Medicine and the Church: Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick
Religion
Medicine and the Church: Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick
Medicine -- Religious aspects; Pastoral medicine
‘It must be granted then, in respect of faith healing, that spiritual
influences, divine directly, or indirectly through human mediation,
may to some unknown power radiate from these highest currents downward
through the more and more “material” planes, arousing them less and
less as they have become more and more statical in order.
‘Once more; it is said that in his “subliminal self” man possesses a
substance peculiarly divine, or a substance or means through which
we may reach divine communion, or through which especially divine
purposes may be fulfilled in us. It is true that we do not know even
approximately the content of the individual man, the materials racially
and personally acquired, the products of past experience, racial and
personal, built sensibly and insensibly into his personality. May we
not each of us be compared with a ship which began its voyage with no
inconsiderable rudimentary equipment, then, calling at many a port, has
gathered many kinds of stores and treasure? Of some of these stores, of
some variety of them, the supercargo has a recollection, especially of
those in frequent use; but, for the most part, the bills of lading had
been lost. Unlike a cargo, however, these contents are not a passive
burden, but a system of coefficients; some on planes which we commonly
call material, some on spiritual planes, some working on the surface,
some working stealthily within; so that much tact and insight are
necessary to unveil and to re-animate those agencies in whose abeyance
disorder or ineffectualness may happen to consist. And the influences
which are to effect these revivals must be akin in nature to these
kinds respectively; some must be solidly material--such as splints
or drugs--some must be religious, moral, and even intellectual, yet
inspired by emotion, by appeal to hope and joy; and their instruments
must be devotion, sympathy, gladness, reasonable persuasion, and even
surprise.’
RELIGION AND MEDICINE IN THE HOSPITAL
No one who has been connected with one of our big general hospitals
can doubt for a moment the advisability of the collaboration of the
physician and the clergyman, each helping the patient from his own
standpoint. It must not be imagined that I advocate any usurping of
the duties of one by the other, but in the cure of certain types of
disease, and certainly in the cure of diseases that are primarily
diseases of mind or character, the doctor should welcome the minister
of religion as a valuable ally. In fact none can doubt that the
minister of religion can bring a power to bear on the mind of a
patient, which the doctor cannot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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