Excerpts from

  The Healing Light
The Art and Method of Spiritual Healing
by Agnes Sanford




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INTRODUCTION

"The scientific attitude is the attitude of perfect open-mindedness," writes Agnes Sanford. "It consists in an un­shakable faith in the laws of nature combined with perfect humility toward those laws and a patient determination to learn them at whatever cost. Through this humility scientists have learned how to conform to the laws of nature and by so doing have achieved results. Through the same meekness those who seek God can produce results by learning to con­form to His laws of faith and love.

"The first step in seeking to produce results by any power is to contact that power. . . .

"The second step is to turn it on. . . .

"The third step is to believe that this power is coming into use and to accept it by faith. No matter how much we ask for something it becomes ours only as we accept it and give thanks for it."

These three steps are made so clear in this book that a child can understand them. But something besides under­standing is required if one desires real healing and that "something besides" is what this book proceeds to give.

That "something besides" which Agnes Sanford possesses more than anyone I have met is hard to catch and put into words; it is something as evanescent and indefinable as the air we breathe. For want of a better word I shall call it the "climate" necessary for healing.

In Northern Siberia there is a Russian port, used for whal­ing vessels in the summer season. But in winter with the temperatures ranging from fifty to ninety degrees below zero, no vessels have ever been known to enter. The port is there, the wharves are there, all the avenues for ships to come and go are there. But no vessels ever come. It would be silly to ask why because everyone knows why they don't come in. It is because of the wrong kind of climate.

Anyone who steps into the presence of Agnes steps into the right kind of climate for healing. When I looked over the manuscript of this book I had only a secondary interest in seeing whether she had the "technique" of healing because I knew she had that. I knew that thousands of people who have never healed anyone in their lives also have the tech­nique. My primary interest was in seeing whether this book (prepared for a world where the spiritual temperature is so far below zero) could furnish a "climate" that would make healing a living reality. To my great joy I found that this is exactly what it does do. I therefore put it on my MUST list for all who wish to go "all out" in their seeking for the heal­ing power of God.

Agnes Sanford was born in China as the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary, she has lived for years in New Jersey as the wife of an Episcopalian rector, and she has studied and tried every form of healing that has ever been known. Never have I met one who combined the meta­physical and the sacramental approach as she does. I have never met anyone more Christ-centered nor anyone more church-centered and yet more utterly unconcerned about the creed or lack of creed of those that she administers to.

"I explained to the suffering soldier boy that there was a healing energy in him that the doctors called 'nature,' that this same healing life was in the world outside of him too, and that he could receive more of it by asking for it.

" 'Who'll I ask?' Sammy wondered.

" 'Ask God. Because He is the one who made nature and He's in nature and He is nature.'

" 'But I don't know anything about God.'

" 'You know there's something outside of yourself, don't you? After all, you didn't make this world. There's some kind of life outside of you.'

" 'Oh, sure. When you're scared enough you feel like there must be something.'

" 'Well then, ask that Something to come into you. Just say "Whoever you are or whatever you are, come into me now and help nature in my body to mend this bone." ' "

This book shows how this boy and scores of others like him were healed through simple exposure to the climate of faith and love. If to this faith and love there is added the warm sunshine of enthusiasm, humor and good cheer there is nothing more to be asked. When you finish reading this book you will agree with me that this is far more than a book on healing. It is a guide to redemptive, creative living.

glenn clark

St. Paul, Minnesota.

Chapter 1

GOD WORKS THROUGH US

if we try turning on an electric iron and it does not work, we look to the wiring of the iron, the cord, or the house. We do not stand in dismay before the iron and cry, "Oh, elec­tricity, please come into my iron and make it work!" We realize that while the whole world is full of that mysterious power we call electricity, only the amount that flows through the wiring of the iron will make the iron work for us.

The same principle is true of the creative energy of God. The whole universe is full of it, but only the amount of it that flows through our own beings will work for us.

We have tried often to make this creative power flow through us, saying, "Oh, God, please do this or that!" And He has not done this or that, so we have concluded that there is no use in prayer, because God, if there is such a Being, will do as He likes regardless of our wishes. In other words, we doubt the willingness or the ability of God to actually pro­duce within our lives and bodies the results that we desire. We do not doubt our own ability to come into His presence and fill ourselves with Him, but His willingness to come into us and fill us with Himself.

My baby had been ill for six weeks with abscessed ears. I prayed desperately that God would heal the child. My mind was filled with thoughts of fear and of bitterness, and these are not of God. God is love, and perfect love casts out fear. So God could not go through me to heal my baby, for there was a break in the pipe line that connected me with Him.

Nevertheless, in His great kindness He did what he could for me. He sent me one of His own ministers. The minister was a young man, ruddy-faced, clear-eyed, full of normal, healthy interest in people and in life.

"I'll go up and have a prayer with him," he said.

"I don't think that will do any good," I replied wearily.

"He's only a year and a half old. He wouldn't understand."

What I really thought was, "If God doesn't answer my prayers why would He answer this minister's prayers?"

"Oh that won't matter," cried the minister, disregarding my feeble protests. He went upstairs.

Light shone from his eyes. I looked at him and saw his joyfulness, and I believed. For joy is the heavenly "O.K." on the inner life of power. No dreary, long-faced minister could have channeled God's healing to my baby. For without my faith the baby could not have been healed, and it was the Joy on the minister's face that called forth my faith. Looking on him I knew that he had been with the One who came to give us His joy and so I knew that the baby would be well.

The minister placed his hands upon the baby's ears and said "Heavenly Father, we ask you to send Your life into this baby's ears and make them well. We thank you because we know that this is being done. Amen."

The fever-flush died out of the baby's face immediately. He turned very pale, closed his eyes and slept. When he woke he was well. And he never again has had abscessed ears.

This incident turned on the light for me in a world that had grown very dark with futility. It showed me that God is an active and powerful reality. True, I understood very little about Him. I merely thought that the visiting minister had the gift of healing. Now I know that he had no gift except that which is open to all of us, the infinite gift of the life of God Himself. God's water of life could rush through him, for the pipeline between his spirit and God's spirit was intact. He was in harmony with God. The life of God flowed through him, and could therefore be turned on by him for the healing child. He knew it, and therefore had the courage to speak with authority.

"We thank you because we know that this is being done," he had said, adding the word, "Amen (So be it)," a word of command. All prayers end with "Amen," but usually the word is meaningless. The people who utter it do not in the least intend to send forth a command so positive that they would dare to say, "When he wakes he will be all right."

This is one reason why many prayers do not seem to be answered.

God is both within us and without us. He is the Source of all life; the Creator of universe behind universe; and of unimaginable depths of inter-stellar space and of light-years without end. But He is also the indwelling life of our own little selves. And just as a whole world full of electricity will not light a house unless the house itself is prepared to re­ceive that electricity, so the infinite and eternal life of God cannot help us unless we are prepared to receive that life within ourselves. Only the amount of God that we can get in us will work for us.

"The Kingdom of God is within you," said Jesus. And it is the Indwelling Light, the secret Place of the Conscious­ness of the Most High that is the Kingdom of Heaven in its present manifestation on this earth. Learning to live in the Kingdom of Heaven is learning to turn on the light of God within.

We must learn that God is not an unreasonable and im­pulsive sovereign who breaks His own laws at will. As soon as we learn that God does things through us (not for us), the matter becomes as simple as breathing, as inevitable as sunrise.

"But God is omnipotent!" some people say. "He can do anything He likes!" Certainly, but He has made a world that runs by law, and He does not like to break those laws.

Few of us in the north would ask God to produce a full-­blown rose out of doors in January. Yet He can do this very thing, if we adapt our greenhouses to His laws of heat and light, so as to provide the necessities of the rose. And He can produce a full-blown answer to prayer if we adapt our earthly tabernacles to His laws of love and faith so as to pro­vide the necessities of answered prayer.

Some day the world will come to understand this fact, as it now understands the miracle of sound waves, for one generation's miracles are the commonplaces of another generation.

Some day we will understand the scientific principles that underlie the miracle-working powers of God, and we will accept His intervention as simply and naturally as we do the radio.

Dr. Alexis Carrell, physician and scientist, declares that he has seen a skin cancer disappear at the command of faith. But that was not a breaking of the laws of nature. It was the super-imposition of a higher law of life over a lower law of life. Thus it was the fulfillment of the laws of nature. If one thinks of a miracle not as the breaking of God's laws but as His own using of His laws, then the world is full of miracles.

I have seen pneumonia destroyed within fifteen minutes, while the patient's temperature dropped from a hundred-and-three to normal and perspiration poured from his body and drenched the sheets. This was almost as great a miracle as the miracle of the frost, weaving ever-changing patterns on the window-pane. It was almost as great a miracle as the miracle of day and night, of sunrise and sunset, caused by the never-ceasing swing of the earth and the sun and the moon in a pattern of motion controlled and adjusted by cosmic forces beyond the ken of the astronomer.

God does nothing except by law. But He has provided enough power within His laws to do anything that is in accordance with His will. His will includes unlimited miracles. It is for us to learn His will, and to seek the simplicity and the beauty of the laws that set free His power.

  The Healing Light
The Art and Method of Spiritual Healing
by Agnes Sanford


Order in Adobe PDF eBook or printed form for $5.95 (+ printing charge)




or click here to order from Amazon.com for $6.99