Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/130

 is apt to become a prey to the lusts of the flesh and their consequences. Gasquet observes that religion may either produce or tend to hinder unsoundness of mind; that it may cause certain symptoms of insanity or modify them; and, lastly, that it may be employed as a means of moral prevention and treatment. He believes that every form of religion, however widely it may differ from our standard of the truth, if it enforces the precepts of morality, is a source of strength to the sound mind that sincerely accepts it.

Clouston has justly observed that far more depends upon the brain that goes to church than upon what it may obtain in the church. That is to say, there must be the predisposition to break down, the religious influence being often merely an accident. It must also be remembered that religious over-enthusiasm may be merely a symptom and not a cause.

Much misconception through misquotation has arisen in connexion with the writer's views as to the therapeutic value of prayer. Reference to the context of his views expressed before the Society for the Study of Childhood will show that reference was made to the habit of prayer in childhood, and its therapeutic value was there urged more as a preventive