Chapter VIII: Introduction: II (5)

Consider the bearing of all this on our highest act of worship, the Holy Communion. There are few parish priests who cannot testify from their own experience to the wonderful--if not miraculous--effects of the reception of the Sacrament upon apparently dying persons, who had been given up by medical science. There is nothing in this that need surprise the Christian believer, nothing that is really repugnant to the findings of modern science. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians about the profanation of the Lord’s Supper, attributes to this cause certain physical consequences incurred by the offenders. ‘For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep.’[81] There is a natural and proper antipathy in many minds to the idea that the Sacramental Elements operate as a charm. Such an idea would be irrational and superstitious, and we are not intended to conceive of a vindication of the sanctity of the Lord’s Supper by material and simply magical penalties. The offence of the Corinthians was the irreverence of ‘not discerning (or discriminating) the Body,’ and Apostolic teaching plainly implies that a spiritual offence of itself acts upon the bodily organism, by a mysterious law of the Divine government.[82] (Here again we must not say that God sent the disease.) Surely, then, it may be argued, per contra, that a reverent reception of the Eucharist makes for health and life, for it brings the failing bodily and spiritual powers of the sick into contact with the Divine and immortal life which animates the mystical Body of Christ. This line of argument may be illustrated by the words of the late F. W. H. Myers: ‘To keep our chemical energy at work, we live in a warm environment and from time to time take food. By analogy, in order to keep the spiritual energy at work, we should live in a spiritual environment, and possibly from time to time absorb some special influx of spiritual life.’[83] It remains only to add that the words of administration in our Communion Office embody the truth for which we are pleading. ‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.’

[81] 1 Cor. xi. 30.

[82] In the _Cambridge Bible_, note _ad locum_, Dr. Lias says we can
well understand how a crime against His Body and Blood would deprive
any Christian, who committed it, of His presence, and predispose it
to sickness and even death.

[83] _Human Personality_, i. 218; quoted by Dearmer, _Body and Soul_,
p. 123.

(iv) The charisma, or gift, of healing, is named by St. Paul among the spiritual gifts of the Apostolic Church,[84] and is associated in one place with the working of miracles (‘powers’).[85] We have endeavoured to show that it was not intended as a transient but a permanent endowment of the Church. But, in the degree in which the Church corporate falls short in spirituality, her spiritual powers wane. The Encyclical Letter and Report of the recent Lambeth Conference mark a step in advance, though it may not be a long step, towards the revival of this healing agency of the Church. The Committee appointed to report on this particular subject was of opinion ‘that the prayers for the restoration of health, which it recommends, may be fitly accompanied by the apostolic act of the Laying-on-of-Hands.’[86] We may be disposed to regret that this primitive rite is not mentioned in Resolution 35, which recommends ‘the provision for use in Pastoral Visitation of some additional prayers for the restoration of health more hopeful and direct than those contained in the present Office for the Visitation of the Sick.’ Desiring, as we do, to follow ‘the example’ of our Lord Himself and not merely of ‘His Holy Apostles,’[87] we may most reasonably ask for authority to administer the blessing through one of the outward signs which He employed. A ceremony, duly authorised by the Church, would have much value, as regulating and controlling the impulse to invoke the healing ‘charisma,’ which at present is often bestowed and received through ‘spiritual healers’ who lack the full official sanction of the Church.

[84] 1 Cor. xii. 9, 30.

[85] _Ibid._ 29.

[86] Report (1908), No. VII. iv. p. 137.

[87] Order of Confirmation, first Collect, Mark vi. 5.

(v) There is another Ministry of Healing, which the Divine Love has provided for the weary body and the careworn mind, which contributes its own part to the restoration of the sick. It is the silent ministry of Nature. Within the ailing body she exerts her healing power; the doctor’s best ally, on the physical side, is the _vis medicatrix naturae_, that strange recuperative power which resides in organisms, and offers a standing resistance to the inroads of disease and age.[88] And then outside there are the soothing influences of the world of Nature, which steals into the troubled spirit to bring the calm which Wordsworth, in his poem on ‘An Evening by the Sea,’ likened to the hush of worship:

[88] Cp. Sir James Paget’s words: ‘The power to repair itself belongs
to the subject of injury in the same sense and degree as does its
power to develop itself and grow and live.’--_Life_, p. 295.

The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration.

Hebrew literature shows little trace, even indirectly, of that sympathy with Nature, which is the best contribution of what is called ‘natural religion’ to the inheritance of the human spirit, except when Nature is regarded in her grander and more awe-inspiring aspects, those of the thunder-cloud, the whirlwind, the raging fire, the roaring sea. Yet it is not altogether fanciful to find, in our Lord’s habit of retirement to the mountain’s side for prayer, His invitation to the disciples to come apart by themselves to rest awhile in a ‘desert place,’[89] His choice of the evening hour, at the setting of the sun, for performing His works of mercy, some sanction for that modern sense of the Divine beauty and mystery of Nature in her quiet aspects.[90]

[89] Mark vi. 31.

[90] Compare also the nature-parables.

We must believe that Christ Himself was susceptible in a singular degree to those natural influences. After the intense spiritual strain of the Temptation, ‘angels came and ministered to Him.’ A great modern artist, M. Tissot, pictures the scene as only the imaginative symbolism of genius would have done. The Saviour lies at full length, utterly exhausted, with every muscle, as it were, relaxed, and through the twilight appear myriads of outstretched angel-hands, reviving the Sacred Body with the touch of spirit-life. Here we have, as in a figure, the expression of the unseen forces of Nature, ministering to the Will of the God of Nature, on behalf of the heirs of salvation and of Him who is the author of our salvation and the Prince of Life.

There is no rule absolute about the influence of familiar scenes and old associations upon the weary or ailing spirit. For some people the cure lies in surroundings as novel and unfamiliar as possible. This is where tact and sympathy on the part of the doctor and nurse and friends come in--questions which must not be confused with natural affection, for in that case they would vary directly, whereas they have been known to vary inversely, with nearness of blood relationship. The quick intuition of sympathy can judge of the environment best adapted to the patient’s individual need. The rigid order and routine of the hospital ward may be torture to the sick person who comes from one sort of home and paradise to one who comes from another. The more we can bring of the ‘mind of Christ’ into the tender care of the sick, the more right we shall have to expect that the power of His name will bless our efforts.

(vi) Again, our Lord’s attention to details, i.e. the material conditions of health, calls for notice. We have referred to His provision of rest for His tired followers. We find Him giving directions, after the recall of Jairus’s daughter to life, that food should be given to her. ‘Life restored by miracle must be supported by ordinary means.’[91] The familiar routine of healthy life is to be resumed as soon as possible. Lazarus is to be loosed from his cerements, when the awe of the bystanders blind them to the practical and obvious. And quite in line with this is Christ’s readiness to conform, in His dealings with men, to the existing social and religious system. It was so notably in the case of the leper, who was bidden, after his cure, to go and show himself to the priest and to make the customary offerings.[92] At the pool of Bethesda Christ helps the impotent man, who has no friend to help him. He leaves the rest of the multitude to the natural operation of the waters.[93] It was a different matter when, as in the case of the Rabbinical rule of Sabbath observance, the conventional practice was inimical to the freedom of the spirit. Our Lord will never allow the spiritual and essential in things to be overlaid by the material and accidental. Traditionalism was then broken through. The principle, that we must render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and to God the things that are God’s, manifests itself in various ways, and this is one of them. But, on the whole, Christianity knows no revolutionary breaches in the established social order, as the history of its attitude towards the institution of slavery shows. Men were encouraged to work out their own salvation under existing political and social conditions.

[91] Dr. Swete on Mark v. 43.

[92] Mark i. 44.

[93] John v. 2.

This spirit of conformity to the existing order in all lawful things, and especially our Lord’s attitude towards priestly ceremonial, in the case of the leper, throws a good deal of light upon the relation which should subsist between the clergyman and the doctor in the treatment of sickness. The Christian doctor will gladly subscribe to the words of the favourite physician of Louis XIV, Ambroise Paré, ‘I treated the wound, God healed it.’ Reverently and thoughtfully he will acknowledge the power of prayer and the tranquillising influences of the spirit, and will yield to the Church, acting by her representative duly accredited and trained, her proper part in the work of restoration. The parish priest will freely allow that the doctor and the nurse, with all the appliances of modern medical science, provide the largest part of the environment and conditions indispensable to recovery; and that it is an act of presumption to reject all these scientific aids in favour of some process of healing by faith alone without expert medical aid.[94]

[94] In Acts xxviii. 9, 10, there is an implication of co-operation
between St. Paul and St. Luke the physician; see _Religion and
Medicine_, pp. 365, 366; the language is technical.

Finally, it must be remembered that we cannot expect to find many favourable notices of medical practice in an age and country in which medical skill was at a very low ebb. ‘Medicorum optimus dignus est Gehenna,’ said the Rabbis of the later Judaism.[95] In nothing has human knowledge made more astonishing strides than in medical and in surgical discovery; and, though we have been too prone in the past to credit the medical profession with the whole of the healing work done in Christ’s Church, the opposite extreme is to be avoided, and it is well to acknowledge thankfully that ‘discoveries in the region of medicine and surgery come to man through Him who is the Light and the Life, the Divine Word.’[96]

[95] See Dr. Swete on Mark v. 26; also Luke iv. 23; contrast Ecclus.
xxxviii. sq.

[96] _Lambeth Conference Report_, 1908 (vii. iii.).

(vii) In a previous chapter we dwelt at some length on the Gospel conception of salvation (as illustrated by the words σῴζειν ὁλοκληρία), as a just equipoise of spiritual, mental, and physical faculties and functions. Two remarks may find a place here. The first is, that too much stress may be laid upon the distinction between functional and organic complaints. There are modern critics who wish to eliminate the miraculous from the Gospel narrative, and deal with the sacred text accordingly. For example, Professor Bousset says, in his vivid way, ‘The community of the faithful drew the simple human picture of Jesus on the golden background of the marvellous. But the picture can be detached from that background with comparative ease.’ In cases which are not to be explained simply by psychology, ‘the historically intelligible is still close below the surface, and appears as soon as we remove a few additions which are due to modern tradition.’ We have to regard certain narratives as ‘legendary accretions (_Wucherungen_).’

If we cannot accept that position, it is not open to us to explain all the miraculous agency of our Lord and His Apostles and the later Church as consisting in the power to deal with functional ailments by mental or psychic treatment. Nor is it open to us to limit the efficacy of prayer to the stimulation of function and the treatment of nervous disorders. And as, with the progress of medical science, the sphere of the organic is continually growing at the expense of the functional, the ultimate effect of such a concession on the side of religion would be to limit her action to a negligible minority of cases. How would a place be found for the healing of Malchus’s ear, if the organic be excluded? But the Church believes that Christ is the Saviour of the body and that the Holy Spirit is, as an early Father says, ‘given that He may dwell in our bodies and sanctify them, that in so doing He may bring them to eternity and to the resurrection of immortality, while He accustoms them in Himself to be conjoined with heavenly powers and to be associated with the Divine eternity of the Spirit.’[97]

[97] _Novatian de Trinitate_, xxix.

A second remark is this. Whatever is allowed for the moulding force of environment, Christ plainly teaches that man is never the mere creature of circumstances. Christ is no fatalist philosopher. It is only the evil that man deliberately assimilates which defiles him. ‘There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him’--a parabolic saying which has a deep meaning. As it is with sin, so it is with disease. Wilful sin is lawlessness in the spiritual being; disease is disorder in the material being. Much remains yet to be done, which lies well within the range of the free human will, to combat this lawless disorder in the life of body and soul. We believe that the spirit can impose its own order and law and harmony upon the material elements of our bodily frame. This creed may be an ideal, but it is the only really inspiring ideal; for beyond it lies the hope of final perfection. Therefore, with faith and courage, let us press forward.

Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart’s desire!
Thro’ the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher.[98]

[98] Tennyson, _Faith_.

THE CHURCH AND MENTAL HEALING

BY

ELLIS ROBERTS

THE CHURCH AND MENTAL HEALING

BY ELLIS ROBERTS

The object of this paper is to show and comment on the present attitude of the Church of England, and of the Churches in communion with her, towards psychic healing: but it may be advisable to remove at the outset one or two misconceptions. With the theory and practice of the Church in this country before the Reformation I am not now concerned. It did not differ essentially from that of the Churches on the Continent. But it should be noticed that a large number of centres for psychic healing, spiritual hospitals, if one may use the term, were removed by the destruction of shrines. In the medieval Church the healer, with his specific charisma, was generally one who was reputed a saint; and usually he healed more people after his death than before. The curious in this matter may consult the evidence gathered in Dr. Abbott’s ‘St. Thomas of Canterbury,’ and I think an unprejudiced reader will gather from that book conclusions somewhat different from those expected by the author.

After the Reformation what signs are there of psychic healing encouraged and sanctioned by the Church? We are compelled to answer that, in spite of great need, there is very little evidence of an intelligent effort at mental therapeutics. ‘In spite of great need,’ I say; for this country and Scotland were affected most terribly by the disgraceful witch mania which raged over Europe, especially in the Protestant countries. There was ample material for the quiet, consoling influence of psychic healing; but alas! the unfortunate ‘witches’ were left to the mercy of scared judges and malicious finders, to the horrors of the trial by floating, or the ordeal of the secret mark. The Church was, apparently, bigoted and powerless.

Yet the existence of an official power, inherent in the Body and acting normally through the Ministers of the Church, was recognised officially in the Canons of 1603–4, which, of course, are still of authority. In the 72nd Canon we read:

‘No Minister or Ministers shall, without the Licence and direction of the Bishop of the diocese first obtained and had under his hand and seal, appoint or keep any solemn Fasts.... Neither shall any Minister ... presume to appoint or hold any meetings for sermons ... nor, without such licence, to attempt upon any pretence whatsoever either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any Devil or Devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cosenage, and deposition from the ministry.’

It is evident from this that, however little it was used, the Episcopate was regarded as possessing the power to licence exorcisers who might deal with diseases that we should call mental.

There is one other piece of evidence--practical this time--that the healing power of the Church was not entirely forgotten or neglected. Up to the time of the Hanoverian dynasty, the Kings of England touched for scrofula, popularly known, from this method of cure, as ‘The King’s evil.’ The most celebrated patient I can call to mind is Dr. Johnson. It may be objected that this practice was not the work of the Church’s ministry; but it must be remembered that most Canonists regard the King of England as _mixta persona_ (that is, semi-clerical) by virtue of his Coronation; and also the position given the Sovereign as ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church would appear to invest him with an ecclesiastical status.[99]

[99] With touching for scrofula may be compared the blessing of
‘cramp-rings.’ The Sovereign of England used, on Good Friday, to
bless rings which afterwards were distributed to sufferers from cramp
or epilepsy. The last monarch to do this was Mary Tudor.

I admit, however, as must all candid persons, that on the whole the Church has grossly neglected all forms of psychic healing; and so welcome the more gladly the definite stand taken in the Lambeth Report, 1908.

That Report is the unanimous act, not merely of the Church of England, but of those numerous bodies in communion with her: on the committee which drew up the report were bishops from America, India, Scotland, Central Africa, New Zealand, and England--a fact that can vouch for the significance of the Report’s admissions and contentions. This Report I shall take as the basis of my inquiry into the official attitude of the Church of to-day towards Medicine and Psychic Healing.

The Report opens with a statement that is refreshing in its admission of ignorance after the ready words of many sciolists and ‘quack’ healers.

‘Your Committee, which has had under consideration “Ministries of Healing,” has felt itself at a disadvantage in discussing phenomena which only in recent times have been the subject of scientific investigation. In the present stage of knowledge it would be premature for any except experts to hazard an opinion upon such topics as the powers of “Mental Suggestion,” and the range of “Subliminal Consciousness,” or to attempt to forecast the possibilities of “Mental” or “Spiritual Healing.”’

While, however, displaying this diffidence in dealing with the scientific side of their subject, the Committee is quite definite about the spiritual aspect of pain, sickness, and suffering.

‘The Committee believes that Christ still fulfils in Christian experience His power to give life, and to give it more abundantly; and that the faith, which realises His Presence, is capable of creating a heightened vitality of spirit, which strengthens and sustains the health of the body. The Committee believes that sickness and disease are in one aspect a breach in the harmony of the Divine purpose, not only analogous to, but sometimes at least caused by, want of moral harmony with the Divine Will; and that this restoration of harmony in mind and will often brings with it the restoration of the harmony of the body. It believes that sickness has too often exclusively been regarded as a cross to be borne with passive resignation, whereas it should have been regarded rather as a weakness to be overcome by the power of the Spirit.’

Then the Committee considers briefly the ‘Mental Healing’ movement outside the Church, and concludes the first part of their Report with a very necessary warning ‘against the peril of being thoughtlessly drawn into alliance, in the desire for health, with any who, under whatever attractive name, are in antagonism with the Christian faith upon any such subject as the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the reality of Sin, and the use of the Holy Sacraments.’

In the second part it discusses ‘Spiritual Healing’ in the Church, and makes the following statement:

‘The Committee would not wish to say a word in disparagement or discouragement of those who may be pioneers in a new branch of service, but it believes it would for the present be unwise to depart from an attitude of watchfulness and reserve; and it is not therefore prepared to recommend that at the present stage any authoritative recognition should be given to those who claim to exercise these “Gifts of Healing.”’

In the third part is a most welcome recognition of the position in the Church of that profession which the Evangelist of the Nativity followed.

‘The Committee believes that medical science is the handmaid of God and His Church, and should be fully recognised as the ordinary means appointed by Almighty God for the care and healing of the human body. The Committee believes that discoveries in the region of medicine and surgery come to man through Him who is the Light and the Life, the Divine Word.’

Then we have a brief recommendation that there should be an ‘addition to the office for the Visitation of the Sick of more hopeful and less ambiguous petitions for the restoration of health, always subject to the Will of God ...; and that these petitions be used in close connection with prayer for pardon and peace.’ And these prayers ‘may be fitly accompanied by the Apostolic act of the Laying on of Hands.’

In the final paragraph the Committee considers the suggestion ‘that these prayers should be accompanied by the anointing of the sufferer with oil,’ and after a brief historical _résumé_, concludes:

‘In view of this evidence and the conditions prevailing in the Church at the present time, the Committee is not prepared to recommend the restoration of the unction of the sick, but it does not wish to go so far as to advise the prohibition of its use, if it be earnestly desired by the sick person. In all such cases the parish priest should seek the counsel of the Bishop of the diocese. Care must be taken that no return be made to the later custom of anointing as a preparation for death.’

With unction I do not propose to deal here. The question is really theological; and the discussion as to its revival does not come within the scope of this book. It may be said, however, that the problem will probably solve itself in the near future, as in many missionary and colonial dioceses, and in not a few English ones, the oil is blessed by the Bishop, and may always be had by any parish priest whose sick people desire this ancient rite.

With one exception, to which I shall return later, the Report may be commended as a courageous, if rather jejune, effort to keep abreast of modern psychology and its more practical manifestations. Let me indicate briefly the encouraging signs in the Report.

(1) We have the definite confession that our present visitation service is not all that can be desired. That we should use more definite prayers for the recovery of the sick.

(2) The Report lays emphasis on the important truth that there must be no banishing of the doctor. Enormous harm has been done by the crude dualism of ‘Christian Science’--a theory which, if logically applied, would prevent persons renewing the tissues of their body by food, or removing dirt by soap and water. A doctor’s medicine is just as much a prayer, a spiritual thing, when it is properly used, as any formula of consolation inculcated by folk in ‘tune with the infinite,’ or people who indulge in ‘higher thought.’

(3) The Report guards--though perhaps not quite strongly enough--against the modern tendency to lay too much stress on mere bodily health. As Christians and men of sense, we can have nothing to do with a mode of thought that, by exaggerating the value of physical well-being, would cheerfully have condemned to some lethal chamber an Erasmus, a Coleridge, a Stevenson, or a Beardsley.

Now in these three matters the Report does seem to represent the real central body of opinion in the Church of England. No living man, perhaps, better expresses the view of the ‘man in the pew’ than the Bishop of London, and he has been one of the first to recognise the reality of the need for a greater recognition of the place of psychic healing. Here is what Dr. Ingram said in his sermon on St. Luke’s Day, 1909:

‘We have on the one side those who really seem to have forgotten the message of the Gospel of the body, who practically in their teaching and even in their own belief simply think of the Gospel as addressed to the soul. They seem to have forgotten that, in our own Holy Communion Service, we pray that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His Body, and some of St. Paul’s most stirring passages are about the body. “Glorify God in your body.” But in their teaching and in their belief they have lost to a certain extent the idea that the Gospel has a message to the body at all. While on the other hand--and it is so very characteristic of the history of the Church that this should happen--outside the Church, with great exaggeration--and with, in my opinion, much false teaching--people are calling the attention of the Church to a forgotten truth. Yes--but with two very grave mistakes. First, they ignore the learning and teaching which God has given us through medical study and investigation about His laws and about His will, and still more they ignore those blessed means of grace which Christ Himself has laid down as the means of our communion with His life.’

Or again, in a diocesan letter of May last year the Bishop of Winchester (who was Chairman of the Lambeth Committee) emphasises the right of medical science, of healing, and of nursing, to their due place in the Church’s spiritual life, to a part in her prayers and thanksgivings.

‘At the recent Lambeth Conference the view was expressed that we as a Church have failed to show sufficient sympathy with the great works of healing, of conflict with disease, and of the alleviation of suffering carried on by the medical and nursing profession. The Divine blessing vouchsafed in modern times, through the progress of knowledge and the advancement of skill, have only in too small a degree been allowed to enter into the prayers and thanksgivings of the Christian Church. It is right that, with greater faith and a larger intelligence, the Church of Christ should acknowledge that the gifts of healing and the discoveries of science come from the Spirit of God, and should seek more systematically to include this and kindred subjects in intercession and praise.’

Not only, however, do we find the Bishops laying stress on the Church’s duty in the matter of healing; but we also find eminent physicians, who are also Churchmen, welcoming the priest in the sick room. In a remarkable article contributed to the _Guardian_, Sir Dyce Duckworth wrote:

‘Next, I will express my opinion that our twentieth-century Christendom is generally lax and feeble in offering earnest prayers for the sick in all stages and for a blessing on the remedial means employed. We should look to a higher Power than that of man to aid us at the bedside, and as thoughtful physicians we do seek these means to aid us.

‘Mental healing has a recognised and long-acknowledged basis of truth and fact, and may be employed by honourable and skilled doctors who have the gift and power to use it. I do not regard it as a fitting duty for the “priests of the soul,” but one to be employed in its appropriate place, as it becomes better understood in the course of time as a part of legitimate ordinary treatment. I see no objection to the practice of unction and laying-on of hands by Christian ministers for those who desire it, but I regard this as an additional means of help, a solemn form of assurance and comfort, together with prayerful ministration, in conjunction with, and as a reinforcement of, the best skill of legitimate medicine. To replace the latter by the former I regard as a withholding of God’s gifts to man and therefore unjustifiable. I conceive and believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are capable of development in the course of the ages and under our present dispensation, and that they were not limited in form and exclusiveness to the age in which they were first somewhat crudely manifested.’

We may welcome particularly Sir Dyce Duckworth’s emphatic pronouncement about prayer. After all the basis of psychic healing is, and always has been, prayer--whether the means used is oil, or water, or the relics or even the shadow of holy men, as reported in the Acts of the Apostles. The motive power that makes any of these means availing is simply prayer. Prayer, whether spoken, desired, or acted, is the vital force that gives the psychic movement all its validity. In insisting on the importance and reality of prayer we have the support of such a psychologist as Professor James, who writes: ‘As regards prayers for the sick, if any medical fact can be considered to stand firm, it is that in certain environments prayer may contribute to recovery and should be encouraged as a therapeutic measure.’

And if the doctor is willing to recognise the great value of prayer, the divine should not be backward in welcoming the doctor; nor should he regard the medical man and the philosopher with suspicion if they lay stress chiefly on the ‘reflex’ value of prayer; regard its subjective effects, rather than investigate its real or objective power.

Once more let me quote the Bishop of London:

‘If I was ill, I would send for the best doctor, and get my parish priest to come and pray by my side, believing that the double work of Jesus Christ is shared by two great professions. It would be bad for either to be banished from the sick room.’[100]

[100] Answer to a questioner. Lent Mission, 1910.

That is the position on which we should lay stress. The future, I am sure, lies with those who are willing to accept the religion of the Incarnation and all that it signifies; the men who proclaim joyfully and unwaveringly that Spirit has dwelt in flesh, but who also never hesitate to assert that it is real Flesh in which the Spirit dwelt. We must have no quarter with the damnable heresy that denies to sin and suffering and disease a reality that it concedes to food and to fees: and we can have no truce with the hard materialism that will acknowledge the truth of nothing that is not revealed to the scalpel or the test-tube. We may be thankful to-day that so many of our leading physicians are becoming more and more willing to admit the reality of prayer and the rights of the priest; we must take care that no headstrong divines, in their new zeal for psychic healing, disparage or despise the profession of St. Luke.

THE EUCHARIST AND BODILY WELL-BEING

BY

ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.

VICAR OF ALL HALLOWS BARKING, EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON, AND RURAL DEAN OF THE EAST CITY OF LONDON

THE EUCHARIST AND BODILY WELL-BEING

BY ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.

The editor of this volume thinks that it should include a paper upon the relation of the Eucharist to bodily well-being, and he has asked me to deal with the question. I am fully aware of the difficulty of doing so, and shall be well content if what I am able to say should lead others to feel, as I do, that the subject is one which deserves much reverent and careful attention. Perhaps that is all that any of us who are taking part in the production of this book can hope to achieve. Our desire is to be allowed to prepare the way for the clearer and stronger action of the future. Little by little we are coming to see that the scope of Christianity is bigger and more comprehensive than has for some time been supposed. We can trace the steps by which religion and its benefits had got to be looked upon as chiefly, if not exclusively, concerned with individuals and their souls. And we can recognise that there have been, and are, counter-movements at work whose tendency is to raise us out of the limitations within which we had settled and to place our feet in a larger room.

To begin with, there has been the revival of the Corporate aspect of the faith, with an insistence upon the truth that the fullest life is only to be realised through fellowship. Very slowly we have been learning that we are not meant to be perfected as individuals, but as parts of a whole of which Christ is the head and we are all of us members. Already this sense of a corporate ideal has made a great difference to our thoughts about the Church and the Sacraments, and has begun to work a change in our beliefs as to the importance of unity and the possibilities of spiritual power. And now it looks as if we are being called to a yet farther enlargement of our conceptions and hopes. To-day we are bidden to add to our knowledge in another direction. This time it is the Corporal aspect of the Christian message which is coming into view. We are to learn that our religion is not only for us all as a whole, but that it has to do with the whole of each of us. In other words it is good for the body as well as for the soul. In some degree, no doubt, we have been accustomed to admit that the fact of the Incarnation is a witness to the dignity of our bodies, and a pledge of their ultimate glorification; but the admission has too often lacked the full force of a living conviction. At the present moment, however, many influences are combining in a remarkable way to send us ‘back to Christ’ with quite a new willingness to believe that He meant His Church to stand in the forefront of all endeavours to bless men’s bodies as well as to save their souls. Some day the world may be filled with astonishment when it sees the fuller life of Christian fellowship brought to bear upon the social and physical problems that are waiting all around us for the power that can successfully deal with them.

Now, plainly such lines of thought must sooner or later converge upon the Eucharist. We may confidently assert that if the fuller life, corporate or corporal, is to be realised and manifested by us, it will be through a more faithful and more intelligent use of the great means which our Lord has provided for establishing a vital inter-communion between Himself and His members.

Let us, then, approach the consideration of the mystery patiently, and make a serious effort to grasp what we can of its meaning in right perspective and due proportion. To this end it will be best to set before our minds a clear statement of the aims and objects of the highest of all Christian services.

* * * * *

Briefly, we may say that the Eucharist is designed to fulfil a threefold purpose for us. In the first place, it is a SIGN OF PROFESSION. Sacraments are ‘not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession’ (Art. xxv.); but this they most certainly are. Again and again our Lord laid stress upon the duty and necessity of an open acknowledgment of discipleship. From the earliest times the Sacrament of His Body and Blood has been regarded as the oath and pledge of a Christian’s loyalty. We may be sure that Christ meant it to be this. Perhaps it is not altogether without significance that while the ancient allegory of the Old Testament had made the test of obedience, ‘Thou shalt not eat’; in the sacred symbolism of the New Covenant it became, ‘Do this,’ ‘Take eat.’ Through the Eucharist we declare our readiness to be known as members of the Christian fellowship, and our determination to be the true followers of Christ. That is its first and simplest and most obvious signification.

Then further the Eucharist is AN ACT OF WORSHIP. It has a Godward aspect, as well as a bearing towards the Church and the world. The original institution had for its background the slaying of the lambs and the pouring out of the blood of the Passover sacrifices. This, said our Lord, is My way of celebrating the redemption, not merely of a nation, but of a world. ‘This is My Blood of the Covenant, which is shed for many.’ And accordingly whenever we solemnly repeat His words and His acts, we do it in a Consecration Prayer addressed not to man but to God. It has been thus that from the beginning the Church has made the ‘perpetual memory,’ setting forth the finished sacrifice of the Cross as the one and only ground and hope of man’s salvation. It is thus that we draw nigh by the ‘new and living way which He has prepared for us’ until we find ourselves amid all the company of heaven, nay more, suppliants before the very throne of God, humbly but confidently asking for the grace to help us in our earthly need. The prayer is freely granted. The very offerings we present are blessed and returned for our enrichment.

And so, finally, the Eucharist is a MEANS OF GRACE. The Altar becomes a Table, and the Sacrifice ends in a Feast. We are bidden, not only to ‘do this,’ but to ‘eat’ and ‘drink’ the Body and Blood. Here it is that we reach the most mysterious aspect of all. Christ died and rose again for us that we might live by Him. In this holiest fellowship He fulfils His promise to be with us; in this highest worship we are made partakers of His very self. How the blessing is bestowed we are unable to explain. The explanations that have been attempted are not really explanations, for they are not themselves intelligible. But we can do better than explain. We can accept the fact, and look to prove it in experience. That is the way of our English Church teaching. ‘The benefit is great,’ we are assured, ‘if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive this Holy Sacrament, for then we spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood.’ ‘The Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed’--not merely metaphorically and symbolically--‘taken and received by the faithful.’ So it has been believed since the foundation of the Church. ‘The doctrine of the reality of the gift bestowed in the Holy Communion is universal in the writings of the early Christians.’[101] And so it will be to the end, when the holy feast is to be royally ‘fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’[102]

[101] Archbishop Temple, Primary Charge.

[102] St. Luke xxii. 16.

It is in connexion with this third aspect of the Eucharist that we are to attempt some further inquiry. Granted that ‘the benefit is great,’ of what does it consist? When we meet together in the gladness of loyal fellowship to ‘lift up our hearts’ through the worship which unites us to the Great High Priest within the veil; when we receive, as from His hands, the more than tokens of our participation in His present life and coming triumph; when after meekly kneeling for the benediction of the heavenly peace, we rise and go our way--what thoughts may we dare to cherish with regard to the blessing that has been granted to us?

Shall we answer that the gain must be of a spiritual character, that what we have received is ‘the strengthening and refreshing of our souls,’ that this is what is intended when the Eucharist is spoken of as a ‘means of grace’? Assuredly we shall be right to answer thus. We cannot insist upon it too strongly, or claim it too confidently. We may not feel at the moment that we are stronger and more able for our life and duty; but then we do not always feel the benefit of physical food and medicine the moment they have been taken. The gain may not appear for hours or even days, when perhaps we have ceased to think of the source from which it came. Strangely enough, too, the immediate effect of a medicine may be to bring out the mischief, and to make us imagine that we are the worse for it rather than the better; and, as we know, there have been times when it has almost seemed as if we had become more distressingly conscious of our faults and failings as a result of our Communion. In spite of it all, faith takes and gives humble thanks for the blessing which has been received.

But, when we say that the blessing is of a spiritual nature, does that mean that its effects are therefore limited to the spiritual sphere? Can we think that they could be so limited? Is not the spiritual the dominant factor in all our life, and must not the quickening and gladdening of our spirits be felt, sooner or later, through every department of our being?

Is it not true that the mind is profoundly influenced by the state of the spirit; that, when the soul is at peace and in harmony with God’s will, light shines as it were from within upon the hardest and most perplexing problems around us? The good and wise Bishop Harold Browne once declared at a Church Congress that he had never known what it was to have intellectual doubts when present at the Holy Communion. So, too, one of the most brilliant of our living teachers, speaking of what he owed to the school chapel at Eton, has said, ‘There I mercifully gained the habit of constant Communion; and this habit was the one permanent stronghold of my faith when in after years at Oxford the violent storms of intellectual trouble broke over my mind.’[103]

[103] Canon Scott Holland, _Commonwealth_, March 1908.

If the mind may be helped through blessing received by the spirit, why not the body also? We are realising more and more forcibly every year how intimate is the connexion between mental action and the physical organism. The two are so linked that every change in the one would seem to be accompanied by a change in the other. Moreover, we are assured by recent psychology that there are regions within us which lie outside--above and below--the levels of our ordinary consciousness; and that influences exerted in these regions are determining causes, not merely of mental, but of bodily states. The close connexion between the spiritual and the physical is clearly insisted upon in the New Testament teaching. Our Lord showed plainly that the problem of bodily disease was not to be treated apart from the more baffling needs of the soul. In unhesitating terms He traced the miseries of morbid physical conditions to moral wrongdoing and the presence of spiritual forces of evil. The great word ‘Salvation’ strictly interpreted meant health; and it was applied to both body and soul. It is no small part of Christ’s redemption to ‘quicken your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.’[104]

[104] Romans viii. 2.

The fact that the body has its appointed part and share in the Holy Communion is in itself significant of the honour to be paid to it, and might be taken to imply that it too is to be partaker of the benefit. And when St. Paul declares that to receive ‘unworthily’ is to be in danger of bodily sickness and even of death,[105] we can scarcely avoid the inference that for the worthy recipient there might be expected some corresponding advantage of quickened health and physical vitality.

[105] 1 Cor. xi. 30.

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If we ask what the thoughts of early Christianity were in regard to this matter, we need remain in no uncertainty as to the reply. Recent discovery of documents and the critical study of the primitive liturgies have given us a great deal of knowledge as to the religious conceptions of those who met for Christian worship in the centuries after the Apostles. At first it was with reluctance that they committed their most sacred formularies to writing. Even as late as the time of Athanasius the precise nature of the liturgy was kept as a secret, to be revealed only to those who would be certain to regard it with reverence and understanding. ‘It is not permitted,’ he wrote, ‘to describe the mysteries to those who are not initiated.’[106] Not until this discipline of secrecy was gradually abandoned, as Christianity came to be accepted throughout the empire, were the actual forms of service allowed to become public property. From these we are able to gather much as to the place which the Eucharist held in the life of the Church, and as to the hopes that were centred in it. These hopes, without question, were primarily of a spiritual sort. Intercession was offered with a fulness and intensity which witness to a wonderful power of sustained devotion and a boundless range of sympathy. There were many and various prayers for the peace and perfecting of the Church and the enlightenment of the world, for the spread of true knowledge, for the sanctification of all estates of believers, and above all, and most of all, for the exaltation and glory of God in earth as in heaven. But no one can so much as glance over these liturgies without being strongly impressed by the fact that those who framed them and used them had no notion of drawing any sharp line of distinction between the spiritual and the material, between the blessing of the soul and the good to be desired for the body. If they made intercession for the Church that it might be ‘kept sheltered from storms’ and be ‘preserved founded upon the rock until the consummation of the world,’ and were careful to remember the higher needs of all classes of Christian people, they were quick to add, ‘Let us pray for our brethren exercised by sickness, that the Lord may deliver them from every disease and from every infirmity, and may restore them whole to His Holy Church.’[107] In the prayer of Consecration they would ask that the Bread and the Wine might be made to all who received them a means of ‘faith, and watchfulness, and healing, and sober-mindedness, and sanctification, and renovation of soul and body and spirit.’[108] When they had partaken of the elements they implored that these might ‘not be unto condemnation but to salvation, for the benefit of soul and body.’[109]

[106] _Apol. contra Arianos_, ii.

[107] Clementine Liturgy.

[108] Liturgy of St. Mark.

[109] Clementine Liturgy.

Just ten years ago a very important addition was made to our store of early liturgical documents by the publication of the Sacramentary of Bishop Serapion, which dates from 350 A.D. The work consists of thirty prayers such as a bishop would be likely to use.[110] Of these the first six and the last twelve have to do with the celebration of the Eucharist; the remainder relate to Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, and Burial.

[110] A translation, with notes, has been edited by the Bishop of
Salisbury in a small volume issued by the S.P.C.K. (Early Church
Classics). The Greek text will be found in an article by the Rev. F.
E. Brightman, _Journal of Theological Studies_, October 1899.

‘Life is a remarkable note of the collection,’ and it is life in the fullest sense of the word. A few quotations will indicate this, and will serve to strengthen the impression we have already sought to convey as to the content of the blessing to be expected in the Eucharist. In the opening Offertory prayer we find the words, ‘We beseech Thee, make us living men.’ At the invocation of the Word upon the elements, ‘Make all who communicate to receive a medicine of life for the healing of any sickness.’ In ‘the prayer for those who have suffered,’ ‘Grant health and soundness, and cheerfulness and all advancement of soul and body.’ And in the final Benediction, ‘Let the communion of the Body and Blood go with this people. Let their bodies be living bodies, and their souls be clean souls.’ Provision is also made for special prayer for the sick, and for the blessings of oils and waters for their benefit, and in these connexions we find such expressions as the following: ‘Be propitious, Master; assist and heal all that are sick. Rebuke the sicknesses.’ ‘Grant them to be counted worthy of health.’ ‘Make them to have perfect health of body and soul.’ ‘Grant healing power upon these creatures that every power and every evil spirit and every sickness may depart.’

It need scarcely be said that all such references to bodily wants are set in a context which is marked by the simplest and most ardent spiritual devotion. The physical is never allowed to usurp the first place. But it is never forgotten. The early Christians believed that the Life which was offered to them in fellowship with their Lord was to extend to every part of their constitution, to ‘spirit and soul and body.’[111]

[111] These references to the Liturgies might be supplemented by
quotations from the patristic writings, e.g. those of Irenæus,
Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Gregory of Nyssa. The last named
went so far as to make Baptism with faith to be the salvation of the
soul, and the partaking of the Eucharist the salvation of the body.
See Bishop Gore, _The Body of Christ_, p. 69; and Bethune Baker,
_Introduction to the History of Christian Doctrine_, pp. 399, 412.

In the light of our increasing knowledge of psychological processes, we to-day are turning with new interest and sympathy to the old stories of marvellous healing that have come down to us from early and medieval times; and we are doing our best, by careful investigation and analysis, to separate the well-authenticated cases from those for which the evidence is not satisfactory. Already it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that the instances in which directly religious influences wrought extraordinary cures were far more numerous than have been generally admitted by critical students of the history. In Mr. Percy Dearmer’s volume entitled ‘Body and Soul’ a large number of testimonies have been collected relating to such experiences at various times throughout the Christian centuries. Thus the passage from St. Augustine is quoted, in which he said that in his days miracles were still being wrought, ‘partly by the sacraments,’ and partly through other instrumentalities. And instances of such miracles are described as they were recorded of Bernard, and Francis, and Catherine of Siena; of Philip Neri, Fox, Wesley, Cardinal Hohenlohe, Pastor Blumhardt, Father John of Cronstadt, and many more. At least two cases are given in which the benefit was definitely connected with the reception of Holy Communion.[112]

[112] pp. 370, 381. Compare also the witness of St. Thomas à Kempis
in regard to the power of this Sacrament. ‘The grace is sometimes so
great that out of the fulness of devotion here given not the mind
only but the weak body also feels great increase of strength bestowed
on it’ (vires sibi praestitas sentiat ampliores). _De Imit._ iv. 1.

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