FAITH HEALING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4839, 8 June 1925, Page 2

FAITH HEALING.

SOME OF ITS FALLACIES. A BISHOP ON MR. HICKSON. At the Durham Diocesan Conference (jsays "The Times”) the Bishop of Durham (Dr. Hensley Henson) referred to Mr Hickson’s book, “Healing the Sick.” He said that the book was tilled with testimonies to Mr Hickson's cures, but he himself' allowed that those fell short of what might be required. In the absence of scientific diagnosis and examina tion afterwards they could not be decisive. The psycho-therapeutist could effect all that the -.spiritual healer effected. Spiritual healing meant no more and no less than mental healing. Faith healing was common to all religions. There was really nothing distinctly Christian about it. Faith - healing appeared to have no relation to morality. The Christian ministry was not charged, and could not wisely concern itself, with the healing of disease. That was the incommunicable task of the physician. Did it follow that there was no sphere for the cooperation of the doctor and the clergyman in the ministry of healing ? None, knew better than the doctors that there were limits which their skill could not overpass. The troubled conscience might have its influence, indirect, even unsuspected, but none the less potent, upon the patient’s power to benefit from their efforts. And the sphere of conscience was pre-eminently the sphere within which the clergyman’s duty was unquestionable. The modern physician could discern the nature of • the psychic trouble which arrested and defeated physical treatment, and his knowledge might lead him to desire the clergyman’s distinctive service. Mr Hickson, in his enthusiasm for “spiritual healing,” denounced the Church fiercely for leaving unused a-, healing gift which might purge the; world of its pain.. But he was mistaken. No contrast between the present and the past was more extreme than when the medical resources of our time were compared with those existing in all former ages. When miracles of healing were most numerous public health was least satisfactory. The wonderful advance of ■medical and surgical science had been conditioned throughout by its hardlywon independence of theological presuppositions and ecclesiastical control. It could not be the duty, of the Church deliberately to return to the beliefs and methods of a primitive and superstitious past.