Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/68

64 ," and not getting much-needed relief from remedies directed even legitimately to organs and functions of the body alone, often grasps naturally enough at shrewdly proffered "cures" or "healings" which promise satisfaction beyond doubt from no matter what irresponsible source, and with an avidity which, if "foolish," is certainly excusable, if nothing more. Nor can anything else be expected when such a sufferer so painfully remembers that in his great and anxious need he has been time after time to a "regular" physician, only to have the real significance of his mental distress misapprehended, or to have it characterized as "silly," or "imaginary," or "not for me," or of "no consequence whatever," or, as was the case with Lady Macbeth's physician, to hear him affirm that therein the sufferer "must cure herself "; or, perhaps worse still, to be treated by heartless "bluff," placebos, or possibly by hints of a normal defection that needs a priest rather than a physician! Nor, again, can anything better be expected, when possibly in obedience to this same distracting hint, such a sufferer has sought his church, only, as it has seemed to him, to be fed with stones, to be treated with indifference, or to be poisoned with doubts and insincerity, to say nothing of the chill that so naturally comes from sham brotherliness, untrustworthy sisterliness, and all the pain that these mean to the hungry distressed soul. If in such a case the "unorthodox" either in medicine or religion can "make good" where the "orthodox" fails, let there not be unseemly surprise, or charges of foolishness or worse, against those who in spite of such neglect and misunderstanding actually do need relief and must seek relief, even until they find it. Instead, let there prevail everywhere the full measure of righteous humility which is so often really due in the premises. The great "irregular" of all time, it must be remembered, was Jesus of Nazareth; and it was He who is said to have healed the people up and down the whole land, in spite of the "regular" doctors, medical and ecclesiastical, of the time. Of course, this is no tribute to quackery as such, either within or without the "professions"; it simply teaches that any one who would really do right in this important field must by every possible endowment and preparation be first and fully possessed, not only of the proper spirit, the needed sympathy, the untiring determination to understand the actual need and provide the real remedy, but additionally, of the most perfect knowledge of human nature and all its woes that can be obtained by patient, skillful investigation, and by most rational induction from well-authenticated facts. Mere one-sided, incompetent, or vain "irregularity" does not by itself suffice, any more than mere self-sufficient or negligent "regularity." In either case, the deeper the insight, the wider the comprehension, the truer the knowledge, the more direct the skill, the better the results achieved.

When the rightly endowed, fully prepared ministrant to a mind