SPIRITUAL HEALING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17219, 10 December 1923, Page 11

SPIRITUAL HEALING.

SERMON BY CANON WILFORD. Canon Wilford, preaching in the Cathedral yesterday morning in connection with the spiritual healing mission thanksgiving services which are to be held on Thursday and Friday of this week, said— The message of the mission has, after all, only been the message of the old Gospel that Christ is living and moving among us. We had known it, perhaps some of us only theoretically. We had for it historical proof. For after His resurrection our Lord had manifestly appeared to so many that there was no room for self-deception. Moreover the New Testament records had stood the test of criticism. But the mission has taught us afresh the reality of these appearances, and surely ought with many people to have done away with the of higher criticism. No longer shall we be troubled about such questions as the credibility of miracles. The difficulties which the Modernists had raised have been dis* solved. We see clearer than ever that the New Testament contains a Gospel —not a series of lectures —on Christian evidences. And the Gospel is the good news of the ever-present Christ. The faith of nearly all of us has been deepened. We must keep that faith strong by refusing to listen to the armchair criticism of the present-day reactionary. Perhaps it is true to say that in times past our love of scholarship has made us too kind to the Modernists amongst us. But we must no longer have it said of us that we are so tender as to become unmindful of the masses.

THE CURES NOT DUE TO SUGGESTION.

But we must keep our minds clear. All healing comes from God. The physician, the surgeon may not be a Christian, but he is using a gift which is divine. His work comes under the category of physical science, but his commission is from God. We must thankfully use his services. Again, mental healing, suggestion, psychoanalysis operating in the sphere of the mind, can be claimed as gifts of God to mankind. But they, must not be confused with spiritual healing. The surgeon uses material means, the psycho-therapist uses mental means. Spiritual healing takes us into the immediate presence of Christ. The sum of the matter is: We must know that the cures of spiritual healing have nothing to do with suggestion. The cures embrace organic and functional disease. Many are willing to allow that some kinds of -illness can be cured by what they will let us call spiritual healing. But we are told that organic defects cannot be so cured. Our reply is that there was no kind of illness which our Lord could not cure in Galilean days and that, therefore, there is no kind of illness that He cannot cure to-day. But when we look a little closer into their position we come to see that after all they are attributing these cures to suggestion. We want no allies of that kind. A half-hearted approval of the work of the Church, at times grudgingly given and always accompanied by an explanation which ties it down to the sphere-of mental therapeutics is as bad for the materialist to give as for the Church to accept. We must not seek the approval of what is often only a pseudo-scientist by letting him put a wrong interpretation upon the triumphs of religion. A faith which would stoop to the halfhearted support of the luke-warm is not the faith of the Church. Suggestion rightly holds a large place in modern day therapeutics, but suggestion is not the interpretation of the modern day miracle. Let other sciences take their true and proper place. It is the duty as well as the privilege of the science of theology to lead, arid one of the findings of theology is that faith can cure both organic and functional disease. That theory ■which would tie the blessings of spiritual healing down to cases parallel to those dealt with by suggestion has been proved to be unscientific both in olden days and at the present time, and unscientific because it is contrary.

A NON-MIRACULOUS CHRISTIANITY IMPOSSIBLE. Those who speak of non-miraculous Christianity have taken themselves far away from Gospel days. If our Lord had only the power to cure neurotic patients. He must have failed time and again. He cured all and told his followers to do the same. The Acts of the Apostles is the. record of their obedience. It is absolutely impossible to take the miracles from the Bible story and leave the book undamaged. The New Testament has come successfully through a scrutiny which has been given to no other book. Its message is that Christianity is miraculous. But the spiritual healing mission has proved over again the truth of what someone has said, that people who are convinced that miracles cannot happen are blind to that fact that they do happen. THE DEFINITION OF MIRACLE. But in speaking of miracles we must know what we mean. We are not thinking of something contrary to nature but of something contrary to what \vp. know about nature. A miracle has been defined as an event which cannot be explained by any natural law and as therefore something which must be attributed to the direct action of God. There arc two methods of Qbd’s operations. One is mediate and works through what is known as the stream of causal process—the other is immediate, working from without. Under the first heading comes the work of the doctors and the psycho-thera-pists, the second is what we cail spiritual healing. Those who would deny the miracles of spiritual healing bind God down to His own laws, which they only imperfectly understaii.d, fail to distinguish between what is supernatural and what is unnatural, and forget that God transcends His universe. IMAGINATION AND PREJUDICE AT FAULT.

Why is it that there are those who are unwilling to accept the miraculous? It cannot be reason which frightens them.* The Incarnate Son of God could surely not appear on earth without the abnormal occurring. There are two things at fault—one a. defective imagination and the other what has been called “a prejudice coming from a continual dwelling on the normal processes.'* Men fail to see that on scientific grounds alone these normal processes are not sufficient to have made the world what it is. THE GALILEAN MIRACLES. Think for a moment of the miracles of our Lord’s Galilean ministry- They cannot be disentangled from the story as a whole. Remove the miracles and the record of the Gospels is in ruins. Nor can these miracles just be left that may be supposed to have to do with neurotic subjects. There is no

indication that one .miracle, is more credible than another. Let men s-»y what they will of the credulity of Gospel days it is only necessary to compare the miracles of the canonical Gospels with those found in the apocryphal literature of early times to be quite convinced that in the Gospel miracles we have God acting freely in His own world. If we really believe that God became incarnate we must realise that it is beyond our comprehension to tell what events should follow His appearance. A Christian of course cannot confine himself to other grounds, but were it possible he would find that even so miracles are not put out of court. For no one would deny that the abnormal and the unexpected do occur. THE MIRACLES OF TO-DAY. I have not attempted to give you a record of the miracles of these last days. I haven’t even tried to get into touch with those who have been healed. I am' bringing you no evidence of cures, you yourselves mere of them than I do. I simply want to say that the very fact that Christianity is true makes miracles inevitable, and that all those cures of which you are cognisant as the result of the Spiritual Healing Mission are not the outcome of suggestion but just facts which of necessity follow faith in Him Who has promised to be with His Church, until the end of time.