Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/179

 Thus Dr. Abbott tells us that the mighty works were simply "acts of faith-healing on a mighty scale." The "Encyclopædia Biblica" lays it down that "it is quite permissible for us to regard as historical only those of the class which, even at the present day, physicians are able to effect by psychical methods." Principal Estlin Carpenter (in the "First Three Gospels") says, "The real force which worked the patient's cure dwelt in his own mind: the power of Jesus lay in the potency of his personality to evoke this force."

'The writers have adopted what may be called, for brevity, the Neurotic Theory. It is for them to show by an actual examination of the records that the ministry of healing which is admitted "to stand on as firm historical ground as the best accredited parts of the teaching," consisted in the curing of neurotic patients by strong mental impressions. Have they done so?'

Dr. Ryle has, of course, no difficulty in showing that they have done nothing of the kind.

'It is not too much to say that no one of the writers who has pinned his faith to the Neurotic Theory has made any attempt to carry it out in detail. We are offered a number of quite commonplace allusions to the power of mind