ABC of Spiritualism 68 & 69/100
68. What objections do Spiritualists raise to the medical profession and to ordinary materia medica?
The great objection to ordinary medical study and practice that Spiritualism raises is rather to its defects than to what it contains. It holds that the medical study and practice up to the present time has dealt almost solely with the body which is merely the house in which a man lives; that every system of medical study and practice which does not include a thorough and practical knowledge of man’s mental and spiritual forces and their influences in causing and healing disease, is radically defective; that you can no more secure radical and permanent healing for the sick by mere change of bodily conditions than you can reform a man’s character by painting his house; that disease originates largely in wrong mental action (inharmonious thinking, feeling and willing); and that to secure permanent restoration to health and happiness you must bring the mind and spiritual forces into harmony with each other and with nature.
69. Has Spiritualism practiced Metaphysical Healing?
Yes, and in a great variety of efficient forms. Historically Spiritualism may justly be regarded as the Mother of the many cults of Metaphysical Healing now spread over America. Long before Dr. Quimby and Mrs. Eddy and Evans of the Mind Cure, long before the New Thought Movement was organized, Dr. Andrew Jackson Davis taught and practiced healing by the mind and spirit forces (though he also made a limited use of drugs), and continued this practice 65 years. Nearly every medium of the early days of Modern Spiritualism was a healer and the verified accounts of many of their healings read like Miracles of the olden time. Dr. J. R. Newton was in many respects the most noted, popular and successful healer who ever walked the earth. According to statistics furnished by representative committees in the various cities he visited, and published in that marvellously interesting book: “The Modern Bethesda; Or the Life of Dr. J. R. Newton,” he laid his hands on and healed in about 20 years 1 50,000 people. No more astounding cases of healing are found in the world’s history than those of Dr. Newton who was a devout Spiritualist.