Is Ours a Faith Cure?

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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

-- Peace be with you,

Don "Quai" Eitner

"Spirit sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, dreams in the animal and wakes in man."

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb