(8) Opinion on so-called ‘special powers’ should be suspended until alleged instances of their existence have been thoroughly investigated by competent trained experts.
THE PATIENT
BY
STEPHEN PAGET, F.R.C.S.
THE PATIENT
By Stephen Paget, F.R.C.S.
The Bishop of Birmingham wrote to me, last year, the following letter. He gave me leave to publish it in the second edition of a book of mine about Christian Science: and he gives me leave to publish it again here:
‘. . . I should wish to make a little more of your admissions as to Mental Therapeutics. Thus—If, as you admit, there are so many functional disorders; and they are curable by mental influences; and religion is a great mental influence; and this influence (“Quietism”) is much needed in such and other cases—I should demand of the Church that it should recognise, far more explicitly, this field of legitimate curative power, and control it, and claim it by showing the power to use it. The neglect of this sphere of influence by the Church plays into the hands of Christian Science. (All this could be associated with the revival of unction.)
‘Also, I think the medical profession likes—in public—to ignore all this, and thus in its turn plays into the hands of pseudo-theology. My criticism is that I want your “admissions” made the basis of a more positive claim both on the Church and on the medical profession.
‘My own experience in the case of well-to-do people when sick or dying is that the medical profession is very much inclined to exclude religion in any form from sick beds till it cannot be of any use. I do most seriously want to reform (1) the Church, (2) the medical profession, in the light of what you admit.’
This wise letter says all, to my thinking, that need be said as to the duty of the doctor towards the cleric, and the duty of the cleric towards the doctor. It says not a word about the signs and wonders alleged by the Society of Emmanuel in London: and I hope that Dr. Gore, by his silence, condemns them, as not worthy of credence. I hope, also, and am sure, that in a few years we shall hear less about that Society. Meanwhile, I should like to say something about one aspect of this matter of ‘spiritual healing,’ which has not received so much attention as it deserves. We have heard all about the cleric, all about the doctor: and we are in danger, I think, of forgetting the patient. We have been tempted to believe that the patient, somehow, belongs to the cleric and the doctor. That we may clear our minds of this mistake, let us put ourselves in the patient’s place. Most of us, I suppose, know that place: I have been there half a dozen times. It is the centre of a great planetary system of kind people. Home love, and the affection of my friends, and the pleasant goodwill of the servants, and the wisdom and the gentleness of doctors and of nurses, and all prayers for my recovery, wheeled round me, each in its appointed course. There I lay, and was watched, like a big baby: and these activities of the spiritual life encircled me, day and night, till I got better. The point is, that it all came naturally to everybody. It was the habit of the home, it was our usual way of doing things. My friends did not suddenly begin to care for me: the doctors and the nurses did not suddenly begin to be gentle: the maids were not stung by the splendour of a sudden thought for my comfort: the use of prayer on my behalf was nothing new. Everybody was kind to me, because everybody in the house always is kind to me. They made me comfortable, and one prayed for me, because they are always making me comfortable, and one daily prays for me. All of us, except myself, were doing what we always do: and I was being what I always am.