HEALING BY FAITH.

Northern Advocate, 16 July 1921, Page 4

HEALING BY FAITH.

T'i "■ v.ork of Raia.nn, Ihe '.Maori n-::! —, leas been <-;msin _n" a :;reai -lea! (I:: lillii, an-d lb' 1 reco^iiit ion ac- • h'..,. by i he \\Yliin»-ion n ;li'-a !>. IS na! u: a liy ua-m.-sei! file in--11; iremarkable man and his : 1... i: is too eai !v to say wlia.'- i ! re-Mil't of his liealinv; work \vil< ■' i> dear thai in* is an hone-:; ■ ■:{' his fellows. Having Inken oi' Scripture literally. lie ha-' ! . ci them, ami Jce has brought . ' :■ i cinii foi! to r.iany -afferer-. a';'" or "spiritual lieal- '' 1.. -(hvavf a ilißirislt siifiv. '

seven years ago a Church of England committee whs set up at Westminster i to investigate the subject, and it re- i ported that, faith healing did not prove t to be different from mental healing or <■ healing by suggestion. Suggestion, \ howfvor, was exersised more effective- i ly by -oino persons than by other?., l Most of the witnesses examined by -i-ho « committee were of opinion that there j was a connection between the spiritual , healing of the present -day and the , gifts of healing in the Apostolic Church, and they regarded those gifts as having been long dormant, but i never entirely interrupted. The committee in it? report found thai spiritual healing, or treatment by suggestion, could bo expected to remain permanently effective only in cases of > what are ordinarily called "functional" disorders. .Where organic . disease was present resort to such me- . thods was dangerous, in that it might result in postponing until .too late the medical treatment that offered a chance of saving life. In its - comments on the committee's report the "British *Mcdieal Journal" declared that it was generally difficult, if not impossible, to obtain f rom healers of any kind evi- ' dence that could stand the test of scientific examination. To a large extent spiritual healing might be called the cure of imaginary diseases by the scientific use of the patient 's imagination. In patients with, dormant willpower and low nerve impulse sugges t-ion stirs sleeping energy into new life. Of psychic influences religious faith was, in the opinion of the "Journal,' the most'potent. But almost any kind of mental excitement or shock has been known to euro hysterical paralysis, dumbness from functional aphonia, neuralgia and epilepsy, and some conditions not so functional. Thus rheumatism has been cured by a railway accident; gout by an alarm of fire. Mucomembranoue colitis, which had resisted every kind of treatment, was cured by the patient's house being burned down. Asthma has been cured by the surprise of a night attack in camp. Ah dicsa instances were recorded .before the t great war, which provided many more remarkable cases of healing. Seven yeas ago the "British Medical Journal" could not cite a case of the curing" of deadly organic disease by ; spiritual healing, and, so far as we ars awase the posit ion has not altered since then. Faith healing cannot /supersede medical treatment in such cases, though its efficacy in, the treatment of functional disorders must certainlv be regarded as well established.