Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/384

364 Did the doctor, the nurse, the cook, and the brusque business visitor whose graven idols are worldly success

and policy, sympathetically feel the thorns they plant in the pillow of the sick and heavenly homesick, looking away from earth, — oh, did they know! — this knowledge would do a million times more towards healing the sick, and preparing their helpers for the “midnight call,” than all their lofty scorn for matter, and cries of Lord, Lord! The benign thought of Jesus, finding utterance in such words as “Take no thought for your life!” would heal the sick man, and so enable him to rise above the supposed necessity of physical thought-taking and planning; but if the unselfish affections be lacking, and common sense and common humanity are disregarded, what mental quality remains, wherewith to evoke healing from the outspread wings of righteousness?

If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, he will accomplish the healing work at one visit,

and the disease will vanish into its native extinction, like dew before the morning sunshine. If the Scientist has enough Christly affection to win his own pardon, and such commendation as the Magdalen won from Jesus, then he is Christian enough to practise Scientifically, and deal with his patients compassionately; and the result will correspond with the spiritual intent.

If hypocrisy, stolidity, or inhumanity find their way into the chambers of disease, through the would-be

healer, if it were possible, they would convert into a den of thieves the temple of the Holy Ghost, the patient's spiritual power to resuscitate himself.