Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of LoveWheaton, Elizabeth Ryder
Religion
Prisons and Prayer; Or, a Labor of Love
Wheaton, Elizabeth Ryder
Evangelistic work; Prisons
Dear Sister--John 17:20, 21: "Everyone members one of another."
"If one suffer all suffer." I do not know that the relation and
consequent influence of member upon member can be better
illustrated than by the connection of the body, mind and spirit,
and the power that any one of the three has over the other two.
The mind depends upon the body to carry out its desires, and the
mind is in constant subjection to the body in health and in
sickness. The body is controlled by the mind as the ship is
directed in her course by the man at the helm. The spirit looks
out through the eyes of the body and is entranced with the scene
of beauty, or is crushed with the sorrow with which it is seized,
according as we look upon a thing of beauty or the eye rests upon
things withered and dead.
The life and experience of every man attest the fact that thought
and emotion, and the body in which the organs of thought and
feeling are placed, are inter-related in such a way and to such
an extent that the mind and body control, to a very great extent,
the activity of each other. The wise man, looking at the inner
life and the outer manifestation of it, from a little different
point of view, expresses it thus: "As a man thinketh in his heart
so is he. The spirit of a man will sustain his _infirmity_, but a
wounded or broken spirit who can bear?" Says a writer in the Laws
of Health: "If a man thinks he is an invalid he is one; if he
thinks himself incompetent he is incompetent, and so through the
whole list." By faith in Christ, as true and confiding as the
trust of a child; by boldness at the throne of grace; by firmness
in resisting temptation, and by resolution in the performance of
every duty we are able to maintain the connection we have formed
with Christ, the head of the body; to bear the fruit of the vine;
to suffer with each other; to be honored with the members of the
body, and to rejoice with those who rejoice.
As the connection of the body, mind, moral nature and spirit is
such as to give one part influence over the other parts and the
power to modify their health and action, so the relation which is
formed with the household of faith, when we come into Christ, is
to be honored by striving for the faith of the gospel and by an
effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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