be known? . . . My son, in thy sickness be not negligent; but pray unto the Lord and He will make thee whole. Leave off from sin and order thy hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness; give a sweet savor and a memorial of fine flour, and make a fat offering, as not being. Then give place to the physician, for the Lord has created Him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. There is a time when in their hands there is good success, for they shall also pray unto the Lord, that He would prosper that which they give, for ease and remedy to prolong life ' (38 : 4 f., 9 ff.). Sickness, as a judicial intrusion of God into the life of man, presupposes sin and calls therefore the sick to repent- ance and sacrifice; nevertheless, for the cool intellect of the Son of Sirach, this does not exclude the use of a physician; but the way in which he expressly places medical help in connection with God's working, and also calls the Scriptures to witness for it, shows that he had before his eyes religious doubts against it, thoughts, as Philo expresses them, that a stronger faith would turn only to God."
6. P. 193.
7. Jellett, Efficacy of Prayer, p. 41.
8. P. 193.
9. Op. cit., p. 303.
10. Medicine and the Church, edited by Geoffrey Rhodes, 1910, pp. 209 ff.
11. Inaugural Address, 1891, ed. 2, p. 37.
12. That our Lord's miracles of healing were certainly not faith-cures, as it has become fashionable among the "Modernists" to represent, has been solidly shown by Doctor R. J. Ryle, "The Neurotic Theory of the Miracles of Healing," The Hibberi Journal, April, 1907, vol. V, pp. 572 ff.
13. See p. 41.
14. Loc. cit., p. 68.
15. Of course this implication of the passage is not neglected by interested parties. We find for example C. H. Lea in his A Plea for . . . Christian Science, 1915, pp. 57-58, writing, on the suppo- sition of the genuineness of this passage quite justly: "All Christen- dom believes that He gave His followers — not only those of His own time but of all succeeding time — the injunction to preach the Gospel and to heal the sick. Now, the giving of the injunction clearly and definitely implies . . . that the mark of one's being a Christian is that he has, or should have, this knowledge and the corresponding power to heal."
16. See above, p. 22.
17. Op. cit., pp. 22 ff.
FAITH-HEALING 303
18. Pp. 52 ff.
19. I have briefly stated the evidence for the spuriousness of the passage in An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testa- ment, 1886, pp. 199 ff. But see especially F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Introduction, Appendix, 1881, pp. 28 fi. of the Appendix.
20. The passages between inverted commas may be found in Gordon, op. cit., pp. 29, 31, 33, 34.
21. Science et Religion, p. 189.
22. We say two; for a third, suggested as a possible alternative by John Lightfoot (Works, 8 vols, ed., vol. Ill, p. 316), does not appear to us possible, viz., that the reference is to a common Jew- ish custom of anointing, in connection with the use of charms, to heal the sick. Lightfoot quotes the Jerusalem Talmud (Shab., fol. 14, col. 3): "A man that one charmeth, he putteth oil upon his head and charmeth." His comment is: "Now, this being a com- mon, wretched custom, to anoint some that were sick, and to use charming with the anointing — this apostle, seeing anointing was an ordinary and good physic, and the good use of it not to be ex- tinguished for that abuse — directs them better: namely, to get the elders or ministers of the church to come to the sick and to add to the medicinal anointing of him their godly and fervent prayers for him, far more available and comfortable than all charming and enchanting, as well as far more warrantable and Christian."