The best way, then, to do good is to be good, and to have such a Christian character as will of itself communicate good. Be yourself what you wish your family, your friends and neighbours, to be. "Physician, heal thyself." God needs physicians, many physicians; for there are many destroyers spreading the influence of their ungodly life—a deadly infection—around, and adding to the disease and misery which man's sin first brought upon the world. Let us act as fellow-workers with the Good Physician in bringing back health and strength and beauty to a plague-stricken world; and for this purpose let us qualify ourselves more thoroughly. Let us apply the Gospel remedies anew to our own case which we recommend to others, that our own profiting and healing by these may be made manifest to all. Let us ask God to search us and see if there be anything that would prevent us from doing all the good that we might, any defect of manner or disposition of heart that might cause the way of truth so far as we are concerned to be evil spoken of; and let us ask the help of the Divine Spirit to get it healed. So that thus being made every whit whole ourselves, we may diffuse a healthy atmosphere around us and make others partakers of our saving health.
The Sabbath is the best day for healing. Jesus asked the Jews, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" The reply might have been, "Is it lawful to do anything else but heal on the Sabbath day?" That day is set apart for healing the diseases of the world. It is the day of recreation—re-creating us and fitting us anew by its rest and refreshment of worship for the toil and travail of our weekday life. Let us bring to Jesus on this Sabbath day all the old infirmities and disabilities which have been a hindrance to the growth of the work of grace in the midst of us, and He will deliver us from them, and make us new creatures; and so—set free in newness of health and strength, with our palsied frame invigorated, our withered hand restored, our lame feet made swift in the way of God's commandments, and our world-bound spirit loosed from its infirmity and covetousness, and enabled to look upward where our true treasure is—let us seek to free others from their infirmities and diseases, and to make all around us strong in faith and health in the new life of God's service.
Let the tonic that has restored our own spiritual constitution be in all our words and deeds and looks, to restore the spiritual constitution of others. Let the perfume that neutralises the drought and cold of the world be exhaled from all our character and conduct, so that it may be the means of enabling all with whom we come in contact to resist the aridity and the coldness of the world too. Let each of us be so full of Christ's healing and saving power, so saturated with His salvation, as it were, that we ourselves may be Christ's best medicines. Let the words "Physician, heal thyself" be in the very forefront of our profession and of our life throughout all the years; and we ourselves in such a case will be among the most potent influences for good in the world.
PLEDGED.
By Katharine Tynan, Author of "A Daughter of Erin," Etc.