of prolonged moral opportunity. 'What shall I eat, and what shall I drink, and how will it agree with me after I have eaten it?' are all necessary inquiries, but they are secondary. The first question is, 'Am I worth feeding . . . does the world need men of my type?""

These points are well taken. Freedom from pain is by no means the first consideration of life. Healing is by no means the chief goal of thought and effort. Any system of therapy which puts it first cannot stand as the highest, noblest ministrant of human need. If any religious system puts it first or makes it so prominent as to rob the higher goals in the moral and spiritual sphere of their grandeur, it loses its claim for human respect and deserves to go the way of all exploded superstitions. But some things must not be forgotten here.

If God is the source of all order and harmony and only such, must not union with Him promote all order and harmony in human life? Psychology is teaching us the influence of the mental factor in health and absence of pain. My belief in God tends to set my thought right, bringing order and harmony out of its confusion. Can I not therefore expect, in the face of the best knowledge of to-day, both philosophic and scientific, that my body, which is ever and always reproducing my thoughts regarding it, will enter into this order and harmony? It must necessarily be so. If I am bent simply on immunity from pain, and personal comfort, my thought has not come into its most perfect synthetization of order and harmony, for these, as experience well teaches, cannot be looked for in the mere material sphere or earthly order. These

goals, when pursued for their own sake alone, are elusive and uncertain; in fact, we may say such search is selfdefeating, but if we recognize that they spontaneously accrue to us in their higher forms when we are on the nobler quests, we may stop a little while to consider when we are on these quests and when health and immunity from certain forms of pain at least are not ours, whether we are really quite as wholly on such quests as we thought.

Again, Jesus' attitude toward all sorts of disease and physical pain caused by ill health was one of rebuke. There is not a scintilla of evidence that when he had the opportunity to cure it by removing it, he refused, even hesitated or waited. In one or two cases he seemed to linger before addressing himself to his task, and these were cases where the power even mightier than casting out disease was evinced. We do believe it was by no means Jesus' primary aim to heal and to free from pain, but we do say with the fullest conviction that it did enter into his plan of bringing life more abundant to this world of ours. It followed, necessarily followed, believers.

Still again, health, personal comfort, freedom from pain are desirable for the larger activities in realizing the Kingdom of God on earth, and they are often worth some careful consideration and large expenditure of time and money to restore when lost. If a system can be devised to bring its help with small or no cost to many who are making it the chief aim and purpose of life to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth, then surely those who are working also to this end, themselves in no fetters of mind or body, should hasten with such relief to their fellows who are in such fetters, to help

them realize this one noble end. And it is just the discovery and working out of such a system that is the aim and purpose of those devoted men and women to-day who belong to the battling saints in the highest sense of the word. They are to be found in the ranks of the new as well as in the old schemes of thought, and the time has come to put away suspicions and doubts of one another and join efforts, minister of religion, psychotherapist, physician, faith healer, health practitioner, social worker, to establish that therapy that will best promote the highest efficiency of the worker for the Kingdom of God.

CHAPTER XV

HOW THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH MAY HEAL

WE may now ask what attitude the Christian Church should take toward religious psychotherapy. We have endeavored to make it plain there is a distinct art which may be called religious psychotherapy, having a distinct sphere of its own though in close touch with all other efficient agencies that make for health. The presumption at once arises that it is right and proper and even necessary that the Church should carry on such a ministry. Let us stop, before we lay down some principles for the practical handling of the matter, for a few considerations why it belongs to the Church's sphere of service.

1. Jesus healed. He healed many. The gospel records are clear on this point. Criticism establishes those records. True, they are not just such records as satisfy the critical modern mind as to just what the diseases were that were cured, how far they had progressed in all cases, how long they remained cured, and all that was actually done in effecting the cure. There is enough given, however, to stamp them as true records. There is no evidence of their being "edited." Jesus' whole attitude toward the sick and suffering was one of the freest willingness to heal.

J. Oswald Dykes, in The Christian Minister and His Duties, page 306, says :

"It is from our Lord alone that a pastor learns the immeasurable value in the Father's eyes of each single soul gained for His kingdom and how its recovery repays the utmost pains or sacrifice it may cost. Take along with this our Lord's scrupulous respect for the personal freedom, responsibility, and right to selfdetermination and self-development which belong to every human being, and you have the two complementary truths by which as guiding lines one man's ministry of spiritual help to his fellow is defined. Jesus while on the outlook for opportunities to help and never sparing Himself, is never found to force His help on any one; nor did He ever hurry on the work of a soul's growth, but with endless tolerance gave it time. It was His method without strife, or the argumentative discussions dear to the propagandist, to drop, as occasion offered, truths like seeds in terse and easy language, leaving them to germinate in receptive hearts. It is needless to say that He never refused to aid the suffering in their bodily as well as moral ailments, although it is clear that He could only aid when, by sympathy which always meant suffering for Himself, He had entered into their case."

John the Baptist, who sought credentials of Jesus the Messiah, was pointed to his works. Jesus authorized and empowered the disciples to work these cures. It was distinctly in his mind that these works should be continued in his name after his leaving the disciples. "Greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto the Father." He said he wrought his works by the Father through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and the fullness of the Holy Spirit was to be given after he, in bodily presence, was gone. His life and works have been the inspiration of men imbued with the mind of their Master for the performance