DIVINE HEALING by Mrs. S. M. I. Henry

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 15, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 11.

DIVINE HEALING.

By Mrs. S. M. I. Henry

THE sight of the pool of Bethesda, even in a picture, must inspire many sacred imaginings, and to the invalid bring more or less of hope, according to the measure of his faith in a real present, personal Christ. In common thought and speech a distinction which is unwarrantable is made between "divine healing" and the cure of disease. God is accredited with the one, while the physician, or the nostrum, is given the honor for the other. The one is called natural, while the other is supposed to be so supernatural as to be not quite respectable or safe.

But there is no cure that is not healing, and no healing that is not of God. Jesus said, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth," and Paul repeated the same truth when he said, "There is no power but of God;" hence all the power by which disease is abated or cured is of God, and has been from the beginning of its first symptoms until now. This curative power is also always manifested in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, and without Him it has no manifestation. It is revealed in the individual in proportion to the man's reception of and agreement with the life that is itself of God.

Health or disease is a question of more or less life; and, since Christ is the life, it follows that physical conditions depend on a more or less perfect acceptance of, or agreement with, Him. Poor health means a limited Christ—a Christ misunderstood, received unworthily, with scant welcome, or altogether repudiated. To repudiate Christ one does not necessarily call himself an infidel. He may be known as a good Christian, and might most positively assert that he loves the Lord, and is accepting even his sickness from His hand as a 'strange dispensation of Providence.' And it would be rightly characterized as strange—so foreign to God that it could not come from Him.

Christ is more than a name, and to be a Christian is more than a profession. Christ has a character made up of certain principles that are eternal, and to take Him, one must take every principle which He has, just as fast as it is revealed to him. To be a Christian is to accept in one's self that Christ is right and true and good, and to give Him undisputed possession of all that is His own in us. This, of course, includes a perfect acknowledgment of the claim which He makes upon the human body as His dwelling-place, and of His right to co-operation in fitting it up after His own ideal, and of our consent that He shall control all its functions and processes.

He requires that the principle of life shall dominate these functions, that everything which tends to death, which would clog or break down the structure, shall be ruled out of practise; that all the machinery shall be kept in place, and given room in which to operate; and that all the friction (which is simply contradiction) shall be utterly destroyed.

"Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. . . . Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee," are the significant words left upon record in the Bethesda narrative, to indicate that absolute obedience to the Word or law of God is the condition of faith. True, "faith healing" involves first of all faith in Christ, and in the authority of His life in the human body; of His right to rule in and reign over every physical as well as mental and spiritual operation; of His right to determine the food with which the man shall be nourished; what principles shall control his clothing, his breathing, his dwelling, his exercise and labor; and how he shall relate himself to people, and things in general, in the world. It is unquestionably reasonable that the Word of God should be accepted as the rule and guide of all life, because of the conditions upon which life exists.

Sickness is lack of adjustment to, and failure to recognize and obey, the authority and power of life. It is to man what a bruise or break is to a branch of the vine,—it limits its hold on life. The broken branch may draw, by a little sliver of the wood fiber and bark by which it hangs, a small portion of sap—just enough to keep it from actual death, but it is at best unsightly, and can not be tolerated very long. It must wholly abide in the vine, or soon be entirely broken off and thrown into the brush heap.

The root of the vine is the depository of the life current. It does not hold anything which can produce breakage or decay. These all come from outside causes. The power by which we are healed and kept in health is the abiding Spirit. He has no sin, no sickness, no infirmity to give. These have no part in Him, and come from things with which he is in constant controversy, and which he has determined to overcome. The medium by which the Spirit works to overcome evil, in any soul is the Word; and as we deal with the Word, we deal with Him. Reject the Word, and you grieve the Spirit; and to grieve the Holy Spirit is to interrupt the flow of life, to bind a ligature about the body of the member of Christ, which you are. Wind a thread about your finger,

and learn the lesson which it teaches. You are as the finger on the hand of Christ. The unbelief and disobedience by which you grieve the Holy Spirit are as the ligature, and cut into the circulation of life between you and Christ, so that congestion (which is selfishness), and pain, decay, suppuration, must result unless the ligature is removed in time by a cheerful acceptance of the Word and will of God in all things.

Perfect health in body and mind and spirit would be an endorsement by the Spirit of God of the consecration to Christ, and intelligent obedience to principle, of the individual man.

God does not heal a man by any arbitrary exercise of power, but by teaching him how to understand His Word and will, how to work with the Spirit, how to prevent the bruises, breakages, and ligatures such as intercept the flow of life.

Through wrong ways of living, through the inheritance of sin, one may find himself in a condition so desperate that even after he has become enlightened and has accepted what he knows of truth,—has done all that he can do to live right,—he is still so far from health, that death, or long invalidism, seems inevitable. He may have given all unquestionably into the hands of God, but he may be yet like the poor man at the Pool of Bethesda, with no one to help him into the pool, while his own best efforts are apparently thwarted at every turn. But his case is not hopeless, for Jesus is just as truly the healer to-day as then. As then, He works by means,—by the simple, natural, common things that lie all about us, and by the practical faith which we use every moment of our lives.

"Wilt thou be made whole?" He asks, for the wilt to be whole must be in the individual himself.

"Wilt thou be made whole?" Not simply made free from pain and that awful sense of physical discomfort, weakness, and incapacity, but whole, whole, WHOLE, in body, mind, and spirit. You can not be whole, even if your body seems perfectly sound, as long as a sinful thought or purpose lurks in the mind. If the will is still set to do evil, a man can not will to be made whole. If you so will to be made whole that you surrender all of self, all of appetite, all of ambition, and will be only as an instrument in the hands of God, then to you comes the command: "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. . . . Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee."

Many injudicious people hinder when they would help the suffering, because they are not informed as to the conditions of healing. They have caught a superficial notion that if any one is sick, and can be worked up into a condition of faith, he must necessarily be healed; and they visit the sick, and urge the "prayer of faith" upon them. Many are led into this snare; and grievous disappointment and much injury to faith and courage are the result.

The "prayer of faith" can not be put on or worked up for the occasion. It is the deep breathing of the Spirit, who not only knows all about the use we will make of strength and health if it is granted, but that "also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which can not be uttered;" and any prayer for healing that is not first prayed within by the abiding Spirit, who knows all that has passed in that soul's secret counsel as well as in heaven concerning it, will be simply of the lips, and can not be answered, for it is no prayer—only a miserable makeshift and pretense. Any prayer that the Spirit breathes within us will be answered. That is the prevailing prayer of the righteous,—the only righteous One, but which, with the righteousness of Christ, may be imputed to us because in our helpless unrighteousness we yet love and believe in Him.

When the Spirit of God in a sick man knows that he will do right provided he is given the knowledge and power so to do, he will by the Word teach him how, and give him the requisite power, and will then begin to breathe the prayer of healing faith all through him. Then "let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."

The motion to send for the elders of the church should always come from the sick one, without suggestion from outside; for no one can know when he is in such condition that the Spirit can breathe within him the healing prayer; and the Spirit should be left to do His work unhindered in every soul. All efforts to help should be such as to lead to the faith of Jesus and to loyalty to His Word. When these abound in any man, the Spirit can be trusted to do the rest.

"Surely He hath borne our sicknesses;" hence we need no longer carry them ourselves. We have in Christ the same right to be free from our infirmities as from the pollution of our sins. MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.