The Henson Journals

[177]

Thursday, January 22nd, 1925.

'Certain dispositions of the heart are of primary importance in Christian healing: "Repentance, whereby we forsake sin, and faith, whereby we steadfastly believe the promises of God". It is the work of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin'.

Hickson. 'Heal the Sick' p. 247.

Yet Hickson repeatedly reports that pagans were more generally healed than Christians in his Mission of Christian Healing! The fact is – and it forms one of the principal objections to the theory of "Spiritual" or "Christian" healing – that neither in the Healer nor in the Healed is there any such connexion between Grace and Goodness, as seems to be indispensable.

I worked at the Sermons, mostly reading. Bell, the Vicar of Monkheseldon, came to lunch, & afterwards discussed with me the Report of the Commission as to the division of his parish. I was distressed to observe that the poor man is suffering from neuritis. Then Clayton and I walked round the Park.

Ella, Miss Headlam, and Fearne went in to Durham to attend old Miss Tristram's "perpendicular" in the Bailey. I did not go, having a seated horror of that function, in which the fatigue of one's legs is unrelieved by the interest of one's mind. Of all forms of what is called "social entertainment" it has ever seemed to me the least attractive.

[178]

A careful study of all reported cases of the miraculous or miraculoid kind, a study illustrated for us many years ago by Charcot, proved to him and proves to the expert observers of today, that they all – palsies, convulsions and the rest, often inveterate cases – are and have been cures of one disease, & of one only, namely hysteria, a malady which in its protean manifestations mocks all and any particular diseases... The 'miraculous cures' then, so far as they are genuine, are cures by suggestion: they take their place with cures of the same kind of disorder by panic, such as an alarm by fire, by 'hypnotism', or by any other over–mastering impression which startles or transports the balance of the bodily functions from one centre of equilibrium to another higher & more stable one.

So much for the 'miracles': which owe nothing to any sacerdotal magic, & to the physician are part of a familiar experience, & of a familiar interpretation.

Sir Clifford Allbutt. 'Medicine & the Church' p. 35/6

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