Present Day Cults.
Christian Science, Dowieism, and the various schools of mental and "divine" healing have been so thoroughly and ably discussed by Goddard (38) and others that it seems unnecessary to add any detailed treatment of them to this already lengthy discussion. While the writer has made a careful study of these systems his aim so far as they are particularly concerned has been rather to confirm the conclusions of his predecessor in this field, and, giving him due credit, to use his conclusions in so far as they fit into a general and extensive study of the miraculous.
Goddard has well shown the limits and possibilities of such systems; their relation to hypnotism; their dependence on the common principle of suggestion; and the irrelevancy of any of their distinctive features as the essential elements in their success, since all succeed about equally and in about the same fields. In other than a scientific age some of their accomplishments would be regarded as truly miraculous. They serve to attract that type of mind that does not easily give over a belief in the supernatural.
They arose as a protest against a too materialistic conception of medicine and as a substitute for the cruder views supplanted by science. They mark a tendency of the day to evaluate more highly the mental element in man, a thing which psychology in a very different way is aiming to accomplish. Far from being discouraged by the fact that modern psychology has been unable as yet to make such peculiar movements impossible the psychologist should welcome their existence as furnishing a field for the study of religious, social and individual psychology unparalleled in the richness of its offers. This field is full of challenges to our science presenting as it does numerous unsolved problems in the nature of mind and its dependence upon physical, social, religious, moral, and spiritual influences.
The recent Emmanuel Movement is worthy of note in this connection because it has called renewed attention to the fact, and possibly the necessity, of a union of religious and spiritual with psychological and medical methods of treatment of disease.
Our study of primitive medicine shows clearly a large religious element in all methods. The success of Christian Science, Dowieism, and kindred movements bears witness to the effectiveness of the appeal to the religious emotion made to center about an organization and a place of meeting. The failure of some cults which make use of the religious appeal and the success of others with the same cases make plain the fact that not the same type of appeal is effective with all minds. As in primitive times, so now, while the underlying principle may be the same the outward manifestations vary greatly for different types of mind.
The Emmanuel Movement in its incipiency gave promise of being a happier and saner combination of medical, psychological, social, and spiritual methods than any that has yet appeared. In limiting its field of operation to that of functional nervous diseases it accepted the findings of science. It is to be hoped that maturer thought will rescue the movement from a too critical attitude toward medical science (91, p. 5, P. 52) to a legitimate and worthy endeavor to combine that which is best in science with that which is best in religion in an attempt to alleviate the sufferings of humanity.
The whole tendency of our study is to emphasize the view of modern psychology that the human personality is a unit -- physical and mental -- and that in the treatment of disease one may perhaps no more neglect the social, moral, and religious nature of the patient than he may the physical. Such a suggestion has tremendous significance for the psychologist, the physician, the social worker, and the religious leader.
To consider it from the point of view of the physician alone it seems to urge, in addition to the appeal which the profession has already made to the psychologist and the social worker, the necessity of a closer association with the religious worker.
The freakish, foolish, unnecessary views of many modern cults would gain less currency if a better understanding and a closer cooperation could be established between the workers in the fields suggested.
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
