THE CHURCH AND MENTAL HEALING
By Ellis Roberts
The object of this paper is to show and comment on the present attitude of the Church of England, and of the Churches in communion with her, towards psychic healing: but it may be advisable to remove at the outset one or two misconceptions. With the theory and practice of the Church in this country before the Reformation I am not now concerned. It did not differ essentially from that of the Churches on the Continent. But it should be noticed that a large number of centres for psychic healing, spiritual hospitals, if one may use the term, were removed by the destruction of shrines. In the medieval Church the healer, with his specific charisma, was generally one who was reputed a saint; and usually he healed more people after his death than before. The curious in this matter may consult theevidence gathered in Dr. Abbott’s ‘St. Thomas of Canterbury,’ and I think an unprejudiced reader will gather from that book conclusions somewhat different from those expected by the author.
After the Reformation what signs are there of psychic healing encouraged and sanctioned by the Church? We are compelled to answer that, in spite of great need, there is very little evidence of an intelligent effort at mental therapeutics. ‘In spite of great need,’ I say; for this country and Scotland were affected most terribly by the disgraceful witch mania which raged over Europe, especially in the Protestant countries. There was ample material for the quiet, consoling influence of psychic healing; but alas! the unfortunate ‘witches’ were left to the mercy of scared judges and malicious finders, to the horrors of the trial by floating, or the ordeal of the secret mark. The Church was, apparently, bigoted and powerless.
Yet the existence of an official power, inherent in the Body and acting normally through the Ministers of the Church, was recognised officially in the Canons of 1603–4, which, of course, are still of authority. In the 72nd Canon we read:
‘No Minister or Ministers shall, withoutthe Licence and direction of the Bishop of the diocese first obtained and had under his hand and seal, appoint or keep any solemn Fasts. . . . Neither shall any Minister . . . presume to appoint or hold any meetings for sermons . . . nor, without such licence, to attempt upon any pretence whatsoever either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any Devil or Devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cosenage, and deposition from the ministry.’
It is evident from this that, however little it was used, the Episcopate was regarded as possessing the power to licence exorcisers who might deal with diseases that we should call mental.
There is one other piece of evidence—practical this time—that the healing power of the Church was not entirely forgotten or neglected. Up to the time of the Hanoverian dynasty, the Kings of England touched for scrofula, popularly known, from this method of cure, as ‘The King’s evil.’ The most celebrated patient I can call to mind is Dr. Johnson. It may be objected that this practice was not the work of the Church’s ministry; but it must be remembered that most Canonists regard the King of England asmixta persona(that is, semi-clerical) byvirtue of his Coronation; and also the position given the Sovereign as ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church would appear to invest him with an ecclesiastical status.99
I admit, however, as must all candid persons, that on the whole the Church has grossly neglected all forms of psychic healing; and so welcome the more gladly the definite stand taken in the Lambeth Report, 1908.
That Report is the unanimous act, not merely of the Church of England, but of those numerous bodies in communion with her: on the committee which drew up the report were bishops from America, India, Scotland, Central Africa, New Zealand, and England—a fact that can vouch for the significance of the Report’s admissions and contentions. This Report I shall take as the basis of my inquiry into the official attitude of the Church of to-day towards Medicine and Psychic Healing.
The Report opens with a statement that is refreshing in its admission of ignorance after the ready words of many sciolists and ‘quack’ healers.
‘Your Committee, which has had underconsideration “Ministries of Healing,” has felt itself at a disadvantage in discussing phenomena which only in recent times have been the subject of scientific investigation. In the present stage of knowledge it would be premature for any except experts to hazard an opinion upon such topics as the powers of “Mental Suggestion,” and the range of “Subliminal Consciousness,” or to attempt to forecast the possibilities of “Mental” or “Spiritual Healing.” ’
While, however, displaying this diffidence in dealing with the scientific side of their subject, the Committee is quite definite about the spiritual aspect of pain, sickness, and suffering.
‘The Committee believes that Christ still fulfils in Christian experience His power to give life, and to give it more abundantly; and that the faith, which realises His Presence, is capable of creating a heightened vitality of spirit, which strengthens and sustains the health of the body. The Committee believes that sickness and disease are in one aspect a breach in the harmony of the Divine purpose, not only analogous to, but sometimes at least caused by, want of moral harmony with the Divine Will; and that this restoration of harmony in mind and will often brings with it the restoration of the harmony of the body.It believes that sickness has too often exclusively been regarded as a cross to be borne with passive resignation, whereas it should have been regarded rather as a weakness to be overcome by the power of the Spirit.’
Then the Committee considers briefly the ‘Mental Healing’ movement outside the Church, and concludes the first part of their Report with a very necessary warning ‘against the peril of being thoughtlessly drawn into alliance, in the desire for health, with any who, under whatever attractive name, are in antagonism with the Christian faith upon any such subject as the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the reality of Sin, and the use of the Holy Sacraments.’
In the second part it discusses ‘Spiritual Healing’ in the Church, and makes the following statement:
‘The Committee would not wish to say a word in disparagement or discouragement of those who may be pioneers in a new branch of service, but it believes it would for the present be unwise to depart from an attitude of watchfulness and reserve; and it is not therefore prepared to recommend that at the present stage any authoritative recognition should be given to those who claim to exercise these “Gifts of Healing.” ’
In the third part is a most welcome recognition of the position in the Church of that profession which the Evangelist of the Nativity followed.
‘The Committee believes that medical science is the handmaid of God and His Church, and should be fully recognised as the ordinary means appointed by Almighty God for the care and healing of the human body. The Committee believes that discoveries in the region of medicine and surgery come to man through Him who is the Light and the Life, the Divine Word.’
Then we have a brief recommendation that there should be an ‘addition to the office for the Visitation of the Sick of more hopeful and less ambiguous petitions for the restoration of health, always subject to the Will of God . . . ; and that these petitions be used in close connection with prayer for pardon and peace.’ And these prayers ‘may be fitly accompanied by the Apostolic act of the Laying on of Hands.’
In the final paragraph the Committee considers the suggestion ‘that these prayers should be accompanied by the anointing of the sufferer with oil,’ and after a brief historicalrésumé, concludes:
‘In view of this evidence and the conditionsprevailing in the Church at the present time, the Committee is not prepared to recommend the restoration of the unction of the sick, but it does not wish to go so far as to advise the prohibition of its use, if it be earnestly desired by the sick person. In all such cases the parish priest should seek the counsel of the Bishop of the diocese. Care must be taken that no return be made to the later custom of anointing as a preparation for death.’
With unction I do not propose to deal here. The question is really theological; and the discussion as to its revival does not come within the scope of this book. It may be said, however, that the problem will probably solve itself in the near future, as in many missionary and colonial dioceses, and in not a few English ones, the oil is blessed by the Bishop, and may always be had by any parish priest whose sick people desire this ancient rite.
With one exception, to which I shall return later, the Report may be commended as a courageous, if rather jejune, effort to keep abreast of modern psychology and its more practical manifestations. Let me indicate briefly the encouraging signs in the Report.
(1) We have the definite confession that ourpresent visitation service is not all that can be desired. That we should use more definite prayers for the recovery of the sick.
(2) The Report lays emphasis on the important truth that there must be no banishing of the doctor. Enormous harm has been done by the crude dualism of ‘Christian Science’—a theory which, if logically applied, would prevent persons renewing the tissues of their body by food, or removing dirt by soap and water. A doctor’s medicine is just as much a prayer, a spiritual thing, when it is properly used, as any formula of consolation inculcated by folk in ‘tune with the infinite,’ or people who indulge in ‘higher thought.’
(3) The Report guards—though perhaps not quite strongly enough—against the modern tendency to lay too much stress on mere bodily health. As Christians and men of sense, we can have nothing to do with a mode of thought that, by exaggerating the value of physical well-being, would cheerfully have condemned to some lethal chamber an Erasmus, a Coleridge, a Stevenson, or a Beardsley.
Now in these three matters the Report does seem to represent the real central body of opinion in the Church of England. No living man, perhaps, better expresses the view of the ‘man in the pew’ than the Bishopof London, and he has been one of the first to recognise the reality of the need for a greater recognition of the place of psychic healing. Here is what Dr. Ingram said in his sermon on St. Luke’s Day, 1909:
‘We have on the one side those who really seem to have forgotten the message of the Gospel of the body, who practically in their teaching and even in their own belief simply think of the Gospel as addressed to the soul. They seem to have forgotten that, in our own Holy Communion Service, we pray that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His Body, and some of St. Paul’s most stirring passages are about the body. “Glorify God in your body.” But in their teaching and in their belief they have lost to a certain extent the idea that the Gospel has a message to the body at all. While on the other hand—and it is so very characteristic of the history of the Church that this should happen—outside the Church, with great exaggeration—and with, in my opinion, much false teaching—people are calling the attention of the Church to a forgotten truth. Yes—but with two very grave mistakes. First, they ignore the learning and teaching which God has given us through medical study and investigation about His laws and about His will, and stillmore they ignore those blessed means of grace which Christ Himself has laid down as the means of our communion with His life.’
Or again, in a diocesan letter of May last year the Bishop of Winchester (who was Chairman of the Lambeth Committee) emphasises the right of medical science, of healing, and of nursing, to their due place in the Church’s spiritual life, to a part in her prayers and thanksgivings.
‘At the recent Lambeth Conference the view was expressed that we as a Church have failed to show sufficient sympathy with the great works of healing, of conflict with disease, and of the alleviation of suffering carried on by the medical and nursing profession. The Divine blessing vouchsafed in modern times, through the progress of knowledge and the advancement of skill, have only in too small a degree been allowed to enter into the prayers and thanksgivings of the Christian Church. It is right that, with greater faith and a larger intelligence, the Church of Christ should acknowledge that the gifts of healing and the discoveries of science come from the Spirit of God, and should seek more systematically to include this and kindred subjects in intercession and praise.’
Not only, however, do we find the Bishops laying stress on the Church’s duty in the matter of healing; but we also find eminent physicians, who are also Churchmen, welcoming the priest in the sick room. In a remarkable article contributed to theGuardian, Sir Dyce Duckworth wrote:
‘Next, I will express my opinion that our twentieth-century Christendom is generally lax and feeble in offering earnest prayers for the sick in all stages and for a blessing on the remedial means employed. We should look to a higher Power than that of man to aid us at the bedside, and as thoughtful physicians we do seek these means to aid us.
‘Mental healing has a recognised and long-acknowledged basis of truth and fact, and may be employed by honourable and skilled doctors who have the gift and power to use it. I do not regard it as a fitting duty for the “priests of the soul,” but one to be employed in its appropriate place, as it becomes better understood in the course of time as a part of legitimate ordinary treatment. I see no objection to the practice of unction and laying-on of hands by Christian ministers for those who desire it, but I regard this as an additional means of help, a solemn form of assurance and comfort, together with prayerful ministration, in conjunction with,and as a reinforcement of, the best skill of legitimate medicine. To replace the latter by the former I regard as a withholding of God’s gifts to man and therefore unjustifiable. I conceive and believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are capable of development in the course of the ages and under our present dispensation, and that they were not limited in form and exclusiveness to the age in which they were first somewhat crudely manifested.’
We may welcome particularly Sir Dyce Duckworth’s emphatic pronouncement about prayer. After all the basis of psychic healing is, and always has been, prayer—whether the means used is oil, or water, or the relics or even the shadow of holy men, as reported in the Acts of the Apostles. The motive power that makes any of these means availing is simply prayer. Prayer, whether spoken, desired, or acted, is the vital force that gives the psychic movement all its validity. In insisting on the importance and reality of prayer we have the support of such a psychologist as Professor James, who writes: ‘As regards prayers for the sick, if any medical fact can be considered to stand firm, it is that in certain environments prayer may contribute to recovery and should be encouraged as a therapeutic measure.’
And if the doctor is willing to recognise the great value of prayer, the divine should not be backward in welcoming the doctor; nor should he regard the medical man and the philosopher with suspicion if they lay stress chiefly on the ‘reflex’ value of prayer; regard its subjective effects, rather than investigate its real or objective power.
Once more let me quote the Bishop of London:
‘If I was ill, I would send for the best doctor, and get my parish priest to come and pray by my side, believing that the double work of Jesus Christ is shared by two great professions. It would be bad for either to be banished from the sick room.’100
That is the position on which we should lay stress. The future, I am sure, lies with those who are willing to accept the religion of the Incarnation and all that it signifies; the men who proclaim joyfully and unwaveringly that Spirit has dwelt in flesh, but who also never hesitate to assert that it is real Flesh in which the Spirit dwelt. We must have no quarter with the damnable heresy that denies to sin and suffering and disease a reality that it concedes to food and to fees: and we can have no truce with the hard materialism that will acknowledge the truth of nothing that isnot revealed to the scalpel or the test-tube. We may be thankful to-day that so many of our leading physicians are becoming more and more willing to admit the reality of prayer and the rights of the priest; we must take care that no headstrong divines, in their new zeal for psychic healing, disparage or despise the profession of St. Luke.
THE EUCHARIST AND BODILY WELL-BEINGBYARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.VICAR OF ALL HALLOWS BARKING, EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON, AND RURAL DEAN OF THE EAST CITY OF LONDON
THE EUCHARIST AND BODILY WELL-BEING
BYARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.VICAR OF ALL HALLOWS BARKING, EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON, AND RURAL DEAN OF THE EAST CITY OF LONDON