Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/108

 striving after truth, and by looking fully into the subject for the purposes of this paper. In talking about Spiritual Healing, we are hampered at the start, because we have only actual knowledge of physical things, i.e. of things as they appear to us here. We have to define spiritual things in physical terms, because they are the only things we know and understand. Time and space do not exist in the spiritual domain. Take just one word in illustration of my meaning, the word Rest. Our present state of being here has certain peculiarities. Labour involves rest from labour, and if the limits of rest and labour are exceeded, the result is ruin to man's moral and physical being. Disease is sure to follow the inactive mind or body, and then comes a time when 'we cannot do the things we would.' But these things do not exist in spiritual language. 'They rest not day and night, but cry "Holy, Holy, Holy."' When we pray 'Eternal rest grant them, O Lord,' we have no thought of a period of rest as we understand it, but rest in and with God.

We are far too apt to think that suffering is an evil—it is not necessarily so; on the contrary it may be a blessing, because it is often a direct means of advance towards perfection. Far