SPIRITUAL HEALING

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 146, 17 December 1924, Page 6

SPIRITUAL HEALING

MR. J. M. HICKSON'S BRADFORD

MISSION

100 CASES OF IMPROVEMENT.

(PROU OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 4th November. A thanksgiving service has been held at Frizinghall Parish Church, Bradford where Mr. J. M. Hickson recently held a healing mission. The vicar announced that about a hundred cases of physical improvement as a result of the mission had been reported. He read testimonies from clergy regarding cases presented from their respective parishes, and extiacts from a large bundle of letters received from all parts of the country, w itliout mentioning the nature of the cases, clergy repoited a complete physical cure at Idle, in Yorkshire, and three practically complete physical healings among the cases presented from Keigh-

The vicar annuonced that in the case of physical betterment reported at the mission the improvement had been maintained. A 14-years-old crippled girl of Bradford who had a picture accepted for the Queen's Doll/c House at Wembley, had, for the first time for several years, been able to walk and run up and down steps. A Ripon clergyman suffer--ing from hernia wrote that, following his attendance at the mission, there had been clear and marked improvement. The Bishop of Bradford, who preached said it was natural that' there should I have been criticism, and they must not ibe afraid of it. The attitude of science appeared _to be that every cure effected at the mission was possible on the plane cf suggestion, and that it had yet to hear of a case of organic and not'merely functional disease which had been healed by the immediate action of God. It had no Toom in its philosophy or in its exact scientific accuracy for the immediate working of God. The attitude of the man in the street was the attitude of a great number of people in so-called Christian congregations—frankly incredulous. Ought that to be the attitude of anyone who was a believer in Christ? Unless he believed there was something in his personality which could bo touched directly by the Lord and Giver of Live, he would not be in that pulpit Great numbers attended the Frizinghall Mission who had not received adequate spiritual preparation, which was one of the conditions on which he sanctioned the holding of the mission. Under the pressure which existed he did not blam« anyone for that, but in future that condition^ should be strictly observed. Christ commissioned the Church to carry on the ministry of healing, and he saw no reason why .they should not revive that ministry, so long as it was kept clear from superstition or mere emotionalism. A REPORTED CURE. At the close of one of Mr. Hickson's services held at St. Michael's Church, Paddmgton, a little grey-haired woman explained : "I can walk upright; I can walk straight. It is wonderful, but I had the faith." A few minutes before, bent with rheumatism, she had hobbled to the altar rail, where Mr. Hickson laid hands on and prayed over her, while Dr. Heber Browne,- the vicar, gave the blessing of the Church. Later she said she had suffered from rheumatism for five years. "The pain had been so bad that I have been unable to work," she-said. "Directly Mr. Hickson placed 'his hands on me I felt a glow, and it was repeated when the clergyman blessed me." The approaches to St. Michael's Church were thronged with people hoping to obtain places.at the service. Policemen regulated the traffic and explained to inquirers that admission was impossible without tickets—a stretcher case from Berkshire was refused admission for that reason.

CHURCH JOURNAL'S COMMENT.

"The accounts of Mr. Hickson's mission at Bradford caused the expected outbreak of eager controversy in the Press," says the "Guardian." "We have had the scientific professor,. of I the 'Old Guard,' treating the whole affair with 'contempt, amused or pitying,' and asking what kind of a God it is Whose power to help waits upon the patients taking a third-class ticket to Bradford. But the only unqualified support he seems to have received is from a Roman Catholic theologian who knows for certain that Mr. Hickson was not 'a vehicle of Divine mercy.' There have not been wanting others who have pointed out that the work of the doctor-itself is a proof that God does quite commo:jly demand human co-operation in His work of healing and, thai, since the professor acknowledged that cures did take place, contempt seemed not so much the fruit of rational thought as of professional jealousy. Fortunately, however, 'the {•eneral attitude seems to be one of willingness calmly to investigate the still imperfectly understood relations of soul and body, and neither to stake the credit of the Church on every reported cure, nor to exclude God from the world that lip has made."