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[is Ours a Faith Cure?

 

Hygienic Review

Vol. IV April, 1943 No. 8

Is Ours a Faith Cure?

Herbert M. Shelton

 

Is the Hygienic System a " faith cure " ? We have been accused of having

only a " faith cure " by many who have only noted what we reject and

have not investigated what we stand for. One man objected that our

faith in nature and nature cure is identical with Christian Science -

is Christian Science, as a matter of fact, in a new dress. We never

knew whether, by this statement, he wanted us to understand that he

has no faith in nature, that he believes only in the unnatural and

anti-natural.

 

What is nature? Let us define it as the existing cosmos. The universe

is cosmic and not chaotic. There is an all-pervading orderliness, nor

can we conceive of the universe existing except in an orderly state.

What is wrong with faith in this system of order?

The bodies and properties of living things are also orderly, that is,

cosmic, and not chaotic. There is an all-pervading orderliness in

life and we cannot conceive of an organism existing for one moment in

any other state.

 

For us, then, nature is the orderly universe with all of its

relations and interdependencies. Science, as well as religion,

directs men's minds to the eternal aspect of things and our faith in

the unchangeable uniformities of nature is well founded.

Nature cure, which is not something that the Hygienist does with his

hygienic agencies, but something nature does, is the result of the

lawful and orderly operations of the forces and processes of life,

working with the regular, normal elements of livingness.

 

Our faith in this nature and its work is no blind or dead faith. It

is rather a faith that leads to work, a faith based on knowledge.

These - knowledge and faith - lead to reform and intelligent

cooperation with the forces of life. It is not a matter of folding

our arms and sitting down and waiting for nature to do for us what

we, as parts of nature, can only do for ourselves. We do not expect

the laws of nature to be violated because we pray for them to be

violated, nor do we expect them to cease to exist because we deny

their existence.

 

However we have no objection to being called " faith curists " if we

may be allowed to define our faith. Ours is a faith in the orderly,

invariable laws of nature. All science is a study of the fixed laws

of nature. So far as man's senses can reach, we always find nature

orderly and as faith is " confidence, reliance, trust, " and as we find

no exceptions to the orderly sequences in the processes of nature, we

can certainly have: faith in these. Faith in the uniformities of

nature is not a mystical conviction that has never been verified, nor

is it the power to say we believe things that are incredible.

 

We know that water always runs down hill; we know that a magnetized

needle points to the magnetic pole; we know that when hydrogen and

oxygen unite in certain proportions the product is always water; we

know that two times two are four. We have faith in the compass; we

have faith in the mathematical processes; we have faith in chemical

processes; we have a whole science of hydrostatics built upon the

invariable conduct of water under exact conditions.

 

Faith describes the confidence we feel that the sun will " rise "

tomorrow, that it will " rise " in the East, for it always has done so.

We do not doubt that iron will continue to rust if exposed to

moisture, for this is what it has always done. We do not expect to

see brick of certain sizes and density and composed of certain

materials become lighter or heavier than brick of these sizes and

materials have always been.

 

That unbroken and cosmic order has reigned throughout the universe

throughout its duration is something we cannot prove. We cannot prove

that there is a law that water must run down hill when we get out

beyond the reach of our senses. But we accept it as a truth because

of our faith in the universality of law and order.

 

Now, cure (healing) is the same yesterday, today and forever. Healing

is the same today as that which has taken place from the beginning of

time. It will take place in the same old way as long as time lasts.

Theories of cure may change, as they have in the past. The methods

of " cure " may continue to change ceaselessly. But the real, orderly

and lawful healing processes of nature are as changeless as are the

laws of gravity, of chemistry, of hydrostatics, of mathematics.

 

We have the same faith in these lawful, orderly and invariable

processes of cure - natural processes - as we do in the lawful,

orderly and invariable processes of nature in all other parts of the

cosmic order. The processes of life are not chaotic, capricious,

changeable, unlawful, disorderly. They do not change from country to

country, nor from age to age.

Faith in the orderly processes of life is not a makeshift to serve us

where knowledge fails. Rather it is confidence in the facts and laws

of which we have knowledge. We have no knowledge of a " natural law "

except as an invariable and orderly sequence. The term " law " is a

very unfortunate one. Our faith is in the fixed and orderly sequences

of nature.

 

If life were not as orderly and lawful as the non-living world about

us, we could expect to gather figs from thistles or to sow to the

wind and reap not the whirl-wind, but a gentle zephyr. If there were

no fixed order in life we might plant a peach seed and have a pecan

tree spring therefrom. We insist upon the " reign of law " in the

organic (the living) world; we insist that order is supreme and that

chaos and " old night " are figments of primitive man's minds. What is

wrong with a faith cure that depends, not upon faith to cure,

but " upon the orderly processes of nature?

 

That person who takes a drug has faith that it will cure him but his

faith is not based upon any demonstrable orderly, sequence an

unfailing curative process set up by the drug. The physician who

administers the drug may have faith in the curative powers of his

drugs, but his so-called faith is a mere superstition - a hangover

from primitive times. It is not a faith based-on a knowledge of the

orderly processes of life. True, he claims a knowledge of the drug;

but what he knows about the drug from a study of its chemistry and

toxicology is the exact opposite of what he believes about it under

what has been dignified with the name pharmacology. His faith and his

knowledge are in conflict.

 

He knows that poisoning does not heal, that it does not produce

health. He believes that it does. He received his knowledge as a

result of modern scientific study; his faith from his ancient

forebears.

 

The physician that expects to restore health with agents that always

destroy health and attempts to save life with the foes of life, may

have full confidence in his agents; but his faith is in a reversal of

the laws of nature. It is a faith in disorder, in chaos, He believes

he can reverse, or annul, or suspend, or change the laws of nature.

As well attempt to make two and two equal three or five, or expect to

destroy any other realm of fixed law.

 

The body always rejects drugs. It has its choice of several methods

of rejecting them, but it never appropriates them. This is a

universal experience to which there is no known exception. The

physician who puts his trust in drugs has a faith that flies in the

face of law and order and beats its brains out against the unyielding

solid rock of immutable " law. " He is exceedingly superstitious.

 

The man who takes a sweat bath may have faith in it. But such faith

is not based upon knowledge. The man who gives the bath may explain

that sweating eliminates toxins from the body. This, too, is a blind

faith. If the man knows physiology, he knows that sweating is not an

eliminating process and that the sweat bath does not eliminate

toxins. Faith in the sweat bath is merely a lingering superstition we

derived from those who used it originally to sweat out evil spirits.

 

Faith of some degree may be said to enter into everything we do. But

faith, per-se, is not the thing that does. Faith does not cure;

though it may enable us to rely upon the forces and processes that do

heal. Nor can faith cause a thing to heal that does not otherwise

heal; although it is often affirmed that it does so.

 

Nature has always built flesh out of food and we are convinced that

she will always do so. She has never built flesh out of drugs and we

do not believe she will ever do so. Exercise and not drugs has always

been essential to the development of the body and we don't believe

that we can ever use drugs for this purpose and dispense with

exercise. In plain English, we place our faith in the ancient and

invariable order of nature.

 

Rest, and not stimulation, has always been essential to the

reinvigoration of tired, fatigued or exhausted organs or organisms.

Stimulation has always lashed them into impotency. This has always

been the order of nature - it has not changed. We impose our faith in

this fixed order and not in theories and practices that are " at

variance with this invariable order. "

 

The Hygienic System uses the same agents and forces that nature now

uses and always has used to build up and maintain the whole of both

the vegetable and animal kingdoms. It rejects those forces and agents

that have never been used in this process. It rejects those things

that have no vital relation to life - things that are anti-vital -

that have no normal part in life's plan.

 

Using the term cure (Latin cura, care) in its original and proper

sense and not as a synonym for the word healing, there is only one

proper cure for any abnormal condition of the living body; namely,

remove the cause. When the cause of the " disease " is removed, health

returns by virtue of the normal, orderly, lawful operations of the

processes and functions of life. This is nature cure. This is a cure

such as has taken place since the beginning of time.

 

Nature, the great restorer, the only healer, helps those who help

themselves. This is not a " faith cure " as commonly understood. The so-

called " faith cures " around us ignore causes. They seek to heal by

faith without removing causes. This kind of faith is a slap in the

face of law and order. It is not a faith that " worketh repentance, "

nor is it known by its works. It is a faith that only talks.

 

The Hygienic System is nature's system understood and applied

carefully and intelligently both in health and in sickness. It is

simply an enlightened compliance with the laws or uniformities of

life, as these have been revealed by study and experience. For, we

have no knowledge of what a natural law is, beyond the fact of

universal and undisputed experience.

 

Herbert M. Shelton]