HEALING BY FAITH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21326, 29 October 1932, Page 12

HEALING BY FAITH

Sir, —Auckland is in the happy position of being able to investigate a most interesting form of faitfi-healing at first hand. And citizens would be well advised to do their own investigating, and not to suppose that this delicate task can be delegated to such doctors and ministers as may be engaged in rival systems of therapeutics and theology. To brand the healing in question as hypnotism, mesmerism, magic, etc., and to call it; the work of "the quack and the charlatan," is to beg and prejudice the question. Hypnotism, like electricity, is jt profound mystery, but may be benevolently employed. And even some superstition is benevolent and valuable. Fairy tales and fiction are not to be despised. I dissent from the view of "Matanga" that healing claims, "when made as assertions of peculiar intimacy with the Most High are a species of blasphemy." That is begging the question. Every such case must be tried on its own merits. And the cases of Jesus and His disciples come under this, category. "The time is ripe," we are told, "for the restriction of the practice of gifts of healing to those of proved expertness in the cura. tive art as far as it has scientifically developed." And who is to say how far the curative art has scientifically developed ? No science of therapeutics i» complete which does not include the miraculous cures of the past and present. How can the healing art progress,if not allowed to continue well in advance'tfif the science of healing? How is "expertness" to be had if practice is restricted or denied ? The spirit of monopoly and intolerance is strongly resented by all charitablyminded persons, who are devoutly .'thankful when poor people "get theirghealing without money and without pricef*' Fair- Play.