ntral
content of consciousness and may control the whole mental interplay. The
practical problem of the scientist is to consider how far these
religious energies ought to be used today in the interests of the cure
of diseases.

From a scientific standpoint such a discussion can hardly be fruitful
with those who consistently take the religious point of view only. A
view of the world which demands the faith that religious belief moves an
almighty power to cure a diseased organ, or that the disease has no
reality for one who lives in God, is invulnerable to merely scientific
arguments. The sick woman who kneels between the candles before the
picture of the Virgin, praying that her heart, which the physicians
declare incurable on account of a valvular disease, be cured, moves in a
sphere of thought which lies entirely outside of the medical study of
causes and effects. The same holds true, for instance, of Christian
Science. This statement is in itself no criticism and no argument; it
only acknowledges that any possible exchange of opinions has to be
carried over from the scientific psychological ground to that of
metaphysics and philosophy. It is quite different with modern movements
of the type of the Emmanuel Church Movement, where the religious thought
is intertwined with the psychological theory and where an actual
cooeperation of physician and minister is sought. Here church and science
really meet on common ground, and it is important to examine objectively
whether it is wise and beneficial to encourage the spreading of this
tempting enterprise. The movement has reached the large cities between
the Atlantic and the Pacific and is beginning to captivate the ministers
of the small towns and villages. It seems as if an epoch has come for
the church--the church which too long has ministered only to the
spiritual needs of the community will at last remember again that Christ
healed the sick, that mind and body are one, that the personality must
be understood in its unity, and that endless fields of blessed influence
may again be opened to the church when the minister becomes the
physician of his congregation. Whoever knows the suggestive power of
such a social movement, and considers the ease with which triumphant
successes may be reached in this field and the disappointing and
discouraging reduction of power which the church shows everywhere in its
purely spiritual hold on the community, can foresee that all the
conditi