Spiritual Healing.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XI, Issue 12, 1 June 1921, Page 281

Spiritual Healing.

V At a meeting on the subject of "Christian Psychology and Spiritual Healing, ' ' convened by the Guild of Health recently, the Bishop of .St. Albans (Dr. Furse) made a remarkable speech, m which hard knocks and ruthless logic were humanised by flashes of "humor and an occasional .reverent unveiling of , the tenderness of the Divine love. Starting with the proposition that man is one, and that health means the health of people as they are, without division of body from soul or mind, he affirmed that the Guild of Health was out to do what every priest had promised to do at his ordination, and every bishop at his consecration, "to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word." He defined psychology as learning " how your think-box works. " He pleaded for a more universal joy m religion. The impression given by many regular communicants and gbod\ people generally was, m his opinion, not that they were bursting with life, but that they were rather dull and despondent; that they lacked assurance and a sense of power. The Christian religion, he urged, was a religion of good cheer. Christ had faced all the facts — God with His Jove, man with his folly and his "miss" of life and his sin, and facing that He had told them that it was all right, that the fact thai was going to

come out top was not man's sin and folly, but God's unconqiiered and unconquerable love. "Christ was continually saying, Be of good cheer. We should say, Cheer up." But it would . be useless for a man to say that unless he had known pain himself. Christ had known pain. They found Him right down mit aIL Bishop Furse passed on to speak of the moral side, protesting vigorously against a moral life that was a system of "dont's." In his own diocese he had been asked to license a little book of prayer for children m which the questions for self-examination were all "Have I done' this, or that, wrong thing?" There was not a single positive thing m the whole of them. The result was, the impression, on the sub-conscious mind of the child that the Christian religion was made up of "You must not do this or that, or if you do it will be the worse for you." It was awful. They had a false notion of prayer because it was based on a wrong notion of God. Christian prayer was, co-operation with God. If he wanted a term to describe the devil he would call it fear. It made men horribly selfconscious, suspicious, crafty. He believed that that was the trouble m the present social system. If they could get rid of the fear of Capitalism, the fear of Labor, the fear of Germany, and so on, he believed that they would get a social system that was worth living. They must get rid of the idea that they had to appease an angry God; and they must do away with the divorce of religion from life. The ordinary Englishman, the Bishop whimsically remarked, took a perfect delight m depression of a certain kind when he went to .church. He loved to describe himself as a miserable sinner. But he was afraid of the confessional. Dr Furse earnestly pleaded that they would ' try to lift the whole idea of the confessional above the range of controversy. It was, he asserted, the most scientific and commonsense way of dealing with a man if his soul was to be healed. How could a doctor cure a man's body unless he knew what was the matter with him. — ' ' Church -Times. ' '