INVESTIGATION URGED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21315, 17 October 1932, Page 11

INVESTIGATION URGED

CLAIMS CHALLENGED * DOCTOR'S VIEW QUOTED GREAT PUBLIC INTEREST Further evidence of ihe> great public interest that has been aroused in the subject of faith healing was given at Mount Eden last evening, -when Mr. Kenneth H. Melvin, of the Free Methodist. Church, gave the third of a series of addresses on "Faith Healing and Faith Healers." Soon after six o'clock 500 or 600 poople had gathered at the Crystal Palace Theatre, where he was to speak, waiting for the doors to open. The theatre, which holds 1200 or 1300, was quickly filled, and latecomers were accommodated in a hall underneath, where loud-speakers had been installed. . "I am pleading for an investigation/"' said Mr. Melvin, "for I know that no faith healer in any land in the world ha# survived an investigation. It is true that they can go on with their -work, but only with those who will not admit the facts.The trouble in Auckland is that if yoa want to know the facts you cannot get thenu "I am simply anxious that the public should hear both sides," said Mr. referring to the teaching of Mr. A. H. Dallimore. "Thuy have had five years of the other side, and now we have had just three weeks of this side." Mr. Dallimore might vindicate his case, he said, by submitting the whole of his work to an impartial investigation. The faith healing movement was worldwide at the present time, and there was nothing exclusively Protestant about it.The results the faith healers were achieving had been obtained at Roman Catholic shrines for hundreds of years past. Similarly, under Christian Science influences, at certain Buddhist temples in the East and wherever these healings occurred it would be found that there were some fancied cures, some real cures and some cases not cured at all. Mr. Melvin said he was prepared to admit that healings were being obtained in the Town Hall, but he claimed that they were not divine healings. Stating that Mr. Dallimore claimed to have learned his methods from C. S. Price and that Price admittedly learned his from Mrs. Aimee Semple Macpherson, Mr. Melvin quoted numerous exposures of Mrs. Macpherson's failures and deceptions. He described cases in which he alleged that grave harm had been done. He was prepared to rest the whole of his case on whether one woman could substantiate her public statements about a cure she claimed. He quoted Dr. A. T. Pierson, of Harley Street, as stating, after a prolonged investigation into alleged faith healing, that in England he had found it impossible to verify a single case of organic cure. Mr. Melvin appealed to his audience to support- him in the demand for a thorough investigation that the truth might be vindicated. CROWD ATTENDS SERVICE MR. DALLI MORE'S REPROOF LAUGHTER DURING CEREMONY The Town Hall was again filled last evening when Mr. A. H. Dallimore held an evangelical service, concuding with the laying-on of hands. Mr. Dallimore took exception to the term "faith-healer" being applied to him. He denied that he possessed personal power to heal. His part in the healing, he said, was to pray to Jesus to effect a cure, and it was only the power of Christ to heal through the faith of tha patient that was producing the results he claimed to have been achieved. .The evangelist recalled the first meetings he had held in the East Street Hall five years ago, when his congregations numbered from five to 10 people, and, on one Sunday in particular, a single person.The movement, he said, had grown in recent months with astounding rapidity. He issued a statement in which he said he would decline to visit patients, owing to the immense number soliciting his intervention. It was as effective, he said, if he prayed at his home asrif he prayed at the sick bed; moreover,sJt helped people to depend on their own faith and on Jesus rather than on his own personal influence. About 400 people stepped on to the platform to submit to the laying-on of ■ hands, the great majority falling to the floor and remaining' there for several minutes. Mr. Dallimore reprimanded a large section of the congregation that laughed when several children carefully looked at the floor behind them as they 1 fell backward, and he severely reproved a number of people who stood up the better to see what was going on on the ' platform, censuring their lack of manners and their general attitude toward his i •work. i At the close of the service, during the i singing of a hymn, about a dozen people, the majority women, collapsed in their chairs, several of them remaining prone • t across the seats for the space of 10 . minutes. .