Christianity and Faith-healing.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 182, 11 December 1886, Page 3

Christianity and Faith-healing.

Faith-curb, technically ?o called, a3 now held by many Protestants, is a pitiable superstition, dangerous in its final effects. It may be asked, what harm can result from allowing persons to believe in "faith. healing?" Very great indeed. Its tendency is to produce an effeminate type of character which shrinks from any pain and to concentrato attention upon self and its sensations. It sets up false grounds for determining -whether a person ia or ia not in favour of God. It opeus the door to every superstition, such as attaching importance to dreams, signs, opening the Bible at random, expecting the Lord to make it open so that they can gather His will from the first passage they see, " impressions," " assurances," &c. Practically it gives great support to other delusions which claim a supernatural element It greatly injures Christianity by subjecting it to a test which it cannot endure. It diverts attention from the moral and spiritual transformation which Christianity professes to work ; a transformation which, wherever made, manifests ita divinity, po that none who behold it need any other proof that it is of God. It destroys the ascendency of reason in the soul, and thug, like similar delusions, it is self-perpetuating ; and its natural and, in some minds, its irresistible tendency ia to mental derangement Little hope exists of freeing those already entangled, but it is highly important to prevent others from falling into so plausible and luxurious a snare, and. to show that Christianity ia not to be held responsible for aberrations of the imagination which belong exclusively to no party, creed, race, clime, or age. — " Century Magazine " for June.