In view, however, of the hopes raised amongst many good Christians that the Church may take part once more in healing the sick, everyone would wish to avoid offending the susceptibilities of enthusiastic and religious people. Still it is by members of the Church that the question of Spiritual Healing has been brought forward, so that it should be for the Church to define her meaning and wishes. In the nature of things it seems impossible to define ‘Spirit’; and, perhaps, it would be wiser not to attempt the impossible, nor to endeavour to yoke spiritual forces to purely material conditions such as bodily diseases. But if certain cases are produced as cures by spiritual means, and if the co-operation of the medical profession is desired in investigating such cures, the Church must be prepared to accept scientific methods of inquiry, methods which do not permit of assumptions except as tentative explanations, to be given up when they fail to explain phenomena, or when they are replaced by simpler explanations. If it should appear that the results of Spiritual Healing are attributable to ordinary activities of the human mind, and that no difference exists between cures by this means and those resulting from ordinary mental influences of the nature of ‘suggestion,’ then the Church must be prepared to abandon all miraculous explanations in these cases. From the medical point of view the main thing to be insisted upon is that all alleged cures must be submitted to the ordinary examination by observation, experiment, and induction. At the present time the whole question of Spiritual Healing is in so nebulous a condition that it is not easy to obtain suitable cases for investigation. Much has been said and written on the matter; comparisons have been made with the cures said to be effected at Lourdes; even the Venerable Bede has been quoted as an authority on medicine. But when a request is presented for the production of actual cases for investigation by trained medical men, it is found that the sources of supply are few and very limited. An examination of some of these cases appears to reveal the fact that so far no actual cure of any definite gross organic disease can be recorded. It must be remembered that to avoid any loophole for error the requirements of a really scientific investigation are somewhat severe. In the first place the diagnosis of the disease must be absolutely certain. This frequently necessitates microscopical or bacteriological examination. A medical man is not always infallible in his opinion of cases; and it may happen that a condition that has been thought to be cancer turns out to be merely a comparatively harmless inflammatory thickening. Such a condition might have recovered by natural processes without any treatment; to attribute such recovery to any particular treatment that the patient might be undergoing at the time would be rash; to use such a case as an advertisement for that treatment would be dishonest.