SPIRITUAL HEALING. Spiritual healing is not identical with mental healing. They have much in common, it is true, but spiritual healing is definitely religious. The difference is illustrated by the operations of the Psycho-therapeutic Society (q.v.) and Christian Science (q.v.). The former system was purely mental; the latter is strictly spiritual. In both cases the aid of Mind is invoked. But on the one hand, it is Human Mind; on the other hand, Divine Mind. The healing power in Christian Science is the full realisation of the goodness of God and of the unreality of evil, the acceptance of a new view of mind and matter. Mental healing requires a great effort of the human mind. Spiritual healing requires no effort, because the mind that heals is the omnipotent Divine Mind. There have been mental healers in all ages. Jesus Christ, it has been claimed, was the first to reveal the science of Spiritual Healing. T. J. Hudson maintains (1) " that Jesus Christ was the first who correctly formulated the exact conditions neces sary and indispensable to the exercise of the power to heal the sick by psychic methods "; and (2) " that the conditions which he declared to be necessary to enable him to exercise that power are the same conditions which are indispensable to-day." An essential condition in
both healer and patient is faith. This was " the key to health and to heaven." This faith, as explained -by Christian Science, springs from a discernwient of spir'tual truth. Week after week persons testify, orally and by writing, that they have been healed of diseases by Christian Science. The testimonies are given with such obvious truthfulness and sincerity that it is impossible to doubt the genuineness of the cures. This suggests that Jesus possessed a secret, which was afterwards lost; and that this secret has been rediscovered in modern times. " If the nineteenth century was materialistic and critical, the Arst half of the twentieth century pro mises to be mystical and spiritual " (Religion and Medicine). See Horatio W. Dresser, Health and the Inner Life, 1907; T. J. Hudson, Psychic Phenomena, 1907 (tenth impression); E. Worcester, S. MoComb, and I. H. Coriat, Religion and Medicine, 190S.