore, can be and are committed in the name of science and Chris- tianity. All laws for public health and preventive medicine, spread and diffusion of epidemics, in- cipient, malignant and infectious diseases are per- mitted to slay families and communities unchecked. The most tender sentiments of affection, care of loved ones, mutual helpfulness and plain knowledge of facts, and the immediate remedies to prevent death and pain are, with utter disregard to moral conduct, swept aside with no heed to Christian ethics. ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens and so ful- fill the law of Christ.” The only relation between Christian Science and Christianity is the teaching of faith-cure in the churches of Christian Scientists. If they believe in immortality, forgiveness of sins, sacraments, the Kingdom of God, no emphasis is placed upon these teachings of the Gospel. The founder—this oft- married and flighty character of greed, arrogance (shall we say imposture?)—-professes equality of character and power with Jesus Christ. My au- thority for such a statement is Frederick W. Pea- body’s The Religio-Medical Masquerade. Mr. Peabody, of the Massachusetts Bar, has openly challenged the Mother Church to contradict, or sue 76 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES for libel, some other assertions he makes concern- ing the practices and policies of the dominant cor- poration for the propaganda of Mrs. Eddy’s doc- trines. In many cases he has won suits against them when retaining certain persons whom the courts decided were treated in anything but a Christlike manner. After a thorough investigation of every edition of Science and Health (first pub- lished in 1875), and every issue of The Christian Science Journal, Mr. Peabody comes to this con- clusion: “Christian Science is a deliberate fraud foisted upon mankind by Mrs. Eddy in the name of religion, for the mere purpose of extorting money from. credulous people.” The fact that organized Christian Science has never attempted to sue Mr. Peabody for the state- ments he makes is fair proof they have no case to withstand what, in the event of their having one, would be most criminal libel. The harm to innocent, suffering children in the name of science is alone sufficient to condemn this most wicked and avaricious fraud the modern world has known. Christian Science is not religion; it is not medicine; it is the greatest hodge-podge of clap- trap jargon in pseudo-psychological terms, mixed with pious humbug, ever written outside of fairy books for a bogus healing system, so their patients inform my family physician. In this discussion, I desire to be absolved from having any personal feeling for or against Mrs. CHRISTIAN HEALING 77 Eddy which would warp my judgment. I refrain, on purpose, from lowering the discussion to an argumentum ad hominem (argument according to men). For we know in logic our likes and dislikes, or the personalities which put forth and expound principles, do not invalidate their logic by odious reference to their wicked lives. Such is the case here. On the other hand, Christian Science has done great good to society. It has directed much of the flotsam and jetsam of our Church membership to an intensive study of the Scriptures. It has cured many imaginary ills. Physicians say that one-third to one-half of their office practice consists of such. It has elevated the tone of thought, of conversation, of outlook on life of many who have never had any other optimistic view of life presented to them. Thus far the Christian Scientists have never re- sponded to the challenge to produce one evidence of a scientifically diagnosed case which has been cured. One of our most popular monthlies (The Cosmopolitan) published an article by an English- man who professed to be cured of fatty degenera- tion of the heart. The issue sold like wildfire. Within ninety days of publication this author died of fatty degeneration of the heart, according to the post mortem examination. Christian Science, aside from such false testimonies, undoubtedly has to its credit cures of functional disorders. It has in- creased the interest of a million people in the gen- 78 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES eral reading of the Bible, and thereby has held up the readers to ideals and moral standards to which they were indifferent or ignorant before seeking health by a short-cut. The preposterous affirmations in Science and Health seem to blind the Eddyites to all sense of humor. Mrs. Eddy was quite oblivious to all use of common sense, and, notably, of a redeeming sense of humor. That the Temples should adver- tise healers; and their taking fees for absent treat- ment is quite ridiculous when they profess to be following Him who said: “Heal the sick—freely ye have received, freely give.” A Christian Science healer has a lucrative position, ordinarily; no clinics are provided for the poor. In fact, poverty is non- existent so far as they wish to deal with it, merely an error of mortal mind, like lockjaw or other symp- toms of blood poisoning. If we examine Christian Science, therefore, as any serious attempt to combat sin, we find that their interests with the unpleasant things of life are nil. For they do not exist. How could one be of a com- bative temperament with a foe who is made of the stuff that dreams are made of? On this account we discover the character of the faces of those entering or leaving one of these Temples; many moral failures, defeated characters who have had such a hard time with sin that to get rid of it they gladly accept a doctrine that it does not exist. Hence the constrained, forced smile, fixed phrases CHRISTIAN HEALING 79 and aloofness of these converts develop from try- ing to live in an unreal world. Put them in a cold shower, in the dentist’s chair, out in the orchards with the bees, in the laboratory under an electric shock, freezing weather and frost-bitten hands, or other painful realities of nature. My observation reveals to me that they experience all the realities of this world that others of us do. Deny it how they will, they do suffer with disease. Otherwise how is it Mrs. Eddy ever died? They admit she died, and all of them will eventually follow her to that bourne from whence no traveler returns. The six standard publications of the Mother Church are spreading light with darkness, queer testimonies, and are as follows: Christian Science Journal (monthly); Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons; Christian Science Sentinel (month- ly); Christian Science Der Herold (monthly); Christian Science Le Herant (monthly); Christian Science Monitor (daily). Certainly these diffuse many choice ideas throughout the world. On the front page of each issue we read that Mrs. M. B. G. P. Eddy was the discoverer of Christian Science. Her writings say this was by direct revelation from God. As a mat- ter of fact, a Dr. P. H. Quimby, in Portland, Maine, gave her the idea of mental healing in 1862. Lyman Powell quotes from Quimby the following phrases: “Science of Health. Matter has no intelligence. Matter is an error. Understanding is God. All 80 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES sciences are part of God. Error is sickness; truth is health. Christian Science.’’ Thus the very name of Mrs. Eddy’s cult is a copy of that which she had received from this obscure physician. Moreover, Christian Healers and practitioners whose names are published and advertised in The Journal, if at all well read, cannot but know the founder was one of the biggest imitators in the nineteenth century, as well as one to supply a theme of keen merriment to such a humorist as Mark Twain. From first to last, these papers among their news and reviews have contained testimonials. The Journal, for in- stance, of February, 1925, says: “Records of inves- tigation are kept in the publishing office.” If they had one bona fide evidence of a reputable citizen, it would be worth more than all their pages of un- signed articles. Some are signed, however. The grammar, symp- toms, diagnosis and cure is therein revealed to be the testimony of persons who have no knowledge of human nature. One patient describes ills which she said existed simultaneously in a child which were utterly impossible for the person to have and live. Another case of scarlet fever and diphtheria conjointly was cured in a few hours. Now those of us who are familiar with scarlet fever know how apparent the speedy cures often are. This I wit- nessed daily in Val de Grace Hospital in Paris in the great Allied Concentration Ward for this mal- ady. Yet what gross ignorance is perpetrated by | CHRISTIAN HEALING 81 The Christian Science Journal by insinuating the danger to the community of contagion had passed, when we know it lasts not less than twenty-one days. I could go on to mention hundreds of worse dangers propagated by these periodicals which are endangering public health. If one asks what is Christian Science doing in the way of Christ to eradicate sin, to combat its evil, the overwhelming evidence is that they do all they can to advance the cause of sin and death; but, not believing there is such a thing as sin, of course they free themselves from this charge of increasing and encouraging that which they bla- tantly say does not exist in the above publications. II, EMMANUEL MOVEMENT Dr. Elwood Worcester, a former rector of St. Stephen’s Church, Philadelphia, of which the cele- brated nerve specialist, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, was a member and close friend of the minister, opened Health Classes in his Church in Boston about 1905. These were to instruct the poor and others in mat- ters of personal and social and mental hygiene. Dr. Samuel McComb, also a well-trained psychol- ogist, was assistant to the rector and cooperated in this movement to alleviate certain conditions, espe- cially those who were suffering with tuberculosis ) and were poor, too poor to go to Arizona or local / sanitariums. The people were taught helpful ways ({ 82 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES of caring for their health. Associated with these clergymen were Dr. Richard Cabot, Dr. Barker, of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Putnam and other celebrated specialists. Topics discussed were such as these: Worry; Anger; Habit; Suggestion; Insomnia; Nervousness; Peace in the Home; What the Will Can Do; What Prayer Can Do; and similar themes. Dr. Misia met these Ra trerita personally after they had been examined by reputable physicians. Dr. Cabot made a careful investigation of results of these interviews after the first year. Among one hundred and seventy-eight cases, twenty of neuras- thenia were reported much improved, sixteen sightly improved, seventeen not at all improved. Among alcoholics, eight cases out of twenty-two were improved. One-fourth of cases of fears, obsessions, hysteria were improved. Slight im- provement was reported among drug addicts. These figures are available in Dr. Worcester’s book, Religion and Medicine. In the past two decades thousands have flocked to Emmanuel Church, Boston. That this move- ment has been a victory over sin through the in- creased health and vigor of the body by aid of prayer-faith and common-sense use of medical ad- vice is apparent. Dr. Charles R. Brown, in his account in Faith and Health, says: “Many sad, discouraged men and women were lifted into new hope and enabled to take up the old life again with a better prospect of victory.” They had a new CHRISTIAN HEALING 83 spiritual outlook. Some who were meditating suicide, through the loss of all interest in life, were restrained and put in the way of living honorable and useful lives. This movement has been repeated sporadically in various churches, chiefly among the Episcopalians, since its inception. But few have the capacity or the training or the codperation of the medical profession to carry on such successful clinics and classes as those of Emmanuel Church. Dr. Loring Batten was the most successful follower at St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie in New York City, and his successor, Dr. Guthrie, does a little along this line. But chiefly it is a charity to obtain free medical examination or cheaper treatment of those who need spiritual and medical attention. A few amateurs among the clergy have endeavored to fill their pews with prospects of reaching the masses by this means, but the movement has practically reverted to the place where it began. It has intro- duced to clergy and laity a taste for such reading as Ralph Waldo Trine’s In Tune With the Infinite, Annie P. Call’s Power Through Repose, and Charles B. Patterson’s The Will to Be Well, to show what can be gained for spiritual peace after the spiritual combat and physical efficiency. 12. COUE, PREACHING, AND THE NANCY SCHOOL Modern preaching conveys to congregations much of the method of auto-suggestion. Mental 84 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES and spiritual forces are thus employed as they have been for years by Liebault and Bernheim and of late by Charles Baudoin and Emile Coué. Coué insisted, while in Boston, Philadelphia and else- where in America, in the verbatim lectures which it has been my privilege to read, that he is not a healer, and had never healed anybody. It was a personal benefit to me to pay one visit to his clinic in the delightful town of Nancy in 1918, while in France on a special mission of the First Army Replacement Battalion. The results to be achieved would be due to the realization of each person’s own thought. He comes to call the latent powers of imagination to be the instrument of their well-being. “You have been sowing bad seed in your Unconscious.” His peremptory personality, his cheery optimism over the absurdity of chronic ills depressing persons needlessly, and patients are led to laugh at their former submission. He brought a merry heart which for many was better than medicine. His is the gospel of “Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice.” He emphasizes the ever vigilant control of the un- conscious mind—“as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” said the Savior. Think you are better and you will become better. “Day by day in every way I am getting better and better,” repeated ten times every night before falling asleep and just upon waking, is more productive to health and morals than morbid introspection. He reéducates CHRISTIAN HEALING 85 the imagination, giving substance to things hoped for, assuring evidence for things as yet unseen. Bowdin’s book shows us how pain is removed by repeating rapidly and decidedly: “It is passing, it is passing, it is passing, it is going, going, gone.” So it goes if not rooted in some serious physiological disturbance or lesion. This will give a mind troubled in other respects perfect peace, thus elimi- nating the temptations to live in sin. One criticism made of Coué is that his own gentle spirit, which thinketh no evil, his own simplicity of life and integrity, gives no adequate recognition of the fact that conditions of sin have a close rela- tion and result in disease. [Ill temper, hatred, wrong ambitions, cross purposes, immoral habits account for many ills, as we know. But this criti- cism, although valid, is a point the clergy make use of in their preaching to illustrate the fact that a mind and soul which is bent upen becoming better and better in the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ thinketh no evil. Although Coué and the Nancy School emphasize faith, they ignore it from its religious aspects. Here the clergy endeavor to convince us in their sermons in these days that auto-suggestion and faith linked up with the eternal Son of God, with Jesus and the power of His resurrection, gain a fellowship and advantage in the cooperation with the source of all health and goodness. In his imagi- nation the evildoer and the bodily sufferer, through 86 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES his sacred faith, may run and not be weary, walk and not be faint. From the sermons published in our Church periodicals, what we hear by radio and elsewhere, we see the strong effect and appeal to the religious imagination and auto-suggestion. 13. SUGGESTIVE THERAPEUTICS The therapeutic value of Christianity is acknowl- edged by leaders in the science of medicine and the art of surgery. It is the privilege and custom of those engaged in the ministry of healing among the Churches to employ whatever methods and persons obtainable to assist in the scientific processes of reputable physicians to alleviate sickness and to promote character. In this connection suggestion is of incalculable worth. Suggestion is the subconscious realization of an idea. It is the putting into operation of the ideo- reflex power which exists in the dominant thought of the influence of Jesus Christ. Suggestion is in- tensified and made effective according to the co- efficient of the emotional factors involved. Reli- gion creates this emotion and sustains it. Every idea tends to undergo transformation into reality. Wholesome and helpful ideas centered about Christ subconsciously transform themselves into corre- sponding realities if the attention and emotion are sufficient to bring them above the subliminal con- sciousness into moral actions. Purely physical CHRISTIAN HEALING 87 actions do not necessarily enter the focus of con- sciousness. When an idea is attended by a strong emotion, there is more likelihood that this idea will be suggestively accomplished. It is the office of the ministry of healing to attach the desires and ideas of health to the deep-seated and intense emotions of our Christian consciousness. There is a law of suggestive therapeutics known as that of reversed effort. A workable suggestion, and one that is accepted and believed in by the patient, cannot be counteracted but is intensified by conscious wishes. Auto-suggestion is a stimulus to moral energy. What was a wish becomes, through ‘the energence of the subconscious, an indomitable will. There- fore, good wishes transpose themselves into actions and initiate practices without the effort of will power upon the part of the patient. An incredible amount of work can be done by those who formerly suffered from lassitudé or the sin of laziness. Sin- ful ‘moods of despondency, low spirits, gloom and depressing vagaries are swept away by plunging oneself into a condition of auto-hypnosis. The fact that faith has cured one of physical ills educates the mind to the knowledge of the value of auto- suggestion in its relation to those practices which are harmful and yet under subconscious control. Suggestion empowers us_ to control something within in our physical and mental organisms inde- pendent | of the will. It is the regulator of our 88 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES internal mechanism upon which our conscious actions depend. Upon it rests the nexus of causa- | tion. Medicine and_auto- suggestion are forces complementary to one another, » one acting from without, the other from within. Hence auto-sug- gestion comes under the new Nancy School as a factor in the reéducation of the will rather than a panacea for the physician’s art. One who acquires facility with auto-suggestion is no longer nature’s slave. Instead he is one who by use of ideoreflex has become master of his will. Such an one is prepared to combat sin and the effects of sin upon the body and the mind and progress in personality employing all the spiritual aids of religion. To this law there is one exception. No sugges- tion, nor hypnosis, can compel a person to willingly perform an immoral act contrary to his desires. To illustrate this, recall your first experience on a pair of skates. You suggested to yourself you were going to run into a tree, and though there may have been a wide area to pass it, sure enough, your sub- conscious mind steers you, with the precision of a pugilist, to hit that tree. When the end or aim has been suggested, the undermind finds a method of control of our nervous, physiological and muscular behavior r adequate to carry out the suggestion. As the poet might have said—there is a subconscious which shapes our end, rough hew it how we will. It is the function of the Church, through its min- istry of healing, to direct this unconscious or sub- CHRISTIAN HEALING 89 conscious activity both before and after cures are made. Because cures are effected, due to faith in a physician or minister or healer, it logically follows that even greater emotional states can be aroused by those persons who have effected a cure. Even a lion will respect and apparently love the keeper who has removed a thorn from its paw. Likewise faith, which heals in proportion as it becomes an emotional state, will cause the brutishness of our natures to be governed by the higher motives of religion and mutual service. I4. MODERN MIRACLES Jesus Christ is a practicing physician today. His office is in every Church which uses His pre- scription of Christian Faith. A new fad for health has swept over the land, such as is typified by the publication of such magazines as Physical Culture and other publications, the establishment of the Life Extension Institute and the advertising of our leading insurance companies. The Churches have, in these days, been challenged as to what they can do to promote health. Glance over the topics ad- vertised in the Saturday religious page of the daily papers and you find approximately one-fourth of the sermon-titles treat of physical well-being. Such strong Episcopal Churches as Trinity and Grace, New York City, advertise the power of Christ to heal. The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1922, according to Daggett’s 90 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES Are There Modern Miracles?, indorsed the efficacy of prayer as an instrument in performance of miracles. A definition of a miracle which I would propose is an occurrence or manifestation of divine law and action for ethical ends according to observations not at present explainable. When Rev. H. B. Wilson was rector of Holy Cross, in Brooklyn, he frequently visited patients in the hospital next door to his home. He told them of Bible truths. They improved astonishingly. It amazed the surgeons, who could not account for these modern and rapid recoveries otherwise than through the means of Mr. Wilson’s prayers. In 1909 he organized the Society of the Nazarene, which was incorporated in 1924 under Rev. Dr. A. J. G. Banks, and in 1925 located at Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. From Nova Scotia to Los Angeles, from Oregon to Florida, Guilds to pray for recovery of the sick meet week by week. All of these report improvements in the health of a small proportion of their members. But these testimonies are valid, authenticated by eyewit- nesses of good standing in their several communi- ties. Mr. Wilson himself said in 1923: “Eighteen years ago I had a valvular heart lesion so serious that a consultation of physicians had decided I could not live a year. Laying aside all these pre- scriptions, I was healed wholly and completely by prayer.” On file in Dr. Banks’ office are heaps of CHRISTIAN HEALING 91 testimonials of cures from both functional and organic diseases. These may be examined by who- soever will. The Christian and Missionary Alliance, founded by Rev. A. B. Simpson, an ex-Presbyterian minis- ter, in 1898, which has branches in three hundred and fifty Churches in the United States, reports many cures and consequent conversions every year. _ Their method, primarily, is through evangelistic preaching. When the Rt. Rev. William T. Manning, Bishop of New York, in 1919 vouched for James Moore Hickson, it made many conservative Christians open their eyes, as well as their Bibles, to learn that the laying-on-of-hands has Scriptural authen- ticity. The Bishop Coadjutor of Massachusetts gives this testimony as the result of Mr. Hickson’s visit to Grace Church, New York: ‘There have been many cases of spiritual growth of the indi- vidual through the Guild of the Nazarene. We know today that the spiritual man and the physical man are so interrelated that what affects the soul must also register its effect on the body. Physical healing is, as it were, a sequel of the spiritual heal- ing.” The clergy of Grace Church attest this heal- ing, but remark that they are very rarely instan- taneous. One of the clergy, Rev. J. W. Sutton, cooperating with Mr. Hickson, referring to faith- cures, says: “Christian Healing is one of the normal activities of the Church for which it is commissioned 92 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES today, as it was over nineteen hundred years ago. Miracles are not only possible today, but they are the most natural things in the world. We have seen them here at Trinity, where the cures that have been witnessed leave no room for doubt of the heal- ing power for both organic and functional disease.” He possesses testimonials over physicians’ own signatures. Rev. William T. Walsh, of St. Luke’s, New York, says of his Thursday meetings: “Some- one is blessed with healing every week.” If one desires to accumulate evidence of modern miracles with their relation to character formation and spiritual uplift, he would do well to take in hand the recent book, Heal the Sick, written by Mr. J. M. Hickson, and published by Methuen and Company, of London, in 1925. This is a compila- tion of results from the Healing Evangelist’s travels over the civilized world. Most of the authority for these statements are penned by others than the author, which gives witness from various types of mind. In this book Mr. Hickson acknowledges himself to be a healer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. These indorsements will convince the most agnostic critic that something inexplain- able happens in the health and living of those who have been cured. The reaction to these missions is a deeper earnestness on the part of the pa- rishioners and a renewed loyalty and attendance upon the Church. Bishops, clergy and laity partic- ipating in these missions attest the curative effects CHRISTIAN HEALING 93 and improvements. The author reminds us (page 267)—Christian Healing rightly understood is sacramental, that is, an extension and application of the incarnate life of Christ through the member of His Body (I Cor. 2:15). Mr. Hickson’s most remarkable results were in Australia and America. Reprints of letters of authorization from bishops and prelates of the Church of England are included in this book. Another evangelist in this field is Rev. F. F. Bosworth, an itinerant evangelist. Three and four thousand usually attend his nightly tent meetings. In one meeting in Brooklyn eight hundred and two testified they had been helped physically and morally by prayer. Although this is of no scientific value, yet it is unlikely to presume that nearly a thousand persons were misled or mistaken at one time. Mayor E. V. Babcock, of Pittsburgh, testi- fies to the fact that John Sproul, a tubercular patient who attended a revival meeting October 15, 1921, was undeniably cured and able to resume his employment after unsuccessful years of agony in the best sanitariums. Likewise Madam Lambert, of Detroit, a well-known opera singer, did not have to undergo a major operation. Her physician, whose name I purposely withhold, writes: “I can find no trace of your former trouble.” Both of these persons are answering requests for prayers for the sick and have as large a visiting list as many physicians. Their lives have been given and con- 94 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES secrated to God unselfishly for the good of others, whereas they had no particular concern about the sin in others’ lives before these miracles happened. They have gone on the frontier of Christ’s army to combat sin. So also has Miss Mattie Perry, for- merly of the Bible Institute, Elhanan, New Hamp- shire; Warren Collens, a pianist of Fort Worth, Texas; and Raymond T. Rithey, of Houston, Texas, who have entered the crusade for souls grateful to God for Christian healing, while Rev. P. C. Nelson left Conley Baptist Church, Detroit, to enter the work of Christian healing as the con- sequence of his own experience with a severe injury to his knee. I have attended Aimee Semple McPherson’s re- vivals. Recently she erected a $100,000 temple in Los Angeles to carry on her work. Referring to~ the spiritual benefits of Miss McPherson’s enter- prise, Rev. Matthew Holderby, of Chicago, says, after actual miracles he has witnessed: “In the presence of the manifest evidence of the Great Physician’s healing power we give her our unquali- fied indorsement.” This minister says he experi- enced personal benefits from the services. The following assurance of modern miracles comes from Rev. W. I. Gates and Rev. Dr. Bitler: ‘Christian Healing is at the doors of the Methodist Church today, and we’ve got to admit it.””,» The McKendree Methodist Church, in Washington, D. C., maintains a weekly healing service. The pastor, Rev. C. A. CHRISTIAN HEALING 95 Shreve, says: ‘We have witnessed the healing of a great many people. Incidentally, we have added seven hundred to our Church membership.” I have equally verified evidence from Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and city after city, where Christian Healing is not merely vouched for but is a custom. How these modern miracles are taking place and affecting the lives and characters of so many people, we do not know. Coué says it is through the imagi- nation, Hickson through the sacraments, Freud through the unconscious mind and mental com- plexes, Dr. Banks through suggestive therapeutics and the companionship of Jesus Christ. Dr. R. S. Cabot, of the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, says: “It is possible that the clue to the action of prayer will be found in the emotions. Beneficent emotions, such as faith and love, may act chemically to produce health.” Bishop Charles H. Brent, in The Mount of Vision, says: ‘‘Jesus Christ heals by stimulating spiritual faculties to appropriate health.” Rev. F. Cole Sherman resigned from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron, Ohio, to direct the Amer- ican Guild of Health at Cleveland, and he has hun- dreds of affidavits from physicians of recognized standing which testify to the healing power of faith and the miracles otherwise unaccounted for by medical science. Moreover, the President of the Guild is, himself, a tuberculosis-cure through prayer, and he possesses the X-ray plates to prove 96 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES it. The American Guild of Health organized to restore and reénforce to fuller expression the min- istry of healing as an inherent part of the pastoral office of the Church. It is completely loyal to scientific principles and methods, has an imposing array of dignitaries of the Episcopal Church on its Advisory Council, of which Rt. Rev. T. J. Reese, D.D., is Chairman. A monthly magazine appears from their office under the name of Applied Religion. Besides those groups and organizations already mentioned, the only other incorporated bodies doing this work at the present time under the aus- pices of orthodox Churches are The English Guild of Health, The Canadian Guild of Health in Christ Jesus, The Society of the Divine Compassion, in England, The English Church Mystical Union. Another growing organization (purely evangelistic) is the Echo Park Evangelical Association, Inc., which is Miss McPherson’s popular society. This is stronger in the far western states. Their monthly magazine is titled The Bridal Call Foursquare. All of these societies vouch for the occurrence of modern miracles through the ministry of healing. III HEALING IN ITS SPIRITUAL ASPECTS I. COMBATING SIN Y own experience with Healing Missions demonstrates that those whose condition has been improved by faith and prayers are living more normal and moral lives than they were before they presented themselves at the altar for healing. I have had these persons under close observation for five years before and after the Mis- sions were held in my parish. Before the first Mission was held by the Rev. H. St. Clair Hath- away, of the Pro-cathedral, Phila., the parishion- ers were a most unhappy and quarrelsome lot of people, constantly at strife among themselves and about to be sold out by'the sheriff. Their minister had been not only poorly rewarded, but unpaid for three months, and their respect for him and for one another was most negligible. Then came the curing Christ into our midst. The result is we call our- selves very truthfully, and our slogan is unchal- lenged, when we say in a paper of over five hundred thousand circulation, we are “The Most Friendly Church In Town.” | Only a very few persons were healed, or re- 97 98 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES ported that they were benefited by prayer. To be exact, there were twenty-one out of two thousand and more who attended the services. I will not say any but two of these were actually cured. But I do know of two others, who were at the point of death and were cases proclaimed utterly hopeless by the family physicians, and would pass away surely, as they said, within a week, who are still liv- ing after four years and do their customary day’s work. In both instances the patients at the time were over seventy years old. I will say that, in my opinion, the health of all these twenty-one was im- proved. When I asked them to bring me a cer- tificate of a doctor to prove their diagnosis, they replied there was no use spending the money for, that they could see, and others about us could see they were better. And so they were. A striking case in Rev. Mr. Hathaway’s ministry is the cure of lockjaw, and the corroboration of doctors and nurses who had given up the case as too far gone for recovery in the Norristown, Pennsylvania, Hospital. In the second Healing Mission held by Rev. A. J. G. Banks, Director of the Society of the Naza- rene, there were reported eleven cures out of the fifteen hundred persons attending. One of the more noteworthy of these is a man whom I know who lost the power of speech through an explosion on a railroad in Virginia. It was a typical shell-shock case. On the fourth night of the Mission over SPIRITUAL ASPECTS . 99 three hundred people heard that man testify very audibly of his cure in open meeting. The other cases included impaired hearing, neuritis, colds, dipsomania, evil habits and minor ailments. My experience not only with those who reported they were healed but with the entire body of people who attended these services is that the claim of Christ and His power, demonstrated before their very eyes, has intensified the spiritual life of the people to a hitherto impossible degree. Their private con- duct and relations to one another, so far as I am able to learn after diligent research and inquiry from others, has established the fact of the power of Christ to combat sin through the revival of the gift of healing in this Church, of which I am proud to be in charge. The behavior of our people has not caused the regret of any of our parents or neighbors, nor chagrin on the part of any child since these Mis- sions aroused these people to combat sin within themselves. By that I do not mean to imply that sin has vanished. We are not Holy Rollers nor Universalists, but old-fashioned Episcopalians come to life. We can recognize sin when we see it, and also know none are free from it. But the combat is on as it never was before the power of Christ to heal took possession of the imagination of our people. One of the persons who was cured of some trifling ailment reported that he was also cured of a five-year grouch. What a testimony that is for 100 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES the combat against sin and salvation from evil and the renewal of life in Christ Jesus as Savior. For what is a grouch, as he expresses it, other than too much of self, a bigoted notion of what one ought to have instead of the meek and loving assertive con- sideration for others. That Christian Healing promotes virtue I am certain from personal observation. The first flower to rise from the seed of healing is gratitude. This ‘virtue has a reflexive influence upon the sym- pathetic nervous system. It engenders all the more fully a sense of feeling well. It tends to make the former sufferer overlook the trivial, to see the spiritual values of the infinite and eternal love of Christ and to live in the atmosphere of worship and worthiness for the benefits received. This is not conjecture or theory, but the realities clearly demonstrable on the annual report of this parish and in the parochial activities of the Guilds, notably that of the consecrated efforts of the Wednesday Evening Health Class. “Love never faileth” is true of those who have experienced _faith-cure under my own observation. By that I mean there grows a deeper loyalty for_ the Christ ; and for His Church, a more generous [/ “support of the ministry (one of those healed was influenced ‘thereby. to enter * the m ministry), and of | Christian work in general, a spirit and reality of mutual helpfulness, a marked “enjoyment for re- ligious services, and I should say their restored SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 101 health never fails to bring those benefited to a most sincere reverence for the sacraments of the Church and in their spiritual and moral preparation for them. Another effect_of the ministry of healing in the Church i is that it holds up before the congregations _ the reality of sin. It presents the fact that there is (as Scupoli calls his book) The Spiritual Combat. Mr. James Moore Hickson well says: “A living church is one in which the living Christ lives and walks, doing through its members what He did in the days of His flesh. It must therefore be a healing Church as well as a soul-saving Church. Spiritual healing rightly understood is sacramental. It is the extension through the members of His mystical body of His own incarnate life.” The sacramental phase of religion, I have noticed, is revalued by those whom Christ’s healing power has restored. They more fully appreciate the spirit of God in all things, hence the spirit of evil is over- come and cast out as these persons resort more and more to prayer and Christian faith. Much sin is committed through ignorance of God’s laws or indifference to them. But the Min- istry of Healing exacts a heart-searching on the part of every seeker for knowledge for ‘‘the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.” Anyone who wishes to know more about Christian Healing than he can discover in the pages of the Bible will be led even- tually through prayer to the author of that book, 102 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES that he may discern the moral import of the Min- istry of Healing. For example, St. Paul says to the Corinthians: ‘The psychical (psykikos) man re- ceiveth not the things of the spirit of God.” The ministry of healing inculcates an altruistic impulse which goes further than merely helping the sick. The Church, other than a few pseudo- Christian cults, accepts no fees and would not bene- fit by another’s misfortune. This heightens the regard of sufferers for the nobler and ideal teach- ings of the religious element of the community. So soon as the Christian leaders accept pay for prayer they have their cause and teaching that “God so loved the world,” John 3:16, put to open criticism for insincerity. The Christian looks for his reward ultimately, if he looks for it at all, in such words as these: “I was sick and ye visited me.” That will be the gracious reward of the Master when He sets the worthy on His right hand to enter into the joy of their Lord. Christian Healing combats sin by awaking the spiritual consciousness. We learn in I Thess. 2:13, that the word of God effectually works in them that believe. Our spiritual consciousness perceives with keener vision the proportions of divine truth and the immanence of God in all things. It arouses the hope that he who hath begun a good work in us will perform it unto the end, and it equips every healed person with a reason for this hope (I Peter Sire), SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 103 Perhaps I should be more specific and treat of the combat against specific sins. But standard works of theology inform us that sin, no matter what form it takes, is always the same. As arsenic is bad for the system, or lead or some other poison is detected by its malevolent symptoms, so sin is the same evil element cropping out in the weaker characteristics of our nature. Faith-cures, in so far as they are effective, give a cumulative value to trust in God. Now the greater trust there is in God, the less prone is the believer to trust in his own evil impulses. Our Lord lived a life of faith. St. Paul says: “TI live by the faith in the Son of God.” This deepens one’s responsibility to a life of integrity and self- control. Moral responsibility is the Christian’s response to God’s ability. This ability is repeat- edly expressed in prophecy, and last ofall in the Prophet of Nazareth. Faith, and especially that which has been tested and proven, settles one in one’s convictions. Now a person who has positive convictions may err, of course, but he is not vacil- lating in all manner of sin, first hot, then cold, as the person who has no decided principles by which to govern his actions. The overmastering love for Christ created and maintained by faith, which has worked miracles of healing, will cause a man to contend against every barrier of sin. This is why I insist faith is a faculty of the affection. True faith strives to accomplish more than God 104 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES alone does. For example, Job, in chapter 23, verse 12, says: “I have esteemed the words of his mouth ‘more than my necessary food.” Again, we may repeat those familiar words of his in the thirteenth chapter: ‘“‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” I said true faith strives; it perseveres. Rooted and grounded in the love for God, it never fears or asks doubting questions, nor halts lazily by the wayside. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (I John 5:4). Compare the faith- ful perseverance of Abraham marching onward, as alluded to in the twenty-third verse of James, sec- ond chapter. One who sincerely looks up to God for health and strength and moral victory, as did Abraham, is not afflicted nor downtrodden by that deadly sin of self-pity. Abraham was theocentric. Lot was self-centered. St. Paul refers to trium- phant faith, speaking of Abraham, who considered not the limitations of nature, because God was his goal and quest, but staggered on out of unbelief, became strong in faith and his character thereby was a glory to God, as we might freely render (Romans 15:13). By an unqualified surrender to God we become capable of assuming all the con- quering capacities of God’s promises. All things become possible to us who trust to God for guid- ance (Mark 9:23). If we hesitate to venture against the onslaught of sin or disease, we are by that very hesitancy betraying to God our lack of trust. The Christian realizes no act of faith is SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 105 lost before the presence of God. With this thought in mind, one is drawn to a profound comprehension of divine immanence. Every moment will have its sacred realization that God is able to do exceed- ing abundantly above all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). Furthermore, the joy resulting from faith expe- rienced in the ministry of healing does much to save one from sin. In my life as prison chaplain in the American Expeditionary Force, I was con- stantly impressed with the morose dispositions of those who were haled before the courts. The evil- doer not infrequently is of a sullen temperament. The bright, cheery comrade is seldom malicious. A faith making life cheerful has the staying power to resist the conquest of Satan if strengthened with prayer. He who said, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” can transform the gloomy outlook and the dark day into one of radiant re- sponse to his divine call: ‘Follow thou me.” As St. James says (1:2-4), we shall count it all joy to fall into ‘divers temptations, because we have the will to win and the imagination to see the beauty of a pure, unspotted life. Human nature unaided may be unable to go forward into the dark night singing (Job 35:10; Acts 16:25), but Christian character, touched by the spirit and curing hand of Christ, is linked to Him who has given us His Spirit, and shall abide with us forever. 106 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 2. CONVERSION James, Starbuck and Harold Begbie give us cases and statistics of the transformed lives through religious conversion. The whole soul is turned to God. Life becomes theocentric rather than selfish or egocentric. Therefore, one who loves the Christ with heart and mind and soul, and enters His serv- ice and makes our Lord’s principles the essentials for conduct, acknowledges that it is God’s will for mankind to become pure in heart and intention, clear in mind, strong in religious motive, meek and content in spirit, poised in judgment, happy in cir- cumstances, abounding in vitality. Such is the ef- fect of conversion to Jesus Christ where we see it thoroughly accomplished. He in whom we live and have our being, and is the source of healing and calm of the universe, and controls the stars and our lives in the palm of His hand, and is manifest in Jesus Christ in chiefly showing pardon, pity and new life to souls, is not the One who sends disease. By means of some disobedience to natural law, conscious or uncon- scious, ill health enters our system. One who serves the Devil, or the worst that is in him, is never healthy. _. Conversion, whole-hearted belief in Jesus Christ, must take place before Christian Healing can be- come effective. We fully appreciate the fact that charlatans, mental healers, potions, drugs and mi SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 107 charms have their accredited cures. This is not by means, however, of the touchstone of the Holy Spirit of God. In Christian Healing as an effect of conversion Christ reaches in for the far greater thing, the healing of the spirit, the source of life-giving ener- gies. In no instance in the New Testament did a miracle of healing happen unless the patient be- lieved Jesus Christ to be the Son of God with power. When this truth is learned healing com- mences, although it seldom ends there. It goes on through a disciplinary process of suffering and pa- tience, proving and provoking that very faith which started the good work. The unconverted are healed by devils, as are also those who have no love or trust in the Savior. The condition for Christ’s healing rests upon the same requirements as salva- tion of the soul. In fact, healing of the body is the result of healing of the soul and the driving out of sin. One living in sin cannot, and does not, experience healing through the power of Christ. Except ye become converted ye cannot be saved nor healed with the ministry of Christian Healing. Accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior and lover of our souls, we may approach Him in faith for what- ever we need. 3. DISEASE A SOURCE OF SIN There is no fundamental antagonism between natural and spiritual law. Both are laws of nature. 108 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES This comprehends all nature and nature’s God. Actions of the mind and soul are subject to natural law just as much as the swinging of the stars or _ the tides. Where one law is resisted, or disobeyed, other processes related to this law are counteracted and thrown out of place. For example, if a train is scheduled by law or order to run on a track at a certain time and does not do so, other engineers who run their locomotives, passengers, roadside deliveries and countless individuals are forced to abandon their schedule and routine. Not infre- quently serious damage is done by this engineer breaking the law, not only to himself and his own train and crew, but to others far remote from the travelers by the loss of life, property and employ- ment. Thus natural law disobeyed interferes with and affects many functions operated by spiritual law. Chemical and biological laws and processes upset and obstruct the functions of spiritual as well as mental phenomena. Disease, whether functional or organic, is in some instances a source of spiritual maladjustment. We combat evil spiritual effects by removing phys- ical and mental disease. Let us take} as an instance, the law of sympathy. That which is spiritual in us dictates we should care for those of tender years and for the aged and infirm. A diseased or unde- veloped, un-Christian and uncivilized mind de- plores the expense of energy and waste in prolong- SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 109 ing the days of those unable to support or care for themselves. Let us contrast this c biological aspect of the case with our spiritual heritage in the Church. Why is it So many men, women and dollars are devoted to maintaining orphanages, asylums, homes for aged and those unfit to struggle against social and economic conditions? Natural law involves the survival of the fittest and a fight to the finish for existence. Now one type of diseased mind is that which is undeveloped, which is governed by the lower laws of brute psychology rather than the higher laws of nature, or we may say God. If we put our law of the survival of the fittest into practice rather than the law of sympathy or love, our hospitals would become death-houses in which to do away with the incurable, the defective, dependent and delinquent classes. The diseases of others would thereby cause us to commit sin. Mother-love motivates our social institutions for keeping alive the aged, the incurable. The preser- vation of this instinct is a mark of progressive civilization. In place of others’ troubles and dis- eases causing us to sin by committing murder, they bring out the expression of one of our most noble and altruistic impulses. If we deprecate mother- love, we eliminate an important factor in the pres- ervation of civilization. Christianity and the Churches emphasize the maternal instinct as one of 110 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES the most precious assets of social growth. The Chinese, the Tibetans, Spartans and American In- dians have not distinguished themselves among races for their exposure of the young or killing of the diseased and aged. Regarded from a personal point of view, disease is a source of sin manifested in maladies which dishearten the afflicted and bring on morbid states. The Ministry of Healing performs therefore a vital function as well as becoming a spiritual recti- fier when it attacks disease. While I was writing this chapter a gentleman of wealth, position, cul- ture, a trustee of a Church, called to see me. He is quite deaf, due to a diseased condition of the Eustachian tubes. He exhibits, as so many deaf people do, a melancholia culminating in the depth of moral depravity and sin. This man remarked: “T can hear little, therefore I learn little news to talk about, so I might as well take poison and go west. I don’t see any use of living. Better people than I am kill themselves for this reason.” Any Christian will state that one who is a suicide dies in sin. Even the wish to die, contrary to God’s will, is sinful. Many other disorders of the body, such as acute rheumatism, physical defects, cancer and other slowly debilitating diseases, especially those of the brain and nervous system, create sin. The physician and the clergyman can codperate in restoring to the sick a moral poise and rehabili- tation in the realm of responsibility. There is a SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 111 “don’t care’ attitude engendered by sickness which the Ministry of Healing as a function of the Church alleviates. New life purposes, ideals more easy of accomplishment, the thought that ‘‘Thou, God, seest me,” is made a moral and spiritual force. Another instance of disease as a source of sin, which may be removed by the Ministry of Christian Healing, is the sin of lust. Sexual immorality is at times dependent upon disease. We know that eighty per cent. of fallen women are feeble-minded. Among men sexual indulgence is increased by alco- holism. A few critics of our Christian code of ethics base their licentiousness on the ground they are acting according to their natural instincts. Low instincts these must be which allow them to commit fornication, rape and live unfaithful to their wives. There can be no permanent happiness, health and wholesome spirituality among those who would en- joy themselves by means of another’s degradation. These diseased minds lead others, as well as them- selves, into sin. Going back into the early history of the race, we find polygamous marriage the custom of society. Going back still further into evolutionary processes, we discover great quantities of offspring such as the innumerable spawn of the oyster and the cod. Here we have quantity to survive rather than qual- ity. But today the perpetuation of the species does not rest upon numbers so much as upon individual capacities and phylogenetic endowment. This is 112 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES promoted by national, civil and family life, with their attendant institutions. When the Church properly relates the individual to these dominant factors in civilization, it does the most that can be done to eradicate the social evil. Christian Healing is a sociological asset in decreasing the sins of society by encouraging men and women to maintain social intercourse upon the highest ideals of civili- zation and religion. The life of Mary Magdalene affords us a striking example of disease being a source of sin, and its removal a motive for virtue. It was she out of whom seven devils were cast that showed such love for the Master in the anointing of His Head, the wiping of His Feet with the hairs of her head. It was she who with diligent love went to the sepulcher and was rewarded by being the first to behold Him in His resurrection body. An unforgiven sin, a hardened heart, is ofttimes an insuperable difficulty in the cure of a patient. A grudge, ill will, hatred, etc., fester in the mind as does an open sore in the flesh. Our Lord perceived the relation of disease to sin when He proclaimed: “For whether is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, arise, take up thy bed and walk.” We would infer from this saying that Christ con- sidered it easier to cure the diseased than to cure the soul by the forgiveness of sin. Having healed the body first, it then became easier to heal the soul. Having instilled cheerfulness and hope in those who SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 113 sought His ministry, Christ thereby approached their souls—the seat of their moral actions. Mod- ern medical science substantiates the value of the contribution of pleasing emotions in the recovery from sickness. Likewise, these mental and moral states carry on their beneficent therapy in the per- sonality of the afflicted. The most curative and morally potent of these is faith. Faith is dynamic. Spiritually we either advance or retreat. Piety never remains in equilibrium. The faith which figuratively can remove mountains of difficulties is sufficient to remove man from the desire to sin. One whose diseases are cured by faith will have such spiritual impetus that, if he is grate- ful to God, he will desire to please God in obeying His commandments. An adventurous spirit. will attempt greater feats of spiritual strength in living an altogether natural and wholesome life. This leads us to positive factors in combating the nega- tive attributes of sin through acquiring virtue. IV HEALTH AS AN AID TO CHARACTER FORMATION I. HEALTH AND FEELING WELL HEN one of the immigration officers at Ellis Island was looking at the line of new arrivals from one of the ships while they passed for inspection, he noticed one who had a decided squint in his eyes. This inspector was a doctor who was apt and clever in quick diagnosis. In this particular case he was not sure whether this man would prove to have a hernia or was disposed to criminality. When examined, it was found that the immigrant had a hernia, as the doctor had con- jectured from his facial appearance. Further in- vestigation showed no trace of crime, but that the man came of good stock and was highly regarded in the community from which he came. This is of interest to us in that it shows that certain types of diseases have their tell-tale symptoms upon the victims of ill-health in their physiognomy and speech and conduct. This may be illustrated in a hundred ways. An advanced pulmonary tuber- culosis patient has his inevitable characteristics of intermittent optimism and sadness. The deaf are 114 CHARACTER FORMATION 115 prone to melancholia and irritability. The blind frequently radiate more cheer after their affliction visits them than when they had normal vision. One who has cancer, or other internal and incurable maladies, is frequently neurotic, living under ex- treme tension. Some types of heart disease develop or have a tendency to create psychoses; whereas a valvular lesion creates an indifferent, languid dis- position. The old axiom of “laugh and grow fat” is not altogether untrue in the hearty, jovial and self-satisfied attitude of those who are well nour- ished. As disease is accompanied by certain types of temperament prejudicial to growth in Christian character, so is health an aid to self-mastery in the direction desired by the individual. If he is living in a Christian atmosphere, is well and strong, self- controlled and the possessor of religious convictions akin to the Gospel, this man will be aided in his formation of Christian character through a healthy body. This is demonstrated by the scholastic standing, for example, of college students who per- form a certain required minimum of exercise in the University of Pennsylvania. They maintain a higher degree of physical and mental efficiency since compulsory physical examination and exer- cise was established. Since pleasurable exercise is included in this schedule, the percentage of those who have been expelled for misconduct has grown less. In other words, a healthy mind in a healthy 116 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES body is conducive to better conduct, conformity to law and order. This is also demonstrable in the army camps among those taken from the draft. Improved health conditions created a marked dif- ference in the moral tone. This is especially note- worthy among the troops of the American Expedi- tionary Force in respect to the activities in the field. Where a man has his mind occupied with a great and lofty purpose, or is entirely taken up with the excitement of battle, it is surprising how strong and rugged he becomes. I was much impressed by this in the lives of several chaplains who had pre- viously led very sheltered lives. Before the war they complained of ills and aches and were more or less self-centered, and I may say selfish indi- viduals. But exposed to danger, living strictly and regularly, their health had a noticeable effect upon their whole characters. Again this can be illustrated in the type of work in which various individuals are engaged. The professional ball-player has a different character than the clerk at the office or the professor in his laboratory, and the outside policeman is decidedly different in character than the banker or the stock exchange broker or the instructor of the ’cello or violin. Taking it by and large, the outdoor man, or he who lives in training and is careful of his diet, exercise and other habits, is of different and more assertive and wholesome character and morals than the puny, emaciated and over-indulged man. Why? CHARACTER FORMATION 117 For one reason, a pure blood supply has enriched his brain. His brain and nerves have been his servants, his aids and staff; whereas, in the other case, these physical and nervous attributes have militated against the proper functioning of soul and body. ‘They have become the obstacles and mas- ters instead of the agents of his personality. Now this applies very closely to the Ministry of Healing in the Church. If and when religion can create a healthy mind and body, this health is going to react upon the physical and spiritual man. For example, in a hospital a patient frequently is benefited by being removed to a ward where all the patients are getting well. Or if he is taken to a place of pleasant surroundings where he can be amused, entertained by congenial: company, there is a reaction upon the whole system. What friends, entertainment, sunshine, a hopeful atmosphere can do for a patient, religion can do in some cases where the patient is or becomes of a religious tempera- ment. Religion can do more with some patients and in some diseases than all of these curative agencies. I am free to admit that where there is no capacity or receptivity of religious influence on the part of the patient, no Christian Healing can or will take place. However, what all these other benefits can do are not comparable to inspiring hope and good cheer and expectant faith in the full and adequate way in which the soul’s sincere desire can perform in the presence and power of a per- 118 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES sonality love above life itself. If that person be Jesus Christ, so much the better for the patient’s character and convalescence. How does it come about? Hope, optimism, good cheer, contentment cause a man to breathe deeper than when he is in a nerv- ous or depressed state. Deep breathing purifies the blood, clarifies the brain, creates better heart action. The phagocytes are increased, become more active and attack bacteria injurious to the system. The blood surging through every tissue, the vaso-motor reactions become more normal, poisons are eliminated, foods and medicines are better as- similated, a general tone of well-being results, and health, that most desired object of all in this world among the diseased, thrills the entire metabolism of the whole man. Christian Healing therefore is intimately related to character through health. But what is char- acter? Is it not that for which Jesus Christ estab- lished His Kingdom on earth to propagate in the lives of His disciples! Character is that by which we resist and overcome sin or lawlessness. If Christian Healing promotes health, and health pro- motes character, and character conquers sin, then it is the logical function of the Church’s ministry to use every God-given agency and command to heal the sick. “Lay hands on the sick and they shall recover” is a command coming from the Head of the Church, even Christ the Lord. Hence the CHARACTER FORMATION 119 Church is combating sin, building up and saving souls in so far as it can attempt to make the Min- istry of Healing efficacious. Frequently we hear the remark from some pious person: “I feel better for going to church.” No doubt, in most cases, if he feels better he is better, both physically and morally. Let us examine the moral situation, as that is the primary consideration of our discussion—their feeling better in its effect upon conduct or sin and misconduct. It is not usually those who feel well, bright and happy, liv- ing purposeful lives, who are haled before the courts for breaking the laws. Those who are lawless— sinful—are those, generally speaking, who are morose, dissatisfied, out of tune with society and their God. Where the Church can bring to these disgruntled and darkened lives the light of Christ’s presence, the joys of redemption, the fellowship of right thinking companions, it does much to prevent these individuals from defeat of sinful whims or devilish ambitions. The ministry of healing then is seen to be wider in scope than restoring vigor to the listless or miraculous cures to the hopeless. In employing every rational and religious means for growth of character, a sound mind in a sound body, the Church is doing a vast ethical work of great spiritual potency. 120 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 2. COMMON SENSE THERAPEUTICS There has been nothing said or implied in the foregoing parts of this book which would minimize the value of medicines and surgical treatments and other scientific methods. Even the most untrained observer knows these are helps, at times the only helps, which can restore health and life. If one’s lungs were filled with water in a drowning accident, we would not think it either Christian nor common sense to do nothing but ask all around to kneel down and pray. We should roll the suffocated per- son and employ such other expert first-aid as is recognized to be helpful. Or in a case of blood poisoning or the swallowing of poisons we would not ask the patient to undo all or any rules of common sense, but would apply such antiseptics and emetics and antidotes as are customarily rec- ognized to be beneficent. There is nothing what- soever in Christ’s words or the Gospel to dissuade us from this practice and readiness to meet emer- gencies. As Christians it is our duty to do all in our knowledge to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke of disease. We are to deal our bread to the hungry, to treat him as we would want to be treated if it will restore life and health and comfort. Every consecrated man will use all the ingenuity and kind- ness he possesses to bring health and happiness to his fellow man. CHARACTER FORMATION 121 In this lies the greatest foundation for character formation in Christian Healing. The Church members will so take to heart the afflictions of those who are ill that they will offer prayers to God that they themselves and others may use every beneficial remedy to assuage the pain of those they love and also of their enemies. A glimpse of what such common sense therapeutics will result in is briefly sketched by Isaiah (58:7-8): ‘“Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.” Christian Healing therefore has a reflexive bene- fit upon those who practice it in the Churches, for in so doing the joy of service, duties conscien- tiously carried out will reflect upon their own char- acters and the glory or character of God shall shine upon them for going out to minister (not to be ministered unto) in His name. For it is Christ who says: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of one of these my brethren ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40.) Therefore the use of common sense and common knowledge is the acme of Christian Healing, combined with faith and prayer. Religion has so long been thought of as some- thing for the elect, the already good, that it will be greatly popularized and the message of salvation spread abroad so soon as the populace knows that 122 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES religion is quite as essential to humanity as is medi- cine, and indeed is itself a medicine to body and soul. Christian Healing is destined to put a joy into religion and to eliminate the Calvinistic fear of the devil as the chief motive for a holy life. It will make the Church more sympathetic to those who suffer, and those who toil. The healing pres- ence of God will become a matter of common knowledge and the practice of the presence of God common sense when it is known God desires the health and welfare of all his creatures. Men will tune-in their hearts to the still, small voice of con- science which will control their actions as expres- sive of great gratitude for God’s healing mercies and miracles. The modern world is rediscovering the pages of the Bible at Bethshean, fifty miles north of Jeru- salem, in the archeological research of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. So likewise are Bible reading Christians delving into their Testaments to see what they can get out of them for their own good. And this is one incomparable pearl of great price—health. There is not a word in the Bible to discourage the attainment of health by every moral means, and without morality as we have seen in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah per- fect health is unobtainable. Health aids in character formation by its en- thusiasms for the joys of living. It makes life a pleasure plus a desire to give pleasure. It bal- CHARACTER FORMATION 123 ances our faculties, it inspires the mind, bearing fruit in wholesome emotions—love, meekness, peace and temperance (in the Greek significance of that word) signifying a well-rounded use, and not abuse of our passions and appetites. 3. MENTAL HYGIENE AND MORALS Man stands apart from lower animals by virtue of qualities of which zodlogy can take no account. How the part of man which is not body is linked to his body is through an extremely intimate rela- tionship of brain and body functions. So close and vital is the union that it is generally recognized that no study of psychology can explain the ulti- mate residuum of personality and the springs of action which motivate conduct. Materialists have endeavored to define spirit in terms of instinct as a property of the brain. Yet the spirit has not to the present time been conclusively linked to the brain so that we may say that both are a unity. Whatever the relationship between mind and body we are now cognizant that physical impulses have a tremendous bearing upon the part of our personality which is termed the spiritual, and that the unbalancing of the physical mechanisms and co- ordinations will mar the processes of the mental. A touch of toothache will incite grave irritability, while an impaired digestion causes certain forms of depression. 124 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES Nor does this relationship cease with these re- actions. An impaired mental state will produce results on the physical organism; and much worry and trouble cause the whole structure to function very inadequately. In the January, 1925, issue of the magazine, Hygeia, a number of personal experiences are given indicating that mental status was greatly improved when the physical disabilities were removed. One of the incidents reported was that of a young girl who was the “Ugly Duckling” of the family. She felt keenly her ineptitude, which she probably exaggerated in common with persons of her temperament. She mastered her lessons with comparative ease, and finally obtained her license to teach. Her first assignment to a public School was some distance from her home. As she did not want to board with strangers, she decided to walk to and from school, a distance of five miles each way. ‘The result of the exercise, with cor- responding benefits, resulted in rebuilding her physique and emancipating her from the “Ugly Duckling” class into that of normalcy, and its at- tendant release from the periods of despondency into which she had formerly been carried. Correction of our physical machinery lies within the domain of the medical professions, we admit. We turn to physicians and surgeons for the recon- struction of dislocated or impaired organic struc- tures, the eradication of incipient disease and the rebuilding of the physique. It is quite generally CHARACTER FORMATION 125 true, barring lesions of the brain, to say that where the anatomy is properly codrdinated and working smoothly, that the operations of our personality are harmonious. There are exceptions in cases of dementia, so acute in some instances as to render these sufferers as public wards. The physician can frequently discover physical abnormalities which cause this dementia; or it may be a prob- lem which resolves itself into a demand for the diagnosis of the psychoanalyst. In these matters the Ministry of Healing has no place nor desire to penetrate a field in which it has no exact knowledge nor expert diagnosticians. There is a striking difference between the Chris- tian Healer and the New Thought cult and the Christian Science practitioner. The Church, just as did Jesus Christ, admits there is disease. The modern healing cults above mentioned endeavor to remove organic trouble by insisting on a mental attitude which denies the very existence of the evil they seek to eliminate. There are cases where this process is the correct one in persons afflicted with hallucinations, but the process should be the prescription and not the universal theory. Vo- taries of faith healing not infrequently overstrain minds of their patients where the malady could be remedied by simple physical processes. As an in- stance, flatulence, haliostosis, biliousness and kin- dred dyspeptic and morose disturbances may be remedied in short order by a cathartic, whereas the 126 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES. operation of faith upon the unconscious mind is a roundabout process. The Ministry of Healing in the Church does not minimize the importance of surgery and medicine. It begins its work often where the physician declares himself impotent to cope with the ravages of disease and no drugs or knife can allay them by any known means. It is in the field of behavior that healing by faith, suggestion, corrected neuroses and psychoses, that the psychoanalyst codperates and supplements the physician’s skill. Freud, Jung, Coué and others emphasize the imperative necessity of their pa- tients to exercise faith in the doctor. Without that confiding relationship more intimate than brother- hood, little can be accomplished. This cannot always be established among strangers. Therefore the Church has a function to perform and a potent opportunity in its impersonal, yet sympathetic re- lationship between patient and priest or pastor. The revelation of past experiences, especially those of sex and related thereto, and certain repressions and mental complexes can be made by religious temperaments to Jesus Christ, the one whom the Christian calls the physician of souls. If faith and imagination is so strong that one experiences the spiritual presence of Christ, the possessor of that faith has an intimate relation with the Christ of experience more vital and personal than any social or professional contacts in a psychoanalyst’s office. ‘The method of mental hygiene is to un- CHARACTER FORMATION 127 bear the troubles, complexes and mental conflicts and, by staring them in the face, as it were, to ap- preciate their impotence over the life of a deter- mined purpose. Christian Healing can greatly aid the mental sufferer by facing these phantasies and sinful designs and moral twists in the “light of God’s own presence” so that the seeming powers of evil are driven away like the shadows of night before a rising sun. The psychoanalyst arrives , at the same end with resorting to faith in Christ as a means of arousing ethical motives and a back- ground for peaceable and beneficent character- istics. It is the conception of the psychoanalyst that crime (the social or legal aspect of sin) is the re- sult of disease. The probability is that many of the so-called criminals of society will be treated by psychoanalytic methods with a view to discovering what biological factors create criminal tendencies. The field of psychoanalytic treatment is limited. Kempf, in The Automatic Functions and the Per- sonality, mentions among derangements caused by repression of intense affections, loss of appetite, ir- ritability, nausea, cardiac palpitation, general hypo- chondriac complaints and enduring psychoneurotic derangements. In Principles of Mental Hygiene, White states: ‘The number and duration of physi- cal and apparently psychical disorders which may originate at the psychological level is endless.” The success of the treatment depends almost en- 128 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES tirely upon the confidence which the subject feels in the analyst. If the patient fails to do his ut- most to help the analyst, and lay bare all the se- crets, the discovery of them will necessitate a more tedious method of procedure and much more time. Christian Healing is a direct approach of the pa- tient to One in whom he can place more faith than anyone if he believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the willing remover of all our infirmities. Christian Healing is of no use to a person who does not believe that. We have now seen the crux of the situation in these mental cases is faith in the treatment and physician. Revelations which can be made to a personal Savior are more intimate and analytical than those to any doctor or analyst. Therefore if self-analy- sis and self-revelation, combined with faith, are essentials in rebuilding character and combating and eradicating sin and crime we have in the con- fiding relationship of the confiding, believing Chris- tian in his Savior a source of moral strength and probity unsurpassed by any scientific method apart from revealed religion. Furthermore, the Churches, through their Min- istry of Healing, offer methods of constructive edu- cational ideas for mental hygiene and development. Courses of study in the Church open up prophy- lactic thought and activity and social relationship too often missing after one is discharged from the ward or the clinic. This is becoming more and CHARACTER FORMATION 129 more apparent in the recreational and social fea- tures of modern parish house facilities. Mental hygiene of youth is stirring the deepest thought of those engaged in religious education. The task is now being fitted to the individual rather than the individual pupil to the task. The child’s ambition is to be grown up. That this ambition is the natural pathway for the urges is evident. The function of the Church is to meet the child and lead him on the way of self-expression. The Church gives the youth a share in the useful activi- ties of the adult world through Boy Scout, Knights of St. John, etc., Girls’ Friendly Society, Daugh- ters of the King clubs, etc., so that they realize a sufficient self-gratification to remove evil methods of self-expression such as “playing the man” by becoming intoxicated, plundering, banditry, sexual indulgences or other current crimes held up before them in the daily press as the things that men do when grown up. Hence the Ministry of Healing not only treats the patient and trains the youth in periods of crises, but is a convalescent home, so to speak, far on in the life of the one who is being developed to com- pare to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. In psychoanalytic language, we shall first find out what our urges are, how they can be given adequate outlets, and how these expressions of character may be so coordinated to the individ- ual that he may freely act, unrestrained by evil in- 130 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES fluences or sin, and thus avoid a neurotic condition, or a tainted disposition and soul, and express these urges without mental conflict in harmony with eth- ical standards and the customs of the Church and society. 4. HEART TO HEART There is an intimacy which springs up between one who is ill and the person of him who would do all in his power to benefit him. The return to health is accompanied with a response of the affec- tions upon the part of the one recovering from sick- ness. These magnanimous feelings have their beneficent consequences upon the character of those who have been helped not infrequently. These personal attachments when elevated to com- panionship with the Christ become the highest in- centives to noble living. In many a long and weary illness, and, in fact, in others of short duration, the heart is so touched by deeds of kindness that it opens to the sweeter, holier influences of God’s grace. Some characters appear to be made more perfect through suffering. Others who are resent- ful are hardened, and themselves turn away from the things of the spirit. But in the case of those whose hearts are touched there is a pouring out of the heart to someone near and dear and usually to God. Man’s heart and affections are so constituted that like St. Augustine many a penitent finds himself CHARACTER FORMATION 131 restless until he rests in Christ—until he knows that Christ knows all. In other words, there is a satisfaction gained by being able to fully express ourselves to one who can understand. Now this may be done informally as friend to friend, heart to heart, as I have said. Or it may be done for- mally in one way or another offered by the Churches with their varying forms and customs. Chief or most universal under this formal category is what the Church calls confession and absolution. During Healing Missions this method is employed by most all healing evangelists. The afflicted is asked to name or confess what is his complaint; what caused it, if he knows; how he has broken the laws of health, God’s laws. Now I am fully aware of the theological contro- versies which have been waged over this matter of sacramental or auricular confession. It is not my purpose here to present a brief either for or against this subject except to say that in Christian Heal- ing confession is of great benefit to the patient. In Churches where confession by the Missioner is held optional to those who want to use it, a vast majority afford themselves of the opportunity, and with markedly good results in the spiritual life of the local Church. . This is so because as never be- fore the sick have opened their hearts to Jesus. We are familiar with the work of Jung, Freud and Coué in this connection. Patients were largely benefited by this process of relieving themselves 132 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES of the mental complexes which were dwarfing their spiritual energies in the psychoanalysts’ offices and Churches at Zurich, Vienna and Nancy. The office of these celebrated analysts partakes very largely of the nature of a confessional. Many family physicians’ offices do likewise. When doc- tors could do no more Dr. Jung told us in America through his interviews in the American Press, when he visited this country, January, 1925, that he acted the part of father-confessor to those who were in difficulty. Freud says practically the same thing in his lectures on the Unconscious Mind. Coué disclaims point blank any reliance upon religion or figure of speech regarding it in any way, shape or form in the Nancy School. Nevertheless, he also is taking the rédle of father-confessor to many hundreds of tortured humanity in his clinics. There is a freshness and jocularity there quite far removed from the somber recesses of the traditional confession box. Yet the point I wish to establish is that these patients see these unravelers of tan- gled minds and mental complexes to confess their deeds, dreams, wishes, actions, marital and social and sex relations even more freely than is done in the Churches. In this way their minds are unbur- dened, set at rest and, generally speaking, nor- malcy ensues. One of the standard books upon the religious phase is Mortimer’s Confession and Absolution (1902). I-see in it, and in the Old and New Tes- CHARACTER FORMATION 133 taments, no place where auricular confession is com- pulsory. But I do observe in eighteen years’ life in the ministry that none of those who use confes- sion speak ill of it; and those who know less or nothing about it perpetually ridicule it. Ignorance again is bliss and causes many a stupid laugh about so holy a thing as opening one’s heart to Jesus Christ. Because people want to be well they wish to tell the greatest quantity of symptoms and thereby re- celve sympathy. In my own ministry I do not practice the hearing of confessions; rather would I have the penitent open his or her heart to Christ in private prayer. Yet should such case arise that one could not quiet his conscience in this way, and needs the advice of a pastor or priest, I have seen the need of heart to heart talks in the sight of God and consciousness of His presence. I mention this because of the close relationship between Chris- tian Healing and Christ’s work in coming to this world to forgive sin. To combat sin we are to use the teaching which our Savior gave us. In the sixteenth chapter of Matthew, verse nineteen, we are very definitely shown that Christ left power in His Church to forgive sin: ‘‘Whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This has no other signification than that of sin. It is not metaphor nor parable. As Dr. Schofield says in his Reference Bible Commentary footnote, page 1022: “A key is a badge of power or authority.” 134 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES It has no symbolic meaning as to opening doors of opportunity on the day of Pentecost or any other day. In the time of the lives of the Apostles, who had been face to face with Christ, the sacrament of penance was established and no adult was baptized until he had been absolved, nor was any convert admitted to the Holy Communion from the second to the fifteenth centuries without conforming to this sacrament. Peter claimed no more right to this power of the keys than the other Apostles. For they all possessed it, as is well recognized by the Roman, Anglican, Coptic, Greek and Gallic and American ordinals. The manner of doing this is open to question, and practices in the various Churches change from age to age. That confession was universally used in the Early Church we may learn from the Epistle of James, fifth chapter: “Confess your faults one to another.” But note this is not auricular con- fession—the stumbling block of so many Protes- tants, far from it! If we did confess our faults one to another, did not bluff and conceal, but all Christians went to Church as in James’ day and there in open meeting told of their sins, it would do much to elevate the tone of health and morals of our modern communities. Where the Church is asked to exercise the Min- istry of Healing upon those who need it, the one who visits, lays hands on the sick, or anoints has a unique opportunity to minister to the soul and CHARACTER FORMATION 135 thereby to the character of the patient. From the principles of psychoanalysis we know there will be no psychical cures take place except through the unconscious mind, the seat of the soul. It is one of the strong points in Christ’s ministry that the soul was made right before bodily healing was evi- denced. First the soul must be cured, saved, then in God’s good time, maybe gradually, the bodily health will be restored. Without faith, as we have previously seen, Christ could do no signs and won- ders. Therefore all adjuncts to curing of the soul should precede any effects of Christian Healing. “Thy sins be forgiven thee” is repeatedly on the lips of our Lord in connection with faith-cures. What He did He tells us to do. The way we do it is open to our own individuality or Church; but to be effective clergy and pastors we are to gather in those that are lost by what right means are at our disposal. Absolution is one, the Ministry of Healing is another, and they are closely related in that they jointly conserve body and soul. Absolution, in most Protestant Churches, as well as in Roman Catholic, has reached a set phraseol- ogy and we hear it read or repeated in many de- nominations in a perfunctory manner. Whatever its ritual or terminology, the essence of Christ’s words or message is still contained in the prayer or proclamation. Now when this is said to a large audience no one objects; but reduce it to a strictly private matter and we hear asked on all sides; 186 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES “How can a man forgive sins against God?” Per- sonally I have never heard of any man who ever tried to do so. But by the authority committed unto him, or in the name, or for the sake of Jesus Christ, we pray that God may have mercy and pardon on the souls who have sinned. No matter what our office or honor in the Christian Church we can all beseech our Heavenly Father for for- giveness and absolution upon ourselves and others. Furthermore, through true repentance, the gospels proclaim the glad tidings, we may be assured of forgiveness with triumphant certainty. Knowing that our sins are washed away by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, being assured of this absolution (washing away), it is going to bring joy, health and new life to those who hear it. This has been the turning point in many who repented, were saved, healed and walk in the light of Jesus’ presence, “redeemed, restored, forgiven by Jesus’ precious blood.” Hence absolution has its effect upon the soul, the soul upon health, and, as we have seen, the health upon character, and stability of character continues to conquer sin. 5. THE TYRANNY OF THE PAST Psychoanalysis is either a raking up of the past according to the principles of Freud, or it is a presentation of present hardships and perplexities CHARACTER FORMATION 137 as per the school of Vienna led by Jung. In either method the psychoanalyst delves into the inmost secrets of the heart. Experiences or wishes are brought to light and true knowledge; in the light their terrors are done away; their inhibitions and complexes are minimized. The tyranny of the past is overcome by a fundamental psychological adapt- ing of the mind to reality as we know it. Emo- tions are given vent. For checked emotions like superheated steam will cause disastrous wreckage. Presenting a suppressed emotion to one’s mind in its true value lets off steam. Desires and longings or fears of which we are not fully conscious but seem to link us to the past, or are left over feel- ings of previous experiences from which we cannot rid ourselves, entangle and stifle our will-power. Let these be related openly and knowingly to con- sciousness and they pass away as does darkness in the light. A A psychoanalyst heals by allowing the patient to give vent to their ‘suppressed emotions. ‘In Christian ‘Healing the priest or minister takes ‘ the place of the psychoanalyst. By. revealing complexes in a heart to heart talk or formal con- fession the patient’s ‘peace of mind is restored. Thus the tyranny of the past is removed, an ave- nue of escape from dwelling on the past and being ruled by it is provided. Jesus Christ left in His Church a means of cure similar to the principles of modern psychoanalysis in the commission: “Heal the sick”; “Those whose sins ye remit they 138 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES are remitted unto them.” ‘Those who have never experienced the linking of the interest of God with their past and their desire to make good in this life invariably ridicule the idea of forgiveness of sin or the instrumentality of any man in their starting life afresh. These persons repel and re- press their instincts, but they cannot thereby con- trol them. A full confession to God completely brings up a mental complex. A surgeon sometimes allows a foreign element like a bullet to become encapsulated when he cannot extract it. But this may cause trouble in later life. Likewise one be- comes neurasthenic when complexes are retained in the mind and kindred ills and evil actions follow. Christian Healing recognizes the scientific value of psychoanalysis in the clarification of the mind. It gives the patient self-control by use of all his instincts in channels and directions toward self- realization. To be specific let us illustrate the teaching of Christ in this connection: “looking on a woman to lust after her.” Here, by the way, Christ used the Greek word—gunaika—signifying a married woman. The passage shows Christ was concerned with intention. We know that evil thoughts of all descriptions enter all our minds. Moral life in Christianity concerns itself with in- tentions. The acceptance of this fact, these in- stincts, in the light of God’s own presence enables us to face all moral issues bravely and not to fear we shall be overcome and thus weaken the will, CHARACTER FORMATION 139 Things which are not seen in their right perspec- tive take on phantastic and erroneous dimensions. A mind which cannot look upon obscene or evil deeds in their relation to an all wise God is per- verted and needs cure by a right relationship with God. This right relationship can be obtained where it is otherwise lacking by the inculcation of the principles and influence of Jesus through the ministry of Christian Healing. Christ inspires psychological expression and contradicts the nega- tion of suppressed emotions tyrannizing our past, present and future. By psychological and Chris- tian expression we can standardize our emotions and mental complexes to our ideals. In this way we will not give filthy or brutal expression to our desires no matter how natural and right they may be. If procuring wealth is my strongest ambition I shall not give expression to it in such a way as to steal, lie or cheat for this would not be con- structive to a happy or Christian state of mind. One who experiences Christian Healing admits his past but does not let it drag him backward nor hold him fast as he aspires to the stature of the fullness of Christ. But one who permits the tyranny of the past to dominate his life reveals this overmastery in conduct, in physical actions, moral distortions or in dreams. Actions speak louder than words. For example, a nervous woman called upon her physician and was asked if the relations with her husband were entirely sat- 140 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES isfactory. She professed they were. Little hap- penings showed this to be untrue. She was late at the appointment with her husband in the doctor’s office, after a day’s absence from her husband, where they were both to meet. She dreamed some harm had come to him—revealing her inmost de- sire,—she had a habit of removing her wedding ring, and lastly professed her devotion most ar- dently at quite unnecessary intervals. The truth was she was enamored of another man, and this was the cause of her neurosis. The value of Christian Healing above the psy- choanalytic past I should say is that there is no possibility of bluff before the presence of Almighty God. If we went to a Freudian physician we would be led to trace our sickness or our evil hearts to some near or remote sex experience. Or if a Jungian physician attends us all our horrible men- tal images or morbid traits would rise before us. Or if a Coué disciple took hold of us we would dwell upon the optimistic resources in our posses- sion. In any case no man knows us through and through as does He who shall disclose the secrets of all hearts. Before the Christ we can unbear our souls as before no physician under heaven. Having un- covered them, the ills and evils of our souls need no longer to be repressed. ‘The instincts can then come into use in their entirety to the completion and perfection of a well-rounded character. It CHARACTER FORMATION 141 may be observed also that the accredited psycholo- gist and psychoanalyst use no drugs, hypnotism nor any other technique other than sympathetic inquiry into the mental and moral experience of the patient. ‘Therefore the skillful and tactful minis- try of Christian Healing is even better prepared to lend spiritual counsel, private interviews without fee and without price. It further unifies the mind and produces harmonious actions by centering the self about the ever-present Christ in a mystical relationship which psychoanalysis does not do. Christian Healing gives ideals, purpose, stability to moral living together with association with right- living people, or those who endeavor to keep God’s law; whereas the psychoanalyst is egocentric in his method, introspective and offers nothing more than crudest nature in a struggle for an escape from the past and for existence. 6. GOD OUR SUPPLY Prayers for healing from the ancient liturgies and other offices of the Church reveal that in the first few centuries the Lord’s Supper was consid- ered as a supply of life-giving power. It was to the Early Christians the central and most frequent act of worship in their public gatherings. The Leonine Sacramentary says: ‘May these mysteries, we beseech Thee, O, Lord our God, con- fer upon us that inward and outward health which 142 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES shall assist Thy servants to live according to Thy will, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” In The Sarum Missal I find: “We beseech Thee, Almighty God, mercifully to behold this our sacrifice and devotion, and of Thy goodness grant us thereby health of mind and body. Amen.” “Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, unto Thy servant health of mind and body by this Holy Sacrament which HE has received; and fill nis heart with everlasting consolations, that being up- held by divine protection, HE may please Thee with holy devotion, and ever obtain a part in the bene- fits which Thou bestowest. Amen.” “We that are refreshed by Thy heavenly bene- diction beseech Thee, O Lord, that the healing power of Thy Sacrament may be profitable to both our bodies and souls through Jesus Christ. Amen.” In the ninth century A.D., we have: “O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God, we en- treat Thee in faith that our [brother-sister], re- ceiving the most holy body and blood of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, may enjoy health both in body and soul, through the same our Lord. Amen.” Prayers of thanksgiving for recovering from sickness occur in the earliest liturgies but are few in number. But these pioneers of faith-healing and of a science altogether Christian have left us spiritual treasures in their formal devotions. These teach that if health is granted to us we should CHARACTER FORMATION 143 use the new vigor thus given in a most consecrated manner for the good of Him who has so had mercy upon us. We should the more earnestly perse- vere with new health and strength to be absolutely unselfish, not using our bodies for ease and-pleas- ure when there is work to do for the Master. This vitality is given to us to devote it generously to Him who bestows it for the advance of His plea for right living and good will among men. The Gelasian Sacramentary says: “O God, in Whose hand are the issues of life and death, Who of Thy great mercy didst raise up Thy servant Hezekiah when sick unto death, we thank Thee that Thou hast restored this our Brother from the gates of death; and we beseech Thee that he may dedi- cate the life Thou has preserved to Thy service, and finally be found worthy to enter that happy abode where sickness and death never come, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” In the office of Visitation of the Sick in the An- glican Prayer Book there is one prayer, and one only, which would inject any hope of recovery, faith or virtue in the person who is diseased. In the same book of Common Prayer in the following service called The Communion of the Sick there is no reference or regard for the Holy Communion as an instrument of health or healing. Nowadays, the prayers and parts of the Visitation of the Sick are scarcely ever used in the Church of England or the Episcopal Church in the United States on ac- 14:4 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES count of their dismal and hopeless character, com- bined with a most displeasing accusation of sin. We have dealt with the subject of Penance under the headings of Confession and Absolution. It presents itself in The Communion of the Sick in the following form: ‘Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he feels his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.” After this confession, which is recom- mended but not held obligatory before Communion, the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath left power in His Church to absolve all sinners who truly re- pent and believe in Him, of His great mercy for- give thee thine offenses: and by His authority com- mitted to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” This was placed in the Prayer Book of the Church of England in this form in 1061 but is not retained in the American edition for the so-called American Church (Protestant Episcopal). This is mentioned in this connection to uphold our line of argument that the early prayers for the sick con- cern themselves with the moral behavior of the af- flicted. Because the office of Visitation of the Sick so logically precedes their communion I insert this reference to absolution of the sick in connection CHARACTER FORMATION 145 with their receiving of the sacrament. It will be observed by the parenthesis that private confession is neither enjoined nor compulsory upon the sick, nor indeed upon any others in this old document. In collecting a few of these ancient prayers which were used for the sick, and at the time or preced- ing the reception of the Holy Communion, we see reason for the belief of the Church in the efficacy of the Lord’s Supper as a source of bodily and spir- itual refreshment. It is universally accepted among all Christians that Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper. This has brought about the doctrine of the Real Pres- ence. Dr. W. P. Du Bose in his Soteriology of the New Testament (page 382) is clear on this point: “The real presence is only a part of the general reality and actuality of Christ in Christianity. It is a part of the general system of objective grace, without which there would be no subjective faith or life of Christ in the world. If there is nothing outward from God to be received, there can be no real inward reception on our part.” The Doctrine of the Real Presence, by Pusey, is the most scholarly treatment of this subject. From Darwell Stone’s Christian Dogma we may learn (page 178) just what the immediate and most conspicuous followers and scholars of our Savior understood was the effect of the word of consecra- tion in the Eucharist. Ignatius refers to the Eu- charist as the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ— 146 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES Ad Smyrna, 6. Iranzus asserts our Lord acknowl- edged the bread to be His body, and established the mixed cup as His blood.—Concerning Heresies, IV. Augustine says practically the same thing, only more emphatically—Sermon, 1:10. Chrysostom speaks of touching the flesh of Christ with the tongue—Homily, 27:5. These teachers are of un- deniable authority from various sections of the Early Church, and together are typical of earliest Christian dogma and tradition. In contradiction of the denial of this doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Communion we have such controver- sialists as Justin Martyr, Cyprian and Tertullian, . Basil and the practice of Christians for twenty centuries. , The Real Presence of Jesus Christ finds us, therefore, in the Lord’s Supper at a place beyond which no human guide can take us and leads us forward into the presence of God. In this sacra- ment we come in contact with the personality, than whom there is none greater. In a letter to The Churchman Professor Samuel McComb states re- specting Dr. Douglas’ Spiritual Healing and the Holy Communion: ‘He has grasped the funda- mental fact that all real healing must be in per- sonality. A disordered personality can be cured of its disorder only by a personality that is the essence of health and order and peace.” ‘This tract, which I mention, is a personal testimony receiving the endorsement of such eminent clergymen as Dr. CHARACTER FORMATION 147 Ernest M. Stires, Rev. J. W. Sutton, Dr. W. H. Owen, Bishops Slattery, Stearly, Lines, Burgess and Nichols, besides the editor of The Living Church and numerous physicians of high standing. The point the author establishes is the necessity of personal guidance outside ourselves. This lead- ership is taken up in mature life by the sacred person of Christ and carries us in sweet compan- ionship to heights which parents, friends and phy- Sicians cannot attain for us. Christ lays hold of our inmost selves and performs His healing work through soul contacts and guidance. The Real Presence is effective through our spir- itual imagination centered in the visible reality of the memorial ordained by Christ upon the eve of His crucifixion. A past event would be useful in its power of auto-suggestion. But the Eucharist offers in the presence of Jesus Christ a direct sug- gestion, to him who attends it, with any imagina- tion or power to will. Since Christ is present In this feast of love He can cure us and heal us. The application follows in mental healing. We first relax our sinful selves in the presence of Him who loves us and gives Himself for us. ‘Thereupon we accept His guidance, His promises and His abiding generalship. We unite our wills in mystical union with the central power of healing and good will of the universe, and become attuned to the purposes of God in mind and body. How we behave in the audience of different per- 148 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES sonages is illustrative of how differently we conduct ourselves in the sight and hearing of the Healer and Redeemer of mankind. That a man holds himself differently on the ball field and in the ball- room, in the company of a dear comrade or in the conference room of the head of the concern is _ obvious to all. That a group of worshipers con- duct themselves more reverently at the time of the Holy Communion is quite noticeable to the Min- ister or Celebrant. The entrance of one person into a congregation frequently alters and uplifts the whole spiritual atmosphere of the entire group. The prayers, sermon and singing take on a unique tone depending upon the personalities of the hear- ers and supporters of the Church. Perhaps it should not be so; but the one in charge of the service cannot but feel the presence of those be- fore them and respond to it. I have observed this occur in the choir as well when a visiting preacher is with us even before he says a word. His bear- ing, his demeanor radiates influences in the very tone and quality of the singing. This was im- pressed upon me very vividly when our Colonel, John G. Parker, whose moral force was superb, sometimes unexpectedly dropped into the canteen of the barracks. Work was done in a more sol- dierly manner and the tone of the conversation was elevated, the disgruntled became quite cheery and optimistic, and the sick lost their languid appear- ance. Such is the power of personality to raise CHARACTER FORMATION 149 one above our surroundings. To infinite degrees in comparison is the power of the Presence of the Personality of Jesus Christ to heal and to restore the will and the imagination, the good behavior and morale of His disciples, when in the audience of Him who says: ‘Take, eat; do this in remem- brance of Me. This is My body and this is My blood.” The Holy Communion is a God-given supply and factor in Christian Healing. This supper and command of our Lord is overlooked by Christian Science. Most Christian bodies pass it by as a healing ordinance. (Refer to the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John, fiftieth to fifty- eighth verses). Here Christ plainly declares the potency of the spiritualized flesh to maintain tem- poral and eternal life. The Jews asked: How could Christ give His flesh to be eaten? Jesus said “Except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” Without life, of course, there is no health present or available. Already we have mentioned the words spoken to a communicant when receiving the Body and Blood of Christ at the altar in the ritual of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church and others which use this phraseology. In a booklet endorsed by the Rev. A. J. G. Banks (to whom I owe so much), entitled Come Unto Me, the wording of the Communion Office, as well as 150 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES the more helpful communion hymns, is analyzed with reference to the healing value of the Holy Communion. Upon close examination one will find at least a dozen allusions, prayers and Scrip- tural statements, besides the daily Gospels and Epistles with their frequent healing narratives, to the supply of health available in the reception of the Holy Communion. E. L. House, How to Heal One’s Self and Others, published by the Revell Co., page 37, treats this more scholarly but less poet- ically. He sums up the matter: ‘All is on the Lord’s Table.” But this little treatise, by Ethel Tulloch—good as it is, is limited in its scope to the one Church, or liturgy, to which the author belongs, and is therefore quite unsatisfactory in its claim upon the rank and file of Christians. A broader claim: to the efficacy of the blessed sacrament may be based upon what our Lord meant when He says (54): ‘“‘Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.” Now, we know from other pas- sages of Scripture that no persistent evildoer has eternal life. In other words, the Communion is in the Church for the giving to its members eternal life in place of the life in sins. Furthermore, we who partake of this flesh dwell in Christ and He inus. This might at first appear the acme of mys- ticism, and it is such. Yet at the same time this sacrament (as do all sacraments) conveys a tan- gible and visible evidence of the healing power of CHARACTER FORMATION 151 Christ through material as well as spiritual union with Him. “He that eateth of this bread shall live forever’ (verse fifty-eight) furnishes the idea of health in its contrast to the statement to the former food from heaven—the manna in the wil- derness. Those who ate it are dead. Those who partake of the Body of Christ live eternally, live better, wholesome lives. The practical question then may be raised as to the invitation of all people to the altar, or the distribution of the blessed bread to the people in the pews, and the wine (fermented or otherwise) for the express purpose of healing. Someone might ask: If I go to the Holy Communion will I get well? We cannot answer yes or no. But we may quote our Savior in this regard: “According to thy faith so be it unto you.” Just how the Holy Communion becomes an agency of divine healing is through faith. By faith in the flesh and blood of Christ as integral portions of our flesh, like the meat and drink from the table, are we infused with the buoyant per- sonality of the ever-living Christ. Speaking by way of scientific criticism, some will observe that some communicants are ill and other non-communi- cants are exceedingly healthy. ‘Therefore we note the Holy Communion is not a talisman to keep off disease nor a hospice from which the unclean are excluded. In the more spiritual crises of life it is easier to present illustrations of the revivifying 152 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES effects of the Holy Communion. When the troops were about to leave the shelter of Base No. 3, I gave them Communion. For some it was, and they knew it would be, their last. But it gave them new and high resolve to offer their lives a living sacrifice for the holy, righteous cause for which America entered the conflict. They went forth to their new assignments on the Front with a Christian courage and endurance fired and fused in the warm glow of Christ’s inner presence. Not one flinched, no one turned back. In the prisons I met those who, without the aid of religion and the most sacred manifestation of it in the Body and Blood of Christ, were cowards, traitors, broken lives, condemned in the sight of God and men. ‘These illustrations per- haps allude too sparingly to health, the subject we wish to emphasize. There can be no health of mind or body where courage to face life bravely has vanished. In the quiet chamber of those who are ending their aged careers I frequently administer the Holy Communion to those who are heir to all the ills of flesh and must shortly or eventually tread that path along which no wayfarer returns. Has the Holy Communion aided them physically as well as spir- itually? Yes, the physicians say it has. Before surgical operations I have administered the Holy Communion and it has alleviated the ether shock and other accompanying effects of severe crises. One notable case I have in mind is that of one CHARACTER FORMATION 153 of our members who had her legs cut off inch by inch time after time in her protracted illness with diabetes. The only thing which gave her, or held her life in her, in these most harrowing and dead- ening adventures toward death was her realistic grip on Christ in the Communion. At such times one is not poetic or imaginative. The surgeons said any other person would have died a year be- fore. Humanely speaking it would have been bet- ter that she had been released from her suffering and lingering torture. But in this evidence of the life-giving power of the flesh of the Son of man we have an assurance that those among us, not af- flicted with what medical science now terms an incurable disease, can be sustained in physical effi- ciency, health and vigor by worthy participation in the Holy Communion. Verse fifty: ‘‘This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that aman may eat thereof and not die.” The worthy reception of the Holy Communion is the highest standard of morality known to man. It at once links us to life in and for Jesus Christ, than whom there is no higher authority for human conduct. We are aware of the effects of various emotions and conduct upon our physical organisms. Adherence to idealistic principles of peace and hap- piness, good will and brotherly love such as the Holy Communion means and imparts has its related effect upon the emotions of communicants. If the seat of faith-cures is in the emotions, or the will, 154 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES or the imagination, in one, or as I believe in all, we here have in this sacrament a supply from our Heavenly Father of influences which touch ever so intimately these through faculties of the uncon- scious mind by means of which the soul is aroused to benefit the body, reviving physiological proc- esses and vaso-motor functions, which in turn reach every tissue of the anatomy. One of the lessons modern welfare work and sociology is teaching us is that we have a right to be free from the disease of poverty. Poverty is the mother of sin and sickness. Men and women are tempted to barter their honor and virtue to escape poverty. The Bible reveals the fact that poverty is largely the consequence of wrong think- ing. There is a way out of it, namely, harmony to the laws of God where this right following of di- vine precepts may be had. Let us quote a few passages from the wealthy King Solomon in his Proverbs to illustrate that God is our supply. “That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.” “By humility and fear of the Lord are riches, and honor, and life.” As we have said, poverty is one of the causes of crime; but this is very largely due to ill health, incapacity to labor and compete and codperate with one’s fellows. It is not our province here to enter into a discussion of all the causes of poverty. But if sickness, physical or mental, is one chief cause, CHARACTER FORMATION 155 then by removing that we are eradicating one of the factors and foundations of sin. Jane Addams is one of the leading authorities in this field, and she declares that drunkenness is all too frequently the effect of poverty. How easy it is for a man to lose the sense of his own unworthi- ness, unfitness and inferiority by over indulgence in some opiate. Poverty has driven so many to degradation, and that in consequence of poor di- gestions, physical weakness, mental dullness and other physical lack. To combat sin we must fight against poverty, especially a poverty of vitality. When we come to the source of life and to Him who came to give us more abundant life (John 10:10), we are tapping the wells of salvation from sins. Jesus did not recommend poverty for the masses. He suggested to one rich man that he might uplift the masses by selling what he had and giving to the poor. Christ knew that man loved money for its own sake rather than the good he could do with it. Life is an attribute of God. All that makes life enjoyable and successful is our Heavenly Father’s good pleasure to bestow upon those who recognize His Kingdom. Sin is that which ultimately de- stroys life,—always negative. Milton defines ‘‘sin as that which is impotent and powerless, ungoverned appetite, that which disfig- ures our likeness to God and destroys everything but itself.” Therefore, whatever will promote life 156 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES and self-realized-living will be antagonistic to sin. Hence a godly, righteous life being the product of a healthy frame and constitution, and supplied by God, is a strategic attack upon evil within and with- out the individual. Social health enhances social purity and fortifies the commonwealth against the sins of society. It is our purpose to show, by way of summary, that God is capable and willing to supply all our needs, to give that vital urge, to fortify our health and will to prevent us from being overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good. Where God, through the Ministry of Healing, has effected a more intelligent consciousness of His ability to supply all our needs we shall come to a keener perception that sin also is a disease. He who can supply all that is necessary for the elimination of diseases can, through forgiveness, create such heal- ing influences that the broken and contrite heart will achieve spiritual reform. The vast majority of our population who take no responsibility in the conquest of sin, and will not be organized against the organized forces of evil, have a very vague conception of sin. When they are aware of it they take it not into considera- tion in so far as it does not disturb their peace, health or property. It would be well if we could disseminate the definition of the meaning of sin given by Sir Oliver Lodge in his book, Substance of Faith, chapter eight. “Sin is the deliberate and CHARACTER FORMATION 157 willful act of a free agent who sees the better and chooses the worse, and thereby acts injuriously to himself and others. The root sin is selfishness, whereby needless trouble and pain are inflicted on others; when fully developed it involves moral suicide.” The foregoing chapters have shown the potency of Christian Healing against what Lodge so well defines. But it must not be supposed, as some modern health cults propose, that health is the only factor, nor indeed is it the chief factor, in overcoming evil. Simply making a man well will not make him sinless, nor eradicating social evils will not eliminate criminality. But given a strong body and forceful, upright character, we shall have two of the fittest foes to lead the onslaught against oppression, lust and crime and every other symp- tom of sin. We have said sin kills. Therefore that which aids the struggle for existence is damaging to sin. Achievement is that overpowering instinct which in turn irradiates happiness. Ill health tends to direct one’s thought inward to unhappiness, to the centers of pain; thereby it promotes a self-centered existence and selfishness. On the other hand, Christian Healing inculcates an outward, upward look, a tendency to the culture of our higher fac- ulties by means of causing us to think less of self, making us free to educate those qualities of mind which appreciate and foster the good, the beautiful 158 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES and the true. Thus we are freed from mere ani- mal existence to become associated with those things representative of a higher existence and of the faculties of divinity, namely art, science, philosophy, religion and creative improvement. The best adapted to survive, and the noblest char- acters of those who have been on earth leave an historic heritage and incentive of what we may ‘ some day become. Not groveling in infirmities and sin, but living unselfish lives, developing the high- est faculties in us, harmoniously evolving God’s purpose for ourselves, and not our own passions, we shall one day possess such souls and bodies worthy and well qualified, fit for the Master’s use. The process shall be: ‘Redeemed, restored, for- given, by Jesus’ precious blood; heirs of His home in heaven—Oh, praise our pardoning God.” Christian Healing, we have said, is but one of God’s supplies in man’s struggle upward to a more complete and sinless life. Anyone who has thus far followed our argument will, I trust, be ready to agree there is a healing power in the universe far beyond our comprehension. That God who created us is willing to help all His creatures who obey His laws is self-evident from those miraculous cures which we have given. And we could add many more on reliable authority, if I were to quote from E. E. Byrum’s Divine Healing, periodicals by the score, of verified cases in Banks’ and Hick- son’s and Hathaway’s missions. The final point CHARACTER FORMATION 159 I wish to establish is that we may recognize through Christian Healing that we are surrounded by God’s care, forethought, joy, love and beauty,—and that we term the Grace of God. Faith in the Grace of God sustains and empowers the will, the conscience and the unconscious mind. It draws nigh to us the more we draw nigh to it. The life of Jesus Christ as portrayed in His tenderness and uplift of the fallen, diseased and dead, His living influ- ence today, His power alone to forgive sin, give us the vital urge to press on toward perfection of soul and bodily fitness——impregnable barriers to sin and weapons sharpened by faith for the combat on the side of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. THE END 1 Ay 5 % ue