The Christian Religion as a Healing Power; A Defense and Exposition of the Emmanuel Movement (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... i session of the soul. Some persons will at once condemn this teaching, on the ground of its mystical character; but to offer a man religion without fmysticism would be like offering him a stone when he asks for bread. 22. Appeal To The Nerve-specialists. But let us turn from abstract discussion and make appeal to some of the great students of the nervous system in health and disease. f "We can reckon," says Mobius, "the downfall j of religion as one of the causes of mental and j nervous disease. Religion is essentially a I comforter. It builds for the man who stands amid the misery and evil of the world another and fairer world. Besides his daily life full of care, it enables him to lead a second and a purer life. The consciousness of being within the hand of Providence, the confident hope of future righteousness and redemption, is a support to the believer in his work, his care, and his need, for which unbelief has no compensation. . . . If we consider the effect of irreligion as increasing our helplessness to resist the storms of life and as favoring dissipation and crime, its relation to nervousness cannot be doubted; for if chronic moral dis-( turbances contribute to nervousness, these con DEGREES ditions must be regarded as causes." 1 "Religious faith," writes Dubois of Berne, "would be the best preventive against the maladies of the soul and the most powerful means of curing them, if it had sufficient ]fe. to create true Christian stoicism in its followers. In this state of mind, which is, alas so rare in the thinking world, man becomes invulnerable. Feeling himself upheld by his God, he fears neither sickness nor death. He may succumb under the attacks of physical disease, but morally he remains unshaken in the midst of his...