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/132

 measures to counteract disturbed sleep, depression of spirits, and all the miserable sequelæ of a distrait mind, he would undoubtedly give the first place to the simple habit of prayer. Let the child be taught to believe in an anthropomorphic God the Father, or in an all-pervading medium of guidance and control, or in the integrity of a cosmic whole, with its transmutations, evolutions, and indestructibilities. It matters little, for they all lead in the same direction. Let there but be a habit of nightly communion, not as a mendicant or repeater of words more adapted to the tongue of a sage, but as a humble individual who submerges or asserts his individuality as an integral part of a greater whole. Such a habit does more to clean the spirit and strengthen the soul to overcome mere incidental emotionalism than any other therapeutic agent known to him. Our schools are as gardens for the cultivating, judicious pruning and sustaining young life by gardeners who have, or who ought to have, full knowledge of the tender plants under their care. Our churches are to the moral welfare of the community as our schools are to the intellectual. The church has been aptly termed 'God's Garden,' where the art of living good lives and the making of character is helped by specially