Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/236

 Holy Apostles,' we may most reasonably ask for authority to administer the blessing through one of the outward signs which He employed. A ceremony, duly authorised by the Church, would have much value, as regulating and controlling the impulse to invoke the healing 'charisma,' which at present is often bestowed and received through 'spiritual healers' who lack the full official sanction of the Church.

(v) There is another Ministry of Healing, which the Divine Love has provided for the weary body and the careworn mind, which contributes its own part to the restoration of the sick. It is the silent ministry of Nature. Within the ailing body she exerts her healing power; the doctor's best ally, on the physical side, is the vis medicatrix naturae, that strange recuperative power which resides in organisms, and offers a standing resistance to the inroads of disease and age. And then outside there are the soothing influences of the world of Nature, which steals into the troubled spirit to bring the calm which Wordsworth, in