‘In view of this evidence and the conditions prevailing 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 our present 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 Bishop of 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: