The Water of Life, and Other SermonsKingsley, Charles
Religion
The Water of Life, and Other Sermons
Kingsley, Charles
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
The medical man is complained of at times as being too materialistic—as
caring more for the bodies of his patients than for their souls. Do not
blame him too hastily. In his exclusive care for the body, he may be
witnessing unconsciously, yet mightily, for the soul, for God, for the
Bible, for immortality.
Is he not witnessing for God, when he shows by his acts that he believes
God to be a God of Life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of
order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness?
Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of
sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the
natural foe of man and of the Creator of man?
Is he not witnessing for the immortality of the soul when he fights
against death as an evil to be postponed at all hazards and by all means,
even when its advent is certain? Surely it is so. How often have we
seen the doctor by the dying bed, trying to preserve life, when he knew
well that life could not be preserved. We have been tempted to say to
him, ‘Let the sufferer alone. He is senseless. He is going. We can do
nothing more for his soul; you can do nothing more for his body. Why
torment him needlessly for the sake of a few more moments of respiration?
Let him alone to die in peace.’ How have we been tempted to say that?
We have not dared to say it; for we saw that the doctor, and not we, was
in the right; that in all those little efforts, so wise, so anxious, so
tender, so truly chivalrous, to keep the failing breath for a few moments
more in the body of one who had no earthly claim upon his care, that
doctor was bearing a testimony, unconscious yet most weighty, to that
human instinct of which the Bible approves throughout, that death in a
human being is an evil, an anomaly, a curse; against which, though he
could not rescue the man from the clutch of his foe, he was bound, in
duty and honour, to fight until the last, simply because it was death,
and death was the enemy of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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