Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/272

 Strangely enough, too, the immediate effect of a medicine may be to bring out the mischief, and to make us imagine that we are the worse for it rather than the better; and, as we know, there have been times when it has almost seemed as if we had become more distressingly conscious of our faults and failings as a result of our Communion. In spite of it all, faith takes and gives humble thanks for the blessing which has been received.

But, when we say that the blessing is of a spiritual nature, does that mean that its effects are therefore limited to the spiritual sphere? Can we think that they could be so limited? Is not the spiritual the dominant factor in all our life, and must not the quickening and gladdening of our spirits be felt, sooner or later, through every department of our being?

Is it not true that the mind is profoundly influenced by the state of the spirit; that, when the soul is at peace and in harmony with God's will, light shines as it were from within upon the hardest and most perplexing problems around us? The good and wise Bishop Harold Browne once declared at a Church Congress that he had never known what it was to have intellectual doubts when present at the Holy Communion. So, too,