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/204

 Master, if it could only be enlisted on behalf of such patients as already possessed 'comfort and sure confidence in their Lord.' We believe that the Church has something less elusive to offer her people in their hour of need: and we return to the records of Christ's miracles in order to discover it.

(iv) The value of what is called 'mental therapeutics' is no longer contested; it receives, and has received for some time, the careful attention of the medical profession. We approach the subject from the religious standpoint, we base our study of it upon the teaching and practice of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, we must discriminate between psychic treatment and spiritual treatment. The former term, if applicable to religious treatment, can also denote forms of mental cure which are unconnected with religion, e.g. the use of hypnotism. But Christ addresses Himself to the Spirit ([Greek: pneuma]), that highest element of our nature, through which the mystics hold that we have kinship with God, and in unison with which the Holy Spirit attests our Divine sonship. His miracles are works of spiritual healing, they are wrought for the whole man, not only for soul, and certainly not only for body. Christ's view of healing is relative to His view of disease,