THERE is no avenue through which satanic deception can so readily reach the human mind as through a supposed miraculous demonstration. And it is through the means of wonderful feats of healing that the strongest grasp is secured. The reason that Satan has chosen this means of deceiving the world is that the ministry of Christ was made notable by His extensive healing of the sick. Because of this fact everything that appears to be supernatural is supposed to be of God. And everything that is incomprehensible to the human mind is deemed miraculous.
So through this means a double deception is worked,—on some minds the works of Satan through his agents are imposed as the work of Christ, while the real miracles of Christ through His accredited agencies are discredited because they are in a measure counterfeited by evil and even professed anti-christian persons. The same principle is still in vogue that was manifested when Moses and Aaron worked miracles before the king of Egypt, and his magicians imitated some of them.
The gift of healing is one of the spiritual gifts that Christ gave to men when He ascended on high. See 1 Cor. 12:1-13 and Eph. 4:7-13. And Satan's work is and always has been to imitate the work of Christ and draw to himself the honor and worship due to Christ. All false worship, including all idea of sacrifice, originated in imitation of true worship and sacrifice, and all false worship, of whatever character, is devil worship, for the reason that Satan is the real author of it all. The whole purpose of it all was manifested when he proposed to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for the worship of himself.
Regarding the many deceptions in the way of healing, in these days, when nearly every one is ailing and ready to grasp at any straw that promises relief, we note some pointed remarks of Dr. E. R. Dille, of this city, on the subject of Christian Science. The following is from the Tribune's report:—
"The body never suffers. How much easier it would be for the Associated Charities this winter to send Christian Science teachers among the poor and convince them that hunger and cold are only illusions—that, as Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science's high authority, says, 'Heat and cold are the products of mortal mind, and food neither strengthens nor weakens the body.'"
"I know of a Christian Science healer who had a daughter upon whom some friends called, and the mother met them at the door and said, 'Helen can not come down; she has a belief in a boil.'"
"Tho she eats with relish, Mrs. Eddy scouts the idea that matter is anything more than an illusion. Tho she has fires in her fine mansion, she says that heat and cold are the products of mortal mind. Mrs. Eddy has a school where she trains Christian Science practitioners, who, not having to waste their time upon such gross and unspiritual things as anatomy, hygiene, physiology, materia medica, or therapeutics, are turned loose on society with great rapidity. For the first course of twelve lessons she charges 300 good hard dollars. So you see that the principles of Christian Science can not yet be applied to commercial transactions. If you call in a Christian Science healer, she will tell you to think you are well and you are well; but if in harmony with these beautiful principles you tell her to think she is paid, she is liable to have you arrested."
"Christian Scientists say that their cures prove that Mrs. Eddy's system is divine. Then the relic cures at the Catholic shrines prove that they are genuine and that the Roman Catholic Church is divine, and Schlatter's and Dowie's cures prove them to be right. These cures effectually neutralize each other so far as any individual value is concerned. There has never been a great delusion on earth that has not been attested by healing wonders."
"For every cure wrought by it I will bring you 100 wrought by the bones and relics of Roman Catholic saints; by healers like Schlatter, who healed thousands in Denver; by Dowie, who has a great establishment in Chicago and shows thousands of testimonials (and he says that Christian Science is an invention of Satan), by clairvoyants, quack doctors, and every quackery and nostrum under the sun. There is not a healing humbug in the world that can not get all the testimonials he wants."
If the adversary of souls can not draw men directly to himself, he will endeavor to confuse their minds so that they will not know the difference between his work and that of Christ. By getting them to discredit everything in the line of miracles, his purpose in forestalling their salvation is accomplished anyhow. W. N. G.
