atest single blessing ever
given surgery, met with no little theological obstruction. It is only
fair to say in this connection that so stupid a conservatism has been by
no means the sole possession of the Church and the clergy. Medicine has
been upon occasion almost as conservative and the difficulties which Sir
Joseph Lister encountered in his endeavour to win the London hospitals
for asepsis and anti-sepsis were quite as bitter. The difficulties were
of a piece with the opposition of the Church to scientific advancement.
After all a conservatism of this sort is a matter of temperament rather
than creed or class.

But if the Church was strangely slow to give place to medicine and
surgery, the Church sought, through agencies and methods of its own, to
cure disease. It is impossible to follow through in detail the long
story though it all bears upon the line we are following through its
massive testimony to the power of mind over body. Since the Church
believed in demon possession it sought to cure by exorcism and there are
in the ritual of the Church, as the ritual has finally taken form,
offices growing out of this long, long battle against evil spirits which
have now little suggestion of their original purpose. The sign of the
Cross was supposed to have commanding power, the invocation of the
triune deity had its own virtue, the very breathing of the priest was
supposed to influence the evil spirit and he fled defeated from the
touch of holy water.

The Church possessed, as was everywhere then believed, not only a
prevailing power over demons, but a supernatural power all her own for
the healing of disease. This power was associated with saints and relics
and shrines. During the lifetime of the saint this power was exercised
through direct saintly interposition. After the death of the saint it
was continued in some relic which he left behind him, or some shrine
with which he had been particularly associated. There grew up gradually
a kind of "division of labour among the saints in the Middle Ages." Each
saint had its own peculiar power over some bodily region or over some
particular disease. And so the faithful were guarded by a legion of
protecting influences against everything from coughs to sudden death.
There is almost an unimaginable range of relics. Parts of the true Cross
possessed supreme value. St. Louis of France was brought back almost
from death to life by the touch of the sacred wood. The bones and hair