its majesty unimpaired, and yet would take away from it such defects as are owing to the imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek languages in the early part of the seventeenth century. It would in fact be not a new version so much as the Authorised Version itself renewed in the light of modern knowledge. For the study of the Kown diáλeкTо in the hands of scholars like the late Dr. Moulton, Dr. Milligan and, in Germany, Dr. Deissmann, has carried familiarity with the Greek of the New Testament to a point which was unattainable even by the revisers of 1870. Such a version would, I hope, be sanctioned for use in all churches. It might become a second Authorised Version. It would restore the Bible to its true place in the mind and heart of the Anglo-Saxon race. Not long ago an important Committee was appointed by the President of the Board of Education' to inquire into the position of English in the educational system of England.' The Committee were unanimous in lamenting that the Bible had lost much of its old influence upon the national life : The power of the Bible [they wrote in their report] upon our language, our literature, our national life and thought, has been lost sight of, because the possibility has not hitherto been imagined that a liberal education may be, and should be, not only a gift within the reach of every child, but the very gift purposed by the State in undertaking the elementary training of its citizens. From the moment when this is admitted it will be seen to be no longer possible to deprive our schools of the free and impartial study of the Bible. If we set aside, as we do with any other classic, all consideration of its bearing upon dogmatic religion, there can be no division of opinion as to its historical position and effect in this country. The Committee were not primarily concerned with the religious character of the Bible. They regarded it wholly or mainly as a work of literature. But it is as an instrument of religion that the Bible has won, and still may hold, its sovereign power. It is a bond of union between the Reformed Churches of all Englishspeaking Christendom. It has been, and is to-day, the fountainhead of the highest and noblest thoughts in English literature. There could be no greater service to religion in the modern world than the restoration of the Bible to its ancient place in the affection and devotion of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. But the Bible will best regain its ancient authority if it can be read by all Christians and within all churches in such a form that, while it embodies the result of modern scholarship, it yet preserves the characteristics which in the Authorised Version, and in that version alone, have made it during more than three centuries the guide, the solace, and the inspiration of Great Britain, and of the British Dominions beyond the seas, and of English-speaking people all the world over. J. E. C. WELLDON. SPIRITUAL OR DIVINE HEALING A SCIENTIFIC and interesting article on 'Faith Healing' by Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones appeared in the February number of The Nineteenth Century and After. He speaks with authority, not only as an eminent member of the medical profession, but as one of the doctors appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve on the Committee of 1920 to consider the use with prayer of the laying on of hands, of the unction of the sick, and other spiritual means of healing.' I should like to express, not so much in answer to that article as in explanation, what I believe to be the view of the Church on this important question. The first thing to do in the discussion of this subject is to clear away all ambiguities and misconceptions. Spiritual healing is to be clearly distinguished from faith healing in its various forms. Spiritual healing is the supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit upon the spiritual part of man, and proceeding thence to influence his soul and body. It works not from below, but from above. Faith is necessary in the patient, but faith does not work the cure. And, again, the cure does not necessarily extend to the rehabilitation of the body. In the words of the Report of the Committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, p. 15: It is thus spiritual in its origin and aims. The restoration of the whole man, which is the goal of spiritual healing, will often include his physical healing; but this is only a fraction of the work aimed at and will not be the exclusive preoccupation of the healer. The success of the treatment will not consist simply in the achievement of bodily health, but in the raising the man's whole nature to a higher plane. The result when attained will be spiritual, and indicates a spiritual cause at work. Again, pp. 18, 19: ... No sick person must look to the clergyman to do what is the physician's or surgeon's duty to do. Whether the sick person throw off the sickness or not, the work of the Church will have been effective, if he has thereby found truer peace of spirit, and a more real knowledge of the uplifting presence and power of Christ. Sir R. Armstrong-Jones enumerates eight classes (or 'prescriptions') of faith healing, viz. : 1. Cures by relics. 2. Mind cures. 3. Christian Science cures. 4. Spiritualistic cures. 5. Mesmeric cures. 6. Direct faith healing. 7. Prayer and faith, as at Lourdes. 8. M. Coué's direct suggestion. With faith, or mental, healing, if the disease or ailment is not done away with, the case is regarded as a failure. The Christian Scientists do not appear to recognise the reality of pain or disease, or call in the aid of the physician. Another confusion, which is very general, is that between unction or anointing as practised in the Anglican branch of the Church and extreme unction among the Roman Catholics. The latter practise unction or chrism in various services, beginning with baptism. Extreme unction is the last of these occasions, and is given to the patient on the verge of death. It is not the same as that practised by the Apostles when they were sent out two by two: 'They anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them' (Mark vi. 13), or that recommended by St. James' words (v. 14, 15), which was evidently employed when there was a good hope of recovery. Spiritual healing, then, is to be looked for from above. Nor, as is sometimes inferred, is it to be in any way independent of the work of the doctors or of the medical aids that are available. Jesus Christ, whose first name means healer or doctor, distinctly recognises the place of the physician: They that are whole need not the physician, but they that are sick.' We are told in the Gospels of a case of a woman suffering from internal hæmorrhage for twelve years. In the words of St. Luke (viii. 43), himself a doctor by profession, ' She had spent all her living upon physicians, and could not be healed of any.' She had, that is, employed all the means known to her and recognised in her time before she had recourse to the Divine Healer. There is a striking passage in the Apocrypha : ... Honour a physician according to thy need of him with the honour due unto him, for verily the Lord hath created him. For from the Most High cometh healing. . . . My son, in thy sickness be not negligent, but pray unto the Lord, and He shall heal thee. . . . Put away wrongdoing. . . Then give place to the physician, for surely the Lord hath created him, and let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him (Ecclus. xxxviii. 1). This book was probably published about 150 B.C. at Alexandria, and is assigned to a writer whose name was Jesus, and at any rate establishes the repute of doctors of that day. The advocate of spiritual healing in no way wishes to supersede or to minimise the physician's work. All means and methods are to be used, every invention of science gladly pressed into the service. The spiritual healer is to aid the doctor, and to create a mental atmosphere in the patient which must assist the powers of medicine. In St. Paul's list of spiritual, gifts or charismata (xaploμara), after the gift of healings he enumerates two which are translated in the Revised Version 'helps,' 'governments.' The word avτines (or helps) is derived immediately from a verb which implies' grasping by the hand '—with a view to helping— and is used of assisting children to walk, and also of supporting the weak. It is quite possible that we have here a medical term for the work of nurses.' The other term, Kvßépvýσeis, denotes faculties of guidance or direction. It is primarily a nautical term, descriptive of the pilot's work. May it not also have been a word used in medical phraseology describing the doctor's task? Now the division of the mind into the conscious, the subconscious and the non-conscious parts is, doubtless, as Sir R. Armstrong-Jones tells us, scientifically correct, but is most difficult to understand, especially where one merges into another. Man is a complex being whose parts are very closely blended together. The Scriptural view is that man consists of body, soul and spirit. His soul is that individual part containing his mind, intelligence and capacity for reasoning, as well as being the seat of all his emotions. The soul is the battle-ground on which the struggle in the formation of the individual character is to be fought. 'In your patience ye shall win your souls,' is doubtless the right (R.V.) rendering of the passage Luke xxi. 19. The spirit of man is that part which is capable of realising the spiritual world and all higher agencies, and of forming some conception of the nature of God. It is the breath (spirit) of life that was breathed into man's nostrils at the Creation. This threefold nature of man has been aptly compared to a ship. The hull and rigging represent the body, the crew the soul, and the wireless apparatus the spirit, which can utter and receive communications with far-distant places. Just as some vessels are without wireless apparatus, so some human beings seem devoid of the spiritual faculty. Now the advocates of spiritual healing believe that in answer to prayer, and sometimes accompanied, when desired, by the outward and visible sign of the laying on of hands, or of unction, a gift of healing falls on the spirit of the afflicted person. It will extend to his soul, and may result in the healing of the body. It may be that the body will not be restored, just as in a shipwreck the vessel may be lost, but the crew saved by the assistance of the wireless message. After all, the body is the least precious part of man in the scale of vital values. Man must part with his body some time. Martyrs and heroes have often given theirs up in some great cause. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's shall save it.' This is the only saying of our Lord's which is quoted in almost the same words by the four Evangelists : Matt. xvi. 25; Mark viii. 35; Luke ix. 24; John xii. 25. The health and soundness of the body is, no doubt, of great importance to us while we are living in this world, and the utmost pains should be taken to preserve it, but the healing of the spirit and soul is the more important, for we believe that they will outlive death. Now with regard to miracles, which were regarded by Hume and his followers as illusions without sufficient evidence to support them, they are now stated to be ' part of the unbroken continuity of order rather than involving a breach of natural order and being supernatural occurrences.' This is quite true in the objective view of them. There are three words used in the original Greek of the New Testament for 'miracles' in our Revised Version of the Bible, viz., répas (not davμa), which implies a prodigy such as frequently described by Livy, Herodotus, etc.; onμelov (= a sign); and dúvaμis (= an exercise of power). The first two are often joined together in the New Testament and in the Septuagint. The same occurrence is, in fact, from the one side τέρας, and from the other σημεῖον. Το those who cannot claim omniscience what seems an interruption of natural laws may be described as répas, whereas in reality it is only the manifestation of some higher law not at present understood. The advance of science and the progress of invention transform the miracle of one generation into the commonplace of the next. If dirigible vessels for the navigation of the air, which fifty years ago would have been deemed impossible, are now regarded as no extraordinary means of locomotion, surely we can realise how much there is in the control of the forces of Nature which is still a sealed book to humanity. The greatest minds among scientific philosophers are conscious that we are only lifting a corner of the fringe of the curtain which conceals the working of these unknown forces. Sir Isaac Newton said that he seemed to himself to have been like a boy playing on the sea-shore and now and then finding a smoother pebble whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him. It was because Christ, from the fulness of His spiritual vision, knew of the working of what to us are supernatural laws, that His wonderful works were to Him onuela, or signs, and to those present répara, or wonderful occurrences. It is to be noticed that the miracles of the New |