Faith-healing and Christian Science / by Alice Feilding.

  • Feilding, Alice.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Faith-healing and Christian Science / by Alice Feilding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    A reason why such an unlovely specimen ailment has been chosen for exemplifying the potency of mental forces is that warts are so apparent that, as Dr. Tuke says, ‘ there cannot be much room for mistake as to whether they have or have not disappeared ’ ;1 the experi- ment of ‘ charming ’ them away, also, is one that may be attempted with fair chances of success by anybody anxious for a personal demonstration of the efficacy of suggestion. And now we may turn our attention to the faith-healing or 4 miracles ’ of the Christian Church. Here we find a practically uninterrupted succession from the earliest days of Christianity. The 4 miraculous ’ gifts of the Apostolic age are generally reckoned to have lasted for only some three hundred years after Christ’s death ; but after this third century there is a fair record of cases of what may be described as genuine faith-cures. c Such are recorded in the fourth century by Athanasius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine ; in the fifth by Hilary and Jerome ; in the sixth by Gregory the Great, 1 Op. cit. p. 365.