And how do these cases of healing stand inquiring into? The writer was once in the company of a young woman, who is connected with one of these healing cults. She claimed to have been miraculously healed. Yet she looked the picture of frailty, and her poor body excited his pity for it was a mass of deformity. If the Lord had healed her, it surely would have been done perfectly. It is pitiable to see souls thus deceived.
A case has come before the writer's personal knowledge. A young woman went to a healing meeting in Bristol. She went in irons and supported by a stick. She was "healed." Yet a few days later she was seen, the irons on her legs, the stick supporting her, hobbling painfully along, assisted by a friend. Was she healed, or only galvanized into the appearance of it under excitement?
There are doubtless many actual diseases that are the product of the mind and the fancy, and there is a great sphere of usefulness open to the doctor, who recognizing this, is able to cure the disease by auto-suggestion. In other words, the disease the mind creates, the mind can cure. The following extract may explain many of the supposed cures of cancer, and there must be many hysterical conditions likewise that come under the same category.
The late Dr. A. T. Schofield writes:- "On one occasion Sir Andrew Clark informed me that he had known of some fifty cases of pulsating tumor of the abdomen that had been sent in for operation, none of which really existed—being what are known as 'phantom tumors'... the peculiar character of it being that a whiff of chloroform will cause it absolutely to disappear. The secret was that in thin women, the beating of the great artery can easily he felt in the abdomen, and, haunted with the fear of abdominal tumor, the mind so dwelt upon it that eventually the muscles of that side contracted involuntarily to a hard ball, and the 'tumor' was formed " (Behind the Brass Plate, p. 100) He likewise adduces testimony to the healing of the crippled in heathen lands by Satanic power. "My brother [the late Dr. Harold Ainsworth Schofield, M.A., M.D. (Oxon)., B.Sc. (Lon,), F.R.C.S., etc.] who had thrown up a brilliant position in London to become a missionary in China, told me that some temples were full of rejected crutches, splints and bandages, left as thank-offerings by those who had been healed " (Behind the Brass Plate, p. 218). The following testimony of one, who surely from her experience is in a position to know intimately the truth of what she writes, is taken from " The Healing Delusion," published by the Bible Truth Depot, 19 West 21st Street, New York. The writer, May Wyburn Fitch, was a superintendent of the famous McAuley Water St. Mission. The article is reproduced exactly, the bold type being the authoress'. "I have attended fourteen healing campaigns, ranging from two to nine weeks in length, and was a member of the party in nine. I have attended between three hundred and three hundred and fifty meetings, in most of them being on the platform where I could observe all that was taking place. I have dealt with hundreds of sufferers before and after they were anointed and prayed for, and I have assisted the evangelists as they anointed and prayed for the sick. I have seen people in all sorts of conditions-some suffering from cancer, diabetes, Bright's disease, tuberculosis, and in fact almost everything except contagious disease. I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of cripples, some so badly crippled they could not even use crutches, but had to be carried in and out of the meetings and up on the platform to be anointed, and they had to be carried down again.
" In the thousands who crowd the platform to be anointed no one can or dare doubt there are many who are truly ' born again.' I have dealt with hundreds of them personally, and in as far as it is possible for any human being to judge, many were truly children of God, some of them for many years. Many have been sufferers for a long period, or have children who are afflicted. They believe what the evangelist says, and they show in their faces the new hope that has come into their hearts. They comply with all that is required. I have known many who were so conscientious that they refused to complete the filling out of their card until they had sought out, or written to, relatives, friends or acquaintances, as the cases happened to be, even when they were not the aggressors, and they have told me the results or showed me the letters received in reply. In some instances reconciliation was effected, in others it was denied, but at least they had done their part. This in itself is a splendid thing, but what I want to point out is this, after having met all these conditions, and done all they could do, they are anointed and prayed for, and they return from the platform in just the same condition as when they mounted it. I might add here that all candidates for healing are compelled to go on the platform, in full view of the audience to be anointed, and if unable to walk they are carried up.
" I do not say that no one has ever been healed in the hundreds of services I have attended. I can and do say most emphatically that I have never seen any evidence of healing. If there were healings they were of an internal character and not visible to the eye. Of the hundreds, yes, I believe I could safely say thousands, of deaf, dumb, blind and cripples I have seen anointed, I have never seen one healed or even definitely improved. There have been a few, a very few, who have said they could hear ' a little better ' or see ' a little better,' but at the end of the campaign they were not improved. Is this the way God heals?
"Am I insinuating that God cannot heal these afflicted ones? No! ABSOLUTELY NO! I know God can and does heal, when it is His will to do so. I am a living witness to the fact. When I was lying at death's door twenty-five years ago, suffering from septicemia, following child-birth, with, according to four doctors, one chance in a thousand,' unconscious and unable to pray for my own recovery, in answer to the prayers of one who loved me better than life I was raised up. I know God answers prayers, and I know He heals in answer to prayer. I object to no preacher or evangelist praying for the sick and afflicted, but I am objecting to the harmful way in which it is being taught and done."
It were well if Principal Jeffreys were to put his healing campaigns to a reliable test. Let him ask half-a-dozen irreproachable Christian men, and half-a-dozen reliable doctors of repute to follow up the hundreds of cases of healing that he claims in some mission of a year ago, and let him and all of us abide by the result. If this work is the mighty testimony to the power of God, surely such a test should not be shrunk from. If it is not forthcoming, we may well draw our own conclusions.
But it is clear from our inquiry that the methods practiced by the present-day healers and the methods of the Bible are very different. It is clear, too, that there is a great deal of auto-suggestion and personal influence in the matter, and that such cures can be equally claimed by Spiritists and Christian Scientists, and, as we have seen, even in heathen circles, where undoubtedly the influence is Satanic.