The art of medicine has not been instituted for the purpose of defying the laws of God; but for the purpose of aiding in the restoration of the harmony, whose disturbance caused disease, and this restoration takes place through obedience to the law. There is no more a “forgiveness of the sin of disease” than there is a forgiveness of moral sins. The cure takes place by means of a re-entering into harmony with the laws of nature, which after all are the laws of God manifested in the natural realm. Neither is the health restored or sins pardoned for the purpose that man with lessened fear of punishment may go and sin again; but after the effects of the discords are overcome, he obtains again the power to sin, so that he may have a fresh opportunity for overcoming temptation and thus attain mastery over himself during his life upon this earth. He who is master over himself is his own law and not subject to any disharmony, and it is this which Paracelsus expressed in his favourite motto: “Non sit alterius qui suus esse potest,” which may be translated, “He who is master over himself belongs to nothing else but himself”: for that Self which conquers “self” is God, the Will of Divine Wisdom, the Lord over All. VI. THE MEDICINE OF THE FUTURE. There is no doubt that the average physician of the present age occupies on the whole a much higher position than was occupied by the average physician of the last centuries when the wisdom of the ancients had become a forgotten truth, and modern science was in its infancy. Although there were even during the middle ages physicians of deep insight, and in possession of a profound knowledge of the mysteries of Nature, such as the modern profession may acquire again by slow growth within the next centuries, the popular medicine of these times was a mixture of ignorance and quackery, the remnants of which are still to be found in our days. Of this class of the physicians of those times Paracelsus says:— “There are a great many among them who have no other object but to satisfy their greed, so that one has to be ashamed to belong to a profession in which so much swindling takes place. They speculate on the ignorance of the people, and he who succeeds in amassing the greatest amount of money by robbing them is looked upon as the leading physician. Mutual love and charity is entirely out of fashion, and the practice of medicine is degraded to the standard of a common trade, in which the only object is to take as much money as one can obtain, and those who have the gift of the gab, and clamour the loudest, succeed best in cheating mankind; for as long as the world is filled with fools, the biggest fool will necessarily be the ruler, if he only succeeds in making himself conspicuous.” (“Defensio,” V.)