Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing

by George Barton Cutten

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

"The Alchemist may doubt the shining gold His crucible pours out, But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, Hugs it to the last."

"Death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality."—Browne.

"I'll tell you what now of the Devil:
He's no such horrid creature; cloven-footed,
Black, saucer-ey'd, his nostrils breathing fire,
As these lying Christians make him."—Massinger.

"If the cure be wrought, what matters it to the happy invalid ... whether the cure is wrought by the touch of the Divine hand or the overpowering influence of a great idea upon the nervous system? If our hunger be appeased, it matters little whether it is by manna rained down from heaven, or a wheaten loaf raised from the harvest field. Miraculous water from the rock does not quench the thirst better than that which bubbles from the village spring."—Berdoe.

The advent of the Christian religion into the world, while purporting to minister especially to the spiritual life, had a wide-reaching and potent influence on the art of healing the body. We cannot sum up the effect by saying that this influence was either wholly good or bad—its relation to therapeutics was a mixed one. It can be truthfully said that nothing has retarded the science of medicine during the past two thousand years so much as the iron grip of decadent orthodoxy, and, on the other hand, no power has caused men and women so to sacrifice time, money, and even life itself for the care and nurture of the sick, as the example and precepts of Jesus Christ.

For eighteen centuries this paradoxical position was held by the church, and the antithetical attitudes of hindrance and help continued to exist. As valuable as was the spirit instilled into the hearts of His followers by the tenderness of the Master, it was never sufficient to counterbalance the deterrent effects of the religion which they espoused. The retardation was caused by two related beliefs which permeated the church: The first was the doctrine of the power of demons in the lives of men, especially in the production of disease; and the second was the prevalence of the idea of the possibility and probability of the performance of miracles, particularly in the healing of diseases.

A rather complicated science of demonology had come down from primitive sources through Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek civilization, although the demons of the Greeks were principally good spirits. At the time of Christ, however, the Jews were the most ardent advocates of demonology, and hence the chief exorcists. They expelled demons partly by adjuration and partly by means of a certain miraculous root named Baaras. They considered it nothing at all out of the ordinary to meet men who were possessed by demons, and just as common an experience to see them healed by having the demon exorcised. Josephus assures us that in the reign of Vespasian he had himself seen a Jew named Eleazar perform an exorcism; by means of adjuration and the Baaras root he drew a demon through the nostrils of a possessed person, who fell to the ground on the accomplishment of the miracle, while on the command of the magician the demon, to prove that it had really left its victim, threw down a cup of water which had been placed at a distance.

Knowing as we do the close relationship between Judaism and Christianity, it does not surprise us to discover that the Christians inherited the doctrine and practice of the Jews in this matter. This is more readily understood when we remember the connection of Jesus with cases of demoniacal possession, and Paul's frequent references to the spirits of the air. Following the example of their Master, Christians everywhere became exorcists. Through the influence of Philo's writings, Jewish demonology was propagated among Christian converts, and the Gnostics quickly absorbed and spread the notion of preternatural interposition. Next to the belief in the second coming of Christ, the doctrine which most influenced the action of the early church was that of a spiritual world and its hierarchy. Terrestrial things were ruled by all sorts of spiritual beings.

Some philosophers, as well as the founders of different religions, expelled demons, and the Christians fully recognized the power possessed by the Jewish and gentile exorcists; the followers of Christ, however, claimed to be in many respects the superior of all others. The fathers maintained the reality of all pagan miracles as fully as their own, except that doubt was sometimes cast on some forms of healing and prophecy. Demons which had resisted all the enchantments of the pagans might be cast out, oracles could be silenced, and unclean spirits compelled to acknowledge the truth of the Christian faith by the Christians, who simply made the sign of the cross, or repeated the name of the Master.