Cautious Co-belligerence? The Late Nineteenth-Century American Divine Healing Movement and the Promise of Medical Science
11. Simpson, Life More Abundantly, 38.
12. Russell Kelso Carter, The Atonement for Sin and Sickness: Or, A Full Salvation for Soul and Body (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1884; repr., New York: Garland, 1985) 19.
13. Carrie Judd Montgomery, Under His Wings: The Story of My Life (Oakland, CA: Office of Triumphs of Faith, 1936) 50.
14. Cullis, Faith Cures, 16.
15. Adoniram Judson Gordon, The Ministry of Healing: Miracles of Cure in All Ages (Chicago: Revell, 1882) 144.
16. Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Lord for the Body, rev. ed. (Camp Hill, PA: Christian, 1996) 79; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Discovery of Divine Healing (New York: Alliance, 1903) 117.
17. In chapters 7 and 8 of his measured retraction of previous doctrinal convictions, Carter points out how leading figures in the Divine Healing Movement all “practically” used medical means personally or referred others to them. These figures include but are not limited to Cullis, Simpson, Gordon, Montgomery, and Dowie. Russell Kelso Carter, “Faith Healing” Reviewed after Twenty Years (Boston: The Christian Witness Company, 1897; repr., New York: Garland, 1985). Carrie Judd Montgomery acknowledges that they all had been inconsistent in their treatment of faith and medicine (Prayer of Faith, 80).
18. Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1983) 141; Cullis, Faith Cures, 5–6.
19. Montgomery, Under His Wings, 50.
20. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 144.
21. Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Gospel of Healing, rev. ed. (Harrisburg, PA: Christian, 1915) 70.
22. Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 348; Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 144.
23. Simpson, Earnests of the Coming Age, 26, 98; A. J. Gordon uses a slightly different name, the “vis medicatrix” (Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 186).
24. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 41, 70, 114, 183.
25. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 67.
26. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 68.
27. Judd, Prayer of Faith, 82.
28. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 45; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Genesis and Exodus, Christ in the Bible 1 (New York: Word, Work, and World, 1888) 205.
29. Carrie Judd, “The Lord Our Healer,” Triumphs of Faith 5:12 (December 1885) 272.
30. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 44, 70.
31. Gordon noted that the opinion of the Divine Healing figures is at odds with the greatest majority of Christians on this issue. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 3; Carter, Atonement for Sin and Sickness, 23.
32. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 10–11; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Messages of Love; Or, Christ in the Epistles of John (Nyack, NY: Christian Alliance, 1892) 76; Simpson noted that unbelief resulted in a lack of healing in Jesus’ day and it continues in the same way (Gospel of Healing, 19).
33. Judd, Prayer of Faith, 26.
34. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 3.
35. Judd, Prayer of Faith, 26.
36. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 54.
37. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 37.
38. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 1–15 and 58–86. Gordon also appealed to the Church Fathers who identified the ongoing role of the miraculous in their own day, a time past that when a cessationist theology would say that miracles had ended (Ministry of Healing, 59–62).
39. Carrie Judd, “The Name of Jesus,” Triumphs of Faith 4:5 (March 1881) 34.
40. Particularly verse three:
Oft on earth He healed the sufferer
By His might hand;
Still our sicknesses and sorrows
Go at His command.
He who gave His healing virtue
To a woman’s touch
To the faith that claims His fullness
Still will give as much.
Albert Benjamin Simpson, “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” Hymns of the Christian Life, rev. and enlarged ed. (Harrisburg, PA: Christian, 1978) 119.
41. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 64.
42. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 10–11; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Leviticus to Deuteronomy, Christ in the Bible 2 (New York: Word, Work, and World, 1889) 119.
43. Albert Benjamin Simpson, The King’s Business (New York: Word, Work, and World, 1886) 71; Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Present Truth (South Nyack, NY: Christian Alliance, 1897) 106; Kenneth Mckenzie, Our Physical Heritage in Christ (New York: Revell, 1923) 17, 53.
44. Carter, Atonement for Sin and Sickness, 23; Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 4; Charles Cullis, M.D., introduction to Dorothea Trudel; Or, The Prayer of Faith, Showing the Remarkable Manner in Which Large Numbers of Sick Persons Were Healed in Answer to Special Prayers, 3rd and enlarged ed. (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1872) 18.
45. Simpson, Discovery of Divine Healing, 11.
46. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 30; Judd, Prayer of Faith, 66.
47. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 191.
48. Mckenzie, Divine Life for the Body, 103.
49. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 44.
50. Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 345; Simpson, Lord for the Body, 101.
51. Albert Benjamin Simpson, “Question Drawer,” Living Truths 4:3 (March 1904) 179.
52. Judd, Prayer of Faith, 81
53. Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 30.
54. For this reason, Simpson cautioned against seeing medical means as cure. He wrote, “It is no use to apply your medical treatment to mere symptoms and try invigorating air and good nourishment so long as that cancer or ulcer is feeding on the vital organs. Get the root of evil removed, then your hygiene will be of some value”; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Practical Christianity (New York: Christian Alliance, 1901) 108.
55. Simpson, “Divine Healing,” 172.
56. Richard Harrison Shryock, Medicine in America: Historical Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966) 171.
57. Simpson, Discovery of Divine Healing, 18; Judd, Prayer of Faith, 66.
58. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 191.
59. Simpson, Lord for the Body, 19; Judd, Prayer of Faith, 66
60. Simpson, Old Faith and the New Gospel, 60.
61. Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 347; Simpson, Old Faith and the New Gospel, 61.
62. Charles Cullis, Tuesday Afternoon Talks (Boston, MA: Willard Tract Repository, 1892) 24.
63. Cullis, Faith Cures, 30.
64. Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 19, 344.
65. Cullis, Faith Cures, 31. The proponents of Divine Healing also noted that there were many Christian doctors who would in their private practice operate in much the same manner. In their consultation with patients, they would ascertain their spiritual condition and proceed accordingly (Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 81).
66. Kenneth Mckenzie noted that Dowie, along with Cullis and Simpson, constituted the “three great figures [that] loom against the sky-line of the last quarter of the nineteenth century” when it comes to Divine Healing. In particular, Mackenzie called Dowie “the apostle of healing in his day” (McKenzie, Physical Heritage in Christ, 17, 20).
67. John Alexander Dowie, “Prayer and Testimony Meeting,” Leaves of Healing 1:6 (October 5, 1894) 84; John Alexander Dowie, “Doctors and Medicines,” Leaves of Healing 1:4 (September 21, 1894) 61; John Alexander Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” Leaves of Healing 2:25 (April 10, 1896) 389.
68. John Alexander Dowie, “The Opening of the Beautiful Gate of Divine Healing,” Leaves of Healing 1:1 (August 31, 1894) 5.
69. “Disease, the foul offspring of its father, Satan, and its mother, Sin, was defining and destroying the earthly temples of God’s children, and there was no deliverer”; John Alexander Dowie, “He Is Just the Same To-Day,” Leaves of Healing 1:22 (February 15, 1895) 341.
70. The only thing that Dowie seemed to affirm in medical science was its intermittent ability to diagnose the physical cause of human sickness. Like the others, Dowie would cite the diagnosis of physicians approvingly and without question while at the same time denying their ability to either understand it fully or do anything about it.
Category: Church History, Summer 2010
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