SPIRITUAL HEALING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2653, 1 November 1923, Page 1

SPIRITUAL HEALING.

THE CASE STATED. AN INTERESTING EXAMINATION. (Bv “The Plain Dealer,” in the Sunday Chroniele). Spiritual healing is a. live thing.Tlioro is no nonsense about it. I myself have seen blind people see. I have seen one with a withered arm for sixteen years hanging' at her side suddenly shoot it out perfectly , whole, I have seen cancers disappear within twenty minutes. We have had people who perhaps a few minutes before were stone deaf, hearing, kneeling at the foot of the ' altar, giving forth thanks publicly i for all God’s goodness to them. This challenging declaration,

made from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, has created a great, stir. Had the sermon been preached in some ordinary church many would have said “(lie man’s a crank,” and scarcely have given it another thought. But an invitation to occupy

that pulpit is a guarantee of.repute, of orthodoxy, of the confidence of tho Dean. I had never before heard of~tlie. Rev. R. C. Griffith, vicar of St. Benedict, and St. Martin-at-Palnee, Norwich, though from lime to time I have heard not a little of this spiritual healing. I accept his good faith absolutely. That there is such a thing as spiritual healing I am quite ready to believe. What i! is I do not pretend to analyse. Whether it can achieve all that is claimed for it 1 shall not presume to say. I keep an open mind.

SPIRITUAL TESTIMONY. It is quite reasonable for the Rationalist and the sceptic to challenge the pretensions of the spiritual healers, but it does not become the professing Christian to he prejudiced against them. In the Gospels and the Acts it is repeatedly set forth not merely that Christ healed the sick—and no Christian can have a doubt on that head —but that He expressly commissioned His disciples to do the same. He not: merely gave them authority, He earnestly charged them to make it an integral part of their calling. They were to heal the bodies of suffering humanity as well as save their souls; they were to cure diseases and cast out devils. And so they did according to the Scripture narrative. Is it not Written in one place that the people brought their sick friends and laid their beds in the streets so that they might touch the healers as they passed? And do we not even read that--“ God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them”? I always used to wonder, long before I heard of Christian Science aud the like, why greater stress was not laid upon these and,-other texts. I would ask what had become of these healing powers, why they were no longer practised, and wherein really lay the crime of the small despised sects which still clung to the belief that faith healing- was a living- thing. I never got a coherent answer, and none that I know of is forthcoming to-day. IF THEN, WHY NOT NOW? Why should the healing power — assuming that it was ever bestowed

—have died out.? Or when did it die out? Why should it he a gross superstition—as I was taught —to believe that a medieval saint had power to cure disease? If it were done in the second century, why not in the twelfth? If in the twelfth, why not in the twentieth? Why did the stream of healing fail? l'liose from whom I sought enlightenment obviously did not relish being crossexamined. . But that is what I mean when I say that I can quite understand a nationalist denying his spirtual healing; but not the Christian. Aud yet the ordinary attitude of the Christian Church is one of real scepticism. But why ? If spiritual healing is a real thing, what a new suction in these days it would he for the Church! There would be no complaints of empty pews, if one could “take the cure” every Sunday morning. But of course, that is not the claim of the spiritual healers aud it is not fair for people to attack them as if it were. What they say

is that mysterious gifts of spiritual healing were committed to the church, that they are trying to rediscover how to use them aright, and that wonderful results have followed which they cannot explain, but which they know to be true. I tind nothing incredible in this. It is perfectly well known that some people have the healing touch. When they enter a sick room they bring a new atmosphere of quiet aud peace. There is a soothing inlluence in their eye, their voice, their

THE CASE STATED.

hand. Spiritualise these endowments—though indeed, they are essentially spiritual in themselves — to a high degree, and “virtue,” if I may borrow the word from a well-known passage in the Gospels, passes, heals and cures, I remember during the war hearing of a lady who had these gifts developed to a most extraordinary degree. She could bring instant calm to the most tortured and racked frame. By laying her hand on the forehead of the wildest delirium she could induce sleep. She was an intensely religious woman; she felt that her gifts should be dedicated to the service of humanity;' she saved many lives. Why anyone should shrink from using such powers I cannot conceive. Such an endowment is surely one of the most beautiful things on earth. But what about the specific claim of Mr Griffith that he had seen a, woman recover the use of a withered arm and a case of cancer cured in twenty minutes by the disappearance of the cancer? What can one say without knowing Mr Griffith or the cases? One requires the evidence to form an opinion, and even when that evidence is presented it is never accepted by some people as satisfactory. They always find sufficient reason for rejecting it as they find reasons for rejecting even the best authenticated cures which are reported from Lourdes. THE MIRACLES OF LOURDES. The trouble -in these cases of healing by unorthodox means —unorthodox, that is to say, in the eyes of the medical profession—is that religious enthusiasts usually mix up the valid cases- with a. lot of doubtful ones. They never are / content with their indisputable trophies; their zeal leads them to claim others which break down on close examination.

But. let us take 'things as they are. If only 1 per cent, of the poor sufferers who go to Lourdes receive miraculous help and cure from spiritual sources outside the ken of the doctors, we should be. thankful even for the 1 per cent. Why the other 9fl per cent, do not get it is a mystery; burthen the ways of Providence, according to the old-fash-ioned epithet, are “inscrutable.” Inscrutable! It is that which annoys the Rationalist. - He wants facts and events which are scrutable. Yet even he has to admit that there are forces at work which wholly elude his analysis. I recognise, of course, the obvious distinction between organic disorders and functonal disorders. Patients suffering from the latter are far more likely to receive benefit than those suffering from the former. For example, the sudden restoration of speech after a long period of dumbness was quite familiar after the war, and was frequently due to shock alone, just as shock had usually caused the original inability to speak. The restoration of will-power to a patient may work what is popularly called a “miracle,” and as many maladies are due to or aggravated by fear, the replacement of fear by confidence or faith —-wether spiritual in its origin or not—may work astonishng cures. No doubt there is a danger in this spiritual healing. The enthusiastic idea that it may supersede the medical and surgical profession is as fanatic as’it is mischievous. Those doctors are not w’ithout their justification who ask us to consider the plight of those who faif to obtain relief or cure, when their last hope is gone and the heavens are —or seem to be —stone deaf to their cry.

And, again, what of those whose only chance —according to the medical view—is an "early operation? What is their plight if they have recourse to spiritual healing and it fails, and meanwhile the malady develops beyond the power of the surgeon’s knife? Hard questions these —in what balance shall they be weighed? WHY DOCTORS MUST DOUBT And yet would medical science take upon itself to condemn the earnest study and experimental practice of spiritual healing? I think not. Medical science is itself to a largo extent empirical. It admits itself baffled here, there, and in a score of places. Its aims is always to speak positively as to cause and effect; when it encounters psychological, as opposed to physiological, factors it knows itself to be in the presence of something which eludes its eye and hand and which puzzles its mind by the introduction of a variable factor.

Medical -science,, I admit, is bound to stand on its guard in respect of spiritual healing, it must challenge its cases; it must remain always sceptical—in the true meaning of the term. It must call for proof, for it owes its own labosipus and wonderful advance to strict reasoning and to the vigorous elimination of whatever will not pass its tests. And yet that the province of spiritual healing ought to be explored who can doubt ? If only the charlatans and the semi-charlatans can be warned off. But that will not be easy.

It may well be proved by experience that spiritual healing is only effectual in the case of functional disorders. But what of that? Are not. functional disorders well worth -curing? Of course they are. For what unhappiness, dismal depression, lassitude of body and soul are they not abundantly responsible? I welcome any healing power, new or old, mental, physical, or spiritual, so long as it heals. That is the only test that matters.