is well characterized by the name: "The Gospel of Healing."* This is really and emphatically a religious revival, whatever else it may be. It is at heart distinctively spiritual and springs from a fresh development, a fresh awakening, of the "spiritual consciousness" of men. And here, again, we must hasten to say, this "Gospel of Healing" is not really new. It is oldold as Christianity itself surely, and may rightly claim indeed to be definitely Christian, in its origin as in its essential nature. It has simply sprung into new life, come to rebirth, in this movement of our time.

It will be well, doubtless, to ask here if the claim is valid that Christ gave to the world what we call the "Gospel of Healing." It certainly does seem that if Christ enjoined anything upon his disciples it was to do the "works," so called-the healing. If there was anything more prominent than another in his own ministry it surely was the "works," the healing, which he performed in privacy, in public places, and on almost all occasions during his active public life. It can be truly said from the testimony of the New Testament records that where he preached once, exhorted the people on one occasion, he healed many cases of disease. And it is safe to say that in his instructions to his disciples he laid the emphasis on the "works" rather than on the word; he put the ministry of healing before the ministry of preaching. He charged the disciples, as he taught them, as he commissioned and sent them forth, to "heal the sick." He insisted upon the healing as the more essential thing, apparently.

What explanation has been given, or can be given, of this unquestionable fact? Nothing really worthy of notice has been offered in disposal of it. It seems to have been taken for granted, without any reason and without scriptural authority, that the command of Jesus to do the "works," heal the sick, was meant for his immediate disciples, and was intended for

* It appears under various forms, well known popularly as "Faith Cure," "Prayer Cure," "Divine Healing," "Christian Science," etc.; but these are evidently only different phases of one and the same thing essentially.

no others or other time. If that were true in regard to healing the same must be true in regard to preaching, and Christian pulpits and Christian preachers as such have no sanction or authority to-day for their existence. It surely appears that the command was equally valid, equally explicit, to his followers for all time both to preach the gospel of truth and to do the works of healing. Is there the slightest intimation by any New Testament writer that the command to heal was at any time revoked? Nay; in no way. We must conclude, without some evidence to the contrary, that the gospel of healing was intended by Christ as a part, a very essential part, of Christianity. The accounts of the healing blotted out of the gospel records, a blank would result indeed.

The important inference must necessarily be made that Jesus had good and sufficient reasons for such great stress placed by him upon the "works," for such prominence given them in his own ministry and that of his disciples, as to have made them part and parcel of Christianity, which was for every age and for all mankind. We must see that very great importance was attached by him to the "works," shown very emphatically by his own extensive doing of them, and by the pressing charge to his followers to do the like.

Why were the "works," naturally we may ask, of so great moment? We answer, obviously there was a good, a value, in those works far transcending that of mere bodily cure. Is it not possible that there are some great truths, certain basic laws and principles, disclosed, illustrated, and enforced thereby, of deep and far-reaching import? We believe so. We are beginning to understand them. A glimpse at least has been caught in these latter days of their large significance. Those who have essayed in our day to do the works Jesus enjoined, to put in practise the method of cure by spiritual means, could not fail to have impressed upon their minds something of their real meaning, of their spiritual import, of their deep revealings.

First of all, they make manifest in a convincing manner the "supremacy of spirit," which surely should find appreciation

by a Christian church in these days of materialistic tendencies. They help men to a higher and clearer conception of the infinite Power. They are, in a word, a revelation of God, the Father. Jesus considered them thus, we must think. Indeed, he said so again and again. Jesus evidently meant the healing, used it, and meant it to be used ever after him, to help men to see that the Almighty Father is very near to them, working ever to heal them even of their physical maladies, the pain and disease of their bodies, as well as to heal them by His same gracious power of ills of mind, heart, and soul. Jesus emphasized the works, can we not believe, as tangible evidence that the infinite God, and He alone, is the real Healer; that he is ever ready and lovingly desirous to cure the bodily infirmities of his children? The existence of God as a reality is thus impressed upon the mind, his immanence upon the consciousness; and his goodness and love are manifested by this all-life-giving and restorative power. The subjects of the healing, when they experience it, feel all this to be trueas if He were indeed "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

Again, the healing afforded to men a new estimate of man, a revelation of him of his greatness and power. The old theological view of him held by our ancestors is happily gone. The later valuation of him preached by Channing and others is nearer the gospel representation. The dignity and intrinsic nobleness of human nature were emphasized-yea, the essential goodness and even divineness of humanity were asserted.

But Jesus took a yet deeper sounding of the real, essential man, can we not see? It is disclosed in his announcement to men: "The kingdom of heaven is within you." In his command, "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven," it is shown. He proclaimed it in "All things are possible to him who believeth." It is declared again in his assurance: "The works that I do ye shall do also, and greater works than these shall ye do." To one who experienced healing at the hands of Jesus all this seemed enforced and illustrated thereby without

doubt. It is the same over again to-day to the patient healed by spiritual means. It is made a living truth to him that men are "made in God's image and likeness;" that they are his children, offspring indeed, sons and daughters of his, partakers of his essence, sharers in his power, and joined to him in oneness. So that to assert the divine, yea more, the deific nature of man-that is, as to his highest, deepest, most essential nature-ceases to appear extravagant or strange today.

Thus it is that the God-nature, the inherent powers and possibilities of man, so open up in the light and by the application of the Healing Gospel as to give a new revelation of him. There are other grand truths revealed by Christ's gospel of healing of equal fundamental worth, but which even to mention here there is not space.

It may be asked, if Jesus gave this Gospel of Healing, and it is of such great importance and leads to such invaluable results, such revealings of truths, why has it been so little appreciated, so long neglected or ignored? The Apostolic Church accepted it and valued it as an essential part of the New Dispensation; the early Christians continued long in the same faith and practise. But gradually, as the centuries wore on, it was mostly left behind, till at length the Church-Protestant Christians, at any rate-became almost wholly strangers to it. They could say, in the old phrase: "We have not so much as heard whether there be any" ministry of healing. It "was in the world," but the "world knew it not." Man was but poorly prepared then to receive, value, and use it.

How has it fared with the gospel Truth that Jesus taught and gave to be preached? What has been preached as it? For centuries hardly more than a mere travesty of it had place in Christendom. Only indeed in recent years has anything like a reasonable, ethical, spiritual grasp and appreciation of it dawned upon Christians. Is it any wonder, however? How could men then, mostly on the level of the senses, gross appetites and passions, comprehend the truth, beauty, and spirituality of Christ's interpretation of religion? It could only be

a "leaven," and work leavening, in the lump of humanity. But what was thus through Jesus "lifted up" could "draw men unto" it; and it draws them now as never before. The time is ripe, and men are ready now perhaps for its large appreciation. Therefore it is that we find possible, yea, actual today, this Spiritual Movement. Be it true that something like a new time is dawning on the world! There are "signs of the times" that surely seem propitious. There is such an awakening of the spiritual consciousness of men in these latter days as to make this new-old Gospel of Healing possible of reception and large fruition in Christendom.

Faith, high and true, large and strong enough, has been so evolved in man that the spiritual healing of him, even so thoroughly as to include his body, is a possibility. To such faith, which is the spiritual state, the power of laying hold of the spiritual, the consciousness of the reality and power of spirit to such faith, indeed, "all things are possible." The sick, the suffering, the weak and sinful are realizing this possibility. The great Teacher is taken at his word, and it is found true: "If ye have faith, the works that I do ye shall do also." It is these conditions that make possible this large and rapidly-growing, and may be permanent, Movement of our day. Time alone will prove what great, general value it has, and what is to be its eventual outcome.*

To conclude, will so-called Liberal Christianity, or will the

* Dr. R. Heber Newton says of it: "Another of the most revolutionizing conceptions of the latter part of our closing century is the movement known under various names-as Faith Cure, Christian Science, Mental Healing, and what not. Within thirty years it has developed to the amazing proportions which it has now assumed in this country. The Movement is still rapidly growing. Allow for all possible nonsense and folly, for any amount of crudeness in the thought of its expounders, for all sorts of exaggerations-and still the broad, deep fact remains that what men in times past have here and there dimly divined to be true, without discovering the application of the truth, has come to be widely recognized and practically applied with astounding results: results that are only the beginning of the issues of this New Thought. He would be a bold prophet who, looking a half century ahead, would dare to say how far Medical Science will be changed by this New Thought; how far man's nature will be altered by it; how far the ills of human life will be modified and ameliorated through it."