SPIRITUAL HEALING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20800, 20 August 1929, Page 10

SPIRITUAL HEALING.

ANGLICAN CLERGYMEN’S DEFENCE. BURDEN OF MR. HICKSON’S MESSAGE. > (Special to Daily Times.) WELLINGTON, August 19. The controversy over spiritual or divine healing was deprecated by the vicar of St. Mark’s Church, the Rev. H. K- Fry, when defending the recent Hickson Mission in the course of his ■ sermon on Sunday morning. “-There were, sajil Mr Fry, “many in the days of our Lord who could accept neither Him nor His teaching, but that did not prove that He was an imposter or that His teaching was false. We must be very careful to h clear in our minds as to what we mean by divine or spiritual healing. We believe that God’s will for us_ is perfection, and that man as God originally created him was perfect. With the advent of sin into the world came imperfection, not only in spirit, but imperfection of mind and imperfection of body. Man has a threefold nature. He is made up of spirit, mind, and body, and these three natures act and react the one upon the other. One cannot be divorced from the other. The three together make the whole man. Christ is the Great Healer, the Whole Man, body, mind, and spirit. Christ uses human agents through whom the power of His healjng spirit works in each of those spheres. The physicians, surgeons, and nurses are at work on the physical plane, and the mind .doctor and psycho-thera-peutist is at work on the mental plane. God ordained ministers, and all who pray for the sick are at work on the spiritual plane. But the point is that no one of these has the monopoly of being the agent of God’s healing power. Each should be working in one with the other. Now what did Mr Hickson lead those people who come to his mission services to expect? He preached that God’s will for man was health, and he said that those who sought release from bodily ailments must come to God In penitence and faith. They must believe in the love of God, and that God wanted them to be well, and that God would help them through. His means—doctors, medicines, other God-given remedies. They were to vise these means. They were to keep utterly in contact with God, whose power could heal them. He taught that if they were really in touch with God they could expect healing, but, and Mr Hickson was very insistent on this point, we should not dictate to God how that healing was to, come. The point he Insisted upon was that wo should never_ leave go out hold upon God. We in this parish who, six years after tho mission, are still carrying or. the same lines, know that it was nothing more or less than the gospel of Jesus Christ which Mr Hickson preached,. and I hope that all here would do as I would do when a dear one is stricken with sickness. I would send for the doctor and act upon his advice. I would carry out his instructions in every way. At the same time I would pray earnestly, and I would get my friends who believe in prayer to pray, not only that my dear one might recover, but that the sufferer may be in such vital and conscious contact with the Great Physician, Christ the Divine Healer, and may be so drawing upon His health and His strength that he or she may he able to fight against the powers of evil and win through. This, I believe, was the burden of Mr Hickson’s message, and I for one thank God for his visit amongst us.”