Father Waite silently regarded the minister for some moments. Then he went on gently:
“It seems incredible that the plain teachings of Jesus could have been so warped and twisted as they have been by orthodox theology. Christianity is so simple! Why should even the preachers themselves condemn the one who seeks to obey Christ? Mr. Moore, the real man is God’s highest idea of Himself. The human mind makes mental concepts of God’s man. And Jesus was the grandest concept of God’s idea of Himself that the human mind has ever constructed by means of its interpretations. He was the image of truth. One of his grandest characteristics was his implicit obedience to his vision of the Father. And he demanded just as implicit obedience from us. But he bade us, again and again, heal the sick and raise the dead!”
“We heal the sick! We have our physicians!”
“Yes? And Asa had his physicians to whom he turned––with the result that he ‘slept with his fathers.’ There is no more ironical statement in the whole Bible than that. We turn to our physicians because we have no faith in God. Materia medica physicians do not heal the sick. They sometimes succeed in causing the human mind temporarily to substitute a 144 belief of health for a belief of disease that is all. But Jesus and the early Christians healed by true prayer––the prayer of affirmation, the prayer that denied reality to evil, and affirmed the omnipotence of God. And that was done through an understanding of God as immutable law, or principle.”
“Would you pray to a principle?” demanded Reverend Moore, with a note of contempt in his voice. “I prefer my own concept of God, as one who hears our petitions, and pities us, and not as a lifeless principle!”
“God is principle, Mr. Moore,” replied Father Waite, “in that He is ‘that by which all is.’ And in order to be such He must be, as the Bible says, ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.’ He must be immovable, regardless of human pleading and petition. And so true prayer, the prayer that draws an answer, is not an objective appeal to Him, but is an intelligent application of the Christ-principle to all our problems and needs. Such prayer will remove mountains in proportion to the understanding and motive back of it. And such prayer does not seek to inform the Almighty of the state of affairs here among men, informing Him that evil is real and rampant, and begging that He will stoop down and remove it. It is the prayer that manifests man’s oneness with the infinite mind as its image, reflecting a knowledge of the allness of good and the consequent unreality and powerlessness of evil, the lie about it. It was healing by such prayer, Mr. Moore, that the Episcopal Synod rejected only recently. Instead of doing the healing themselves by means of the principle given them, they still plead with God, the immovable and immutable, to do it for them, provided the very uncertain science of materia medica fails.
“The true method of prayer was employed by the early Christians, until the splendid vision of the Christ became obscured and finally lost to the Church by its bargaining with Constantine for a mess of pottage, namely, temporal power. Then began to rise that great worldly institution, the so-called Holy Church. In the first half of the sixth century Justinian closed the schools of philosophy at Athens. For a while Judaizing Christianity continued its conflict with Gnosticism. And then both merged themselves into the Catholic form of faith, which issued forth from Rome, with Christian tradition grafted upon paganism. Theology and ritualism divided the gospel of healing the sick and saving the sinner into two radically different systems, neither of which is Christian, and neither of which can either heal or save. Since then, lip-service and ceremonial have taken the place of healing the sick and raising the dead. The world again slipped back steadily from 145 the spiritual to the material, and to-day ethics constitutes our religion, and stupid drugs hold sway where once sat enthroned the healing Christ-principle.”
“I would remind you, Mr. Waite, that I have Catholic leanings myself,” said Doctor Siler. “I don’t like to hear either my religion or my profession abused.”
“My criticism, Doctor,” replied Father Waite, “is but an exposure of the entrenched beliefs and modes of the human mind.”
“But, sir, the Church is a great social force, and a present necessity.”