WHAT MR J. M. HICKSON CLAIMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2642, 6 October 1923, Page 4

WHAT MR J. M. HICKSON CLAIMS.

AN AUTHORITATIVE STATEMENT. On account of the controversy that has raged in nearly every city visited by Mr .Tames Moore Hickson, the spiritual healer, the editor of “Life” secured from him an authoritative statement just at the close of his Australian Mission, and on the eve of his departure for New Zealand. Mr Hickson, at the outset, disclaimed any ability to cure persons of disease, but claimed that he possesses in a marked degree the gift of spiritual healing. Explaining this he said that this gift was bestowed by God upon the Church, and that it was the duty of every clergyman to find omt if he possessed it in any special degree. Just as some men might be “born” musicians or “born” speakers, so others might be “born” healers. In other words, God might have selected them as specially adapted to be the channels of His healing power. Mr Hickson denies that the cures were effected by suggestion or psychotherapy, and claimed that spirilual healing went further than these human agencies. They were limited in their curative range to functional derangements, but spiritual healing surpassed them and healed organic diseases as well as functional ailments. He states that in a gathering of natives, of which a photogra - ph is reproduced with the article m “Life,” more than thiry people were cured of blindness, srtme of whom were stated to have been blind from birth. During his Australian tour, *Mr Hickson says that he travelled 10,000 miles, and witnessed the curing of hundreds of people and that many were cured of organic diseases; but Mr Hickson adds that, after ell, the finest results achieved and aimed at are not physical, but spiritual. This full and authoritative statement by Mr Hickson, which occupies three pages in “Life” for October, and is really a review of bis five years' mission all over the world, will be read with deep interest bv both scoffers and believers.