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/85

 mental disturbances, the help of a priest of forceful character, reasonably controlled, may be of great service.

In concluding this article a summary of the suggestions offered for consideration may be made:

(1) The main function of the minister of religion should be concerned with what is called the spiritual side of man, and not with purely material conditions, such as disease.

(2) If ministers regard the Scriptures as imposing upon them duties in healing the sick, they should be content to be subservient to the physician in material conditions that are not included in their training.

(3) In dealing with phenomena as specific as diseases, the Church must be prepared to accept scientific explanations. It is useless to complain of the materialism of doctors in connexion with material physical disorders.

(4) It is not unlikely that the effects of spiritual healing will prove to be merely results of a form of suggestion.

(5) Results that can be described as curative will be found, probably, only in what are known as functional and neurotic conditions.

(6) It is most unwise to countenance untrained laymen in carrying on spiritual healing