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/227

 disposes man to oppose the rights of God to those of Cæsar, the dignity of the human person to public constraint.' In the language of religion, 'No man hath seen God at any time: if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.' That is the ideal of the Christian Society, the Body of Christ, actuated by the great principles of faith, hope, and love. And much might have been said of the duty of a Christian State to secure to all its members the elementary conditions of a healthy, useful citizenship. Most of our disease is a disgrace to our Christian civilisation, because it is preventable. The ancient poet rightly associates the spectres of Care, Hunger, and Fear with the grim forms of Disease at the portals of his Inferno:

Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae: Pallentis qua habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus, Et Metus et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas.

(ii)  But the problem of the prevention of sickness scarcely concerns us here, though it requires a passing reference. It has been