CHAPTER XIII

THE DEMANDS OF A VALID RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF HEALING

We have now finished our discussion of some of the distinctive religious and philosophical systems of healing and are face to face with the necessity of laying down the plan of a valid system of healing on religious ground.

We have called attention to the demand that is being made upon the church to-day for its larger attention to the relief of human ills clearly within her power to relieve, and that there are those in her ranks who have begun to respond to this demand. There are doubtless many others within the Church, who are willing to respond to it if they knew exactly what was demanded of them and how they could meet the demand. It will be our aim to answer the first of these two questions in this chapter and the second in the two chapters following.

Before attempting to put this demand in definite shape, let us look at some of the elements that enter into such a demand to give it form. In directing our thought to this point, we must have recourse again to some aspects of religious value brought out in our former discussion.

Religious value, in the light of which we are now discussing psychotherapy, has been referred to as the ideal unity and consummation of all values; as their con

servation, the perpetuation of the fundamental values of life; the gathering up, the unification, and completion of the logical, æsthetic, and ethical values; and the test of the perfection of religious value is the extent of the development of these constituent values.

We at once see by such conceptions that we are on different ground from that in our sciences and in much of our everyday philosophy and religion, and yet we are plainly within our experience or within the materials given us in our experience. When we are tumbled, rather roughly at times, perhaps, out of some comfortable berth of opinion or thought, we may bump into religious reality, or at least into some aspect of it, and such unwelcome experiences are for our highest good, for we see we have not had true ground for our smug self-satisfaction and become bent on going on further in our search for ultimate reality. Men in all departments of human thought and in all walks of life are very prone to consider the values in their petty realm, the final values, the supreme values. It sometimes happens that the scientific man — he may be a highly educated and well-trained physician may not be able to view impartially and take the proper account of a bit of simple experience: the sickness and, to him, inexplicable convalescence of a patient; his reaction to the case is too wholly intellectual, logical. A minister of religion, thoroughly conscientious and sincere, may fail in his services of help and inspiration to a soul because he is lacking in due appreciation of the æsthetic values, and all that he does for his subject only tends to put the subject further out of his reach, for he fails to perceive his subject's keen sense of the proprieties, the symmetries, the harmonies of life.

We of the professions must stop talking market values where the market is our stall as the highest values. If this be not altogether possible, for it is still left to man to fill his little niche in some department of human activity which to him seems to be of greater importance than any other, he must recognize the values of his neighbors in their stalls. He must do more. He must, by rising above all personal, professional, and even all social values, come to the ground where he and his neighbors may finally meet on values of universal validity. It is not by rejecting the lower, the partial values, but, by coming to the truest, highest estimate of them, and allowing men perfect freedom of choice and movement in their respective spheres in attaining the highest values possible in such spheres, that we shall insure a foundation upon which the ultimate values will disclose to us religious reality in the truest sense of the term. When we are thus standing on the firm, solid, and unshakable ground of religious reality, we shall recognize and welcome the real contributions from all the minor spheres.

From the language of our professions, our spheres of labor, we are called to learn a wider, more universal language. We have called attention to this language; we have had its elements long with us; they are to be seen in the very constitution of man himself. Because we have become so enamored of one dialect, which has enabled us to orientate ourselves to many aspects of our life on our planet, we have failed to develop this more universal life and language which holds the key to the higher and best aspects of life and to nearly all the greater cosmical aspects of it. It is now to the rapid development of this life and language that man

has come; it can no longer be evaded, and any one who refuses to prepare for this life and to learn this language must go the way of all the unfit. Inasmuch as this life and language have much, we may truthfully say, nearly all, of our life, sick or well, within their power, it is vitally necessary for the future welfare of the race that we learn them quickly and learn them thoroughly. No piecemealing here; no splitting up into petty spheres of conception and practice, unless there is recognition of the whole and each one does his work with some reference to the whole. Thorough investigation will still be necessary, and this must at times be on narrow lines to be thorough, but there must be with it all the wider outlook, the conception of the whole.

The point is now reached where we may briefly discuss the elements that will point the way of a valid religious psychotherapy. These elements are as follows:

Sick

1. It must be supremely good. Character, the highest, truest, noblest attainable, will be the goal. ness comes from want of goodness. When it is said that many very good people are subject to the severest diseases, we have but to answer, their goodness is partial, inadequate; not a whole-souled, whole-hearted, and a whole-bodied goodness. Some are sick because they are not good to their mind; some because they are not good to their body. A goodness that starts in the spiritual and will be allowed to work unfettered and unhindered in the intellectual, emotional, and physical life will not be sick. It knows no sickness.

Any psychotherapeutic system, therefore, laying claim to the name of religion will attach the highest

importance to a superlative goodness as the goal for the treatment of the patient and as the requirement of character for the practitioner. This goodness must face the fathomlessly deep problems of man's moral nature, both in its regular, normal orbit and its obliquity. Evil here is not to be dispelled by an incantation. Sin is not to be healed by suggestion. While goodness may be found in human nature in every human, man will despair of finding here a font of goodness large enough, pure enough to wash away all defilement and cure all disease. In life above that of the merely human order; in transactions in which it is true he has a part, but in which the party of the first part is pure and holy, without taint, will he look for a goodness which will satisfy his longings for a perfect goodness. In Christianity, he finds just such a source in that One, who, representing both God and man, satisfied the farthest claims of justice and love, and thus in His own person opened up a source of goodness that flows unceasingly. It is in coming to this life as a font and receiving, that a goodness is gained which takes its seat in the inmost life of the subject, and becomes a spring, a well of living, healing power, making good all that the man is, and holy all that the man does. This goodness heals, and it heals most effectually. It is variously expressed in the creeds and formulas. Here it is in one, as given in the Congregational Statement, Article 4:

"We believe that this pardon (conveyed to the individual by Christ's sacrifice for sin) is appropriated by faith in Jesus Christ and that by this faith the Holy Spirit, producing union with the living Lord, regenerates human nature to eternal life."