Article December 7, 1912 Issue

A recent issue of your paper contains a further statement...

Frederick Dixon

South London (Eng.) Press

A recent issue of your paper contains a further statement by the Rev.—on the subject of faith-healing. I should not trouble you with any remarks on the subject were it not that one section of the discourse is headed "A Reply to Mr. Dixon." In these circumstances I am sure you will allow me to say something on the subject.

The critic said, quite truly, that I declared it was not possible to limit the power of God. I repeat that again most emphatically. To me it seems a hopeless position to take up, to say that spiritual healing can overcome a nervous or a functional disease, but cannot overcome an organic one. If there is any truth whatever in what is known as scientific idealism, all disease, whether nervous, functional, or organic, is merely a mental phenomenon or result of energy. If, therefore, these phenomena or effects can in one instance be overcome by the understanding of spiritual law, as Christian Science maintains, they can all be overcome in the same way. Even if you were to assume the most materialistic position you could arrive at, and declare that material phenomena were absolutely independent of mind, it would not in the least affect the fact that if the power of God is able to overcome one phase of disease, it must be able to overcome all.

A well-known clergyman, of the Emmanuel movement to which this critic has so oftem alluded, has, I know, attempted to lay down the principle that there were two kinds of leprosy in the East, one infectious and the other not infectious, and that the lepers whom Jesus touched were suffering from the non-infectious kind. To me it is frankly ludicrous to suggest that the man who raised the dead and walked upon the water would only dare to touch a case of uninfectious leprosy, and I can only repeat, as I wrote at the time, that unless critics of Christian Science are prepared to prove that there were two kinds of water in Palestine, in one of which you sank and on the other of which you could walk without sinking, he might as well cease to bother his head over leprous distinctions.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

A recent issue of your paper contains a further statement...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access