Some time ago, a woman afflicted with an internal disease was carried to a hospital. The head-doctor examined her on the following morning, and immediately concluded that her case was too grave to be remedied.
He declared any attempt made to operate on her would prove fatal and hasten death; the only thing he could do was to prescribe lenients, in order to alleviate intense agony so long as life held out. The young students around him urgently insisted on the operation being performed; whereupon the physician, turning towards them, and finding expostulation unprofitable, said: "If this patient were my wife, gentlemen, I should not attempt what you suggest, I should leave her in peace; you must, therefore, not expect me to do otherwise by this woman...."
Such words as these should be engraved in letters of gold on the hearts of all practitioners.
THE POOR MAN'S DEATH.
A fact that has often been set forth by Christianity is that the secrets of man are revealed on his death-bed. Then it is that every syllable he utters, every motion of his spirit, are full of significance. The smallest sign is a ray of light by which a whole lifetime can be read; and, if the amount of faith in a man is thus disclosed, how easy it is to compute the amount of faith in a nation from what is supplied by observation in so many single cases!
O mors! bonum est judicium tuum!—O death! thy judgments are equitable!
No man is better qualified than the priest to look into this matter. A large portion of his time is spent by the dying, and my own personal experience has confirmed me in the following observations.
The most striking features as regards faith in the dying are moral dejection and an almost total absence of hope. These are the inevitable consequences of the efforts which have for some time been made to uproot religious principle from the hearts of the people. It is no wonder that hope fled with her divine sister, faith. Can any thinker form a notion of the state of a man who has been down-trodden all his life, who has been looked on as a bearer of burdens and a misérable, and who has nothing to hope for in a future state?
We read in Holy Writ that, when the waters of the deluge began to decrease, and Noe looked out of his ark after his arduous struggle with the elements, he saw a dove, bearing an olive-branch, fly towards him; the bird was the herald of good news, the harbinger of future deliverance.
Our poor, when exhausted by long adversity, look out in vain for the dove, and that hope which carries peace and help seldom brightens their last moments. Death to such as these is nothing but acquiescence in blind fate. What can a priest do in such cases? Teach and enlighten. Very true; but the patient's physical condition does not give him much time to do this thoroughly, nor can the sufferer always attend to the little the priest can do. The thing left to be tried is the awakening of the dying man's memory. The priest therefore recalls the scenes of boyhood, talks of a mother's teachings, of the village church, the long-forgotten first communion, etc., etc. If the poor man come from the South or from Alsace, the patois of his native place rouses wonderful reminiscences; but it is useless to attempt reasoning. A plain-spoken statement of fact that is neither commonplace nor trivial often creates a great impression. It is a mistake to use unrefined phraseology in the hope of redeeming the illiterate by descending to the level of their intelligence; the lower classes prefer plain but elevated language, and value the price of the liquid according to the cost of the vase in which it is contained. Returns to God in the last day are very scarce and always leave much room for the mercy of the Almighty; but it is something to have brought about a desire for the last sacraments, and to have been able to set forth, though imperfectly, one or two of the great truths of Christianity.