to those to whom the Apostles had conveyed them — whence a presumption arises against their continuance after the Apostolic age. Then, again, that there are instances of sickness in the New Testament which were not removed by the prayer of faith. There is, for example, Paul's leaving of Trophimus at Miletum sick, and his recommending to Timothy, when sick, not the seeking of healing by the mi- raculous act of God, but the use of medicinal means — the drinking no longer of water but of a little wine for his stomach's sake and his often infirmities. It seems quite clear that Paul did not share the views of our modern Faith-Healers. (7) The Faith-Healing arguments presup- pose or lead to many false doctrines. A desultory allusion to some of them here may not be without its uses. (A) Sickness and sin are often connected in an utterly unscrip- tural manner. That all the sicknesses which afflict our race are a result of sin is true. But that special sicknesses infer special sin our Saviour Himself explicitly denies. (B) These arguments would be equally valid to commend perfectionism. If sinfulness is not to be removed in this life, neither is sickness. Both are the fruits of guilt, and both are removed on the basis of the work of the guilt- bearer; and both are removed only when the subjective salvation is completed. (C) They are founded on a com- pletely unscriptural view of the functions of suffering, and the uses of sickness and pain. All sickness and suffering are spoken of as if they were from the evil one alone; as if they were sheerly the mark of the displeasure of God; and as if they were a fruit of particular sin. Scripture says: "Behold whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." Sickness is often the proof of special favor from God ; it always comes to His children from His Fatherly hand, and always in His loving pleasure works, together with all other things which befall God's children, for good. (8) The Faith- Healing contention leads to contempt for God's appointed
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means, and this leads to the fanatical attitude of demand- ing from God apart from all means that for the attaining of which He has ordained appropriate means. We are not to refuse to cultivate the soil and then demand to be fed by miracle. (9) The Faith-Healing practice leads to the production of "professionals," standing between the soul and God. There is grave danger in a soul permitting an unauthorized intermediary to take up a position between it and the gracious activities of God toward it. From this germ the whole sacerdotal evil has grown. And, on the other hand, to the practitioner himself there comes inevitable temptation to spiritual pride and autocracy, which is most disastrous to his spiritual life; and some- times even something worse.
One of the phenomena of the Faith-Healing delusion has been the production of a series of these practitioners, whose activities have not always been wholesome. From time to time an individual healer has risen to public notice and attracted the attention of the whole religious commu- nity, for a time at least attaining tremendous vogue and commanding great applause. There was, for example, to confine ourselves to recent times, Prince Alexander of Hohenlohe, who during the first half of the nineteenth century created a great stir with his miraculous healings in Austria and Germany.58 A lesser light burned contem- poraneously in Ireland in the person of Father Matthew.59 One of the most admirable of these figures was Johann Christoph Blumhardt who, says William James, quite spon- taneously developed in the early forties of the last century "an extremely pure faculty of healing," which he exerted during nearly thirty years.60 Perhaps Doctor A. B. Simp- son of New York, who has been since 1887 the president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, founded in that year at Old Orchard, Maine, has been blamelessly in the public eye as a healer of the sick through faith for as long a period as any of our recent American healers.61 The
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