WHEN we speak of ‘“faith-healing” we use ambiguous language so far as we leave it undetermined whether we understand the healing in question to be effected immediately by the action of the faith itself, or by the God to whom it is committed in faith.! In the latter case the healing is, in the proper sense of the word, a supernatural one. In the former it is a natural healing, as natural as if it were wrought by a surgical operation or by a drug. This is, of course, not to say that God has nothing to do with the healing in this case; or, indeed, has not Himself wrought it. God has very much to do with the cures wrought by the surgeon’s knife or the physician’s medicaments; so much to do with them that it is He who really makes them. It is to Him that the efficacy of all means is due, in general and in particular. It is a wise man of very old time who in one breath bids us look to the physician with his remedies and to the Lord who is behind the physician and works in and through him and his remedies. “Honor a physician for the honor due unto him, for the uses which ye may have of him… For of the Most High cometh healing… My Son, in thy sickness be not negligent; but pray unto the Lord and He will make thee whole… Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him.” > When we think of cures wrought by means, we do not exclude God from them. But just because they are wrought by means, we do not ascribe them to God as their proximate cause. The point is that a cure wrought proximately by faith, or by any other mental act, or attitude, or state, is just as truly wrought by means as if it were wrought by a drug or a knife. And it is just as truly wrought by natural means. Our minds are ours, and all their acts and states are our acts and states; and all that is produced by them in any of their acts or states are effects of our own. Any cure supposed to be produced by faith itself is accordingly a natural cure, and that just as truly as any other natural cure whatever.
It might conduce to clearness if writers would agree to classify all such cures, the natural products of faith itself, under some such caption as mind-cures—or, if we prefer a big name, under the general designation of psychotherapy —reserving the term “faith-healing” for those cures which are ascribed not to faith itself, but to the immediate action of God sought in faith. Meanwhile this is not the universal usage. The nomenclature is far from fixed. Very frequently the term faith-cure” is employed to express specifically cures wrought directly by faith itself. As often, it is used in a sense wide enough to embrace both of these very diverse species of cures. Naturally, this produces confusion. The confusion shows itself, for example, in the definition given to Faith-Healing’’ at the head of the article printed under this title in Hastings’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. There at least emerges from this definition, however, an express recognition of a double sense of the term ‘“faith-cure,” a strict and a wide sense. Taking so much as gain, we shall, contrary, no doubt, to this author’s own meaning, discriminate these two senses in such a manner as to assign to the strict sense of the term those cures which are supposed to be immediately wrought by God on faith, and to the broader sense those which are supposed to be wrought more or less wholly by faith itself. Having the latter of these varieties in mind, we find ourselves more in accord with our author when he remarks that “faith-healing is the oldest form of healing in the world,” antedating, or at least growing up side by side with, “medical practice in its earliest and crudest form, and as its predominant partner.” 3 We cannot, indeed, ascribe with him the miracles of our Lord and His Apostles to this category. But, apart from the miraculous attestation of the special revelation of God which has been recorded for us in the inspired Scriptures, we recognize with him a continuous stream of faith-healings in this sense, extending from the earliest ages quite down to our own day. The numerous “Healing-Gods” of classical antiquity, such practices as “ temple-sleeping,” and the endless narratives of cures sought and found through it and other means, attest its prevalence in pre-Christian times; the Patristic and Medieval Ages overflow with instances; the Reformation was far from bringing its practice to an end, and—if we may now enlarge the category to that of mind-healing in general —the history of such movements as those still going on among us under the names of Animal Magnetism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Mental Healing, New Thought, Christian Science, evince the place its conscious practice still takes in the life of the people of to-day.
In a former lecture we have sought to give some account of the assertions which are still made that faith-healings, in the strict sense of healings made directly by God, continue to occur among us. For the sake of completeness it may not be improper to proceed now to some account of at least the more prominent varieties of faith-healing in the wider sense—or, in a less confusing nomenclature, of mind-cure—prevalent in our day. No doubt, in doing so, we overstep the limits of our formal subject. Faith-healing in this sense—that is to say, mind-cure—by virtue of the very fact that some mental act or state is held to be the producing cause at work, can make no pretense to miraculousness, and in point of fact, in the forms at least in which it is most commonly practised, it makes no pretense to miraculousness. Nevertheless, its relation to faith-healing in the stricter sense is so close, confusion with it is so common, and the lessons to be learned from it as to the real nature of the alleged instances of faith-healing in the strict sense occurring among us are so instructive, that we should not be justified in passing it by altogether.