It is thought that should this plan meet with the success which has attended other hospitals founded on similar principles, it will be ultimately possible to re-direct our richly endowed charities to the purposes intended by their founders and supporters. For many years it was loudly maintained by the doctors that patients could not recover from many illnesses without the liberal use of alcoholic stimulants. The success of the Temperance Hospital has upset that “idol of the schools.” The physiological mania, the drug mania, and the operative furor will all in time pass away like the craze for bleeding, and it will ultimately be found that it is perfectly possible to cure the sick and save the limbs of the injured by merciful, honourable, and rational means. But then it will want merciful, honourable, and rational Christian gentlemen to do all this. _Nous verrons._ _L’Envoi._ When the world has been dowered with a great truth, the boon comes usually as a germ. The world always looks for its Messiah as a crowned King, and neglects its infant Jesus in the manger. No great truth flashes on the world all at once; great forces work ever most silently. Even the Christ of God so little affected the contemporary history of His period that scarce any record is found of His work in the secular literature of the time. The seeds of truth, placed in favourable conditions, can no more help growing than the sun can help shining; both fulfil the laws which are behind them; and it is a source of infinite solace to the noble men and women who are striving to benefit the world by their words and works that no great idea founded on the truth of God can either perish or fail of its mission. The work of Mildred and Harrowby Elsworth must ultimately succeed; its principles must in time dominate the conduct of the great medical charities of our land. When the air and light of day are let in upon the foul accumulations of scientific error which have lately been infecting their atmosphere, their antiseptic influence will kill the bacteria of a “science falsely so called.” THE END. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES This text has been preserved as in the original, including archaic and inconsistent spelling, punctuation and grammar, except as noted below. Obvious printer’s errors have been silently corrected. Text in italics in the original work is shown herein as _text_. Small capitals are shown herein as all capitals. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the relevant chapter. Contents, Chapter XXIV, page number was changed from 153 to 152 to correspond to the actual chapter beginning page number. Contents, Chapter XXXI, title is “Gospel at Work” and chapter title is “Gospel of Work” which was retained. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of St. Bernard's, by Æsculapius Scalpel