THE HEALING MISSION.

Otaki Mail, 10 August 1923, Page 3

THE HEALING MISSION.

To the Editor. Sir, —I liavo to thank you for your courtesy in inserting my hist letter relating to the above mission. May I further trespass upon your space by giving-, for the benefit of those interested, especially the sufferers in our own midst of whom a considerable number are looking forward to this mission as their only hope, one or two instances of what occurred during Mr. Hickson's mission two months ago in Bathurst. "I have looked." said Br. Long (Bishop of Bathurst) into the eyes that were badly crossed of a lad, and so weak hi sight, that he could barely see by the aid of thick lenses. I have seen that boy two hour.-- later with eyes ported ly straight, and discarding glasses, and seeing clearly. I have seen a child tlit:■ lias not walked for eight years

walk quite steadily along the Cathedra! path to its father and mother. The last person upon whom we laid hands on Wednesday morning was blind in th - left eye, and as she passed through the vest• y the sight returned in full. On Tuor lay morning the first man upon V: horn wo laid hands looked to be at the point or death. He was so wi ak the night before that it was impossible to take him to the private house to which he had been assigned, for years he has been bed-ridden. Two hours later he was dressed and walking about, and doing physical exercises to show his recovered powers. He walked to the Cathedral in the afternoon to return (hanks. Here is a woman of thirty years who has never walked in her life, walking from the ear to the railway platform, and stepping tip strongly into the carriage. Here is

another woman of some thirty years who, on the evidence of her Vicar and her relatives, lias never spoken in her life. To her has r-onie the full gift of speech. In two cases, patients reported to me before the mission that medical men had said to them that the profession could do nothing for them, and their only hope lay in Christian healing. Both wore cripples, and both were walking about firmly and well before the second day of the mission had passed. An old man had been coming for weeks to our preparation services. UK left hand was always filled with pain. He had no control in if whatever. Alcdical men had told him lie could never hope to use the hand again. As I stepped out of the Cathedral on the first day he gripped me with that hand, and it would lie hard lo say how many hundreds in Bathurst he has not shaken hands with since. These, and dozens of other eases of healing, reported by I lie Bishop of Bathurst, are incontestable. In the Newcastle Diocese the Rev. \V. • E. I\. Burkitt read, at a thanksgiving service, a large number of testimonies, bearing witness to the great benefits derived from the mission. Some gave glowing accounts, especially in the case of a lady from Deninen. From eajly cliildliood she had been a cripple owing to a fall. Her back was bent and humped, her chest undeveloped, internal organs disarranged, and one of her legs was much shorter than ihe other. .Since the mission her back has completely straightened. Her chest has expand!, and the organs are functioning in their correct positions. Ilev short leg is almost the length of the other one. Being released from her phy.-ical infirmity she is now able to walk with great ease, (speaking iu the Cathedral at iSvdnc-y Air. Hickson fold of a case at Tokio, in Japan, whb-h was brought to his notice while a healing service was going on. He was urgently requested to leave the service and go to lay his hands on a demented -woman who was then in a frenzy. She was four or five miles away, and being unable to leave the service he asked the 1.000 or so there lo offer (heir prayers. This was done, and wle-a the berucrs of tnu urgent message returned they found that the woman had completely recovered at tiro moment when the prayers were offered. “They had had the mission,” said the Bishop of Bathurst in his presidential address, subsequent to Air. Hickson’s visit, “and when it was coming there were doubtless amongst those present those whose minds were filled with hesitation and perplexities.

Some of them had no doubt asked themselves what this sober old Anglican Church of theirs was giving its backing to now. lie had heard one man say llmt if there was one steady and sober old thing that they could rely upon to remain steady and sober it was the Anglican Church, but that as a result of the latest move he felt that the people had been betrayed. That was the sort of thing that was being said about the mission, but he had assured these people that there was no betrayal, and that the mission was going to have a WltT.iiifl influence throughout Australia. It was wonderful how people of position and power were now coming to see that. He had letters from mc-n in high positions who hud come to the conclusion that the healing mission was going to prove one of the greatest, impulses of the generation. There were men of high position, not biassed or impulsive, but who were saying now that the old church was not foolish after all. except in that folly that was Christ’s.”—l am, etc., G. F. PETRIE. All Saints’ Vicarage, August 10 th, 1923.