Healing the Sick
The health and happiness of mankind depend in a great degree on faith.
Every emotion of the body and every action of the mind is an exhibition
of faith. Persons who believe they are well, even if they are ill, will
soon recover, and persons who believe that they will not be sick are
seldom ill. There is no department of human life so dependent on belief
as that connected with health. Millions would arise, take up their
couches and walk, if they could be made to believe that they could do
so. To believe a falsehood has cured many people, and consciences waver
between the duty to tell a patient the clear truth when he is very ill
and to make him believe a lie in order that he may get well.
It must also be stated, in fidelity to the truth, that the subject of
healing by faith has called out a host of the half-insane classes who
proclaim with trumpet tones some cases of divine healing which are
unworthy of a moment's consideration. Hence, out of a collection of
possibly sincere letters, many have been rejected altogether as foolish
or misleading. Eleven hundred written testimonies to cases of healing in
direct answer to prayer at the Baptist Temple have been carefully
examined and the trustworthy testimonies tabulated. Those "years of
healing" to which reference is so often made were years of prayer and
years of faith. After deducting all the questionable cases, and after a
wide allowance for the naturally health-giving and health-preserving
power, the normal human belief is that there remains an overwhelmingly
convincing amount of evidence that healing is directly brought about by
sincere prayer.
Through several years cases were reported to the church or pastors which
convinced all who knew the people and the circumstances that some
intelligent power, higher than human knowledge, had interfered to heal
the sick. But when the knowledge of those trustworthy cases came to be
known, and especially when they had awakened much excited comment, then
the "cranks" and monomaniacs crowded to the front and vociferously
proclaimed the most absurd miracles, to the disgust of reasonable men
and women and greatly to the damage of the beneficent work.
Sometimes all references to healing were omitted in the pulpit and shut
out from the meetings for prayer until the wild advocates of divine
healing settled down and dispassionate views could be taken. Many
intelligent devout men repudiated the whole experiment, believing that
the excitement over it was doing much more harm than good. But the
larger part who saw the people who had been cured by the unexplainable
means were steadfast and went on sincerely thanking God for his
wonderful works among the children of men.
A digest of the written testimonies showed that cataracts had unrolled
without the touch of a surgeon's knife, although the greatest number of
the restoration of sight to the blind were with the aid of apparent
means. The methods by which the Lord restored their sight did not make
their gratitude to him for restoration any the less commendable.
Mysterious and evidently dangerous internal tumors disappeared slowly or
suddenly in a manner unexplainable by the most learned physicians.
By far the greatest number of the eleven hundred cases selected for
consideration out of the multitude of testimonies were cases in some way
directly connected with the nervous system. Patients long confined in an
insane asylum were brought home and cured of what had been considered
hopeless insanity. There were many cases of various forms of brain
diseases, while in all these cases a specially conservative examiner
could declare that they might have been cured by the special or wise
treatment.
Yet, even if such were the case, the devout man who prayed may claim
that the treatment was only a part of God's healing plan. It was often
declared publicly and without any contradiction that for long seasons
there was not one person ill in bed in the more than one thousand homes
represented in the membership of the church worshiping in the Temple.
Usually health reigned in the entire church, and it was reasonably
claimed that in five years more than six hundred cases of lung and
throat trouble were permanently healed. Epidemics afflicted the city,
and, quoting Doctor Haehnlen, it was declared that "the Angel of Death
had passed over the congregation, taking none." Of course the people
believed that if they went to the Temple to pray for the recovery of
their friends they would surely be favorably answered. Many have,
however, written that if that condition of faith could be secured in the
doctor, nurse, and family, that spirit of hope would be naturally
aroused in the patient and aid greatly in the recovery. But the men who
pray can say with greater confidence that in every case it was, at
least, God working with man. At all events, the general health of the
congregation must be far better than would have been the case with the
same people if they had not gone to church and prayed.
Hundreds of men and women live on in health and vigor who were in that
congregation at middle age thirty-five years ago. Their strength "is not
abated," although some of them were invalids thirty years ago. The
healing force of a cheerful faith is everywhere acknowledged to be a
health-preserving agency of vital importance in the establishment of
public health. It is a vital necessity in thousands of individual cases.
Such a condition is probably often a gift of God--through the influence
of his suggesting and soothing spirit. Jesus healed many without
resorting to miracles and seems to have resorted to the miraculous only
to convince his hearers of his authority in divine matters. In some
cases, as the woman who touched his garment, he claimed nothing for
himself, but told her that her own faith had served her.
Even the most ultra-conservative critic at the Temple who tried hard to
see in these many cases of restoration only the "working out of some
natural law" confessed that if his child was sick he "would not dare to
omit praying" for its recovery. The conclusion of the whole matter is in
the settled conviction in the minds of nearly all the worshipers at the
Temple that God does answer prayer for the sick.