Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1885 — Faith-Healing a Fact. [ARTICLE]

Faith-Healing a Fact.

There can be no question that faithhealing is a fact. The brain is not simply the organ of the mind; it is also the chief center, or series of centers, of the nervous system by which the whole body is energized, and its component parts, with their several functions, are governed and regulated. There is no miracle in healing by faith; whereas, it would be a miracle if, the organism being constituted as it is, and the laws of life such as they are, faithhealing under favorable conditions did not occur. The fallacy of those who proclaim faith-healing as a religious function lies in the fact that they misunderstand and misinterpret their own formula.

It is the faith that heals, not the hypothecated source, or object, of faith outside the subject of faith. The whole process is self-contained. Nothing is done for the believer; his act of believing is the motor force of his cure. We all remember the old trick of making a man ill by persistently telling him he is ill until'he believes it. The contrary of this is making a man well by inducing him to believe himself to be so. The number of the “miracles” performed will be the precise number sos persons who are capable of being thrown into a state of mind and body in which “faith” dominates the organic states. Pathologists will limit the area of this process to the province of functional disease; but we are not sure that they are justified by scientific facts in making this limitation. It must not be forgotten that function goes before organism in development, and that there are large classes of cases in which the disabilities of a’ diseased organ for a fair performance of its functions are mainly due to a want of power or irregularity in action. And it is a fact in pathology that if the function of an organ be maintained or restored, much of the destructive metamorphosis due to proliferation of connective tissue, fatty deposits, or even certain forms of atrophic change in which the nuclei of cell-life are rather denuded than destroyed, may be arrested and to some extent repaired. The vis medicatrix nature is a very potent faetpr in the amelioration of disease, if only it be allowed fair play. An exercise of “faith” as a rule suspends the operation of adverse influences, and appeals strongly through the conscioueness to the inner and underlying faculty of vital force. There are many intractable cases in every practice which might be “cured by faith.” It is well that these poor persons should be benefited by some means, it matters little what; and if they can be “healed by faith” we ought to be very glad, and thankful, too, for the mistaken zeal of those who, being weak-minded themselves, make dupes of other weak-minded folks to their advantage. This is a blind leading the blind in which they do not fall into the ditch, but, by a happy -combination of circumstances, actually escape danger and gain something to boot.— London Lancet.