The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-06-05
REV. QUINCY EWING
 OA INSPIRATION Sermon Yesterday at Church
 of the Advent FAITH HEALING DISCUSSED The Bible May or May Not Have Been Inspired, Yet in Either Case
 We Should Be-
 lieVe 1t.
 

Church of the Advent, occupied his pulpit
 at that church yesterday morning. preach
 ing on the subject of Faith Healing and
 the Question of Inspiration
 He chose as his text:
 Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer 5 s and certain man. lame from his mothers womb, was carried. whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple | to ask aims of them that entered into the temple; who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an aims. e Then Peter said, silver and gold we have none; but such as l have 1 give thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk. And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately hs feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God.p Acts iii:1-9 vs.
 He said:
 It would be considered probably "seien- tific' in certain quarters to dismiss this story of the healing of the lame man as unworthy of eredenee, as setting before us an impossibility in the guess of an actual happening. Peter and John 1t would be considered scientific to assert, did not witness any such healing at the gate of the temple as the book of acts records, because there is not such thing as healing save by scientific methods. All tales to the contrary are but tales, and very idle ones. Physical ailments rest upon physical causes, and such causes can be overcome only by physical treatment. If Peter and John supposed that they healed the lame man by causing him 10 look on them, and by repeating a formla, they are grossly deceived. Such miracles do not happen now, and can not be allowed to have happened nineteen hun dred years ago.
 l think We venture to dissent from this scientific" point of view, to deny that 1t Is unquestion&bly scientific. For science has no right to mark off by a dogmatic line the possible from the impossible in the realm of alleged human experience. The scientific man has, of course. the right to say, the usual procedure of na- ture in its various departments Is thus and so, one thing implying another. one thing standing to anotler in the relation Of cause to effect, the whole of nature, so far as 1t has been made subject to scientific methods, suggesting the exis- tence of certain unehangeable laws and imperishable forces"
 But the scientific man becomes unseien- tific the moment he parts with the spirit of humble and patient investigation, the spirit of open mindedness to evidence in support of alleged truths, and bluntly de- clares that nothing can happen winch does not happen in obedience to the laws he knows, as he knows them.
 Beyond doubt we have the right to claim that physical ailments as a rule to which there may be no exceptions are overcome by the application of remedies known to the scientific physician and sur geon; and it would clearly be our duty to send large man for treatment to the most scientific physician or surgeon avail able, because 1t is the rule that the lame people who are helped by the methods of science. That Is q plain matter of fact
 Put we have not the right to say that lameness and other bodily ailments have rever been, and never are, cured except by the ordinary methods of medical or surgical science. For we do not know that to be fact; and the scientific spirit forgets it's first and great commandment when it steps out of the region of the known to dogmatize In that of the uf- known.
 Faith Healing.
 Considering the great volume of testi- mony that might De adduced in behalf of what are called faith cures, gathered from many lands and centuries; consider Ing the belief of thousands of intelligent men and women in the present day that such cures do occur, 1t would seem to require a good deal of dogmatic temerity to deny outright that anybody was ever cured of any serious bodily ailment by power not known to be physical. Doubt less there is nothing easier than to point out egregious follies in the creed of Chris tian sciencetism and to laugh it's philoso- Thy out of court.
 But the philosophy of Christian science Is one thnig; the body of alleged facts which 1t undertakes to account for is quite another, andy for one, l am not prepared to maintain that those alleged facts are all mere faneies. The testimony in behalf of faith cures is, l should say. sufficiently volumnous and sufficiently strong to forestall any dogmatic denial of their reality to render such denial arbi- trary and unseientidc.
 And so it would seem to be arbitrary and unscientific to dlscredlt the book of acts on the ground that it presents 10 us as a fact what could not have happened setting Peter and John before us in a role which they never really occupied.
 To he sure, the story in the Book of Acts may not present to us a fact; the DISSlblIlg bl llS DtlilE AluC lS hO hbbui- ance that it is true; 1t may be the 'in- yention of a later age"-a fabrication conscious or unconseiousness. and we are under no moral obligation either as men or as Christians to maintain that 1t must be true.
 But, on the other hand. it may be that the healing did occur, that the man did leap and walk as described; and, if we desire to manifest the true scientific spirit in dealing with the story, we shall decline to deal with it as an idle and superstitious tale. If if must find us ag- nostics, let it at any rate find us rever- ent agnostics claiming the right neither to affirm nor deny on insufficient evil dence.
 Of course such an attitude would be ob- jected to by many people who would be quick to tell us that, unless we believe that is written in the Book of Acts, we are not good Christians, inas- much as such withholding of belief would imply that we doubted the inspiration of the Bible. Fortunately. the dilemma suggested is more apparent than real. Fortunately. there is no fundament- ----~s---~>--~~---~----------
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