FAITH HEALING

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 23 May 1925, Page 16

FAITH HEALING

METHODS OF A SUPERSTITIOUS PAST.

At the Durham Diocesan Conferenco (says "The Times"), the Bishop of Din> ham (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. Tho psycho-therapeutist could effect all that the spiritual healer effected. Spiritual healing meant no more, and no less, than mental healing, l'aith healing was common to all religions. There was really nothing distinctively Christian about it. Faith healing appeared to have no relation to morah tv.

The Christian ministry was not charsrcd, and could not wisely concern itself, with the healing of disease. That was the 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. Tho troubled conscience might have its influence, indirect, evert unsuspected, but none the less potent, upon tho patient's power to benefit from their efforts. And the sphere of conscience was pre-emi-nently 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. „ ■ .r-. Hickson, in his enthusiasm for ' spiritual healing," denounced tho Church even fiercely for leaving unused a healing gift which might purge tho world of its pain. But he was mistaken. No contrast between the present and' the past_ was more extreme than 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 by its hardly-, won independence of theological presuppositions and ecclesiastical control. It could not be the duty oF the Church deliberately lo return to the beliefs and raetnods of a primitive and superstitious past.