Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/327

 THE GENESIS OF A MODERN PROPHET 3 I 3

from Sydney to Melbourne; and in the following ten years he laid hands, in the name of the Lord Jesus, on eighteen thousand sick, of whom he declares the greater part were fully healed. In a sermon delivered in Chicago in September, 1894, entitled, "He Is Just the Same Today," he gives the keynote to this new teaching, begun in 1882, in a criticism of Havergal's poem

beginning,

I take this pain, Lord Jesus,

From thine own hand. I take this pain, Lord Jesus,

As thine own gift where he says :

To declare that a painful, horrible, filthy disease, corrupting and destroy- ing a useful life, is implanted there by the Savior and the Healer and the Cleanser, the incorruptible God, from whom nothing unclean can come, is to say that which is not true.

And as a corollary to this denial of any agency on the part of God in the visitation of disease he further declares the doctrine of divine healing. The progressive features of this doctrine are that all bodily ailment is the work of the devil, and a very personal devil at that; that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, and disease is one of them; that it is the privilege of all who believe in him to enjoy perfect and perpetual bodily health; that the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ covers all kinds of sin and its consequences, of which disease is one; that divine healing is a perpetual covenant with God's people; and that the "gifts of healing" are ever in the church of Christ, for I Cor. 12:9 shows that they are in the Holy Spirit, and he is ever in the church. In the closing days of 1882 the ministry of divine healing was publicly begun in Melbourne on this platform, and the International Divine Healing Association was formed with Dr. Dowie as its director. For six years more, with Melbourne as his headquarters, in the midst of a congregation every mem- ber of which believed in divine healing, and eschewed strong drink and tobacco, he carried on the double crusade against sin and disease, conducting occasional missions throughout Australia and New Zealand. In the fight against the saloon element in Melbourne, under whose influence an ordinance had been