Is Ours a Faith Cure?

Hygienic Review Vol. IV April, 1943 No. 8 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