Abstract
AT the Methodist Conference held at Newcastle in July, the report of a Committee on Spiritual Healing was read by the Rev. Leslie D. Weatherhead (Methodist Recorder, July 23). He declared it to be an interim report only, and expressed the hope that the Committee would be reappointed. The report is cautious in tone, recognizing that the subject is full of difficulties. The trouble from the scientific point of view is that what appear to be like causes do not necessarily produce like effects. “We pray for one man and he gets better; we pray for another and he does not and we don't know why in either case.” Of course, in healing, the individual factor is the important one, and this makes scientific generalizations almost impossible. The only thing to do, presumably, is to record a large number of cases as accurately as possible, and to extract from them whatever may seem to establish some sort of a regular law of behaviour. Or, as the report puts it: “the work which lies before students of this subject must include research into those conditions under which those energies which sweep through personality may be set free to do their work.” The report wisely says: “We felt all along that a method is not less a manifestation of the Divine because it is understood.” As for “orthodox” medical science, “We believe no method [of spiritual healing] is to be welcomed which brushes aside as irrelevant the amazing findings of modern medicine and surgery.” It is indeed all to the good that religious bodies such as the Methodist Church should interest themselves in the systematic study of the psychological causes of physical health and sickness, and the report of this Committee is for that reason important.
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Spiritual Healing. Nature 138, 277 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138277b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138277b0