Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/110

 Pain and evil are not interchangeable terms, but are quite different. Evil cannot be innocent, though pain can be, and often is. When the disciples said, 'What hath this man or his parents done that he should be born blind?' they formulated the usually accepted idea at that time, and an idea, moreover, that dies very hard. The whole treatment of disease in the Middle Ages was based on it.

If we quite briefly consider our Lord's miracles, they were signs of His Divine mission, not proofs, and in performing them, He felt limitations; for we are definitely told that in Capernaum 'He did no more mighty works, because of their unbelief.' These signs were sudden manifestations of His power, and as such they are preferably called Divine Healing. They showed the very highest degree of spiritual power, but there was nothing really new. Christ was the perfect manifestation of eternal things, and eternal things are obviously never new. Perhaps the fact that our Lord thought it worth while to show his power in bodily healing was intended to teach us that to keep our bodies in health is an important religious duty, and more than that, that all hygienic social work undertaken is an important part of the duties of religion. Both nursing and doctoring bring us very near