The Evening Star : WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1887.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 93, 21 April 1887, Page 4

The Evening Star : WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1887.

far the caute that lacks assistance, Tor the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ire can do.

The subject of faith-healing is just now exercising the minds of a great many people. Are the phenomena real ? Are cures actually effected ? Questions like these are usually met by a sceptical snicker. Now we have no hesitation in avowing our belief iv faith healing. Nearly every enlightened doctor believes in it, and acts upon his belief, and the reality of the phenomena is acknowledged by Dr. VV, B. Carpenter, Dr. Tuke, and ■other leading writers upon psychology. Cures performed in this or analogous ways are too well attested to leave room for questioning their authenticity. They have been investigated by men of the highest scientific attainments, and admitted. Within certain defined limits, then/there is ample evidence that by simply believing implicitly that they would be cured, thousands of persons have actually been cured of ■disease, By,»no weans* let # it be

inferred, however, that all diseases are capable of being thus treated, or that all people who believe most earnestly and implicitly that they have been cured are really healed. For every " faith cure " there might be brougnt thousands of failures, notwithstanding that the goodness and faith oittie subject were undoubted, and that, m all human probability, he might have been cured by adopting the system oi treatment recommended by medical s-ieuce. ' Writers upon the^ subject quote certified cases of this kindoi so conclusive a character that doubt is impossible. But our space does not admit of reproduction. It should also be mentioned that many of the cases which are claimed as faith' cures have turned out upon examination to have been no more than hysterical or hypochondriacal simulations of disease. Ihe diagnoses of the moat able doctors are subject to error, and.every medical man in large practice has on his list one or more baffling cases, and subjects for whom he has no conscientious scruple about palming off the " new medicine' in the form of bread pills, froni which the patient declares he is experiencing " so much relief."

Granting, therefore, that there is_ a mass of evidence to which the "faith healers" may appeal, the question comes in, by whom have these modern miracles been performed, and under what circumstances 1 One of the most celebrated healers by faith was th« hereditary King of England, by the touch of whose garments hundreds of thousands were cured —and there is evidence which we are bound to accept, actually cured—of scrofula or king's evil. During the siege of Breda in 1625, the Prince of Orange resorted to an ingenious fraud to prevent the capitulation of the garrison, who were reduced to the last extremities through scurvy, fluxes, dropsies, &c. He instructed his physician to serve out to the people a liquor which was perfectly valueless as a curative agent, with a positive assurance that it was an absolute cure for the prevailing maladies. Dr. Frederic Van der Mye, who was present, testifies:—"The effect of the delusion was really astonishing, for many quickly and perfectly recovered. Such as had not moved their limbs before were seen walking the streets sound, upright, and in perfect health." Then there was Mesmer, who cured his thousands professedly by magnetism. The instances quoted above are not associated with religious belief, but are merely evidences of the effect of strong faith in particular specifics, and in which there could be no reasonable doubt that the cure was effected entirely by the power of the imagination over the physical frame. Have we not instances enough of this in connection with every savage race 1 Even in the3e days, cases of death from a superstitious belief in witchcraft among the Maoris are not unknown, and in the old times they were common. For a recognised tohunga to tell a man or woman he was bewitched and would die, meant almost certain death. A Maori suffering the mOst trivial ailment, who makes up his mind that he is going to die very rarely recovers. The imagination powerfully appealed to is capable of producing almost any ailment. la it not logical to infer that it may cure a great many 1 We have little doubt that Mr Dowie, who appears to be afflicted with the silly anti-Roman Catholic craze, would dispute the genuineness of the famous cures performed by Prince Hohenlohe, Bishop of Sardica, by Father Matthew, at the Shrines of Knock, Lourdes, and other sacred places resorted to by pilgrims. Yet these furnish many of the best-authenticated cases of undoubted cures.

The other night Mr Dowie violently denounced Mr Milner Stephen as an impostor, yet we have personally received assurances from people who were suffering organic diseases that ,they were cured by Mr Stephen, and one of these was a medical practitioner. The early history of Mormonism abounds with instances of faith cures. Mrs Stenhouse, in her interesting exposure of that extraordinary delusion, narrates how she wa3 herself carried away by the proofs of miraculous power, apparently exercised by the missionary elders, people who had been bed-ridden for years jumping up with their faculties restored. Mohammedanism and Spiritualism have their rolls of such cases. • Dr. Newton, a celebrated American faith-healer, who worked exactly upon Mr Dowie's lines, claiming that the healing was parformed by precisely the same power as was put forth by Christ, and His apostles, yet declared that I*r. Bryant, who followed his methods and whose pi-oofs of such cures were just as strong, healed only through the people concentrating their minds upon his operations with the expectation of being cured. (This and other instances of faith-healing are described at greater length in an interesting paper upon this subject in the " Century" magazine of June, 1886.) ■ We believe that Dr. Newton rightly described the healing force, and that it was just as true of his own as of Dr. Bryant's cures.

With regard to Mr Dowie's claims that the power at work is analogous to the miracles worked by Christ and His apostles, we think that-every dispassionate person who examines the records of Christ's miracles will see that there is no real resemblance between the two. Faith was not an essential element in the cures effected by the Messiah. He healed persons who were not even conscious of His existence, and many who were cured, as with the lepers, had neither faith nor gratitude. While we believe that cures by mental effort are possible in certain cases, and though we do not doubt Mr Dowie's personal sincerity, we consider his mission a mischievous one. It is founded, we believe, upon ,a .gross error—a confounding

o f causes. It tends to divert neople's minds from the true tenor of divine teaching and divine intention, that men shall exercise their reason, and by leading rational lives and obedience to rational law, they shall obtain good health, without mvokin°- or expecting a miraculous interposition to reverse the order of nature.