Medicine and the Church / Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick

by Unknown

Of something done, I know not where.[43]

It is through that under-self that mental cures appear to operate.[44]

The theory certainly contributes something to our problem, making it conceivable, even to our finite intelligence, how the Divine Life of Christ should enter into man, sick of body and sad of soul, and this quite in the line of the order and natural law of God’s universe. Christ is one with the Father; He came down from Heaven to do the will of the Father; His works are done in the Father’s name (John x. 25). The Father hath given the Son to have life in Himself (John v. 26). The Divine Life is communicated to those who seek it in Christ. We are not to restrict the thought of that Life to the immaterial part of our nature; it is the more abundant life which floods the being of him who ‘liveth unto God.’[45] We may not fathom its hidden processes: like spiritual teaching, spiritual healing can come home only to the ‘spiritual men’ whose minds are ‘in tune with the Infinite.’[46] But some desire for ‘more life and fuller’ is found in every man. Classical scholars will remember the pathetic lines written by the statesman Mæcenas in his last illness:

Debilem facito manu,

Debilem pede, coxa . . .

Vita dum superest, bene est.[47]

In this universal fact of human nature, this desire to live, which varies infinitely among men from the mere craving of animal existence up to the desire for the life in God, we see man’s response to the Giver of Life.

The appeal of the Good Physician is to human nature, and ‘He knows what is in man.’ He takes a natural emotion or faculty, vitalises and invigorates it. We have had to keep the connexion of spiritual health and physical health constantly before us. There is a parallelism between them which is no mere analogy, but is a sort of pre-established harmony; and therefore a wise interpretation of Scripture has seen in the Miracle an ‘acted parable.’ Thus it is in regard to the ‘desire to live’ which supports our bodily vitality. This categorical imperative or instinctive ‘ought’ of health is a primary instinct. The ‘will to be well’ corresponds with the ‘will to be good’ which is the basis of the moral life.

(2) Bearing these principles in mind, we must turn to a closer examination of some of the miracles, with a view to some practical conclusions in regard to the healing office of the Church of our own day.

(i) Has the age of miracles long ceased? It has long been assumed by religious minds, as a kind of axiomatic truth, that this is so. They have seen in the healing miracles of Christ the unique exercise of a power specifically Divine, a power which was continued for a time, with other extraordinary gifts, to the early Church for reasons which no longer held good when once she had taken firm root in the world. But we have already shown reasons for the opinion that, unique as is our Lord’s Humanity, we are to regard it as conditioned by those laws of nature and material existence which are the expression in the visible sphere of the Creative will. ‘It behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren.’[48] And there is strong reason to hold that the true believer will be permitted, in virtue of his fellowship with Christ, to do ‘greater works’ than those which Christ Himself wrought,[49] greater, that is to say, not in a material but a spiritual way. That the works in question were wrought ‘in the spirit’ is unquestioned. Consider what those ‘spiritual’ methods of the Great Healer were. He wrought His mighty works in the Father’s name. Not only does He lay down for others the principle of intercessory prayer, but as Man He exercises it Himself. Of the demoniac boy He says: ‘This kind goeth forth not but by prayer and fasting.’ St. Luke records the fact that He made the importunity of the multitude, who sought His teaching and healing grace, a fresh occasion for retirement and prayer.[50] The same Gospel tells us of a night spent in prayer before the election of the Twelve Apostles.[51] They received His commission to heal and to teach on the succeeding day, which saw also the vast concourse of people resorting to Him once more from all quarters. In the account of the raising of Lazarus it is clearly laid down that Jesus Christ knew the Father’s will in virtue of fellowship with Him in prayer and meditation, and that He exercised His own life-giving powers in accordance with that Will.