MIND-CURE 1. Intermediate positions are, of course, possible in the abstract, in which the cure is ascribed both to faith and to God acting reinforcingly or supplementarily. But these possible abstract points of view may be safely left out of account.
2. Eeclus. 38: rfl.
3. This is, of course, the common representation. Thus, for example: H. H. Goddard, The American Journal of Psychology, vol. X, 1898-1899, p. 432: ‘““As a matter of fact the principle is as old as human history”; H. R. Marshall, The Hibbert Journal, vol. VII, 1909, P. 293: “ Were the complete history of medical science written, it would without doubt appear that the treatment of disease through what seems to be mental influences has prevailed in one form or another ever since man began to realize that certain illnesses are curable.”
4. How little they can be ascribed to it has been shown by R. J. Ryle, in an article entitled “The Neurotic Theory of the Miracles of Healing,” in The Hibbert Journal, vol. V, April, 1907, PP- 572-586.
5. Sir William Osler, The Treatment of Disease, 1909, speaks of the necessity in all cases of “suggestion in one of its varied forms —whether the negation of disease and pain, the simple trust in Christ of the Peculiar People, or the sweet reasonableness of the psychotherapist.” Cf. especially William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,” 1911, pp. 712 ff.; Stephen Paget, The Faith and Works of Christian Science, 1909, pp. 204 ff.; Henry H. God-dard, The American Journal of Psychology, vol. X, 1898-1899, p. 481. That this is not the account given by the practitioners themselves lies in the nature of the case. Consult, e. g., C. H. Lea, A Plea for… Christian Science? 1915, pp. xv, 70 ff., who appeals to “an ever-operative principle of good, or spiritual law, underlying all life which is here and now available for all mankind.” For that matter consult Elwood Worcester, Religion and Medicine, p. 72; on pp. 67 fi. Worcester speaks quite in the spirit of the Spiritual Healers spoken of above.
6. Samuel McComb, The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, 1909, p. 117: “It does not believe that its cures are due to any miraculous agency…”’; Religion and Medicine, 1908, p. 3II: “We dare not pray to God to work a miracle, that is, to violate one of those general laws by which He rules the physical world.”
7. Religion and Medicine, p. 14, note; The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, p. 90.
8. The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, p. 39. The remedy which Wesley proposed, however, was not that the minister should turn physician, but that the physician should become Christian: “It follows,” he writes, “that no man can be a thorough physician without being an experienced Christian.”
9. McComb says expressly, The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, p. 92: “In many instances it does not matter what the object of the faith may be; it is not the object but the faith that heals.” The matter is more fully stated in Religion and Medicine, Pp. 293: “Faith simply as a psychical process, or mental attitude… has healing virtue’’; “Faith as a mere mental state has this power’—in accordance with Feuchterleben’s saying, Confidence acts like a real force.” Elwood Worcester, p. 57, agrees with his colleague. Of course it is allowed that if we are seeking moral as well as physical effects it is better that the faith employed should have God rather than Mumbo-jumbo for its object. The plane on which McComb’s chapter on “Prayer and Its Therapeutic Value” (Religion and Medicine, pp. 302-319) moves is the same. The therapeutic value of prayer resides in its subjective effects. As it is clearly stated in a leading article in the British Medical Journal for June 18, 1910: “Prayer inspired by a living faith is a force acting within the patient, which places him in the most favorable condition for the stirring of the pool of hope that lies, still and hidden it may be, in the depths of human nature.” McComb does not utterly exclude the prayer of desire or deny that it has an effect on God; even, if it be a desire in behalf of others, an effect on them. We are organically related to God, he says: “We exist in Him spiritually somewhat as thoughts exist in the mind,” and “a strong desire in our soul communicates itself to Him and engages His attention just as a thought in our soul engages ours.” God may resist this desire of ours, thus entering His consciousness; but the stronger the thought, the more frequently it returns, the more likely it is to be acted upon.” If now we have a desire in behalf of others, “our soul not only acts on that soul,” telepathically we suppose, “but our prayer arising to the mind of God directs His will more powerfully and more constantly to the soul for which we pray.” This is very ingenious and very depressing. We hope there is no truth in it.