Page:The future of Africa.djvu/203

Rh by skill and kindness, to adjust and restore this machinery, when fractured, or disarranged, or lacerated, or under decay; yet, by so much as the soul is superior to the body, so do we estimate its superior value, and aim the more, directly and indirectly, to seek its good. Spiritual, as well as bodily good, is one of our aims and objects in this blessed project. We cannot, if we would, escape the notice of soul-suffering in this world. We have to recognize the presence of spiritual as well as bodily disease among our fellow-creatures. By sense, and thought, and reason, and observation, and experience, by each and all, we have had forced upon our attention those internal disarrangements, those mental fractures, and those spiritual lacerations, which are wasting away the better portion of man's being, and of which, indeed, physical ailments and bodily pain are but the outward signs and symbols. And, for both the one and the other, the disease of the soul, as well as that of the body, human beings need medicines, skill, and the Physician. Here, as everywhere else in the world, poor human nature must needs have the medical man and the minister. And this is to be a Hospital for diseased bodies and for maimed and wounded souls. 2. It is this intrusion of human misery which lessens all our joys through life, and makes brief-born and transient our brightest pleasures. All our delights are mingled with pain in this world, all our happiness is clouded with sadness. Even the satisfaction of this gracious work, which we inaugurate to-day, is neutralized by the contemplation of disease, which it forces upon us, and by the knowledge of