HEALING AND SAVING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 7920, 12 April 1887, Page 3

HEALING AND SAVING.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,l listened attentively to the Rev. Alexander Dowie on Sunday evening. He gave expression to his ideas clearly, distinctly, and loudly, and at times with pathos ; but that to me seemed worked up and deficient in spontaneity, and there was also throughout his address a marked absence of reasoning. Mr. Dowie is in no accord with this reasoning age. He wishes to roll back the centuries to that distant past when the sick and the lame lay by the sides of miraculous pools waiting for the moving of the waters; when the blind and the leprous begged on the highways, or lay at the gates of cities and the doors of temples ; and when passing dogs were the nurses that dressed ulcerous sores. He would demolish our hospitals, dismiss doctors and nurses, wipe out European civilisation, and , give us that of Arabia eighteen centuries ago. He abjures sect, yet is a most uncompromising sectarian. .Religionists of bygone times proselytised with a book in one hand and a sword in the other ; Mr. Dowie proselytises with Christ in. one hand a*>d disease in the otherthat is, he proffers Christ, and if you accept you will have health; if you reject, you will have diseasq. The ancient alternative of the sword was more merciful, Is it not inhumane to make health conditional upon the acceptance of a faith? Our Hospital has no suoh condition, nor have oar medical practitioners. The one is open to the sick, the others wait upon the sick, whatever the faith of the patients. Is i Mr. Dowie not aware that there are mental conditions

under which the faith he preaohes cannofe be aocepted ? and is the unfortunate subject o! these conditions to be condemned to disease because bis mind caunot perform the irnpoHßible ? Perhaps he has not studied mental operations ; few revivalist preachers have. I beg to say to Mr. Dowle, liberalise, humanise your goepel. If you have health to dispense, bow it broadcast, like a genuine • philanthropist. You may then leave your faith to take oare of itself; if it 19 true it will triumph without the bribe of health. We read that those of ancienfc times, of whom it is alleged that they bad the power of miraculous healing had also the power of causing miraculously disease, and also death. Klisha, though he healed the leprosy of Naaman, smote his servant Gehazi with the same disease ; Paul struck Elymas with blindness, and Peter struck Ananias and Sapphira de&d. If Mr. Dowie carries about with him the power of miracu-< lous killing as well as of healing, he ought to be taken care of. It is well known thab emotional excitement affeota health. Violent emotions occasionally cause sadden death, and long-oontinued, distracting care emotions cause ill-health. Joy-producing emotions foster health. " There is no better tonics' than happiness," writes Herbert Spencer. Hence it ie quito probable that persone who have been afflicted with the conviction that they were among the damned, and have been relieved of that delusion to believe themselves among the saved, will experience such an influx of joy as will cause their health to be tangibly affeoted and improved. With highly nervous converts the change may be mar* vellous, and all that could be wished; to others the strain may be too great, and the brain may give way to temporary or permanent insanity. But these effects o! emotion upon health are perfectly natural } are not confined to Mr. Dowie'a followers, to Christian believers, nor conditional upon the acceptance of that or any other faith. The conditions are psychical, nob theological, and may be produced in any sect or movement where emotion or enthusiasm is highly stimulated. There is nothing offends me more than to hear a human ephemera travel beyond the precinots of the knowable, and presume to prate about the judgments of the Incomprehensible upon its creatures, and Mr. Dowie committed that folly on Sunday evening in, his estimate of the number of those saved and those lost. Burns makes Holy Willie say God " sends one to heaven and ten to hell;" Mr. Dowie's God-ideal sends one to heaven and twenty-seven to the pit. Ot the 1400 millions of the present genera* tion of humanity, Mr. Dowie estimates that nob more than fifty millions are saved, or will be saved ("What a failure" he ejaculated), and 1350 millions are lost. Is this estimate divine or diabolical? Is it orthodox or blasphemous ? Have the unnumbered generations past, and will the uncountable generations to come, experience the game fate? What an anticipation! It ia enough to drive anyone who believes it true, and who has a large amount of human sympathy, to the madhouse or to suicide. lathis casting-up—this estimate of Mr. Dowie'a —one of the leaves that are " for the healing of the nations ?" Is such an awful anticipation not sufficient to eclipse any "Sun of Righteousness" that may " arise with heali ing on his wings ?" Mr. Dowie should .imitate the modesty of the Press, and speak guardedly about causes which are sub judice. The eternal fate of each stands undetermined until the Judgment Day, and Mr. Dowie should reserve his computation of the saved and the condemned until after the great assize. There is a sect of Christians, not a numerous sect, who believe that as Christ died for all, all will be saved. They have no better authority on the matter than Mr. Dowie, but their idea is certainly humane, and divine also, if goodness is divine. I agree with Mr. Dowle that comparatively little is yet known of healing, and I think also that there is much room for medioal knowledge being popularised for the general welfare, instead of being held au it very much is, as a close craft for the benefit of a profession ; but I think medical science is on the only road whereby it may with certainty be extended. We do not want any physician or healing knowledge which "passeth by" — the priest and the Levite passed by. In a matter of such importance as health we want nothing which is itinerant. We want a knowledge of healing which will grow up amongst us from nursery to school, from school to college ; which will be inters woven with all our domestic arrangements and social institutions. We want this knowledge to remain with us, grow and increase, and become a bank of health ; not for this generation only, nor for the next only, but for all time—ever augmenting in detail and efficacy. There is nothing, in* dividually or collectively, of so much value as health.—l am, &c,, A. Campbell. April 11.