THE RELIGIOUS PHYSICIAN.
In no respect, perhaps, is this progress more apparent than as regards the Medical Profession. In ancient times, it was proverbially true, or alleged, that wherever there were three physicians, there were two atheists;[30] that is, the majority of that profession were then deemed atheists, or atheistic. How changed now! Many are, no doubt, still living without any recognition of God. They refuse to be illumined by the light which irradiates others, and grovel amid the grossness of material things, instead of soaring, as they might do, to the spiritual, the heavenly, the eternal. But others, led by the Supreme Wisdom, do soar to these. With religion for their directress, they are skilled in the remedy of the soul as well as of the body. They can occasion the melody of spiritual joy and spiritual health, as well as promote the blessedness which originates in the well-being of the body. An accomplished physician of our day has said, and said with truth: THE
RELIGIOUS
PHYSICIAN. “Every medical practitioner, whether he desires to have it or not, has a cure of souls as well as of bodies. He is literally an inheritor of some of the duties of the very apostles, and called to be an imitator of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[31] Now, as no sphere could be named where Religion is confessedly more required, let us consider it for a little in connection with the Medical Profession.
DANGER—
DANGER— I. Conversant daily with death, or walking from hour to hour along the verge of the grave, and in sight of eternity, there is some danger lest these great realities should lose their power—that is, lest the mind should become indifferent to all that is most solemn in the lot of man. And what is the antidote? There is none, except a constant realizing of eternal and spiritual things. The mind must be kept constantly under their influence, or the proverb as to the atheists will be at least practically realized. Deprived as Physicians often are, of the repose of the Sabbath, and all opportunities for worshipping the Father of our spirits, they need a double portion of religion in the soul.[32] If it be not possessed, then for the same reason as soldiers and seamen are profligate and abandoned, till their profligacy be proverbial, do those who tend our bodies sink into deeper spiritual darkness than others. Though familiar with death, they are not warned, as other men are, of the need of preparing for what follows the all-decisive change. Accustomed to devote their thoughts and their care—sometimes, perhaps, with feverish anxiety—to the body, they are in danger of forgetting its immortal occupant. Many do forget it, and gaze on the power of that ruthless destroyer who has baffled all their skill, with as little thought as a sexton on a coffin, or on the fragments of the dead which he dishumes with his mattock. Regarding the body as the man, and overlooking all beyond it, a gross materialism becomes dominant in the mind; and unless a divine, a living, and spiritual religion occupy the soul, as the antidote to this danger, the most skilful physician may just become practically the most thorough materialist.
Nay, far more: such a physician must often see the mind of the dying utterly dependent on the state of the body. It is delirious or calm—it is soothed or agonized—it is torpid or restless, just according to the stage of the disease. This at least is commonly the case; and accustomed to that spectacle, the physician who watches, perhaps with deep sympathy for the sufferer, over every new phase of the disease, almost in spite of himself regards the patient as a piece of mere materialism. It is upon the material part that his thoughts are fixed, or his skill brought to bear. He thus magnifies his office, and hence his danger; hence the grossness of some of the more vulgar minds among physicians; hence the perils even of the purest and the most scientific.
THE ANTIDOTE.
But hence, also, THE
ANTIDOTE. the need and the preciousness of pure and undefiled religion. Hence the mercy implied in the revelation of a spiritual Teacher, the very Spirit of God, to ward off that danger, and give reality and prominence to the things of the soul. Hence a loud call to those who know that there is a spirit in man, to realize its existence and seek its welfare. Hence the need of solemn impressions of the truth of God, in all that is said to fix our thoughts upon the soul, its condition and its destiny. Hence, in short, if any man needs a personal religion—that is, a religion for himself, a Saviour for himself, repentance, faith, love, hope, holiness, all for himself—it is the man who lives on the confines between life and death—who has to do with the body when affection clings to it most closely; and who is apt to forget the inmate while attending to its abode—the immortal, while concentrating his skill upon the transient dust.
SIN, AND DISEASE.
SIN, AND
DISEASE. Or farther; no intelligent physician can practise for a single month without having the connection between sin and disease forced upon his notice. He may be too thoughtless to attend to it, or too gross to think of it at all; but whether he think of it or not, the fact is unquestionable—there is a necessary, a divinely-appointed connection between crime and disease. The bloated drunkard and the wasted debauchee, the premature death of many a youth, the madness of many a maniac—all proclaim the beneficent decree of God, that suffering shall follow sin. Now, can it be rational for men to be daily cognisant with that connection, and do nothing to counteract it? Maintaining a daily conflict with pain, shall they ignore its origin? Are they benevolent or merciful, who assail the bodily disease, but neglect the divine antidote for the soul? Nay, am I not conspiring against the immortality of self-deluded man, if I know a cure for that mortal ailment which has seized on the very vitals of his being, and yet hide it from his view? Rather let me press it kindly on his notice; and that I may learn to do so with tenderness and tact, let me make sure that it has attracted my own, that my soul is illumined by its radiance and animated by its hopes.