34. With a view to resisting dangerous tendencies in contemporary thought, the Conference urges the Clergy in their dealings with the sick to teach as clearly as possible the privilege of those who are called, through sickness and pain, to enter especially into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings and to follow the example of His patience. "35. The Conference recommends the provision for use in Pastoral Visitation of some additional prayers for the restoration of health more hopeful and direct than those contained in the present Office for the Visitation of the Sick, and refers this recommendation to the Committee to be appointed by the President under the Resolution on the subject of Prayer Book enrichment. 66 '36. The Conference, having regard to the uncertainty which exists as to the permanence of the practice commended by St. James (v. 14), and having regard to the history of the practice which professes to be based upon that commendation, does not recommend the sanctioning of the anointing of the sick as a rite of the Church. "It does not, however, advise the prohibition of all anointing, if anointing be earnestly desired by the sick person. In all such cases the Parish Priest should seek the counsel of the Bishop of the diocese. Care must be taken that no return be made to the later custom of anointing as a preparation for death." 1 1 Conference of Bishops at Lambeth, S. P. C. K., 1908, pp. 54-5. The student who wishes to compare other rites of Unction with those mentioned above in Chapters XXIIXXIII, XXV, and XXIX, will find the present Eastern service in the Euchologion, and an English translation in G. V. Shann, Book of Needs. Early Medieval Western forms are in E. Martene, De Antiquis Ritibus Ecclesiæ, I, 7: Medieval English forms in the York Manual, ed. W. G. Henderson (Surtees Society, Vol. 63), which includes a collation of the Sarum Manual and that of Hereford; or in W. Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiæ Anglicana; and the modern Latin forms in the Ritualia of Rome and Milan. CHAPTER XXX FAITH-HEALING TO-DAY IN EAST AND WEST America and Europe; The Shrines of Greece ENGLISHMEN have been apt to forget how general is still the practice of religious healing, especially outside the island of Great Britain. Yet when we cross either the Irish or the British Channel we have only to open our eyes, and the holy wells of Ireland fluttering with their little eloquent bits of rag, or the shrines of the Continent, loaded with gold and silver thank-offerings, will make us aware of a widespread phenomenon which hitherto we probably have passed over in unconcerned contempt. These have a special interest because they have gone on from time immemorial, and they need. special mention because their flourishing condition is little realised in this country. But it has to be borne in mind that there has been far more faithhealing even in England than is generally known. A few years ago a conference of some 2,000 faith-healers was held at the Agricultural Hall in London, at which 120 English faith-healing centres were represented; there are such centres, too, in the Colonies, and "prayer-healing" circles exist in Protestant Prussia. On the other side of the Atlantic, one need hardly say, the movement is enormous. Nor is it new. Just as in England we had the Peculiar Peo ple and more than one Beth Shan, sects of the oldfashioned type, before the newer movements came over from America, so in America itself, before Christian Science with its million of members and before the other Inner-health movements which differ greatly from Christian Science, there was Phineas P. Quimby (1802–1866), from whom Mrs. Eddy got her ideas; 1 and there were older faithhealing sects, such as the Shakers, who were founded in New York by Anne Lee in 1774. Christian Science does not vouchsafe us any evidence, and therefore is of little use for this purpose; but some of the Mental Healing centres have been open as to their cures, an example of which is given in the Appendix.2 No one has yet attempted, so far as I know, the gigantic task of collecting and examining the faithhealing agencies in East, and West, and Far West Christendom at the present day. We need go no further than Normandy, and we find healing centres at the springs of Fécamp or Grand-Andely; we travel further afield and in every Roman Catholic country we see abundant evidence, without having to go to Lourdes. In Austria, for instance, at Mariazell, Styria, the church is visited by 200,000 pilgrims a year, and has been a centre of healing since the year 1157. In Italy we find churches like that of S. Maria dell' Arco, near Naples, which has been a local Lourdes for four hundred years, and provides an 1 The whole story is well and fairly told by Mr. Lyman P. Powell, Christian Science, the Faith and its Founder (Putnam's), 1907. 2 Appendix II, p. 406. official pamphlet giving the names of over a hundred cases of healing out of the crowds to which the votive offerings, covering the interior of the church, bear witness: here, too, as at Amalfi, Palermo, and other places, the ancient practice of Incubation is practised.1 The Shrines of Greece And so we might continue; but it will be more useful to give fuller particulars of the Eastern Church, since most travellers do not penetrate so far into Europe, and Englishmen have an unfortunate habit of ignoring this ancient part of Catholic Christendom. We are too apt to assume that the frequenting of holy places is peculiar to the Roman Church, and we forget that the Orthodox Church of the East has more than one Lourdes. I do not know that anyone has told us about Russian practices in this connection, but Miss Hamilton, in her investigations of Incubation,- the ancient practice of sleeping in pagan temples which is still continued among the Christians of Greece and South Italy, where the climate renders it convenient has visited several great churches in Greece, and from her book I will venture to take a few instances. She describes churches where healing is regularly carried on, at Mytilene, at Crete, in the Cyclades, at Cyprus, and Corfu, and in the mainland at many chapels in Argolis, in a monastery of Arcadia, where "hundreds of sick people make the pilgrim1 M. Hamilton, Incubation, 1906, p. 183 ff. age each year, but out of the crowd only seven or eight receive healing," also in Achaia, Phocis, and other parts, as well as several places in Asia Minor. To all these churches the sick come in great numbers, and cures are confidently reported. For instance, in the monastery of the Hagioi Tesserakontes near Therapne in Laconia "The festival on March 22nd is a great event in the district, and pilgrims come from long distances to attend it. Incubation is practised in the church, and miracles of healing are performed on blind people, cripples, and paralytics especially." 1 Or, again, at the church of St. George in the village of Arachova, 4,000 feet high in the valley of Delphi, is a new picture of the saint "It is the votive offering of a Russian, who came a paralytic to Arachova in July, 1905. He spent several weeks praying and sleeping in the church, and departed completely cured. The festival of St. George is held on April 23rd [as it is all over the world]. They have three days of dancing and feasting, and at night all suppliants bring their rugs and sleep round the shrines in the church. Every year many of the sick are found to be cured when morning comes. "2 Some of the other places mentioned are real health resorts, as the church of the Panagia Iatrissa, the "Virgin Physician," on Mount Taygetos, where consumptives come, and very wisely spend the summer in open-air treatment, combined with regular prayer in the little chapel and Incubation in the cells that surround its court. In many other places, it is interesting to notice, mad people are frequently 1 M. Hamilton, Incubation, p. 216, 2 Ibid., p. 214. |