Article October 28, 1911 Issue

That the church of today lacks power to heal disease...

Oregonian,

That the church of today lacks power to heal disease because it does not pray enough, was the statement made by Dr. W. B. Riley, pastor of the First Baptist church of Minneapolis, in his sermon at the White Temple. Dr. Riley took as his texts yesterday the accounts of Christ's healing of a man having the dropsy, of Peter's healing of the lame man at the temple, and of the apostle Paul's call to Macedonia.

"In one respect, at least, the Pharisee of old was in perfect line with the modern skeptic," said Dr. Riley. "He doubted the reality of the supernatural and proposed to subject the proposed miracle to the scientific test of observation and experiment. The Christ who failed not in the Pharisee's house will not fail before the assaults of twentieth-century skepticism. The miraculous power of Jesus is as definitely established from an historical standpoint as is his name and character.

"That Christ expected the exercise by his followers of healing power, is clearly proved in the reproach he administered to his disciples on one occasion of its failure. After all our wriggling endeavors to escape the Bible doctrine of divine healing, the fact remains, and the church is becoming increasingly conscious of it, that our powerless spirit is our prayerless spirit, for 'the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.' It is time we began to confess our 'faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.' Every invalid member of this church is a challenge to prayer and a call to the exercise of faith in the importunate pleading of the promises of God. Great as is the need of prevailing prayer to bring again the gift of healing to the church of God, it is not greater than, perhaps not so great as, the need of a reviving of Scriptural instruction."

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