FALLACIES OF FAITH HEALING

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 199, 23 May 1925, Page 20

FALLACIES OF FAITH HEALING

A BISHOP ON MR. HICKSON At the Durham Diocesan Conference (says “The Times”), the Bishop of Durham (Dr. Hensley Henson) referred to Mr. Hickson’s book, "Healing the Sick.” He said that the book was filled with testimonies to Mr. Hickson’s cures, but he himself allowed that those fell short of what might fairly be required. In the absence of scientific diagnosis and examination afterwards they could not be decisive. The psycho-therapeutist could effect all that the spiritual healer effected. Spiritual healing meant no more, and no less, than mental healing. Faith healing was common to all religions. There was really nothing distinctively Christian about it. Faith healing appeared to have no relation to morality. The Christian ministry was not charged, and could not wisely concern itself, with the healing of disease. That was fee incommunicable task of the ■ physician. Did it follow that there was no sphere for the co-operation of the doctor and the clergyman in the ministry of healing? None knew better than the doctors that there were limits which their skill could not overpass. • l*he troubled conscience might have its influence, indirect, even unsuspected, but none the less potent, upon tlie patient’s power to benefit from their efforts. And the sphere of conscience was pre-eminently the sphere within which the clergyman’s duty was unquestionable. The modern physician could discern the nature of the psychic trouble which arrested and defeated physical treatment, and his knowledge might lead him to desire the clergyman’s distinctive service. Mr. Hickson, in his enthusiasm for “spiritual healing,” denounced the Church even fiercely for leaving unused a healing gift which -might purge the world of its pain. But he was mistaken. No contrast between the present and the past was more extreme tli>i when the’ medical resources of our time were compared with those existing in all former ages. When miracles of healing, were most numerous public health' was least satisfactory. The wonderful advance of medical and surgical science had been conditioned throughout bv its hardlv-won independence of theological presuppositions and ecclesiastical control. It could not be the duty of the Church deliberately to return to the beliefs and methods of a primitive and superstitious past.