Hebrew literature shows little trace, even indirectly, of that sympathy with Nature, which is the best contribution of what is called ‘natural religion’ to the inheritance of the human spirit, except when Nature is regarded in her grander and more awe-inspiring aspects, those of the thunder-cloud, the whirlwind, the raging fire, the roaring sea. Yet it is not altogether fanciful to find, in our Lord’s habit of retirement to the mountain’s side for prayer, His invitation to the disciples to come apart by themselves to rest awhile in a ‘desert place,’[89] His choice of the evening hour, at the setting of the sun, for performing His works of mercy, some sanction for that modern sense of the Divine beauty and mystery of Nature in her quiet aspects.[90]
We must believe that Christ Himself was susceptible in a singular degree to those natural influences. After the intense spiritual strain of the Temptation, ‘angels came and ministered to Him.’ A great modern artist, M. Tissot, pictures the scene as only the imaginative symbolism of genius would have done. The Saviour lies at full length, utterly exhausted, with every muscle, as it were, relaxed, and through the twilight appear myriads of outstretched angel-hands, reviving the Sacred Body with the touch of spirit-life. Here we have, as in a figure, the expression of the unseen forces of Nature, ministering to the Will of the God of Nature, on behalf of the heirs of salvation and of Him who is the author of our salvation and the Prince of Life.
There is no rule absolute about the influence of familiar scenes and old associations upon the weary or ailing spirit. For some people the cure lies in surroundings as novel and unfamiliar as possible. This is where tact and sympathy on the part of the doctor and nurse and friends come in—questions which must not be confused with natural affection, for in that case they would vary directly, whereas they have been known to vary inversely, with nearness of blood relationship. The quick intuition of sympathy can judge of the environment best adapted to the patient’s individual need. The rigid order and routine of the hospital ward may be torture to the sick person who comes from one sort of home and paradise to one who comes from another. The more we can bring of the ‘mind of Christ’ into the tender care of the sick, the more right we shall have to expect that the power of His name will bless our efforts.
(vi) Again, our Lord’s attention to details, i.e. the material conditions of health, calls for notice. We have referred to His provision of rest for His tired followers. We find Him giving directions, after the recall of Jairus’s daughter to life, that food should be given to her. ‘Life restored by miracle must be supported by ordinary means.’[91] The familiar routine of healthy life is to be resumed as soon as possible. Lazarus is to be loosed from his cerements, when the awe of the bystanders blind them to the practical and obvious. And quite in line with this is Christ’s readiness to conform, in His dealings with men, to the existing social and religious system. It was so notably in the case of the leper, who was bidden, after his cure, to go and show himself to the priest and to make the customary offerings.[92] At the pool of Bethesda Christ helps the impotent man, who has no friend to help him. He leaves the rest of the multitude to the natural operation of the waters.[93] It was a different matter when, as in the case of the Rabbinical rule of Sabbath observance, the conventional practice was inimical to the freedom of the spirit. Our Lord will never allow the spiritual and essential in things to be overlaid by the material and accidental. Traditionalism was then broken through. The principle, that we must render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and to God the things that are God’s, manifests itself in various ways, and this is one of them. But, on the whole, Christianity knows no revolutionary breaches in the established social order, as the history of its attitude towards the institution of slavery shows. Men were encouraged to work out their own salvation under existing political and social conditions.
This spirit of conformity to the existing order in all lawful things, and especially our Lord’s attitude towards priestly ceremonial, in the case of the leper, throws a good deal of light upon the relation which should subsist between the clergyman and the doctor in the treatment of sickness. The Christian doctor will gladly subscribe to the words of the favourite physician of Louis XIV, Ambroise Paré, ‘I treated the wound, God healed it.’ Reverently and thoughtfully he will acknowledge the power of prayer and the tranquillising influences of the spirit, and will yield to the Church, acting by her representative duly accredited and trained, her proper part in the work of restoration. The parish priest will freely allow that the doctor and the nurse, with all the appliances of modern medical science, provide the largest part of the environment and conditions indispensable to recovery; and that it is an act of presumption to reject all these scientific aids in favour of some process of healing by faith alone without expert medical aid.[94]
Finally, it must be remembered that we cannot expect to find many favourable notices of medical practice in an age and country in which medical skill was at a very low ebb. ‘Medicorum optimus dignus est Gehenna,’ said the Rabbis of the later Judaism.[95] In nothing has human knowledge made more astonishing strides than in medical and in surgical discovery; and, though we have been too prone in the past to credit the medical profession with the whole of the healing work done in Christ’s Church, the opposite extreme is to be avoided, and it is well to acknowledge thankfully that ‘discoveries in the region of medicine and surgery come to man through Him who is the Light and the Life, the Divine Word.’[96]
(vii) In a previous chapter we dwelt at some length on the Gospel conception of salvation (as illustrated by the words σῴζειν ὁλοκληρία), as a just equipoise of spiritual, mental, and physical faculties and functions. Two remarks may find a place here. The first is, that too much stress may be laid upon the distinction between functional and organic complaints. There are modern critics who wish to eliminate the miraculous from the Gospel narrative, and deal with the sacred text accordingly. For example, Professor Bousset says, in his vivid way, ‘The community of the faithful drew the simple human picture of Jesus on the golden background of the marvellous. But the picture can be detached from that background with comparative ease.’ In cases which are not to be explained simply by psychology, ‘the historically intelligible is still close below the surface, and appears as soon as we remove a few additions which are due to modern tradition.’ We have to regard certain narratives as ‘legendary accretions (Wucherungen).’
If we cannot accept that position, it is not open to us to explain all the miraculous agency of our Lord and His Apostles and the later Church as consisting in the power to deal with functional ailments by mental or psychic treatment. Nor is it open to us to limit the efficacy of prayer to the stimulation of function and the treatment of nervous disorders. And as, with the progress of medical science, the sphere of the organic is continually growing at the expense of the functional, the ultimate effect of such a concession on the side of religion would be to limit her action to a negligible minority of cases. How would a place be found for the healing of Malchus’s ear, if the organic be excluded? But the Church believes that Christ is the Saviour of the body and that the Holy Spirit is, as an early Father says, ‘given that He may dwell in our bodies and sanctify them, that in so doing He may bring them to eternity and to the resurrection of immortality, while He accustoms them in Himself to be conjoined with heavenly powers and to be associated with the Divine eternity of the Spirit.’[97]
A second remark is this. Whatever is allowed for the moulding force of environment, Christ plainly teaches that man is never the mere creature of circumstances. Christ is no fatalist philosopher. It is only the evil that man deliberately assimilates which defiles him. ‘There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him’—a parabolic saying which has a deep meaning. As it is with sin, so it is with disease. Wilful sin is lawlessness in the spiritual being; disease is disorder in the material being. Much remains yet to be done, which lies well within the range of the free human will, to combat this lawless disorder in the life of body and soul. We believe that the spirit can impose its own order and law and harmony upon the material elements of our bodily frame. This creed may be an ideal, but it is the only really inspiring ideal; for beyond it lies the hope of final perfection. Therefore, with faith and courage, let us press forward.
Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart’s desire!