given, encouragement is given, but the necessity for patience is not
made clear. Patience is typical of all the other virtues. Many a man has
followed the best of advice for a time, and has become discouraged
because the promised results did not materialize. It is disappointing,
surely, to have lived upon a diet for months only to find that you still
have dyspepsia, or to have followed certain rules of morality with great
precision and enthusiasm without obtaining the untroubled mind. We are
accustomed to see results in the material world and naturally expect
them everywhere. The trouble is we do not always recognize improvements
when we see them, and we insist upon certain preconceived changes as a
result of our endeavors. The physician is apt rashly to promise definite
physical accomplishments in a given time. He is courting disappointment
and distrust when he does so. We all want to get relief from our
symptoms, and we are inclined to insist upon a particular kind of relief
so strongly that we fail to appreciate the possibilities of another and
a better relief which may be at hand. The going astray in this
particular is sometimes very unfortunate. I have known a man to rush
frantically from one doctor to another, trying to obtain relief for a
particular pain or discomfort, unwilling to rest long enough to find out
that the trouble would have disappeared naturally if he had taken the
advice of the first physician, to live without impatience and within his
limitations.
The human body is a very complex organism, and sometimes pain and
distress are better not relieved, since they may be the expression of
some deeper maladjustment which must first be straightened out. This is
also true of the mind--in which the unhappy proddings of conscience had
better not be cured by anodynes or by evasion unless we are prepared to
go deeply enough to make them disappear spontaneously. We must sometimes
insist upon patience, though it should exist as a matter of
course--patience with ourselves and with others. The physician who
demands and secures the greatest degree of patience from his clients is
the most successful practitioner, for no life can go on successfully
without patience. If patience can be spontaneous,--the natural result of
a broadening outlook,--then it will be permanent and serviceable; the
other kind, that exists by extreme effort, may do for a while, but it is
a poor makeshift.
I always feel like apologizing when I ask a man or a woman to be
tolerant or charitable or generous or, for that matter, to practice any
of the ordinary virtues. Sound living should spring unbidden from the
very joy of life; it should need no justification and certainly no
urging. But unfortunately, as the world now stands, there are men and
groups of men who do not see the light. There is a wide contagion of
selfishness and short-sightedness among the well-to-do, and a necessary
federation of protection and selfishness among the poor. The practical
needs of life, artificial as they are among the rich, and terribly
insistent as they are among the poor, blind us to larger considerations.
If all matters of welfare, public or private, could be treated
unselfishly, how quickly we should be rid of some of the great evils
that afflict the race. I am inclined to think that much of the goodness
of people does come in that way, unconsciously, naturally, as the light
flows from the sun. Yet I suppose that in our present order, and until,
through the years, the better time arrives, we must very often ask
ourselves and others to be good and to be charitable, just because it is
right, or worse still because it is good policy.
A man grows better, more human, more intelligent, as he practices the
virtues. He is safer, no doubt, and the world is better. It is even true
that, by the constant practice of virtues, he may come finally to
espouse goodness and become thoroughly good. That is the hopeful thing
about it and the reason why we may consistently ask or demand the
routine practice of the virtues. But let us hold up all the time in our
teaching and in our lives the other course, the development of the
inspiration that includes all virtues and that makes all our way easy
and plain in a world where confusion reigns, because men are going at
the problem of right living the wrong way around.
The practice of good living will never be easy in its details, but if it
is sure in its inspiration there will be no question of the final
triumph. We shall have to fight blindly sometimes and with all the
strength and persistence of animals at bay. We shall fail sometimes,
too, and that is not always the worst thing that can happen. It is the
glory of life that we shall slowly triumph over ourselves and the world.
It is the glory of life that out of sore trouble, in the midst of
poverty and human injustice, may rise, spontaneous and serene, the
spirit of self-sacrifice, the unconquerable spirit of service that does
not question, that expresses the divine tenderness in terms of human
love. Through the times of darkness and doubt which must inevitably
come, there will be for those who cherish such a vision, and who come
back to it again and again, no utter darkness, no trouble that wholly
crushes, no loss that wholly destroys.
If we could not understand it before, it will slowly dawn upon us that
the life of Christ exemplified all these things. Charity, kindliness,
service, patience,--all these things which have seemed so hard will
become in our lives, as in his, the substance and expression of our
faith. The great human virtues will become easy and natural, the
untroubled mind, or as much of it as is good to possess, will be ours,
not because we have escaped trouble, but because we have disarmed it,
have welcomed it even, so long as it has served to strengthen and
ennoble our lives.
XI
THE CURE BY FAITH
The healing of his seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain--
We touch Him in life's throng and press,
And we are whole again.
WHITTIER.
I cannot finish my little book of ideals without writing some things
that are in my mind about cure by faith or by prayer. It is a subject
that I approach with hesitation because of the danger of
misunderstanding. No subject is more difficult and none is more
important for the invalid to understand. We hear a great deal about the
wonderful cures of Christian Science or of similar agencies, and we all
know of people who have been restored to usefulness by such means. Has
the healing of Christ again become possible on earth? No one would be
more eager to accept it and acknowledge it than the physician if it
were really so. But careful investigation always reveals the fact that
the wonderful cures are not of the body but of the mind. It is easy
enough to say that a cancer or tuberculosis has been cured by faith, and
apparently easy for many people to believe it, but alas, the proof is
wanting. The Christian Scientist, honest and sincere as he may be, is
not qualified to say what is true disease and what is not. What looks
like diseased tissue recovers, but medical men know that it could not
have been diseased in the most serious sense, and that the prayer for
recovery could have had nothing to do with the cure, save in a very
indirect way.
The man who discards medicine for philosophy or religion is courting
unnecessary suffering and even death. The worst part of it is that he
may induce some one else to make the same mistake with similar results.
In writing this opinion I am in no way denying the great significance
and value of faith nor of the prayerful and trustful mind. If it cannot
cure actual physical disease, faith can accomplish veritable miracles of
healing in the mind of the patient. No thoughtful or honest medical man
will deny it. Nor will most medical men deny that the course of almost
any physical illness may be modified by faith and prayer. I am almost
saying that there is no known medicine of such potency. Every bodily
function is the better for the conquering spirit that transcends the
earth and finds its necessary expression in prayer.
There really need be no issue or disagreement between medicine and faith
cure. At its best, one is not more wonderful than the other, and both
aim to accomplish the same end--the relief of human suffering. When the
two are merged, as some day they will be, we shall be surprised to
discover how alike they are. Christian Science is rightly scorned by
medical men because it is unscientific, because it makes absurd and
untenable claims outside its own field, and because it has not as yet
investigated that field in the scientific spirit. When proper study and
investigation have been made it will be found that faith cure, not in
its present state, but in some future development, will have an immense
field of usefulness. It will be worthy of as much respect in that field
as medicine proper in its own sphere. As a matter of fact both medicine
and faith cure are miraculous in a very real sense, as both depend for
efficiency now and always upon the same great laws which may be fairly
called divine. What is the discovery that the serum of a horse will
under certain circumstances cure diphtheria? Does it not mean that man
is tapping sources of power far beyond his understanding? Is man
responsible save as the agent? Did he produce the complex animal
chemistry that makes this cure possible? Did man make the horse, or the
laws that control the physiology and pathology of that animal? Here,
then, is faith cure in its largest and best sense. The biologist may not
be willing to admit it, but his faith in these great laws of God have
made possible the cure of a dread disease. Here, as in all matters of
pure religion, it is what men say and write, not the fact itself, that
makes all the misunderstanding; we make our judgments and conceive our
prejudices from mere surface considerations. Call life what you
will,--leave out the symbolic word "God" altogether,--the facts remain.
The true scientific spirit must reverence and adore the power that lies
behind creation. It is as inconsistent for the bacteriologist to be an
unbeliever as it is for the Christian Scientist to deny the value of
bacteriology. Medicine is infinitely farther advanced than Christian
Science, and yet Christian Science has grasped some truth that the
natural scientist has stupidly missed. When an obsession is thrown off
and courage substituted for fear, we witness as important a "cure" as
can be shown to the credit of surgery. If the Christian Scientists and
the other faith-curers were only less superficial and less narrow in
their explanation of the facts, if they would condescend to study the
diseases they treat, they would be entitled to, and would receive, more
respect and consideration.
The cure and prevention of disease through the agency of man are
evidently part of the divine plan. Our eagerness to advance along the
lines of investigation and practice is but that divine plan in action.
The truly scientific spirit will neglect no possible curative agent.
When scientific men ridicule prayer, they are thinking not of the real
thing which is above all possible criticism, but of the feeble and often
pathetic groping for the real thing. We ask in our prayers for
impossible blessings that would invert the laws of God and change the
face of nature--very well, we must be prepared for disappointment. The
attitude of prayer may, indeed, transform our own lives and make
possible for us experiences that would otherwise have been impossible.
But our pathetic demands--we shall never know how forlorn and weak they
are. Prayer is the opening of the heart to the being we call God--it is
most natural and reasonable. If we pray in our weakness and blindness
for what we may not have, there is, nevertheless, a wonderful
re-creative effect within us. The comfort and peace of such communion is
beyond all else healing and restoring in its influence upon the troubled
and anxious mind of man. The poet or the scientist who bows in adoration
before the glory of God revealed in nature, prays in effect to that God
and his soul is refreshed and renewed. The poor wretch who stands
blindfolded before the firing squad, waiting the word that ends the life
of a military spy, is near enough to God--and the whispered prayer upon
his lips is cure for the wounds that take his life.
The best kind of prayer seeks not and asks not for physical relief or
benefit, but opens the heart to its maker, and so receives the cure of
peace that is a greater miracle than any yet wrought by man. Under the
influence of that cure the sick are well and the dead are alive again.
With the courage and spirit of such a cure in our lives, we shall
inevitably do our utmost to relieve, by any good means, the physical
suffering of the world. We shall follow the laws of nature. We shall
study them with the utmost care. We shall take nothing for granted,
since by less careful steps we shall miss the divine law and so go
astray. The science of healing will become no chance and irrational
thing. We shall use all the natural means to relieve and prevent
suffering--there will be no scoring of one set of doctors by another
because all will have one purpose. But more to the point than that, men
will discover that health in its largest sense consists in living devout
and prayerful lives whereunto shall be revealed in good time all that
our finite minds can know and use. There will be no suffering of the
body in the old and pitiful sense, for we shall be so much alive that
disease and death can no longer claim us.
THE END