fcibrarp of Che Cheolocjtcd ^emmarjp PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY The Estate of Victor S. Lukens KCLpO~5 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/aretheremodernmiOOdagg THE REV. HENRY B. WILSON. B.D. FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF THE NAZARENE DEDICATION “Spiritual Healing through Prayer is based on as immutable laws of the universe as is electricity or the radio or the aeroplane. The law operates successfully when it is correctly applied. That we some¬ times fail to get the healing does not in the least invalidate the law. What we need to remember is that there are regular rules for this science as for any other. “I regard the Rev. Henry B. Wilson, of Boonton, N. J., as one of the great experts who know how to apply them. In his line he is as great a specialist, we may say, as is Edison in the Electrical or Marconi in the Wireless World.” Charles H. Brent, Bishop of Western New York. To the memory of this “great specialist” this book is affectionately dedicated by some of his friends r r m <*§>♦'"* . v */} MAR 12 1953 Are There Modern ^ < >%sigal $0 Miracles? By Mabel Potter Daggett 1923 THE NAZARENE PRESS ASHEVILLE, N. C. FOREWORD T HE article reprinted in this booklet, by permission of the author and the publishers of the Ladies' Home Journal , in which maga¬ zine it appeared last June, has brought many hundreds of letters of enquiry to the offices of the Society of the Nazarene. We are sending out this booklet, not merely for the publicity it will give to our own Society, but because it shows clearly and graphic¬ ally the whole modern trend towards the restoration of this Ministry within the Churches and Missions of our land. As Tennyson reminds us: “God reveals Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” And while we may disagree with the methods employed by some of the evangelists referred to in this article, we can still rejoice that the Healing message is being so fearlessly presented and that the “signs following” are so abundantly manifest. As the writer of this article was not herself engaged in any sort of propaganda and was quite unbiassed in her point of view, it is all the more surprising that so large a part of her message is occupied with the revival of the Healing Ministry within the Episcopal Church. If she had been permitted more space she would doubtless have followed the movement to the Antipodes and would have referred (as we have done in the Nazarene for September, 1923) to the marvel¬ lous revival of the Healing Ministry in the Anglican Churches of Australia. Mr. Hickson may be criticized by some good friends of the Church, but the fact remains that he has aroused the whole Anglican Communion throughout the world to a remarkable and active interest in this Christlike ministry to the sick and suffering which our Lord Himself instituted. Recent records of his work in South Africa, China, Japan and Australia, as well as in such a conservative center as Aberdeen, Scotland, all combine to demonstrate that his message is being welcomed by all the progressive minds in the Anglican Body. The recent endorsement given by the Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia (reprinted in the September, 1923, Nazarene), bears elo¬ quent testimony to the above statements. In the United States the endorsement is a little slower, just be¬ cause the Healing ministry has been too much exploited by itinerant preachers and “healers” whose sensational and spectacular methods have only served to increase the cautiousness of some of the more orthodox and conservative minds in the Church. The Society of the Nazarene represents the happy “Via Media” between the extremes of conservatism and radicalism in the Ministry of Healing. Our methods were wonderfully demonstrated in the Mis¬ sion of eight days held at St. Mark’s Church, Denver, Colorado, August 19-26, 1923. At this Mission, held under the auspices of the Society of the Nazarene, four bishops, twenty parochial clergy, two deaconesses and a large number of consecrated laity ministered nightly to a congregation of more than 800 people and many wonder¬ ful healings took place. No one personality was exploited or projected in the meetings. It was truly a Mission of the Church in its corporate capacity, and the slogan of the Mission as reported by the local press was that “Apostolic Succession is most truly vindicated by Apostolic Success.” We wish to express our very hearty thanks to Mrs. Daggett for permission to reprint this article from her original MSS. (which in¬ cludes some matter not used in the Ladies’ Home Journal). Also to the Curtis Publishing Co. for similar permission. We pray that God will use this little publication to still further promote the coming of His Kingdom and the doing of His will “on earth as it is done in Heaven.” A. J. Gayner Banks, Director, Society of the Nazarene. Asheville, N. C., September, 1923. Are There Modern Miracles? T AKE a look through the library shelves for a small, black leather bound volume. And it prob¬ ably has gold edges and maybe your mother’s name written on the fly leaf. Get it down. Dust it off. It’s a very old classic that’s come to be the new best seller. Why? Because there’s a Great Physician whom two continents are talking about. And the Bible contains a record of his practice. A revival of religion as an adjunct to daily living of as practical importance as modern plumbing or electricity, is thrilling through the churches. And its converts are hold¬ ing aloft the Bible as the key to health. No, I’m not talk¬ ing of that newest church which within a generation has belted the earth with its adherents of health and prosperity. Nor yet of that oldest church whose claim to miracle cures some of us in protestant superiority have been wont to dis¬ miss as superstition. It’s your church that is now concerned. Almost any Sunday now from your pastor you may hear of divine healing. From as divergent points as London and Edinburgh and Rome and Tokio and Cape Town and Melbourne, the asso¬ ciated press carries reports that it has occurred. A Pres¬ byterian Church in San Francisco and a Methodist Church in Philadelphia, alike, are teaching it. In Los Angeles a Baptist preacher has just erected a $100,000 interdenomi- 7 national auditorium for it. In Washington, D. C., six or seven churches advertise it among their weekly announce¬ ments. In New York City, historic Trinity and Grace and a dozen other churches are doing it. In Wichita, Kansas, sixteen ministers joined in a campaign for it. In Toronto on a single Sunday it was the theme from twenty pulpits. Then this has now occurred: at its last General Con¬ vention, the Episcopal Church, the denomination that is the most established and conservative of all, endorsed the effi¬ cacy of prayer as an instrument in the cure of disease. If the new idea hasn’t yet reached your town, it’s as sure to as the radio that arrived a year or so ago. You may be able to dismiss it with a smile when the rumor first comes from the kitchen that the cook’s cousin has been healed. Your sister-in-law’s claim to a cure may be rather casually received. You begin to take notice when your hostess at a fashionable dinner party announces that she is well of that trouble for which she was going to New York for an opera¬ tion. No, it isn’t the town’s leading specialist. Nor even psychoanalysis. It is prayer. One day you may even meet Jones or Brown or Smith on the stieet such a picture of health you think he must be just back from Hot Springs. He says it’s something better. And he bursts forth with the panacea he’s just got to have every one know: “Tell you what, old fellow, I’ve taken the Lord Jesus Christ for my Healer and Savior.” Catch your breath. Do you get what’s going round? It’s the old time religion, but with a new content that makes it as secular as it is sacred: Christ the Redeemer of the 8 world from sickness as well as from sin, a faith as valuable for here as for the hereafter. Christians formerly were wont to “confess” a religious experience. But these new converts want to shout theirs. Jones and Brown and Smith and the rest say that the search¬ ing of the Scriptures has disclosed an original gospel that included a gift of healing. They’re as enthusiastic about it as an archaeologist who might have turned up a lost art of a buried civilization. They open their Bible to Psalms 103:3 and point you to a God “who forgiveth all thy in¬ iquities, who healeth all thy diseases.” For more definite in¬ structions which they all are following, they show you James 5:14,15: “Is any among you sick, let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” “Are they crazy?” But Smith’s a judge perhaps. And Brown’s a member of the Republican campaign committee. They’re as regular as that. They’re not Christian Scientists. Nor are they HolyRoilers. Where did they get it then? Well, it is out of Boonton, New Jersey, that has come the Society of the Nazarene that is exerting a profound in¬ fluence on modern religious thought. Boonton is a small place on the map. But there is a little brown church there that God has set on a hill. The Episcopal clergyman who is its rector, Rev. H. B. Wilson, is the founder and director of the Society of the Nazarene established in 1909 for the purpose of restoring the use of prayer as it was practised by 9 the early church. A polished, scholarly gentleman and a graduate of the General Theological Seminary, New York, he is as well versed in physiology and psychology as he is in theology. He was a number of years ago the rector at Holy Cross in Brooklyn. It happened to be next to a hospital to which he was often called to visit patients. And it was in this way, he says, he made the discovery of the Biblical truth he is now giving his life to promoting. There was a day when he was called into the hospital office. “See here,” said the head surgeon, “so many of the patients seem to be improving since you’ve been coming round, what’s going on?” “Prayer, sir,” was the answer. “All right,” agreed the doctor. “Anyhow, we like it. Go ahead. You can have the freedom of the hospital.” Practically installed like this as unofficial chaplain, the young clergyman walked the wards with the doctors, there to acquire the experience later to be put to test in his spiritual practice. His parish is now as wide as the world. So far has the little candle lighted in Boonton shed its beams that the Society of the Nazarene now has guilds numbering thou¬ sands of members, some of them in far foreign lands. There are no dues. But there is a pledge for daily prayer. And there is the Intercession List of those requiring assist¬ ance in recovery from illness, for whom the entire member¬ ship make petition each day to God. A valued member and contributor to the monthly magazine is Sir William Will- cocks, K.C.M.G., Chief Engineer of the Assuan Dam in Egypt. From Atlanta, Georgia, to San Diego, California, 10 and from New Orleans, to Ottawa, Canada, the prayer guilds dot our own continent. “And are people with real ailments actually cured by prayer?” I asked Mr. Wilson. “I myself was,” he answered quietly. “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 of thefr prescrip¬ tions, I was healed wholly and completely by prayer.” Then he pointed to the filing cases that line the walls of his study and now overflow everywhere through the little brown rectory. “I have here the evidence ” he said, “of the cure of every kind of disease, not only functional but organic as well.” He picked up at random from the heap of new mail on his desk a letter. It was from a trained nurse, the daughter of a physician. “I was very ill 17 months ago with pulmonary tuberculosis,” she wrote, “and my friends had lost all hope of saving me. But since I began living by the teachings of the Nazarene Society, I have steadily im¬ proved. Today I haven’t a symptom of tuberculosis.” Testimonies like these from cured patients are published each month in The Nazarene. This is the little magazine which Mr. Wilson has been compelled to establish as a means of communicating to an inquiring world the informa¬ tion for which Boonton has been fairly besieged. Meanwhile out in Chicago there is Paul Rader, Presi¬ dent of the Christian Alliance. At its inception thirty-five years ago, when the Rev. A. B. Simpson, a Presbyterian minister, left his New York pulpit to organize it, the ad¬ herents of the Alliance were looked upon as a peculiar 11 people. They have always practised faith healing. Now the organization has grown to number some 350 churches throughout the United States, which since the death of the founder have come under the direction of Paul Rader. Have you ever heard him preach? There’s a punch to his religion that hits his hearers hard. Paul Rader was a prize fighter before he stepped into the ministerial ring to become the magnetic and virile and powerful champion of a new Christianity. The son of a Methodist minister, he had strayed far from his father’s faith when the Lord found him and brought him back from Broadway’s white light district. People crowd his Tabernacle in Chicago to hear this story and others by which the preacher presents gospel truth with a genius equal to a De Maupassant. And under Paul Rader’s leadership, his religious group is now to be reckoned with in church circles. For a few years past it has been happening in city after city that some important Main Street minister has put on his hat and gone across the town to investigate what the little obscure Christian Alliance Church was doing to draw such crowds. Some time later, perhaps a brother clergyman re¬ turned from a Metropolitan convention, reports that fash¬ ionable New York churches are doing the same thing. And suddenly the healing that was peculiar has become popular. When the Right Rev. Wm. T. Manning, who is now Bishop of New York, sponsored the idea, a great many Christians everywhere opened their Bibles again to find that it was correct. It was in 1919 that James Moore Hickson, a layman, came from London with letters from the estab- 12 lished, Church of England attesting the spiritual cures ac¬ complished through his laying on of hands and prayer. Bishop Manning’s acceptance of Mr. Hickson opened the doors of the most exclusive religious edifices in America for a tour of the country in which the working of wonders was witnessed by vast throngs of people. Trinity chapel, New York, where Mr. Hickson’s mission began, and Grace Church, where had already been installed a prayer guild of Mr. Wilson’s Nazarene Society, became centres of interest to draw visiting clergymen from all parts of the country. Of what takes place at Grace Church, the Right Rev. Charles Lewis Slattery, the former rector who is now Bishop co¬ adjutor of Massachusetts, has this to say: “There have been many cases of spiritual growth of the individual through the Prayer Group. It is the spiritual growth of the individual through prayer that is, of course, the chief concern of the church. But we know today that the spiritual man and the physical man are so interrelated that what affects the soul must register also in its effect on the body. Physical healing is as it were a sequela of the spiritual healing.” The Nazarene group at Grace Church meets regularly on Tuesday afternoons. One day recently I stepped from the rush and roar of Broadway into the healing quiet of Grace Church’s beautiful chantry. The subject of the day presented by the clergyman in charge was one of the miracles of the Bible. Afterward there were people rising here and there in the congregation who “witnessed” to the modern miracle that they said had happened to them. Then the new seekers for healing came forward to the altar rail. As they 13 knelt, the clergyman in his white surplice passed along. He stepped before each for the anointing from the tiny vial of olive oil that he carried. Touching the forehead in the sign of the cross and laying both hands on the head of the sup¬ pliant, he offered an individual prayer for each, specifically mentioning the nature of the trouble for which relief was sought. After the service, I sought out the officiating clergyman, the Rev. Eliot White. “Is it true,” I asked him, “that these people are actually healed through prayer?” “The results here at Grace Church,” Mr. White an¬ swered, “speak for themselves. For anyone who has wit¬ nessed what here occurs, there can be no doubt of the efficacy of spiritual healing. Instantaneous cures are rare. But so many people have been markedly helped in a recovery from serious illness, that although the improvement may be gradual and over a period of time, it must be ascribed to the cause that so definitely antedates the physical change, namely to prayer.” “We are working not in opposition to but in co-operation with the doctors,” the clergyman continued. “However, we also have cases with which medical treatment has failed and ended, where the prayer treatment alone works the cure. A case I have in mind is that of a woman who for months had suffered from a suppurating gland and a growth on the side of her neck. On account of it, she was obliged to carry her head bent over to her shoulder. Her family doctor had lanced it twice and inserted a drainage tube, but the dis¬ charge continued. By the month of October the trouble had 14 become so acute that at a hospital consultation an operation was advised. But the patient feared to risk it. For two months more she continued under her own doctor’s minis¬ trations to have the affected part painted with iodine. At last he said, ‘There is no improvement and there is really nothing more that I can do except to change the dressing as it is required.’ The woman was by now quite terrified. Her husband suggested, T guess if you believe in your religion, this is the time to try it.’ On January 25th she came to me. I laid my hands on her head and also on the bandage on her neck and prayed for her recovery. The next morning she hurried to show herself to the doctor. As he removed the bandage he remarked, ‘Why, something very remarkable has happened. This gland has begun to heal. I don’t understand it.’ Two days later he removed the bandage and threw it into the waste basket with the an¬ nouncement that the healing was complete. On January 29th she came to church to show us her cure. She was hold¬ ing her head erect for the first time in months. She flexed her neck easily. Then I carefully examined the neck. There was only a pale brown scar where before, only four days before, had been an open wound, and an angry sore and a swelling as large as your first. My assistant, Rev. Frank Gifford, was also a witness to what occurred. And we both agree that here there had been a miracle.” At Trinity Chapel in East 26th Street next I asked the rector, Rev. J. Wilson Sutton, “Is disease cured by prayer?” “Spiritual healing,” he answered, “is one of the normal activities of the church for which it is commissioned today 15 exactly as it was over 1900 years ago. We do not rest out belief here at Trinity on the miracles of either the Old or the New Testament. If God be what we know Him to be, 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 healing power for both organic and functional disease. One of our cases is that of a young married woman who had suffered six years from the results of an apoplectic stroke at child birth. She could walk only with the aid of two crutches when she came for her anoint¬ ing. On the following morning she put the crutches in a closet and walked off without them. She has not used them since. There was a young woman suffering with valvular heart disease who was brought to Mr. Hickson’s service here. I saw her carried down the aisle on a stretcher for his prayer and anointing. Three times afterward I myself prayed for her. She is a perfectly well girl today. A physician from out of town came for prayer and anointing for himself for angina pectoris. Suppose you read what he says.” And Father Sutton passed me a letter which read, over the physi¬ cian’s own signature: “Laus deo! A veritable miracle has been wrought! I have been as it were remade. I can do without suffering things I have not done in years. It’s all very wonderful. What more can I say than that I am pro¬ foundly thankful to God.” “Is disease cured by prayer?” I asked the Rev. Wm. T. Walsh, the rector at St. Luke’s, New York. “At the spiritual healing service held at St. Luke’s each Thursday,” he 16 answered, “some one is blessed with healing every week. This healing in answer to prayer is so frequent as to put the phenomenon outside the range of coincidence. It has been demonstrated now beyond question. It is in accordance with laws of the universe as exact as the law of gravity. These spiritual laws are recorded for our use in the Bible. But in order to apply them successfully, it is essential to master their technique. For this we are told, ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ Among our cases that I may mention is that of a girl of thirteen obliged to wear steel braces on her legs and unable to walk even two blocks without them. After three prayer treatments she took off the braces and is walking normally today. A woman whose physician had told her she had a valvular heart trouble was in one prayer treat¬ ment cured so that the same specialist has pronounced her heart quite normal. A physician’s son, a boy suffering from epilepsy, had been despaired of by medical men. He had been having three or four seizures a week. Under the prayer and laying on of hands, the boy’s body grew rigid. He said afterward it was as if an electric current passed through him. He relaxed and was well. This healing occurred three years ago since which time the boy has not had another seizure.” Testimonies like these from prayer groups all over the country were the evidence examined by the Episcopal Com¬ mission on Healing, among the prominent members of which were Bishop Manning of New York and Bishop Boyd Vincent of Ohio. The report of this commission adopted by the Episcopal General Convention in Portland in Septem¬ ber last contained this statement: “We believe that the body 17 no less than the soul of man was included in the work of redemption; that the restoration of harmony of man’s mind and will with the divine will often brings with it the restora¬ tion of the body; that the full power of the church’s cor¬ porate intercession in this connection has been too little realized and that confidence in the efficacy of prayer for restoration of health has not been sufficiently encouraged. Here then is the first great need of the church today in the revival of her ministry of healing.” Also, see Paul Rader’s group now. “Is disease healed through prayer?” I asked Paul Rader. “We have thousands of our Christian Alliance members who bear witness that it is,” he replied. “None of us, he continued, have the least objection to the use of medicine. Only in my own family when anyone is ill, there is but one doctor we will have. We run for the Great Physician.” So popular are the Christian Alliance tenets becoming today, that in town after town the little Christian Alliance Church can no longer contain the people that crowd to hear its evangelists. The largest hall that can be hired is required. Out onto its platform has stepped Fred Francis Bos- worth. Born on a farm in Nebraska, he had risen to be a teller and city clerk in Fitzgerald, Georgia, before he came to the pastorate of a little church in Dallas, Texas. Some years ago the Lord spake unto him and called him to a larger field. He drew back protesting: How should he with no college or theological training, dare to lift his voice among learned preachers in great cities. But the call was insistent. 18 At last, he says, the Lord commanded: It is healing you must teach, with prayer and anointing. “But, O Lord,” he protested, “what if none of them should get well?” “That,” replied the Lord, “is my business. Yours is to pray and anoint.” After a week’s struggle on his knees before the throne, he capitulated: “All right, Lord, even though they all should die as fast as I pour oil upon them.” But they haven’t. There are now literally thousands who assert that they have been healed of divers diseases through Mr. Bosworth’s ministrations. In Miami, Florida; Toronto, Canada; Toledo, Detroit, St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and many smaller cities where his great revivals have been held during the past two years, his name has be¬ come a household word spoken with reverence and affection. In the summer of 1922, Mr. Bosworth had arrived in New York to try out whether the gay metropolis would want salvation. And perhaps they wouldn’t. But when they heard it was health, they hurried to get it. In the months of August and September 2000, then 3000, then 4000 came nightly to the Christian Alliance tent pitched on a vacant lot on the edge of Brooklyn. I sat for six weeks nightly on the platform there, from which I saw what occurred. Beyond the lifted sides of the tent, the people who couldn’t get seats, stood way out among the weeds and the sweet clover. Pressed forward, straining to hear through- 19 out the entire service, you could see their heads out there in the darkness silhouetted against the light that streamed from all the little shops around. And along the Boulevard that skirted the scene, shot the gleaming headlights of the in¬ cessant automobiles speeding on to Coney Island. From a city famous for all worldly pleasures, this man now lifted up before them, had drawn his hearers. His personality seemed luminous. The serenity of a soul crystal clear shone in his face. An amplifier that should help to carry his voice hung over his head. He stood with an open Bible in his hand and without sensational rhetoric calmly, yet convincingly, expounded what he says is the word of God. And it is the same thing that Henry Wilson says: that “God is not the author of sickness; that the atonement of Christ’s death on the cross will save the world alike from sickness and from sin. Believe it and accept it, and you shall be healed of all your diseases.” Night after night, as the invitation was given at the close of the sermon, I saw seekers for this healing fairly pour down the aisles. On crutches and in wheel chairs they came and some were brought on cots, all manner of twisted and deformed wrecks of humanity our boasted civilization has produced. It was sickness in all its hideousness that was raising its head, as if homes had fairly belched forth the awful anguish that on the other occasions is covered and concealed. It surged in waves that literally beat upon the figure of the man whose anointing touch offered the hope of salvation 20 from its misery. And he stood among them, a man of sor¬ rows, in his eyes the compassionate look of one acquainted with grief—O, all the terrible griefs of so many cities. And he moved among the multitude anointing them and praying for them, just as Mr. Wilson does, “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” And it came to pass that the lame walked, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dumb talked, and many declared themselves healed of their diseases. Those who witnessed what occurred were irresistibly im¬ pelled to sing unto the Lord, joining with the chorus under the direction of B. B. Bosworth, the evangelist’s brother. It was the gospel hymn, “It’s Almost Too Good to be True,” that made the welkin ring. Again and again out over the great city rolled that ringing refrain, “It’s Almost Too Good to be True.” If you ask Francis Bosworth, “Does prayer cure?” he shows you. At the close of one of his Brooklyn services, he requested all those present who had at any time experi¬ enced a cure in answer to prayer, to rise. “And what were you cured of?” he inquired of the man at the beginning of the first row. Like that he went down line after line with the question until the answers had covered every disease in materia medica. “I guess that will be about enough,” he announced. “We won’t need the testimony of the rest of you.” But he turned to his secretary, “How many people are there on their feet?” “I have counted 802, sir,” the secretary replied. “Now,” said the evangelist simply as he faced his audience, “would it be possible for all of these folks to be mistaken?” 21 But if you should wish further proof from Mr. Bosworth that spiritual healing occurs, there are some 2000 concrete cases that he may cite as evidence. Have you heard the story of John Sproul? It has been told all over the United States and has now been translated into foreign languages to be taken to Europe. Mayor E. V. Babcock of Pittsburgh, where it occurred, is kept busy answering inquirers from all over the world. “Until I saw John Sproul,” he says, “I didn’t believe in miracles. Now I do. His spiritual heal¬ ing has actually occurred. You can’t get away from it.” Here is the story as John Sproul himself and Mayor Babcock of Pittsburgh and Mr. Bosworth the evangelist vouch for it: John W. Sproul, an American soldier from Pittsburgh, fell in the terrible drive of Chateau Thierry and was carried off the battlefield to a hospital. There were injuries from which he never recovered. The gas had affected his lungs and bronchial tubes. His voice was gone and he was from the day of the battle unable to speak above a whisper. They operated on him at Bar le due. There were more operations here in America, some fourteen in all, from Bar le due to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and San Francisco. But all the skill of all the army surgeons was of no avail. John Sproul received a certificate of total dis¬ ability from the army hospital at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This was afterward augmented by the decision rendered at Mt. Alto Hospital, Washington, where he was detained under observation for ten days to make perfectly sure before he was again dismissed as “totally disabled,” and granted a pension by the United States Government. This pension 22 had been secured through the intervention of Mayor Bab¬ cock and influential Pennsylvania politicians whom he had interested. For John Sproul’s case was known to all Pitts¬ burgh. His disability was such that he was subject to spells of strangulation that were likely at any time to overtake him in the street. So the Mayor had him provided with a “courtesy card” from the Department of Public Safety, notifying whoever should pick him up that he was not drunk but ill and must be taken either home or to a hospital. From these spells of strangulation he had suffered so that he had not been able to sleep a whole night through in three years, he had not spoken aloud since the Chateau Thierry Drive, and in the many operations his throat muscles had been so cut away that he was unable to hold up his head which fell forward uncontrolled on his breast. The Bosworth campaign had been in progress in the city of Pittsburgh in 1920. But to his mother’s urgings that he try spiritual healing, John Sproul had always replied that it was “fake stuff.” Then Mr. Bosworth had returned for a second campaign in 1921. Sunday, October 15th, John Sproul had passed a night of terrible agony. On Monday morning he walked into the kitchen. His wife had just put her weekly wash out on the line. “Elsie,” he said in his whisper, “come we’ll go to that Christian Alliance taber¬ nacle this afternoon.” Together they took in the wash wet as it was, and started for the meeting. When at the close of the service the invitation for healing was given, the young man leaned over to his wife, “Elsie,” he said, “I’m going up to the platform and something tells me that when I come back I shall be well.” 23 While he was being prayed with at the altar, the worker used the phrase, “Praise the Lord.” Sproul thinking it a command addressed to him, opened his mouth to whisper the words. And lo, he found himself uttering them out loud. Then he shouted, “Praise the Lord.” As he did so, there ran through him like a streak of fire, a burning sensation. And then he was perfectly well. From that moment he could raise his head and hold it normally and he had his perfectly natural voice back again. His mother fell in a faint when he called her over the telephone. The Mayor’s secretary whom he also telephoned answered, “Quit your kidding. This isn’t John Sproul, because John Sproul can’t speak out loud.” “But he can,” insisted the voice at the other end of the wire. Well, the morning newspapers next day carried the story with double headlines to all Pittsburgh. A few days later the government surgeons at Mt. Alto Hospital looked John Sproul over again and certified him perfectly cured. He returned his pension to the government and went back to his old position in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s offices. For the past year he has been kept busy telling the story of his miraculous healing. Now and again he appears on the platform of Mr. Bosworth’s meetings in different parts of the country. Churches are frequently asking him to speak from the pulpit. And the sick are continually coming for his prayers through which cures are reported. So -that John Sproul now is contemplating giving up his desk job, to devote his life to evangelical work. This is what Madame Edith Lambert, of Detroit, is doing. Madame Lambert is a well-known concert singer in 24 the Middle West. She was healed during the Bosworth cam¬ paign in Detroit. At that time she was planning to have an operation for an internal trouble. It was to be done at her home. All of the pads and appliances had been collected. Her family physician who is also a surgeon was ready. Then she said to him, “But, doctor, everyone is talking about this spiritual healing. Do you suppose it might be that I could get it so that I would not have to submit to the knife?” “You could try it,” answered the physician. “See if any¬ thing happens.” She went for the prayer and anointing. And she says she came home well. She presented herself at her physician’s office the next day with the announcement, “Doctor, it’s happened.” After a thorough examination, the doctor agreed, “I can find no trace of your former trouble. All I can say is that you no longer require the operation we had planned.” Today Madame Lambert has closed her Detroit studio and given up her profession of music in order that she may devote all of her time to showing the sick the way to salvation that she herself has found. Out at her home in Algonquin Avenue, she is answering her door bell requests for prayers for the sick as regularly as any physi¬ cian with a large clientele of patients. It is this burning zeal of the people who have been healed and their determination to pass on the gospel of health and salvation to the rest of the world, that is turning the movement into a crusade. In city after city of the United States today, the story that Jesus Christ heals is being told by those who say that they have experienced this healing. Miss Mattie Perry, former superintendent of the Bible 25 Training Institute at Elhanan, New Hampshire, is telling the Southern States. Warren Collins has left his piano store in Fort Worth, Texas, to carry the news from coast to coast. Raymond T. Richey, who says he was healed twelve years ago from astigmatism and approaching blindness, has been addressing vast audiences in Houston, Chicago, Pitts¬ burgh and other cities. Dr. H. E. Rossler, a bone and joint specialist with offices at 300 Madison Avenue, New York, was an interested spectator at the Bosworth meetings in Brooklyn last summer. Night after night he was present to scrutinize closely the cases that claimed to be healed. “Well,” he said after six weeks of close study, “they are healed and that is all there is to it.” Then he went to the evangelist. “Bosworth,” he said, “I’m going to give up my therapeutics for yours.” And he has. His Madison Avenue office is closed. He is in training for evangelical healing work. Rev. P. C. Nelson, in 1921, resigned his pastorate at the Conley Memorial Baptist Church, Detroit, to take the evangelical platform and preach healing and salvation. His decision to this action was reached as a result of his own experience. Through an automobile accident in which he was knocked down in the street, he had received a severe injury to his knee. “Under medical treatment,” says Mr, Nelson, “the knee was growing worse. The doctor had as¬ sured me I was in for a long siege. Then I called in friends who prayed with me according to James 5:14 and 15. I had not been off my bed and had hardly been able to move for five days. The Lord healed me. I arose and dressed my- 26 self. The next day I was in my pulpit. On Monday morn¬ ing I gave my testimony before thirty Baptist ministers in Detroit.” It was a little later that Mr. Nelson became an active assistant in Mr. Bosworth’s Detroit campaign. “I saw there,” he says, “the most remarkable instantaneous healings. I myself anointed and prayed for a Polish woman who had been blind for thirty-three years. She immediately regained her sight and for the first time in her life she saw her daughter who was twenty-five years of age and had led her to the meeting. That day I prayed for two other blind people who also regained their sight. The same evening I prayed for four deaf mutes all of whom were unable to hear and speak. A woman, a cripple, was healed and went out carrying her crutches high in the air while the audience wept and cheered.” Since taking the platform as an evangelist himself, Mr. Nelson declares in his own meetings hundreds have been saved and healed. “Many blind have received their sight,” he declares. “Many scores of deaf have been made to hear. At our great meeting in Wichita. Kansas, several were healed of paralysis, of rheumatism, of cancer and of other diseases called incurable. One woman, an invalid for twenty years, brought from Des Moines in a wheel chair, was instantly healed. She remained four weeks walking around in the meetings and giving her testimony. Her sister was likewise healed of paralysis and deafness and gave me her ear trumpet. Several left their crutches and canes. Some who were brought on beds were made to walk. The audience came from nine states.” This Wichita campaign of Mr. Nelson’s began in a chapel, then moved to a church and finally filled to over- 27 flowing in succession two of the largest churches in the city. Sixteen local ministers assisted in it. During the campaign the Wichita Daily Eagle on March 25, 1921, published what Mr. Nelson announces as his Declaration of Principles as the scriptural basis for divine healing. There are ten of these principles, the first of which states, “Divine healing is not mental or psychic therapy or suggestion. These depend on the power of man.” This and the entire Declaration was signed by the sixteen ministers who had participated in the healing work, among them Baptists, Methodists and Pres¬ byterians. Now there is also another preacher of the new healing. She was a girl on a farm in Ontario, Canada, not so many years ago, when as she asserts, God called her. She has since been around the world in His service. In the summer of 1921 she had come to Denver, where the streets were banner hung for her arrival. “What’s going on in this town?” inquired a travelling man as he stepped from the train. “It’s a woman in white,” they told him. “And she’s turning the world upside down.” Aimee Semple McPher¬ son’s Denver appearance was the climax to a campaign that had covered many cities. Just previously she had taken St. Louis by storm. Those who were present at Denver say scenes were witnessed there such as have nowhere else oc¬ curred outside of Galilee. More than 3,000 people claimed to have been healed through the evangelist’s prayers and laying on of hands. It is this Mrs. McPherson who has just builded an house unto the Lord, the $100,000 tabernacle 28 financed by her followers, which she dedicated on January 1st in Los Angeles. From the Episcopal Church, from the Christian Al¬ liance, and from the campaigns of the dominant personal leaders, the healing revival has now reached to every evan¬ gelical denomination. More churches than it would be possible to enumerate are now holding weekly healing services. Rev. J. Wilson Lunly, Presbyterian minister in San Francisco, after participating in one of Mrs. McPher¬ son’s campaigns on the Pacific coast, declared: “To many of us this is something entirely new. But in the presence of the manifest and remarkable evidences of the Great Physi¬ cian’s healing power, we give it our unqualified approval.” Rev. Matthew Holderby, Presbyterian minister in Chicago where he is the Director of the movement the Christian Family Crusade, is now frequently speaking from the public platform on healing. Mr. Holderby says he has had a personal healing. He had been in attendance at a cam¬ paign that Raymond T. Richey was conducting in Houston, Texas. “There,” he says, “I saw wonderful sights of de¬ liverance from bodily infirmities. On my return to my home in Chicago, I earnestly prayed the Lord to manifest Himself to me in a healing of a deformity in my knee and the ankle of my left leg that had been caused by a severe attack of arthritis. I solemnly affirm that I have evidence that this condition has been remarkably and to me miraculously healed. The whole contour of my ankle has been restored to normal.” A leading exponent of spiritual healing among the Con- gregationalists is Rev. Edwin House, of Hood River, 29 Oregon, who at the urging of the ministers of his own de¬ nomination, has accepted a call to the lecture platform. A special lecture at the Winona Bible Conference and a bril¬ liant platform speaker throughout the country, he has a crowded itinerary for his lecture on the Psychology of Reli¬ gion in which he is teaching: “Have all the physicians thus far failed to heal you? Take these words, T am the Lord that healeth thee,’ ” Exodus 15:26. Among the Methodists, Rev. J. S. Bitler, D.D., from the Southern Methodist Conference, has made a special study of the healing as it was manifested in both Mr. Bosworth’s and Mrs. McPherson’s campaigns. And Dr. Bitler declares, “Divine healing is at the doors of the Methodist Church to¬ day and we’ve got to admit it.” In Texas City, Texas, Rev. W. I. Gates, pastor of the First Methodist Church there, formerly a cripple able to walk only with the aid of two crutches, was partially healed through the ministrations of Mr. Hickson and later his cure was completed through Mr. Richey. Today at his church, Mr. Gates is actively engaged in the healing work. In Washington, D. C., three years ago, the McKendree Methodist Church established a weekly healing service. The pastor, Rev. Charles A. Shreve, de¬ clares that he himself was spiritually healed of typhoid fever while the medicine that the doctor had prescribed lay un¬ touched on the table. Mr. Shreve asserts: “The results of our weekly prayer service at the McKendree Methodist Church speak for themselves. We have witnessed the heal¬ ing of a great many people. Incidentally we have added 700 to our church membership. Like this in city after city 30 and town after town the churches are engaged in spiritual healing today. It is more than a creed that now confronts Christianity. It is a custom. The healing crusade that is sweeping over America is challenging the attention of as excited throngs as watched the aeroplanes ten years ago. The religious world is divided in opinion about the manifestation. Are you for or against the new healing? Everyone is searching the scriptures to find out. Some of the theologians are aghast. The Denver Bible Institute has announced “with special reference to Mrs. McPherson”: “Of a truth we live in the hour of the confusion of religions, an hour in which Satan has ransacked his supernatural intelligence to produce upon the earth some new form of delusion and religious fiasco.” Clifton L. Fowler, the dean of the Institute, says: “I do not believe that modern divine healing is divine. God heals. But the modern methods and the modern results are beneath His majesty and dignity.” Even the Churchman has com¬ mented on James Moore Hickson: “Some ministers fell pretty hard for Hickson’s methods. But others feel that these methods create a certain psychology that in certain neurotic cases may do real good but in cases of organic trouble would be useless and possibly harmful.” In reply to which spoke Bishop Manning: “The healing work per¬ formed by Mr. Hickson is based entirely on the first prin¬ ciples of the Christian religion. It is beyond me to see how any Christian who believes in faith and prayer can question healing of this sort.” Yet there are some Christians who do question it. The Scruggs Memorial Methodist Church in St. Louis has been 31 disrupted over it, two-thirds of the membership following the pastor, Rev. Morse Markley, to establish an independent church that will practise the healing. In Brooklyn, New York, the Bible Healing Committee, a group of ministers formed for the purpose of studying the question, found that the majority endorsed the new movement. A minority opinion, however, was voiced by Rev. T. W. Davidson of the Reformed Church on the Heights, who says: “I can see there is a healing. But I don’t believe that it is divine.” And there is another group to whom the phenomena on which the attention of the religious world is centered is of almost equal interest. Many medical men are agreed with a New York physician, Dr. Egbert H. Grandin, who has urged: “Let the shoemaker stick to his last. Let the clergy¬ men heal the soul. Leave to the physician the attempt to cure diseases.” Some believe with Dr. Roehl, of the Detroit Health Department, who is reported to have charged weep- ingly that “the healings are due to the delusions of psycho¬ pathies and the imagination of mal-developed minds.” But there are now all over the country other medical men whose outlook in the situation is giving pause to preconceived opinion. Dr. E. S. Cowles is a celebrated specialist in nervous disorders. When I asked Dr. Cowles, “Does prayer cure disease today?” he answered: “There is no doubt but that through prayer, functional disorders have been healed. But does divine power directly heal organic disease that has progressed to the point of the breaking down of bodily tis¬ sue? I have never seen this done. However,” he adds simply, “I would not wish to deny that it may be. This is 32 a marvelous age in which one hesitates to say of anything, It is impossible.” Then I went to Dr. Richard S. Cabot, of Boston. Dr. Cabot, on the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, is a physician of world-wide renown. This is what he told me: “I believe that prayer does cure disease. Healing comes to some individuals directly through prayer, I am sure. I use it in my practice and rely on it today more often than on medicine. But as a physician I have never relied on prayer alone for a cure. A man who prays before going into battle, proceeds to employ also every other means available for winning his fight." So do I. I believe that prayer is a con¬ tributing factor in the victory over disease. And if I had no material means at hand, I should use prayer alone, with confidence that it would work the cure if recovery were in conformity with God’s will. And when prayer has thus been made a factor in recovery, I believe it is through direct action on the part of God. We know that prayer produces a definite result. Just how it works is not yet scientifically clear, though I think it will be in time. It is possible that the clue to the action of prayer will be found in the field of the emotions. We already know through our laboratory experiments that some emotions have a chemical effect on the bodily secretions. Fear and anger, it is now definitely established, produce chemical changes in the body which may favor disease. Fear may cause hyperacidity of the stomach and consequent indigestion. For this I might pre¬ scribe medicine, giving the patient an alkali to counteract 33 the acid. But if it is fear that is the determining factor producing the indigestion, there may be more than an alkali required to cure it. One may try to reconstruct the patient emotionally through a psychological or a spiritual prescrip¬ tion. The removal of the fear from the mind or soul may indeed be the only way to a permanent cure. You have then not only checked the hyperacidity, but you have as it were shut off the disease at the source. Since science now knows definitely that the devastating emotions like fear and anger may directly register adverse physical conditions in the body, it is a logical conclusion that the beneficent emotions like love and faith may also act as chemically to produce health instead of disease. I believe that almost any day now this may be demonstrated in the laboratory. This way, you see, lies the explanation for some of the cures that have appeared miraculous. When through prayer, the soul of man is opened to the love of God, what flood gates of healing may we not have unloosed ? I believe that any disease could be cured through prayer, though as a matter of fact it is func¬ tional disorders that are particularly amenable to this treat¬ ment. But it is also a matter of record that cures of organic disease at the celebrated shrine of Lourdes in France have been witnessed and authenticated by physicians. The prayer groups in the churches should not, of course, attempt to handle cases say like diphtheria, where loss of life might result from lack of medical attention. But with a due recognition of this limitation, they can find a very definite and helpful work in the treatment of some diseases that have baffled the medical men.’’ 34 So science and religion are plainly met at the crossroads today. It is through their friendly co-operation, that the Episcopal Church proposes to establish the facts of spiritual healing. Even among the advocates of the use of prayer as a therapeutic measure, there is yet a difference of opinion to be cleared away. The Christian Alliance and Rev. Mr. Bos- worth and many of the Episcopal clergy assert that “nothing is too hard for God.” There are others who along with many of the medical men question the efficacy of prayer in the case of organic disease. So I have asked some of the bishops for their opinion. Bishop Boyd Vincent, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was chair¬ man of the Commission on Healing that presented its report to the Episcopal General Convention in Portland. And Bishop Vincent says: “I believe in the use of prayer in co¬ operation with medical science. There are, however, cases where the medical men have done all that they could and have failed to produce a cure, where afterward the patient had been healed through prayer. But I believe these cases are of the particular type known as functional disease. I would not wish to say that organic disease cannot be healed through prayer. I can only say, I have not seen it.” So it is to carry the investigation further, that a new Commission on Healing was appointed by the General Convention. This commission is composed of six bishops, six clergy, three laymen and three physicians. Bishop Charles H. Brent, of Buffalo, Bishop of Western New York, a prominent member of the commission, is one of the fore¬ most advocates of the use of prayer in the cure of disease. 35 His book “The Mount of Vision” states in no equivocal terms: “He who waves away the healing power of Christ as belonging only to early New Testament times is not preach¬ ing the whole gospel. He was and is the Savior of the body. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He who in Jesus Christ heals by stimulating spiritual faculties to appropriate health, is not dependent upon what doctors can do nor helpless when doctors fail. Our Lord’s words to the imprisoned Baptist are also for those of us who are in the prison of medical materialism: ‘Go your way and tell John the things which you do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. . . . According to thy faith, so be it unto thee.’ As I write, I see the whole pathetic body of the sick and diseased rising up and claiming their right to that sacrament of anointing which is denied them by churches that should know better. Is it that we are afraid that it will not be ef¬ fective for healing ? If so, it is an acknowledgment of weak faith. Anointing is the representative remedial act and sanctifies whatever physical treatment may be necessary. It ought to have behind it the sanction and blessing of the entire church. . . . God is not the last resort in sick¬ ness. He is the first.” From my absorption in these statements, I looked up to meet the quiet gaze of the man who had written them. In the drawing room of his Buffalo residence Bishop Brent amplified these views with a personal statement for the Ladies’ Home Journal : “I believe,” he said, “in spiritual healing. I have successfully practised it in my ministry. 36 I regard it as the function of the church equally in the twentieth as in the first century. There is no question about the spiritual cures that are occurring in great numbers throughout the world today. I have in a recent number of the Churchman a communication calling attention to James Moore Hickson’s remarkable cures in Africa. And I can vouch for other spiritual healing that has occurred within the range of my own observation. I include not only func¬ tional but organic disease as well. I know of a case of cancer so diagnosed by a responsible physician of recognized standing. Medical means had failed to cure it. It was an outward and visible cancer and through prayer and the lay¬ ing on of hands it was healed so that only the scar of it remains. “To this and to other cures,” continued the bishop, “I know that objectors reply, 'O well, then the diagnosis must have been wrong. It couldn’t have been the really malignant growth that is scientifically cancer.’ My reply is that of the blind man to the objectors in Bible days who assailed his healing, 'Whereas I was blind, now I know that I see.’ “Beyond per adventure, something was the matter with all these sick people who now say they are well. And so great is the mass of cumulative evidence now piled up, that it is but begging the question any longer to fall back on the futile refutation that if the person got well, then the original diagnosis must have been wrong. Not so many doctors could reasonably have been mistaken. Some of these people who say they have been healed, by all the rules of probability must have had the diseases of which they claim that God has cured them. 37 “What we need to realize is that not our physical but our spiritual nature is the dominant part of us. It is the monarch that holds sway over all the rest of us. Also I want to say that I find no conflict between science and religion. Now faith is operative in every department of life. And we do certainly know this, that faith irrespective of its object has an enormous power over human life. Just look back at what we call our patent medicine era. We know now there wasn’t any science behind it, most of it. Yet it un¬ doubtedly did bring health within the reach of many people. Now there you have an instance where there was the essence of faith though independent of a worthy object. Look a little further and in the domain of modern psychology today see faith operating on another and a higher plane through suggestion. I have in mind an instance where I know that it occurred. A woman had an abdominal tumor. The famous surgeon who was to operate for its removal, discov¬ ered on laying open the abdomen that the tumor was so closely tied up with vital organs that its removal would have caused death. So he quietly sewed up the opening he had made. When the patient came out from under the anaesthetic, she was not acquainted with the facts, but was assured that the operation was successful. That was in 1901. To this day she does not know the facts, but believes, of course, that the surgeon cut out her tumor. That belief operated as successfully, however, as any knife could have done. Since 1901 the woman has been perfectly well. This shows what suggestion and faith can accomplish. And today all the world, through the efforts of the great French 38 scientist Coue, is coming into an understanding of the cura¬ tive effect of auto-suggestion. I would not in the least underrate all of the modern psychological aids to health. The only test we need to apply to them is, Are they sound according to the psychology of Jesus? I believe they are. And then I believe something more about them: I believe they in themselves justify spiritual healing. “Psychological healing, as it were, goes half way. Spiritual healing goes the whole way and all the way. In spiritual healing we find faith operating on its highest plane. It is on this plane that the greatest curative results may be expected, and we today are in fact seeing them occur. When we arrive at faith, not in any material or psychological means, but religious faith in the Ruler of the universe, we have a faith that acts not only through its subjective power, but it also relates itself to a real object. And that object is the Source of health and life, none other than God Himself. God is always the Source of all healing even when medicine or psychology is employed to that end. But in spiritual healing, God’s highest power becomes operative. “Through the exercise of faith we give God direct recog¬ nition, and then in return he gives us direct action. God’s response is always as direct as is our movement toward Him. God is ever ready and waiting to lay hold of life in every department that is open to Him. Though sometimes there is no room at the inn, and He has to go to a stable. It is the common people to whom spiritual healing comes most fre¬ quently. Among the more highly educated classes, intellect and what we may term medical materialism too often inhibit 39 the operation of the spiritual faculty and the action of God. Not all who seek spiritual healing,” concluded the bishop, “find it. We do not yet know all of the conditions by which it operates. But of this I am certain, that spiritual healing through prayer is based on as immutable laws of the uni¬ verse as is electricity or the radio or the aeroplane. The law operates successfully when it is correctly applied. That we sometimes fail to get the healing does not in the least invalidate the law. What we need to remember is that there are regular rules for this science as for any other. I regard Rev. Henry B. Wilson, of Boonton, New Jersey, as one of the great experts who know how to apply them. In his line he is as great a specialist, we may say, as is Edison in the Electrical or Marconi in the Wireless World. Lastly, we should never overlook the fact that the chief function of religion is not as a means to restore health, but as a means by which to know God. And the spiritual benefits that it may bestow on the soul, far outweigh the physical healing that we may seek for the body.” Now still another member of the new Commission on Healing is Bishop Theodore Irving Reese, of Columbus, Ohio. And Bishop Reese says: “The healing of the body is an essential element of the gospel of Christ. Prayer is today an accepted therapeutic measure. By its fruits we know that it is efficacious in the cure of disease. I personally have seen lists of the patients healed through Mr. Hickson’s ministrations in 1919, who have stayed healed. These lists, carefully followed up, are in the hands of the Episcopal clergy in various cities of the United States. There is no longer any question but that spiritual healing works today 40 as in Christ’s time. And there is no question but that the church is commissioned to preach and practise it. But we do need to know more of the laws through which it operates. We must have a careful scientific record of conditions before and after and during the moment of healing. It is with the purpose of securing this data, that the American Guild of Health has been organized. I have accepted the chairman¬ ship of its Advisory Committee. We are going to co-operate with the Society of the Nazarene and all of the prayer groups. It is our intention, with the aid of physicians as broad as Dr. Cabot, of Boston, to prove spiritual healing as a scientific fact. We’re out to get real evidence that no materialist can shoot full of holes. Then we shall go ahead to sell the idea especially to the seminaries, so that young men educated for the ministry in the future, will be prepared to handle the healing of the body along with the healing of the soul, as an essential part of their pastoral work.” The new organization, The American Guild of Health, has for its president another member of the Episcopal Com¬ mission on Healing, Rev. Franklyn Cole Sherman, of Akron, Ohio. The Rev. Mr. Sherman has recently resigned his pastorate as rector of St. Paul’s in Akron to take charge of the movement which he has been selected to direct. The Guild of Health last February opened national head¬ quarters in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Sherman is an enthusiast on spiritual healing. Today a picture of vigorous health, he is a tuberculosis cure. “And,” he asserts, “I have all the X-ray photographs before and after to prove it. “Our Guild is very much in earnest,” he continues. We re going to get evidence like mine for the movement at 41 large. We intend to have spiritual healing substantiated by the affidavits of physicians of recognized standing. These healings are occurring all about us in the case not only of functional but of organic disease. They are accomplished through coming into direct conscious communion with God. Psychoanalysis and auto-suggestion and the laying on of hands are contributing means, all of them, to that great end. There is a religious approach and there is a scientific ap¬ proach to spiritual healing. What psychology can do is to teach us how to apply religion so that it will get physical bodily results. What our Guild wants to do is to find out all the laws by which spiritual healing works. And we have 16 bishops of the Episcopal Church backing us in our movement.” Like this today, metaphysical science and material science are joining hands in spiritual research. At a meet¬ ing of the Episcopal Church Commission on Health recently, Dr. Cowles, of New York, who is one of its members, pre¬ sented a plan for a unique institution. He proposes a hospital for every kind of treatment for body and soul. He would have it open for “all men to show their wares.” Divine healing would be as welcome as drug healing. Op¬ portunity would be afforded ministers and medical men to meet together on equal ground in pursuit of God’s truth. • Meanwhile if divine healing comes to your town, it is well to remember what Bishop Brent has pointed out, that not all who seek may find it. It may even be that the divine thing will be attained by the cook’s cousin, while it com¬ pletely eludes, say, the richest vestryman who passes the 42 plate on Sunday. The statistics on the cures vary. An Episcopal clergyman, the rector of Grace and St. Peter’s Church, Baltimore, says that among his people who seek healing about 32 per cent receive it. Mr. Bosworth’s figures are about 50 per cent. And Mrs. McPherson claims as high as 80 per cent. The Denver Bible Society has issued a little pamphlet listing some cases of spiritual healing that failed. These are, of course, to be found. But on the other hand note the cases of material healing that failed, as recorded on all the headstones of all the graveyards. For success in spiritual science as in any other, as all of its specialists point out, it is important to find out the fundamental principles. As a background, read Crile on the Emotions and Berman on Glands. Then for exact technique, there is a book for which Bishop Brent has himself written the introduction. It is the Power to Heal by Henry B. Wilson, who the bishop says is the great modern expert on spiritual or divine healing. Does Christ still heal? Let the doctrinal discussions wage. Suppose you lift your eyes and look on those who say He does. See. From the cook’s cousin to the society lady and the man in the street, there’s a shining in their faces, there’s a radiance in their whole personality. Something has happened to them. 43 Ghosts or Gospels By HENRY B. WILSON, B.D. Spiritism as practiced by mediums compared with the true spiritualism as revealed by the Master. How far does modern spiritualism conflict with the teachings of Chris¬ tianity? Do spirits direct healing? Can departed souls haunt us? The basis of true spirit communication. Automatic writing explained. A book that clears up many disturbing problems and will satisfy many longing hearts. A guide to the highest use of our psychic powers. Price, $1.25. Does Christ Still Heal ? By HENRY B. WILSON, B.D. Did Christ’s commission to His disciples to “heal the sick” terminate with the death of the apostles, or is it still in active existence? Are the churches really Christian in their belief about pain and sickness? Vital questions with which the author deals in plain, vigorous English, basing his arguments on the words and deeds of Christ. $1.50 Net Postage Extra The Power to Heal By HENRY B. WILSON, B.D. Foreword by THE RIGHT REV. C. H. BRENT, D.D. Bishop of Western New York A Handbook of Preparation for Healing of Self and Others, According to the Methods of Jesus. New edition, revised and enlarged, just published. Contains Introduction and new chapter by Dr. Banks, including many new prayers and meditations. Cloth boards, $1.00 postpaid Paper, 50 cents “Body and Soul” By the REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A., D.D. Professor in Kings College, University of London Published bv E. P. Dutton & Co., $2.50. Can be obtained direct from the Nazarene Press, Asheville, N. C. This book is an enauiry into the effect of Religion upon Health, with a description of Christian Works of Healing from the New Testament epoch to the present day. It is an ideal book for study groups and guilds and contains an introduction by the Director of the Society of the Nazarene. The Nazarene for July, 1923, says of this book: “This is the standard book on Healing in the Church and its conspicuous merit is attested by the fact that it has been the leading book on this subject for some twelve or more years. . . . Those within the Church who ardently seek the diffusion of reliable information on this subject of Healing feel grateful to Dr. Dearmer for his lucid and forcible presentation of a difficult thesis. ...” MR. WILSON’S LAST BOOK God’s Will for the World A Refutation of the Popular Interpretation of the Phrase “Thy Will Be Done” By HENRY B. WILSON, B.D. Author of “Does Christ Still Heal?” “The Power to Heal,” Etc. “Thy Will Be Done,” one of our most frequent prayers and inherited by the Christian from the very lips of Christ, is yet generally misunderstood and nearly always wrongly used, as the author conclusively proves in this book. “Thy Will Be Done” should not be a sigh of despairing resignation under physical sickness, failure and suffering, but a shout of triumphant anitcipation of happiness and health and joy. Price $1.50 ORDER BY NUMBER THE NAZARENE $1.50 PER YEAR Numbers in Stock: No. 3. “The Ministry of Healing”- 5 cents No. 5. “The Will of God in Healing”- 5 cents No. 6. “Spiritual Healing and Psycho-Therapy”- 6 cents (Above issues 50c per dozen; $4.00 per hundred) No. 7. “Is Spiritual Healing Real,” (Testimonials)-15 cents No. 8. “Important Aspects of Mr. Hickson’s Mission of Healing”— 10 cents No. 9. Can the Church Heal the Sick?-10 cents No. 10. The Peasant Healer- 10 cents No. 11. The Path of Peace and Joy-10 cents No. 12. The Value of Organization-10 cents No. 14. Upon Reading the Gospels-10 cents No. 18. Healing at the Church Congress_10 cents No. 20. “Effectual Prayer,’’ by Churchill_ 10 cents No. 23. Crowd Psychology _10 cents No. 25. What Every Minister Could Do_10 cents No. 26. Clerical Reports on Healing-10 cents No. 29. Faith and the Physicians-20 cents No. 30. Realizing the Presence_10 cents No. 31. Misinterpretations of God’s Will_10 cents No. 32. Need for Organization—Preach and Heal_10 cents No. 33. Our Comprehension of God (J. E. Ward, Ottawa)_10 cents No. 37. The Reality of Spiritual Fellowship_10 cents No. 38. Losing the Lord’s Prayer_10 cents No. 39. Psychology and the Christian Life_10 cents No. 41. Healing and the New Psychology_10 cents No. 42. Henry Blauvelt Wilson, B.D_25 cents No. 43. The New Director_10 cents No. 44. The Dean of Chester and Coue_10 cents No. 45. Annual Report Number_10 cents No. 46. What the Bishops Say_10 cents No. 47. The Denver Mission-Conference (Double Number)_20 cents No. 48. Healing and Modern Christology_15 cents No. 48. James Moore Hickson (An Appreciation)_15 cents No. 49. Christmas Number (Double)_25 cents (Above issues, $1.00 per dozen; double number extra.) The above titles are those of special articles. Each issue contains many smaller articles of general interest. Please order by number. THE SOCIETY OF THE NAZARENE Asheville, N. C. » ' ■ > .