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/242

 medicine and surgery come to man through Him who is the Light and the Life, the Divine Word.'

(vii) In a previous chapter we dwelt at some length on the Gospel conception of salvation (as illustrated by the words [Greek: sôzein holoklêria], 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