9. McComb says expressly, The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, p. 92: "In many instances it does not matter what the object of the faith may be; it is not the object but the faith that heals." The matter is more fully stated in Religion and Medicine, p. 293: "Faith simply as a psychical process, or mental attitude . . . has healing virtue"; "Faith as a mere mental state has this power" — in accordance with Feuchterleben's saying, "Confidence
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acts like a real force." Elwood Worcester, p. 57, agrees with his colleague. Of course it is allowed that if we are seeking moral as well as physical effects it is better that the faith employed should have God rather than Mumbo-jumbo for its object. The plane on which McComb's chapter on "Prayer and Its Therapeutic Value" (Religion and Medicine, pp. 302-319) moves is the same. The therapeutic value of prayer resides in its subjective effects. As it is clearly stated in a leading article in the British Medical Journal for June 18, 1910: "Prayer inspired by a living faith is a force acting within the patient, which places him in the most favor- able condition for the stirring of the pool of hope that lies, still and hidden it may be, in the depths of human nature." McComb does not utterly exclude the prayer of desire or deny that it has an effect on God; even, if it be a desire in behalf of others, an effect on them. We are organically related to God, he says: "We exist in Him spiritually somewhat as thoughts exist in the mind," and "a strong desire in our soul communicates itself to Him and engages His attention just as a thought in our soul engages ours." God may resist this desire of ours, thus entering His consciousness; but "the stronger the thought, the more frequently it returns, the more likely it is to be acted upon." If now we have a desire in behalf of others, "our soul not only acts on that soul," telepathically we sup- pose, "but our prayer arising to the mind of God directs His will more powerfully and more constantly to the soul for which we pray." This is very ingenious and very depressing. We hope there is no truth in it.
10. The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, p. 10. The leaders of the Emmanuel Movement are very insistent that the Christianity which they employ is that of the "critical interpreta- tion" of the New Testament.
11. It seems almost as difficult for clerics to recognize frankly the limits of their functions as spiritual guides with respect to medi- cine, as with respect to the state. They repeatedly show a tendency not only to intrude into but to seek to dominate the one alien sphere as the other. Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1896, II, p. 37, recounts how the mediaeval church sought to secure that physicians should always practise their art in conjunction with ecclesiastics. Pius V ordered "that all physicians before administering treatment should call in 'a physician of the soul,' on the ground, as he de- clares, that 'bodily infirmity frequently arises from sin.'" Clear differentiation of functions — "division of labor" the economists call it — lies in the line of advance.
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12. The Christian Religion as a Healing Power, p. 99. See above, note 7.
13. These citations are derived from Medicine and the Church, edited by Geoffrey Rhodes, 1910, pp. 35, 64, 73. Cf. what Stephen Paget says on the general question in The Faith and Works of Chris- tian Science, 1909, pp. 180-190.
14. The primary literature on the Emmanuel Movement is comprised in the two books by its founders: El wood Worcester, Samuel McComb, Isador H. Coriat, Religion and Medicine, the Moral Control of Nervous Disorders, 1908; and El wood Worcester, Samuel McComb, The Christian Religion as a Healing Power: A Defense and Exposition of the Emmanuel Movement, 1909. See also Robert MacDonald, Mind, Religion and Health, with an Apprecia- tion of the Emmanuel Movement, 1909; C. R. Brown, Faith and Health, 1910. A very good criticism of the movement will be found in the article by Doctor Henry Rutgers Marshall, on "Psycho- therapeutics and Religion," in The Hibbert Journal, January, 1909, vol. Ill, pp. 295-313. The most recent literature includes: Loring W. Batten, The Relief of Pain by Mental Suggestion, 191 7; Isador H. Coriat, What is Psychoanalysis? 191 7.