AFTERNOON MEETING, APRIL 20, 3 P. M., SANITARIUM CHAPEL

W. W. PRESCOTT in the chair: There are several here who expect to present before you considerations from the Scriptures upon the subject of divine healing, I will ask Dr. Kellogg to lead out at this point.GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.11

J. H. Kellogg: Mr. Chairman, what I have to say I will say rather from the physician’s standpoint than from the standpoint of a theologian. It happens in my experience that I am called upon every little while to deal with patients who come to me saying, “Doctor, I am sick,” and I find on examination a paralysis, or internal tumor, or a cancer, or some similar trouble; and I learn in talking with this patient that the case is the very same case that had been announced as having been healed in answer to prayer, and there are so many cases of that sort going that it has seemed to me that it would be a good thing for us doctors and preachers to sit down and talk upon what it means to be healed, because when a man has been prayed for and healed, and then has straightway to go to a doctor to have something done for him, it looks as if there was a misunderstanding as to what it means to be healed.GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.12

A patient came here to the Sanitarium one time, who, I found on examination, had a tumor, and I said the case was so bad that I did not think an operation would be of any use. Well, this patient was prayed for by friends, and she went home. It was announced in the city papers at home that this patient had been to Battle Creek with this great tumor and had been healed. A week afterward I had a letter from a doctor in the town, saying, “You remember Mrs.—came to your place, and was prayed for, and published to the world as healed. I performed a post-mortem examination yesterday, and removed a very large cancer of the kidney.” Another doctor wrote me from the West, and said, “A patient went from here to your place about a month ago, and came back again, a couple of weeks ago, and it was announced through all the papers, that this patient who had an enormous cancer on the breast, had been healed in answer to prayer at your Sanitarium. And she has come home. Now,” he said, “I think you are an honest man, and I thought I would write to get the facts about it.” The facts were these: I examined the patient, and told her that she ought to have an operation performed, and she said “I will think about it.” Two days afterward it was announced in the institution that she had been prayed for and healed. I asked her to come to my office, and I examined her, and this cancer was there just the same as before. And I had to write to the doctor about it. She went home. Three months after, she was dead and buried. It seems to me that the Lord does not get any glory in this way of doing things. That Christianity and the question of religion is not in the slightest degree glorified in the eyes of the world by such doings as this, and we ought to have some sort of an understanding as to what it means when a man is healed. When God does a thing for a man, it seems to me he will do something recognizable. When he heals a man, the people will be able to know it, and so that after a man has been healed, you can find out that he is healed.GCB April 23, 1901, page 436.13

Suppose, after Christ had touched Bartimeus’s eyes, and he was able to see, he should have gone down the street with somebody leading him by the arm, or with a cane, feeling his way, saying, “I have been healed,” it would not give anybody any faith. It is no use for us to go on in this kind of child’s play. It seems to me we are temporizing, and are acting in a very childish way, and abusing a very sacred thing, and we ought to have more respect for God, and for ourselves, and for the religion which we profess, and more respect for true, genuine gospel faith, than to be giving out to the world, without any consideration or thought, that great miracles have been done, if nothing at all has been done, or any change brought about except, perhaps, that the man has been blessed in his soul. Perhaps that was all that needed to be done.GCB April 23, 1901, page 437.1

I want to say, in the first place, that I don’t think there is anybody in all the universe that can heal but God. There is just one God and one Creator, and restoring to health means exactly what creating means. It take the very same power to heal as it does to create. When a man has a cancer, what has to to be done? That cancer has to be removed, in the first place, and then new tissue made in its place; so it is a creative work. There is no such thing as healing by any human power. There is no man that has the power to heal. Even Christ did not pretend to be able to heal anybody himself; but he was an instrument. God was working through him. I believe there are some who entertain the notion that doctors have one sort of healing and preachers another. And that there is a sort of competition between them. That doctors have the long, tedious way, and the preachers the short way. It does not seem fair that there should be this discrimination between the doctors and the preachers. And it seems to me that if there is a better way than we doctors have, we will aspire to it, and will lay hold of it, if we can get it.GCB April 23, 1901, page 437.2

If our way of healing is long, round-about, tedious, and clumsy, and we have to use water and electricity when it is not necessary, I am sure we would be very glad to cut loose from all those things and would like to get a shorter way. I think some people think a man can take the longer or shorter way as he chooses. A lady said to me a short time ago, who had pneumonia, and whose lung was solid, “I am going to be prayed for, so that I can go home.” I said, “Why do you want to go? You are getting better every day?” And she said, “Well, William is getting real lonesome, and I must go and cheer him up. Besides, I know I would be well enough to go home in two or three weeks, but I can save that two weeks, and it costs me $15 a week. The Lord says, ‘Ask and ye shall receive.’ So I have made arrangements to be prayed for. I want you to come along.” I said. “I can’t come along. The Lord is healing you now: ought you not to be thankful and be satisfied? Why do you want him to do something more for you, when he is doing now for you all you can ask. You ask the Lord to work a miracle to save you $30, and cheer William up. And he can cheer William up well enough without you going home to do it.” Well, this lady was prayed for, and came back in a couple of hours, and said she was healed. I examined her lung, and she was just the same as before. But she went, and reported all over the country that she was healed.GCB April 23, 1901, page 437.3

A lady came here with a tumor. She said. “I don’t believe in doctors. They don’t have faith. I have faith.” So she was prayed for: wrote an article announcing that she was healed of this tumor. Dr. Lindsay examined her, and the tumor was there just the same as before. Some years afterward this lady reported again that she was healed, from another tumor. We knew it was the same tumor. By and by she came here with an enormous tumor, and wanted me to remove it. I said, “You have come too late. You are looking right into the grave. Your pulse is so feeble you can hardly sit up. Your heart is enlarged, dilated, and there is not hope of your going through the operation. You would die on the operating table. Even the anesthetic would kill you. It is no use to try.” In a month she was buried. There was a time when, if this lady had possessed real sensible faith, there was an opportunity for her to be cured of that internal tumor. But she went into the grave.GCB April 23, 1901, page 437.4

I don’t say God can’t do such a thing. I know he can do whatever is best, whatever is right, and whatever is consistent to do. But I believe that God heals everybody who ever gets well. And I want to go a little further than that, and to say that God is healing all the time. And he heals people even when they don’t ask him to heal them. That all healing that is done, God does. Here is a man has a sore on his skin. How does that get well? You come to a doctor, and say, “Give me some healing salve.” There is no salve that can heal. You rub a little healing salve on a table, and see if it can produce any skin. There is no salve that can heal up a sore. What do salves, and lotions, and applications do? They simply keep the sore clean, and keep the germs off. They are simply for protection. They are purely inert. God creates the new skin.GCB April 23, 1901, page 437.5

And you can see it going on day by day. Doctors and preachers can’t heal anybody or anything, but God can heal. What persuades God to heal? Is it because we pray? No; for God is working all the time for us. He is healing us all the time; but when we pray, we put ourselves in such an attitude that God can work more readily, and more successfully for us. God answers our prayer, because of our need, and because our attitude is such that he can. God puts it into our hearts to pray, so that we may be ready for it. You get it because God had it for you, and he put it into your heart to pray so that you would recognize it was from him it came. God invites the prayer in your heart. He is more willing to give than we are to receive. And when he has the things all ready for us, he gives us an intimation that he has them ready.GCB April 23, 1901, page 437.6

He advertises the fact so to speak, by putting into our hearts a disposition to pray. So we get ready to receive the thing that God has for us, and we receive it from him. It seems to me that is the true philosophy of prayer. As long as I prayed with the idea that I had to persuade God to do something he didn’t want to do, or was neglectful about, or was likely to overlook, I didn’t have any faith in my prayers at all. I prayed because I felt so bad I had to pray. And I hoped the Lord answered my prayers, too, because he put it into my heart to pray. Nevertheless, I did not have much confidence in my praying. I often wished I could get somebody to pray who had more confidence in God than I.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.1

Hagar left her child in the bush, and went off so that she could not see the child die. And we read that the Lord heard the voice of the lad. Not Hagar’s prayers, but the voice of the lad. So it was that poor, thirsty boy that appealed to God. It was his need that led God to open Hagar’s eyes that she could see the well secreted there where she could not see it. He answers our prayers and has the answer ready even before we pray. We see very often that we pray for something and we get the answer so quickly that when we look into the thing we see that the answer had been a week coming, when we only prayed five minutes ago. God started the answer to your prayer before you prayed. Then what was the prayer? What is the good of praying?—It is worth everything. Because when man prays, he lays down his will, and opens his mind and heart; he receives an intimation of what he may do to help himself; and prayer is the very best tonic. Cold water is a tonic, but I don’t know of any tonic so good as prayer. The man puts himself into such a relation with God that he feels the Spirit of God in his soul, so that he will be lifted up above his disease and weakness.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.2

It seems to me that what we want is to have a larger faith instead of a smaller faith. I am not content with the idea that doctors can heal a few ordinary cases, but that the bad cases are to be turned over to the Lord. My idea is that we have to turn all our cases over to the Lord. That there is no one who can heal except God, and all we can do is to co-operate with God. Shall we co-operate with God in the fever cases, in the little cases, and then when we come to the big cases, do nothing at all? Shall we say, “Here is a man who has fever, and I use cold water for him; but when he gets real sick, we will stop doing everything, and turn him over to the Lord?” Is that a consistent thing to do? No. If God blesses the man who is sick, in a mild way, will he not bless the remedies also when the man is very sick? Hezekiah was so sick he was likely to die, and he believed he was going to die. He prayed, and the Lord put it into the heart of Isaiah to go to him and tell him to put on a fig poultice. He was suffering from blood-poisoning. There was a carbuncle, and that is worse than any ordinary boil. He was likely to die of it; he had a severe chill, for he says, “Like a crane I chatter,” etc. Hezekiah didn’t know that a poultice was the thing he required. He had to have a prophet of the Lord tell him to put on a poultice. He could have touched him with a finger if that had been the Lord’s will. But he put on a poultice, and in about three days Hezekiah was able to go into the Lord’s house. The poultice softened it up, and drew it to a head, as we say, and it opened and discharged. Then he was able to get up and walk.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.3

There are other cases in which we know something was done. When Christ healed the blind man’s eyes, he took some earth, and spat on it, and made some clay, and anointed the man’s eyes with that. That represents the means we must use. Naaman was instructed to go and dip in Jordan. There was the anointing with oil, that perhaps was also intended to indicate practical means. We must recognize God as a God of love, seeking to do the best he can for man all the time. There are some things he can’t do. If I should sit down in my room, and pray to the Lord, and ask him to bring in some wood to build a fire for me, he could not do it, because it would be an inconsistent thing to do. God is infinitely consistent, and he could not do an inconsistent thing. He is infinitely good, and therefore he can’t do a wrong thing. He is infinitely wise, and he can’t do an unwise thing. He is infinitely merciful, and so he can’t do anything but what is best to do for us. Nobody can get between us and God. God deals with man directly, and he does not need any man to act as mediator. He does not forget us, and have to be hurried up. He knows all about it all the time, and the only thing that is necessary is to put ourselves in the right attitude toward God. God being the most perfect being in the universe, he is the most restricted being in the universe.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.4

There is uniformity in the world, because the first time God did anything, it could not be done better, so it is the same thing every time. So if we ask God to do for us the things that are not best for us, he can not do it; and no matter how many brethren were called in, it would do no good, because he can’t do anything for us that is inconsistent. What about healing, then? There are many people suffering from maladies of their mind. They are melancholy, depressed in spirit, and that is what keeps them sick. They could be healed in an instant. All that has to be done is to change their mind. A man has lost $50,000, and he goes into a decline right away. He is so depressed he almost loses his mind. He loses flesh, his appetite, and his ability to do business. It breaks him up. He is all gone to pieces. Suppose that this man should inherit a million dollars. It would cure him in about an instant.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.5

I knew a man who came here as a patient, who had met with a railroad accident, and it jarred him considerably. He had cold sweats, and he could hardly stand on his feet and walk. A railroad adjuster came here to adjust his claim And he asked me about his case. I said, “He is pretty sick.” He said: “I believe that a couple of thousand dollars would cure him in about a week.” And he said, “I want you to explain that to me. Half these people who have been in a railroad accident, as soon as they are paid off, get well right away. They are awfully sick, but as soon as we settle their claims, they go about their business in a week or so.” I said, “That is a plain case. Here is a man who is sick, poor, and penniless. His children are threatened with starvation, and he is in such distress of mind that it depresses him so that he keeps himself sick.” He said, “That is probably a good explanation.” Well, he left eighteen hundred dollars for this man, and I watched this case. In less than a week he didn’t have to take any treatment. And in less than a month he was well. The lawyer made a perfectly correct diagnosis of that case.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.6

Suppose that God had blessed that man, and he just felt his whole soul thrilled with the Spirit of the Lord and his body filled with God’s blessing, and he had such faith that he could just hold on to the Almighty Father, why that would be a great deal better than a couple of thousand dollars; better than a million dollars. It would have lifted that man so out of himself and above himself; it would have been the best medicine in the world for him.GCB April 23, 1901, page 438.7

I remember a young lady here we had treated for six months. None of us seemed to be able to do her any good. Then it occurred to me that if that lady would lay hold by faith and was prayed for, it might do her good. We did so, and in one single moment she was made well. She walked off, and in a couple of months could do her work. She might have stayed here years and years, and got worse every minute. That was the sort of case I think needed to be healed in that sort of way.GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.1

I saw a man who had lost his leg. It was cut off; nevertheless I didn’t see anybody who wanted to pray for him, that the leg should be grown on. It was very inconvenient for him to go about with a wooden leg. Nobody seemed to want to pray for that leg to be grown on. I knew another brother who had a large hole in his chest. He was prayed for, blessed, and pronounced whole. But in three months that man was in his grave. There was not any glory to the Lord from that case at all. I have seen people with consumption get well. I don’t say the Lord can’t cure consumption. He is doing all he can for every consumptive, but I believe we must use some common sense, and that the right way to pray is to ask God to do his will in those cases, and to do for this man all that is the best to do for him, and to teach us what we can do for him, rather than to say God has healed a man when we know he has not. If we take a consistent course about this thing, we give the Lord all the glory in every case, of every man who gets well and doctors won’t claim that they cured anybody, but will give all the glory to God.GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.2

Here comes a man who has a dilated stomach because he eats abominable things that are improper and unwholesome. He wants to be prayed for, and says he is healed. And he goes on eating griddle cakes, fried cakes, and other dietetic abominations as he did before. We must follow all light as God gives it to us, so that the healing process that is within the man all the time will be promoted and will be accelerated.GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.3

Here is a man who smokes. He is poisoned by the smoke. Why doesn’t he die?—Because God heals him. If it was not for the power of God in that man’s liver and kidneys when he smokes, the nicotine would kill him. He says, “You have made me to serve with your sins, and have wearied me with your iniquities.” One way God serves with our sins is healing us of the effects of our wrong-doing.GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.4

What would become of us if, when we were in trouble we had to send off to get some people to pray for us, and we could not be helped at any other time? Where would we be to-day? What about the man who is clinging to a mast in mid-ocean? Can’t he look up to God and believe that he is going to save him if it is the best thing for him? Of course he can. God saved a man from delirium tremens, but six months afterward that man died from Bright’s disease of the kidneys. It was the result of the seeds he had been sowing for forty years, and he had to die of Bright’s disease. He was healed of his delirium tremens, but he had been sowing the seeds of disease and had to reap the harvest. God couldn’t consistently save that man’s life from Bright’s disease, because the kidneys had been destroyed utterly; and if God had saved that man from Bright’s disease and made him as sound and well as when he was a boy, there would be an inconsistency about that thing. If he did that thing, it would be to say that it didn’t do any harm to drink liquor. But can’t God heal Bright’s disease? Yes. But if there is no limit to that thing, if the law of consistency doesn’t come in here, why do Christians ever die?GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.5

Here is a man who has been smoking. God has healed him of the immediate consequences of smoking; but by and by the man comes to the point where his liver capacity and his kidney capacity have been so destroyed by the nicotine in his body, that his heart is paralyzed, and he has got tobacco heart. That man says, I had better pray, and he asks God to heal his tobacco heart, and God can’t do it. Why?—Because he had been doing for him all he could under the circumstances. He healed him the first day, and he healed him the second day, as far as he could. Suppose I pull off a piece of skin from my hand, would not God heal that?—Yes. Suppose I pull that off again, and keep on pulling it off—don’t you see that my hand would never be healed? God could never heal it. It would not be consistent to heal it. As long as I keep pulling off the skin, it could not be made well. Now this man has been smoking till his heart is paralyzed. God has every day saved that man’s life. He has done all he could for him. What can God do for the man?—He can put into his heart a disposition to stop smoking, and he can give him the power to stop smoking; and when he has got a disposition to stop and the power to stop, then God will keep right on doing what he has been doing all the time and the man’s changed attitude will make it possible for God to do for him now what he could not do before; for God can’t approve of or put his stamp of approval on smoking. Can God heal our brothers and sisters of the consequences of their evil habits in dress and diet and other things while they are going right along in those evil habits?GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.6

I believe that there are cases of extraordinary healing. When Moses’ rod was held out, the Red Sea opened, and the children of Israel went through, that was an extraordinary thing. Moses had authority, not that he could do it himself, but he lived so near to God that God could use him as an instrument. When Moses struck the rock, the water flowed out. That was because he had got to the place where Adam was when he had dominion over everything. I believe the time will come when men and women will get so near to God that you will see that thing happen again. Man must have the image of God so restored in him that God’s power can be manifested through him with the original dominion that God gave to man, and that he manifested through man as a humble instrument. But is there a man or woman in this audience to-day, or any one else that you know of, who could be safely entrusted with such power as that to-day? [Voices: No]. It means creative power. The man who has the power to touch a paralyzed limb, and restore it instantly to health, has the power to touch a piece of clay, and make a live man out of it. The very same thing must happen. The man who has the power to touch a blind eye and make it see, can make one loaf feed five thousand.GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.7

When there are men who have such nearness to God that God can work in them in such a way as to create parts of the body instantly, as to restore an enlarged liver to its normal proportions, then we shall see a person that has risen above all frailties of humanity that lives so near to God that the elements will obey his will, that he can hold out a rod, and a way will open through the sea, that he can do just what Christ was doing when he was here on earth. I don’t say the time won’t come when that will be done, and I don’t know anybody on earth to-day whom I think could be safely trusted with such power as that.GCB April 23, 1901, page 439.8

When a man has such a faith as to ask God in response to his touch and his prayer, to heal a part that is gone; to restore a part that is gone within the body, that man will be just as willing to restore parts that are gone outside of the body. The man who has faith to lay hold of the Lord, to ask him to heal a cancer of the stomach, that man will not hesitate to ask the Lord to make a new hand, and you will see a new hand as quickly as you will see a new stomach. Of course to a physician it doesn’t matter much whether it is on the inside or outside of the body; for a doctor can look inside the body; but it is easier to say that the thing has been done with reference to the part that is out of sight.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.1

I think there are three classes of cases we can recognize: a class in which there is mental disease, and may be healed instantly, and God does it, too; another class in which parts have been destroyed, and are gone. Such cases can not be cured without a new creation. The first class of cases may be cured by a change of mental state. God can change our mental state in a second. Sometimes the doctor can change the mental state. I visited a patient last night who said when I came out that my visit had done him so much good. I had simply given him a few cheering words. That man looked melancholy when I went in; and when I went out, he looked very happy. That change was instantaneous. Well, now, if I can do that,—a poor, feeble instrument,—why just think what God can do. He can touch the brain and control the nervous system of the body, and infuse the whole body with a new life, a new strength, and a new vigor, and that can be done instantly.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.2

We are not discussing what God can do; it is a question of what he does do. Here is another class of cases, in which there is some organic change, like diseased stomach, prolapsed stomach, or consumptive lungs, or weak heart and depressed nerves. In that case the mental state may be such as to re-act on the body, if the mental state is improved. There is a creative process going on in the body more or less all the time. A child down in Chicago had one of his leg bones gone, and the doctor took a rib out of that child’s chest, and put it down in his leg, and fixed it in such a way that it grew in, and made a leg bone. Curious things are done nowadays, and bones are sometimes partially reproduced.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.3

A scientist at one time cut out half of a rabbit’s liver, and in a short time it grew again. Then he cut off the other half, and that likewise grew again, so that after a while that rabbit had a brand new liver. Take an earthworm, and cut it in two, and one-half will grow on a head, and the other half a tail, so that you will have two worms where you had one before. It is because parts have the power to reproduce themselves. If the mental state is made right, and if a man’s attitude toward God is right, he will eat right, he will think right, and he will behave himself in all his relations in life, and the consequences will be that he will be able to so minister to the needs of his bodily functions, that they will be so perfectly performed, that diseased conditions may be wiped away, and yet all coming from the improved mental state. It is just as reasonable for a man who has a diseased stomach which will require six months to get well,—it is just as reasonable to ask God to do that in a minute, as to plant some corn in a field, and ask God to give you a crop in a minute. You sow some corn in the field, and do you ask God to give you some husking ears to-morrow?—No. It would not be reasonable. In due time, as a result of our husbandry and our cultivation, we would get the fruit of our harvest.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.4

Don’t you see that health is the very same thing? We sow for disease, and we get disease; if we want health, it is as much our duty to sow for health, and to wait for that harvest of health, as to wait for a harvest of corn. Can you give any reason why we should insist that God must heal us instantly of any disease, while we must wait weeks and months for our crops of corn? Let us be consistent and reasonable.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.5

Here is a person who has some organic trouble of the stomach. We will suppose this edge of the table here represents the line that divides between disease and health. Up here is high health, and down there is the grave. When a man is well, he is away up here, and bad habits bring him down. He says he is well all the time. Smoking doesn’t hurt me; griddle cakes don’t hurt me; pepper and mustard don’t do me any harm; tea and coffee don’t do me any harm; three meals a day don’t hurt me. One day he gets sick. Then he says, “I guess that glass of milk I took doesn’t agree with me. That vegetarian dinner was not the best thing for me. He attributes it to some small thing. He says I overworked and exhausted my nerves canvassing; I overworked in Bible reading.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.6

A person gets down here, and the last thing he did he thinks is the thing that made him sick. But that was not so. People never get sick while they are well. You have to get ill before you are sick. That may sound paradoxical, but that is truth. By and by you get down here, and the last thing you do is simply the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Then you get down below this line, and then you say, “I am sick.” Here is a man who is down here somewhere. He is prayed for. He gets his head above the water. He says “I am well.” But he is not well. His feet are under the water still. He can breathe, but he is not well. It only takes a little to get him down again. So he goes on with his old habits. Then he says the Lord didn’t heal him, but the Lord did; and what he ought to have done was to go on praying, and have reformed his habits of life, and then by and by he would have gotten up way above the disease altogether. But so many people live right on the line here. Their heads are bobbing up, and one minute they are well, and the next they are sick.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.7

We doctors that are trying to practice principles which we believe God has given us, and our faith is big enough to believe that God does all the healing, and that we don’t do any of it; that every case of healing is divine healing, and all that we can do is to co-operate with God who is ready to do everything that our attitude will let him do; and when God can consistently do such things as to grow new eyes, that have disappeared, and make new bones for people, I think the evidence will be so plain that doctors and other people can see and know it. Then certainly will be the time for us to proclaim to the world that the Lord is doing these things.GCB April 23, 1901, page 440.8