SPIRITUAL HEALING

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 November 1923, Page 7

SPIRITUAL HEALING

WHAT IT REALLY IS. There is great confusion of thought over what “spiritual healing” implies, writes Dr. George M. Robertson, Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Edinburgh, in a letter to the London Times, referring to the recent sermon in Westminster Abbey by the Rev. R. C. Griffiths. It is not mental therapy, such as suggestion, auto-suggestion, or psycho analysis, the curative effects of ■which are admitted by all. It partakes, according to the manner of thought of the ordinary man and woman, bf the nature of a miracle. And, being an exhibition of Divine power, there is no liinit to its possibiltes. Mr. Grffiths sa wpatients suffering from blindness and deafness cured; but we know that suggestion alone is capable of doing this. Then, what grounds has Mr. Griffith for saying these cures were effected by “spiritual healing?” The paralysed arm of a hysteric, withered from disuse, may also become alive and active by suggestion alone. But Mr. Griffith has also seen cancers cured in 20 minutes. But in such a case every medical man will want to know if the disease was certainly cancer. It does no good—indeed, it does very much harm —to the cause of true religion to assert that a blind, deaf, or paralytic patient was cured by “spiritual healing” when mental suggestion alone may have been the active curative agent, or to say that a cancel was removed when the disease was not known with certainty to be cancer. It has been hinted that doctors are materialistic, but so is disease. It is also asked: ‘“Why should we deny the power of God?” The physician certainly docs not do so; he admits it as readily as the devout astronomer every hour of the day. Let us look at these problems in another way. The laws of space and of gravitation are no more an obstacle to Divine power than are those of anatomy and physiology!, which are involved in disease, for mountains may be removed. Do we ever hear of the clergy initiating miracles in this sphere or performing feats of an engineering kind? When the foundations of the pillars supporting the dome of a great cathedral subside do they not open subscription lists and call in the services of an architect?