The passage which I have chosen, not as a text, but as an introductory statement for our morning's discourse, is found in Luke's gospel, 5th chapter, verses 30-32: "But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners? And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." It is this little verse we want to lay special stress upon: "And Jesus answering said unto them, they that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick."

We have thought of Jesus as the Great Shepherd, and the Church as His sheep; we have thought Jesus as the Vine, and His Church as the Branches; we have thought of Jesus as the Captain, and the Church as His soldiers; we have thought of Him as the Bridegroom, and the Church as the members of the Bride; we have thought of Him as the Teacher, and they as the Disciples, the learners; we have thought of Him as the Master, and they as the Servants; and we have thought of Him as the great Chief Corner Stone, and they as the Stones who may be erected upon Him as a foundation-built up into that Chief Corner Stone; but this morning, dear brothers and sisters, I want to invite your attention to Jesus as our Great Physician, and ourselves as the Patients of that Physician.

You remember this was a relationship which our heavenly Father very prominently sustained to Israel. You remember how He expressed it in Exo. 15:26, saying: "I am the Lord that healeth thee." You remember his expression in the 103rd Psalm, "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." You remember how often He reminded Israel that if they were obedient, He would not put upon them the diseases and the afflictions that had been placed upon the Egyptians. You remember, He reminded them that obedience would indicate the proportion of their good health, and you remember how often He rebuked the kings, because instead of looking to Him for healing they sought [PE108] the natural physician. And some one may say, do those promises mean anything to us? Have we a right to claim them. I answer, dear friends, that God never made a promise to natural Israel but what that promise means more even to the Spiritual Israelite than it did to the members of Natural Israel. You remember how God told Israel of the world that if they were faithful He would bless them and their basket and store; you remember He reminded them how He would multiply their flocks, and increase their herds, and would bless their wheat, and wine, and oil. And all of those promises mean more to us today than they did to Israel of the world. Why, one says, that is surprising; I never thought we had any right to claim those promises! I always thought that if we were faithful to our Lord we would expect to suffer, that we might anticipate trials; that there would be a sacrifice to bear; and do you mean to say that if we are faithful to our Lord it will mean worldly prosperity, that we will have the measure of our earthly wealth increased, and that instead of a cross we will find a bed of roses? And I answer no, dear friends, not at all. The following in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ will mean a cross; it will have its trials, it will mean sorrows; there will be thorns in our pathway. But you ask, how can that be? If all these promises are for us, and if the Lord should fulfill such promises to us, would there be any cross to bear? Would there be any trials or difficulties with promises like those being fulfilled day by day? O, dear brethren and sisters, you do not get the thought.

Let me put it this way: God never made a promise to Israel of the world but that Spiritual Israel has even more right to claim that promise than natural Israel had. But when we claim these promises, we must translate them from natural promises into spiritual promises. In other words, whatever God promised Natural Israel along natural lines, He promises Spiritual Israel along spiritual lines. You remember how He told them that if they were faithful and obedient to Him, He would bless their wheat and their wine and their oil and their flocks and He promises the same thing to us, but it is the spiritual wheat, it is the spiritual wine, it is the spiritual oil, and it is the spiritual flock that is to enjoy the blessings in this case.

Do you not recollect the way God spoke to Israel, saying, O Israel, if you had hearkened unto my commandments, then I would have fed you with the finest of the wheat. But very few of the Israelites ever tasted of the finest of the wheat. The finest of the wheat was not the wheat that grew out of the fields of Palestine; that was the most ordinary, the commonest, of the wheat. The finest of the wheat is that wheat that 1900 years ago God began to feed His children upon. So then, dear friends, while a few of those Israelites, like Peter, Paul, James and John, [PE109] were sufficiently faithful to be permitted to partake of the finest of the wheat, the largest part of them never tasted anything better than the commonest of the wheat.

And the same thing with respect to sickness. We do not understand we are to expect that our heavenly Father and His heavenly Son are to be our physicians to heal us along natural lines; it is not the natural diseases they have promised to relieve you and me of, but it is the spiritual diseases-pride, selfishness, impatience, malice and envy, etc. We use the words "spiritual sickness" in rather an accommodated sense this morning. In the true sense, these are not spiritual diseases. We might say they are figurative diseases, but as the word spiritual is often used in a sense synonymous with the word figurative, we will use it in that sense this morning. And so we are not going to tell you today about natural consumption, natural diphtheria, and natural paralysis, but we want to talk to you about spiritual consumption, and spiritual diphtheria, and spiritual paralysis. We find, dear friends, that God always intended that His children should use their good common sense when it came down to the treatment of natural diseases. When we feel cold, we do not pray the Lord to miraculously make us feel warm, but we go to the fire, and thank Him for the fire that made us warm. When we feel hungry we do not pray the Lord to perform a miracle and take away that hungry feeling, but we go to the table and eat the food that takes that hunger away. And just as we go to the table to have that hunger cured, and just as we go to the fire to have that cold feeling cured, so likewise we believe God would have us make use of any of the natural remedies that might help our natural health. And just as we thank Him for the fire and the food, so likewise should we thank Him for the medicine or the remedy, whatever it was, that gave us the relief along natural lines. Indeed, dear friends, I think that the Lord's word is just full of this thought. Many references are made throughout God's Word to medicines, and the way in which we should make use of them. I think indeed it is true that the strongest passage in the Bible to support the view of the faith healers really contradicts their view most emphatically. They often quote that passage in the 5th chapter of James, "Is any sick among you? let him call for the Elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." We do not understand that anointing with the oil was a ceremony. We do not think that God through His Son left us three ordinances, -baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the anointing with oil; not at all. We know that to a large extent oils constitute a very important portion of our medicine. We know how sweet oil and cod-liver oil and vaseline are use so largely as remedies, and in the Bible we learn that, with the exception [PE110] of a few roots, and herbs, and balms, the oils were among their very chiefest remedies; and to anoint with oil was equivalent to giving medicine. It was not merely part of a ceremony, such as perhaps today many seem to think, who entertain wrong ideas along the lines of faith healing. However, dear friends, that is not what we are going to talk about today. It is these other diseases we are more interested in. To the consecrated child of God, pride is a more terrible disease than pneumonia. To one following in the Master's footsteps, selfishness is far more awful than scarlet-fever. What would a man do to get rid of his natural disease? How much money would he not spend, and how far would he not be willing to travel, and how much inconvenience would he not be ready to suffer, if thereby he could find an improvement in his natural health? And what should not a Christian be willing to sacrifice for better spiritual health, and what inconvenience should he not be willing to endure, what sufferings should he not be willing to go through, and what sacrifice should he not be prompted to make if thereby he could find an improvement in his spiritual health? And I trust, dear friends, that as a result of our Convention here, we may all go away with a larger measure of spiritual health, no matter whether we go away with a better degree of natural health or not. Not only so, but I would also like to say that in addition to God and His dear Son being our great physicians, there is a certain sense in which we should all remember that we are to be under physicians-physicians to one another. You know how it is frequently the case, that if a patient has been under the care of a doctor for many years, he learns many of the methods of the doctor, and in case a friend of the patient should be taken sick, he would say to that friend, Now when I am troubled like that, the doctor generally advises me to do so and so; you try it, I think it will help you. So it should be with us: if we have been under the care of the Great Spiritual Physician for a number of years, it ought not only to have made an improvement in our spiritual health, but put us in a position to assist our brothers and sisters to a better degree of spiritual health as well. What an awful thing it would be if one of our brothers or sisters would be heard to say, Well, I am sorry to come in contact with him, for every time I meet him, it seems that it gives a set back to my spiritual health. And on the other hand, what a glorious thing if your brothers and sisters can say, I am glad to meet with him, for it seems every time I come in contact with him, it means an uplift to my spiritual health, and I come away feeling that my spiritual health is better as a result of that season of communion with him.

Now we know that our Lord never used an illustration that was inappropriate. We are sure He never inspired His apostles to use an [PE111] inappropriate illustration. Therefore when in this passage our Lord, and in another passage, our Heavenly Father, are compared to our physicians, we recognize that there must be something very appropriate to this illustration. And dear friends, I am sure you will all find that it is so. We will find that there is a wonderful parallel between the natural and the spiritual diseases. We will find that every natural affliction has some corresponding spiritual sickness; that just as there is natural pneumonia, so there is spiritual pneumonia; that just as there is natural paralysis, there is something corresponding with it along spiritual lines; that just as there are various ailments of the flesh, so we find there are corresponding, or parallel, ailments along spiritual lines. We will not only find that these different diseases have their parallels, but we will find the method of their treatment likewise so; we will find that all of the different indications of the presence of disease have also their correspondences. We will find that all the various aids to health along natural lines have their corresponding aids to health along spiritual lines. One reason why I think it will be especially helpful to us to use this illustration this morning is the fact that it is of such a well-known character that we will not only be better able to grasp the various lessons, but probably more likely to retain them. If I should stand here and illustrate some of these spiritual lessons by some very abstruse propositions in astronomy, it might be said that it would sound very nice while I was telling it, but how soon would we have forgotten all about it? On the other hand, if we take such an ordinary thing as suffering and sickness and disease, and if we draw this parallel, we trust it may.have the effect of enabling you to draw such parallels constantly day after day during your life. I hope that after this morning, you will never think of a doctor, but that it will remind you of that Great Physician. I hope that you will never hear of a person being paralyzed, but that you will stop and begin to think and notice whether you are spiritually paralyzed; that you will never begin to feel pains or aches but that it will remind you of some of these spiritual pains and aches, and that as a consequence instead of this being a sermon for this morning, it will be a sermon for every day in our lives, that every experience of suffering and sickness, and things incidentally thereto, will remind us anew of these spiritual diseases, and set us to thinking in our own case to see if we have any of them.

Now the first thing I am going to talk about is Aids to Health. We know that there are a great many aids to natural health, and all of those aids to natural health find their corresponding aids to spiritual health. [PE112]

The first aid to health we want to mention is a proper knowledge on one's condition. You know a man or woman would be considered very foolish who had some very strange appearances manifest themselves upon his or her body, and yet gave no thought as to what they were. How foolish a man would be who had some strange appearance upon his finger and yet neglected it, and paid no attention to it, until at last it proved to be blood poisoning and ultimately resulted in his death. And the same way along spiritual lines, dear friends. We realize that every one of us is in a better condition spiritually in proportion as we are diligent to know about what may be our state along this line. We do not want to be of that class, who close their eyes to their weaknesses. You remember the way the Apostle advises us to examine ourselves. Why examine ourselves? To find out whether we have any weaknesses; we could not tell that without an examination. And we examine ourselves to find what those weaknesses are, which we believe we have.

You remember that there is a class of people very numerous today who are termed Christian Scientists. You know they believe that sickness and suffering is merely a delusion, merely a work of the mortal mind; they are the people who say there are no headaches-we never have any headaches, they say, etc. I do not think there is any such thing as a headache; a headache is merely a delusion, a deception, a germ of the imagination. Now, dear friends, there is another kind of Christian Scientist, who does not call himself one, but he is one just as much as the other man. He is the one who says, I have no selfishness, I am just as unselfish as anybody in Indianapolis. He is a Christian Scientist too, whether he calls himself by that name or not. We realize that along natural lines, that the man or woman who understands what his or her trouble is, is in a better position to get more quickly and promptly cured than the man who is blind to that fact. How foolish we consider the one that would say, Well, I have a little cold, I know it is unpleasant, but I won't pay any attention to it. If the cold gets so bad that it develops into pneumonia, then I will go to a doctor to see if he can cure me. You would say, What a foolish man he is! How much easier it would have been for him to be cured while it was in the cold stage than to wait until it reached the pneumonia stage! So it is along spiritual lines. Your pride may not have reached a very serious stage yet; that pride that is in your heart may be a very little matter, a little thing, but it is just like that cold, so gradually and yet so seriously it develops, and likewise that pride grows and grows, and the longer you wait, the longer [PE113] before the treatment begins, the greater the danger that it is not going to be cured at all. We realize the necessity for a knowledge of our condition. We do not want to shut our eyes, we want to know what our weaknesses are. It is not going to benefit me to know what weaknesses you have, and it is not going to benefit you to know what weaknesses I have, but it is going to benefit me tremendously if I know what my weakness are, and it will benefit you immensely if you know what weaknesses you have.

The next aid to health I would like to mention is an aid to natural health and it is equally an aid to spiritual health, and even more so, we might say. It is the presence and assistance of THE PHYSICIAN. You know how it is, you go to the doctor and tell him of your condition, you ask him for his advice and for his assistance and help, and he will prescribe the proper remedy. So it is in regard to spiritual sickness. We go to the Great Physician in prayer and say to Him," O, Great Physician, I have an awful attack of impatience, and now, Great Physician, I want your help; you are the one that can help and cure me of this awful attack; I must look to you for assistance." Dear friends, we ought to go to Him frequently in our petitions, seeking more and more of this spiritual strength.

But another thing before we pass from that point is this; not only should we go to the Great Physician for ourselves, but we ought also to go to the Great Physician for our brothers and sisters. You know very frequently you will have a friend or a member of your family who is sick and unable to go for the doctor, and you go to the doctor for that one. Sometimes, there might even be some one who is unconscious and cannot go himself, and what do you do for him? Suppose you had a son and he is sick and unconscious; how do you act? Do you say, "O, there is my son, he is unconscious, he is sick, he knows nothing; why, what a terrible state he is in! I hope he will come to consciousness again, and then I will send him for the doctor." Why, not at all. You do not wait for him to come to consciousness, but you go immediately for the doctor yourself and say, "Come to my boy; he is sick and unconscious." So it is along spiritual lines. Not only do we go to the Great Physician for ourselves, but we want to go to Him for our brethren and our sisters as well. Sometimes you may find some brother who has some of these spiritual diseases, and is unconscious of them; he may have a measure of pride and he fails to realize it. What should be your duty? Should you say merely, "I hope some of these days that brother will recognize that he has pride and will go to the Great Physician and get [PE114] cured." No, dear friends, you want to go to the Great Physician for that brother, and, as the Scriptures say, Pray for one another that ye may be healed.

I believe that is one of the ways we may properly judge of the strength of our spiritual health. I suppose almost all of us have come into contact with some brother that may have offended us, and now, dear friends, how do you feel toward such a brother? Imagine there is such a brother. Can you think of one? See if you can think of some brother in your neighborhood with whom it has been very hard for you to get along, who all the time seems to want to show the wrong spirit, etc. Now, then, what have you done about that brother's case? How often have you prayed for the brother? Why, you say, I never thought of praying for him once. Then you had better go to the Great Physician, for you need Him as much as your brother does. And if you can say, Well, I have prayed for that brother frequently, then, dear brother, you can rejoice, for your spiritual pulse is in good condition.

I would also like to speak about another aid to health; it is an aid to natural health and also an aid to spiritual health; and that is the proper kind of DIET. You know how a doctor will say to a patient: "Now, it does not matter how much you send for me, and it does not matter how much of my medicine you take, if you are not going to give up drinking so much of that strong coffee, it will not do you any good. My medicine won't help you." So it is, dear friends, along spiritual lines. It does not matter how many conventions you attend, it does not matter how much you read of God's Word, it does not matter how often you attend the meetings in your home town, etc., if you are not regulating your diet according to the prescription of the Great Physician, you cannot expect to have better spiritual health. And what is our spiritual diet? Why, just as our natural diet consists of the things we eat, our spiritual diet consists of the things we read. You remember the Scripture says, "Thy Word was found, and I did eat it." Dear brothers and sisters, if when you get up in the morning the first thing you take for breakfast is one or two accounts of some murder trials in the morning paper, then a couple chapters out of some novel for dinner, then a divorce case or two from the evening paper for supper, not only will your spiritual health be very poor, but it cannot thrive on a diet like that. Somebody says, is there anything wrong with that; is there anything wrong or sinful in reading novels? What a foolish question! What do you think, -suppose I was sick, and the doctor came and would say to me, "Well, it does not matter how often you send for me, you are not going [PE115] to improve until you stop drinking that strong coffee; your heart won't stand it." And I say, "O, doctor, do I have to give up that coffee? Why is there anything sinful in drinking coffee?" He would say to me, "Why, you foolish man; it is not a case of whether it is sinful or not, it is a case of whether it will help your health or not." Now, that is the way it is on spiritual lines. It is not a question of whether reading novels is sinful or not, but a question of whether or not it will help our spiritual health. And I will say that it never gave anybody real spiritual health.

I might also speak about another aid to health; it is both an aid to natural, and an aid to spiritual health; and that is CLEANLINESS. You know how the doctor will say to the patient, "Well, you must bathe frequently and keep the pores open, if you want to progress as favorably as you may." So, dear friends, along spiritual lines, if we want to have spiritual health, we must learn to keep clean spiritually. You remember how it speaks, in the 5th chapter of Ephesians, of the washing of water through the Word; and you remember in the 119th Psalm and the 9th verse, it reads, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleans his ways? By taking heed thereto according to thy Word." God's Word is the water in which we are to wash and be clean in this higher sense.

But there is another thought here: You know that very frequently the water will not cleanse you, or you cannot cleanse yourself so effectively, unless you have warm water. You know warm water is a so much better cleanser than cold water. What makes it warm? It is put in fire. So, if you want to get clean along spiritual lines, it will not do for you to take the Lord's Word and read it merely in an informal way-that is using the water too cold. We want to put the fire of zeal into it, then we will be able to get clean. You know sometimes in our travels, we come across a brother who probably has been addicted to the use of tobacco; and in talking with the brother, he will say, I would like to give it up, I would like to get clean along this line, but I have tried and it does not seem that I am able to do it; I don't seem to be able to give it up at all. And probably you will meet that brother years afterwards, and behold he is just as free from bondage to tobacco as anybody in the world. And you say, "Brother, how was this? I thought you told me you could not give it up before, that it was impossible?" "Well, you see, I found afterwards that I was not zealous enough about it. If I had had enough zeal, I could have given it up then." You see the trouble with him was, he did not have the water warm enough, as it were; and so, dear brethren, probably you have not had enough zeal; probably the water has not been warm enough to permit you to cleanse yourself as thoroughly as it might otherwise have done. [PE116]

I would also like to speak about another aid; it is an aid to natural, and also an aid to spiritual health; and that is EXERCISE. It will not do for you to eat heavily every day and then get no exercise at all, but you must go out and exercise more; so, dear friends, if you and I want better spiritual health, we must learn to exercise; we must learn to use the strength, the spiritual food God gives us. If you go to God's Word, and feast there at the table on His Word, and feast there once or twice every day, and then you are not exercised, you are sure to have spiritual gout, or something of that kind. We see that a great many of the Lord's people fail to realize this. This is what the light is for. Our light is not to be put under a bushel. Our light is not merely that we might know more than others, but God has given us the light so that we might be workmen approved unto Him. This reminds me of a statement I saw over in Scotland. I happened to pick up an old Scotch book there, and this statement was in it, which I thought was very much to the point. It said, "Don't put your light under a bushel, for if you do, either the light will go out or else it will set the bushel on fire and you will have a bigger blaze than you bargained for." I do not think we want to be in that condition. The Lord has given us light that we might exercise, and the more we do exercise, the better will be our spiritual health.

I am acquainted with a case of a sister in Canada. I had heard of her very often and everybody seemed to have such great ideas of her spirituality. Why, it just seemed as though she must have been a giant along spiritual lines, but I had not had the pleasure of meeting her. At last it was my privilege to go to the town where she lived. When I arrived at the town, I found she was from a natural standpoint just about as ordinary a young woman as one could meet; nothing especially attractive appeared from the natural standpoint; and yet I soon found myself entertaining the same idea everybody else had. She was such a spiritual giant. And it did not take me long to find out what the reason was. She told me after she had come to a knowledge of these truths, she had taken some sheets of paper and on those sheets of paper she first put down the name of every relative she had in the world; after that she put down the name of every friend she had in the world, and after that the name of every person she really knew in the world; and she said she never stopped until she had mailed to every one of them some literature that would put them in the way of knowledge and some of the blessings she enjoyed. I remember how, driving along the road, a brother and I were in a carriage ahead, and she and two sisters in [PE117] a carriage behind, and I remember how she would stop her carriage and get out, and the brother told me as he looked back that she had gotten out to give those farmers some tracts. She never thought of taking a ride in her carriage, or going anywhere, but that she had a supply of tracts along. She was always on the lookout for opportunities of service. She was exercising, dear friends; that is one of the ways of exercising. We realize there are different ways of exercising. We can exercise in our own home. What grand opportunities the wife has of exercising patience, long suffering, gentleness and resignation in connection even with her own house work. There are opportunities of exercising everywhere, and the thing for us to do is to use these opportunities of exercise. You remember how the Scripture says, "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby." (Heb. 12:11). Everything wants exercise, whether it is chastisement, or discipline of a mild character, or not.

We might speak of another aid to health! It is an aid to natural health and also an aid to spiritual health; and that is the proper kind of ATMOSPHERE. You know how the doctor will say, "Well, you must get the patient out of this stuffy room, it is too close, the ventilation is not good enough." So, dear friends, proper atmosphere is necessary for the natural health. And pure atmosphere is necessary also for the spiritual health. What kind of an atmosphere do God's people breathe? We answer, that atmosphere is God's Holy Spirit. That is what the Apostle Paul says, "Withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly." Why? Because that is not the proper kind of atmosphere with which we want to come into contact. We do not want to hold communion or fellowship with one who walks disorderly, with one who is in the habit of becoming intoxicated, or walking inconsistently with the spirit of morality, to say nothing of the spirit of Christianity. That is not the kind of an atmosphere that is suited for the betterment of our spiritual health. "Evil communications corrupt good manners," the scriptures truthfully say.

I would like to speak about another aid to health; it is an aid to natural health and also an aid to spiritual health; and that is proper REST. You know how the doctor will advise the patient to give up business for a few days to take a rest, to go out to the mountains or to the seashore. So, dear friends, rest is an essential for spiritual health. [PE118] What kind of rest? The rest of faith, the rest that depends on such promises as, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Who could not rest on a promise like that; the rest that is founded upon such a glorious Scripture as that where our Lord said, "My grace is sufficient for thee." Dear friends, if you are not resting on these promises, it is because you have not the proper faith in the promises. Faith is what we want. I find so many of the world who have faith in their feelings, and faith in the attitude of their friends, and faith in this thing, and faith in that thing, but very little faith in the statement of God's Word. You and I ought to have that faith that will say, I will have more faith in God's Word than I will have in my feelings, or my friends, or anything else, for He has said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." If there is any leaving or forsaking, dear friends, it is you that have done it; you may have left or forsaken Him, but He will never leave nor forsake you. We know sometimes the Lord's people are sorely puzzled in what seems to them almost that the Lord has forsaken them. It is well illustrated in that passage in Psalms, "His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men." You know something of what the first part of that means, "His eyes behold." The Lord is looking down on us; He beholds us; and He says, "His eyelids try the children of men." What does that mean? What are the eyelids? The eyelids are what we use when we go to sleep; when we go to sleep we close down the lids, then we are ready to sleep. But His watchful eyes never slumber nor sleep. God's Word says: He does not go to sleep, but sometimes he seems to go to sleep.

Suppose we put it like this: Imagine I have a little shop, and I employ a man to help me; and this man seemed to be very attentive to business when I was present, but when I would go away, no matter how important the work was, he would neglect it. So I thought to myself, I am going to prove that man one of these days. I am going to see if I have a man who is reliable when I am away as well as when I am present. So one day, he and I had considerable work to do, work that was very important, and that we were in a hurry for, and we were laboring away at it. I got through with my share of the work and I went and took my seat and leaned back and closed my eyes. He looked over and thought, the boss is asleep and I will take it easy. So he stopped working. I was not asleep at all. I was really looking out under the corners of my eyelids; my eyelids were only trying him. When I find that man is unreliable, I cannot trust him. And that is the way with our Heavenly Father. He never goes to sleep, but sometimes his eyelids try us. We cry out and it does not seem as though he hears; we are in distress and it does not look as though he pays any attention, and it almost appears as though the Lord was asleep; but no, He is not asleep; His [PE119] eyelids are only trying us. He wants to see whether we will say, Well, if the Lord is asleep, I am going to stop and take it easy. The Lord is looking for those who from the depths of their heart say, No matter whether he is awake or asleep, I am going to be just as faithful in the one case as I would be in the other.

Now, dear friends, I would like to speak about another aid to health; it is an aid to natural health and also an aid to spiritual health. Just as we have seen that this faith will mean better spiritual health when we have the faith to rest on His promises, so likewise, dear friends, another very important aid to health is CHEERFULNESS.

You know that the doctor will often say to his patient, "Cheer up, you are too depressed." And so, if cheerfulness is of such wonderful help in regard to natural health, it is equally and even more helpful in the matter of spiritual health. If you are spending all of your days worrying about your trials and your difficulties, no wonder you have not very good spiritual health; you could not have under those circumstances. You must learn, as the Apostle Paul has put it, to forget the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto the things that are before, press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Some time ago, one of our brethren drew a picture, and on one side there was a big block of stone, probably fifteen feet in each direction, and underneath that block of stone there was a woman screaming with pain. On the side of the block of stone was carved the words, "Our trials." There that woman was being crushed to death with those trials. And in another picture, the same block of stone is represented, but there the woman had gotten above, and she seemed so happy and cheerful standing there on top of that block of stone; and underneath the picture were these words: "Are your trials burdens or blessings? That depends on whether you live above them or below them. Where do you live?" Now that is the question with every one of us: "Where do you live?" If we are living under our trials, no wonder we do not find very much help there, but if we are living up above our trials, then what blessings we can even get from the trials themselves.

I have no doubt that we will be very much surprised if we can find how our great trials grew from such small beginnings. You know someone, and probably one who is not in sympathy with your belief, makes some remark about you, probably it is some little ungenerous remark about your religion. Now it would have been best for you to take that pleasantly and to pass the remark by, but you don't do it; you think that it is awful, that it is a terrible thing for him to say anything like [PE120] that to me; I do not think that is right. And we start away, and by the time we get down to the corner, we conclude that it is worse than we thought it was. Then we meet a brother, and say, Well, I have had a very severe trial; I met a neighbor and he insulted me on account of my religion. And when we tell him about that, it sounds worse; we never knew it was so bad until we told him about it, and as the brother sympathized with us he expresses sorrow that we had had such a trial and we think, Now I know this brother would not express that sorrow if it had not been something bad; it must have been something bad or he would not have sympathized with us. And thus that trial keeps growing, growing, growing, until at last that little mole-hill has become a big mountain. You and I do not want to lack the faith that could turn mole-hills into mountains, but we want to have the fait h that will turn mountains into mole-hills. Our spiritual health cannot be very good under conditions like that. Not only will cheerfulness mean a great aid to our own spiritual health, but it will mean help to the spiritual health of our brothers and sisters likewise.

I am sure that everyone of you has a cross to bear; you all have trials, and I think it would be very ungenerous of me to want to put some of my cross on you and make you bear a little more than you have to bear. No, I do not think that is the advice the Word of the Lord gives us. Does the Word of God say, "Casting all your care on your brethren for they care for you?" No it does not say that at all. It says, "Casting all your care upon him." Dear friends, if I have a joy, if I have a pleasant experience, if I have had some experience that has been uplifting, some experience that is sweet, I want to tell you about that experience, for that will help you; but if I have had an experience that has been trying and burdensome, an experience that has.produced pain, I want to tell the Lord about that; he is the one with whom to share that.

This reminds me of one of the classes out west, one of the grandest classes in the western part of the United States, where this little incident happened. One of the brethren there told me about it, and I think it illustrates the point very well. This brother said that every Wednesday night they had a prayer and testimony meeting in that town, and these meetings became very serious occasions, perhaps almost every Wednesday night there would be two or three sisters weep a little, and two or three brothers would talk as if they did not cry, they would like to, and generally when the meeting was over all were so sad and depressed they hardly knew what to do, longing for someone to lift the weight and relieve them of their burdens. The brother said that this had kept up for quite a while, and one Wednesday night there was a sister present who was accompanied by her husband, a man who was [PE121] not only not in the truth, but made no profession of Christianity at all. He had no special interest in religion, but he accompanied his wife to this experience meeting. And the brother said that this meeting was just like all the others, it was a very serious time, they all had so many trials to tell about, and they all had their difficulties and their hardships, and they had failed to gain victories that they had hoped to gain, and they were almost crushed to the ground with the experiences that night. And toward the latter part of the meeting, this sister's husband stood up to speak and they were all surprised, as they knew he made no profession of religion at all, and did not see what he would have to say. But he stood up and said, "Friends, I am glad I have been here tonight, for I have learned something. Ever since my wife got interested in this religion, she talked about so many mysterious things that I could not begin to make head or tail out of it; she talks about it in a way that I cannot understand, but every once in a while, something would be said that would make some matter clear and plain, and that is the reason why I am glad I am here tonight. There is one thing she used to talk about from the very time she first became interested in this, and I never could make out what she meant by it, but tonight it has been made perfectly clear and plain. She used to talk so much about the Great Tribulation Class, and I never knew what the Great Tribulation Class was until I came over here tonight." They all took it to heart, and that was not the Great Tribulation Class after that. They took their trials and sorrows first to the Lord and when they came together, it was with more cheerful and more pleasant experiences.

Now we realize this spirit that beareth the sorrowful and unpleasant things, exults the good, sweet and helpful things, will not only help.your spiritual health, but will help the spiritual health of your brothers and sisters also. You remember we need the charity that will cover a multitude of sins. Be sure we have that charity.

Sometime ago a sister said to me, a grand good sister too, but I could not help thinking at least it was probably a little bit of envy that had prompted it-but she started to complain about a brother connected with a class where she was, a grand brother, a man that I esteemed very highly, and thought much of him, and I tried to get the sister to stop, but she could not stop, she had to tell about this brother, and about this thing, and about that thing, and about the other thing, I guess for about a quarter of an hour, and all my suggestions that she should not speak about those things were of no avail. At last when she had talked about a quarter of an hour she said, "O well, it is all buried." I said, "No, sister, it is not buried." She said, "Yes it is." And I said, "Sister, it is not all buried." "Why, Brother Barton, what do you mean? It is buried." "Well, [PE122] sister, if it is buried, then you dug it all up this afternoon, because I have seen it here just as prominent as if it had never been beneath the ground."

Now, dear friends, let us have the spirit that when we say we forgive, that we do forgive; that when we say we bury anything we bury it; that when we say we cover a multitude of sins, we cover them; and not spread the cover over the multitude of sins like this. (Brother Barton placing his handkerchief over the back of the chair) and say, "Oh yes, we have forgiven that brother, we have covered all the sins, but you know what he did when he did so and so (pulling up one corner of the handkerchief) and then the other time, you know he did this (lifting another corner of the handkerchief), and then there is that other thing that he did (lifting another corner of the handkerchief)-but I have covered it all with charity." Now, dear friends, I am afraid a good many of us have that kind of forgiveness.

You and I wand to have a little grave yard all our own, and we want to have plenty of little graves open all the time. And then the Bible speaks about dead works, and when you find any of those dead works, put them in one of those little graves. You know that if you lived in a house, and you found there were dead rats on the mantel-piece and dead dogs on the sideboard, and say other kinds of dead animals elsewhere, it would not be a very healthy house would it? So, dear friends, if your houses are filled with these dead works, those unkind things others have said about you, those misrepresentations, and those little things that you are treasuring up, you cannot have very good spiritual health in a house like that. And yet at the same time, let us remember that when any of those unkind things are said, we want to put them immediately in one of those little graves. If a brother says something unkind about you, see how quick you can bury it. If you can bury it as quick as he says it, all the better. And we do not want to erect a tomb stone over it, and on the tomb stone say, "Here is buried the unkind thing that John Smith said about me the other day when he said so and so." But we want to forget that we have buried it there. We want to bury it so deep that it cannot be resurrected.

We might say a little here, before we pass to the next side of our subject, about the care of the physician and the work he has to perform. You know sometimes a case becomes so serious that the physician even has to do some amputating; he has to amputate a finger, or an arm, or a limb; and so, dear friends, the Great Physician has to do some amputating; sometimes he has to amputate our opportunit ies for service, and somet imes he may have to amputate our health, or some of our worldly possessions, or this thing, or that thing, But just as the wise [PE123] surgeon never does any amputating unless it is absolutely necessary, so the Great Physician never does any amputating unless it is absolutely required for our spiritual health. But then, dear friends, how often this amputating might have been avoided if we had been more faithful! You know that a man, for instance, has cut his finger and got some poison in the cut, and he goes to the doctor and says, "Doctor, I am afraid this is blood poison here, what can you do for it?" And the doctor will say, "Well, I guess I will have to cauterize that." "But, doctor, that is painful." "Yes, it is rather painful." "Well, I cannot let you do it; I don't want that suffering, so I will not have it done." And he goes away and comes back a few days afterward and says, "Doctor that finger is worse; you can cauterize it now." The doctor will say, "It is too late now, blood poison has set in, and cauterizing will do no good; the only thing now is to cut the finger off." "Cut the finger off? Why, doctor, I cannot permit that." "Well, I will have to do it." "I cannot, I will not let you do it." So he goes home and comes back in a few days and says, "Doctor, it is worse, and you can cut the finger off now." "Why, it is too late, the whole arm will have to come off now, it has become so serious."

And so, dear friends, along spiritual lines; it may be somet imes we have done something that is unkind or ungenerous and it requires cauterizing; we have to apologize to some brother because we have mistreated him, or because we have not acted as generously towards him as we should have done; it is painful, we do not like to make that apology; we do not like to cauterize that wound. And it gets worse and worse until at last it results in amputation; amputation may become necessary, and you are deprived of some of the blessed.privileges you have in the Lord's service. And, even then, it may ultimately result in the second death itself. But as the Master said, It is better to enter into life with one arm than to have the two arms and run the danger of the second death.

Then, dear friends, we also think about the medicines. You know that the natural physician has a great many remedies, and so has the Great Physician. The natural physician has a great many remedies that are quite bitter, and so the Great Physician has many remedies that are very bitter, but the Great Physician does not give us these bitter remedies because He is not interested in us. You know when the doctor gives some bad tasting medicine to his patient, he does not do so because he wants to see what kind of face the patient will make, but because that it the only medicine that will do the work. So the Great Physician, when He has given you some bitter medicine, He does so because He [PE124] knows it is the medicine that will best help your case.

We might say that the Bible is like a great medicine chest. You and I want to go the Bible, and we want to learn to get the remedies there that will fit our case. We want to apply these remedies intelligently. Let us be careful that we get the right remedy. You know that when a man goes to a medicine chest to get out the medicine he needs, he is very careful to select the right remedy. He does not hastily pick up the first thing he lays his hand upon. If he has a little cold, he does not hastily pick out just any medicine, and run the risk of getting a bottle of laudanum and kill himself. He is careful to choose the right remedy. So along spiritual lines, dear friends. When we go to the Lord's word for the remedies, let us be careful that we get the right remedy, the remedy that is most needed.

To illustrate the matter, I will imagine there is a brother who is spiritually sick. We will suppose there was a class of the Lord's people and in it one brother who was very learned; he was educated and knew just how to say anything, and say it in the most beautiful way and when he talked, everyone listened at the wonderful words that come from his lips. And imagine there was another brother in this class who was very ignorant; this brother had not had the advantages of a college education and if he wanted to say anything, he had to go all the way around the circle, and then in the end you had to guess at what he meant. And imagine this learned brother did not like that; he says, "I do not like to hear that man talk; I like to hear a man talk that knows how to explain himself, who can give you the idea that is in his mind; I do not like the language of that brother." You see he is sick spiritually, dear friends, it gives him a pain.whenever he hears that poor ignorant brother talk. And now imagine he goes to get the remedy, and he says, "I know I am sick, and I must go and get some remedy; I must get help; I cannot stand to be in the presence of this ignorant brother! What shall I do?" And he goes and looks through the medicine chest for the remedy, and at last that passage in Thessalonians occurs to him, which says: "Withdraw from every brother that walketh disorderly," and he thinks "Now that is it; I will withdraw myself from that ignorant brother, I will not have anything more to do with him, he is not talented enough for my association."

Now dear friends, he has gotten the wrong remedy, and indeed if that brother does not discover his mistake in time, the result might even be the second death. The trouble with him is pride, and that remedy was not intended for a case of pride. We might say here also, dear friends, that there is one great distinction between the natural and the spiritual remedies. Natural remedies, even when we get the right ones, we have [PE125] to take in very small quantities, but it is different with spiritual remedies; when you get the right spiritual remedy, you can take it down sixty times a day by the gallon, and the more you take the better. The more we take of the glorious remedies of the wise and great Physician, just so much the better.

Now, I am going to say a few words about the next phase of our subject, as we will be far more able to say what we would like to say in this matter by so doing; so I will say just a few words about the symptoms of diseases. We know there are various things indicative of the state of one's natural health; and so these things have their correspondences in other things indicative of the state of our spiritual health. For instance, one of the very common ways of telling the state of one's health is by looking at his tongue. You know how often the doctor will tell one's condition by the tongue of the patient. And that is a very good way of telling the state of the spiritual health too. All we have to do is just to listen to the tongue a little while and we can tell what is the state of the spiritual health of the one that uses that tongue.

Then we know another indication of disease, or sickness, is pain. If there is pain, it indicates something wrong. And we know, too, that the kind of a pain indicates what the trouble is. The doctor will say, "How does that pain come on, quickly? And is it soon over? Or, does it come on very slowly, and stay with you for a long period?" And.from the description you give him, he will be able to tell about what the trouble is.

So we see, dear friends, pain is indicative of spiritual disease. If you are pained because people don't pay enough attention to you, if you are pained because this one doesn't recognize you, and that one doesn't recognize you, when you come here to Convention, if you are aggrieved because you are not called on to take a prominent part in the meetings, etc., it indicates sickness, spiritual sickness, and the kind of pain even indicates what the trouble is. I will imagine that I am sick spiritually. Whenever I make a mistake it gives me such an awful pain. So I go to the Great Physician and say, "Great Physician, I know that I am sick, because whenever I make a mistake, what a terrible pain I have; I have an awful pain. And he would say, "Do you have that pain whenever you make a mistake?" "Yes, whenever I make a mistake." "Are you sure? Is it whenever you make a mistake, or when you only happen to make mistakes that other people know about?" "Why, I haven't any pain when nobody knows about it." "Then pride is your trouble." If we had the right spirit, we would be sorry for the mistakes that nobody knew about, as well as for the mistakes that everybody knows about. But if we can [PE126] say that it is only the mistakes others recognize and see that we are sorry for, then the right condition is not present, and it indicates that pride is present. But if on the other hand we can truly say that we are as sorry for the mistakes nobody knows about as for those that everybody knows about, it is an indication that we are imperfect but it also shows that the healing work is going on.

Weariness: I will also say that another indication of disease is weariness. You know that often men and women will say, "Well, I cannot be well; it seems I cannot keep up the way I usually do; something must be wrong." And so with us, dear friends; if we are becoming weary in well doing, it is an indication that we need some kind of a spiritual tonic, as it were. It is an indicat ion that our spiritual health is not as good as it ought to be. Yet, when I say, "Weary in well doing," do not get the wrong thought; do not think I mean, weary in coming to conventions, not that; that is not the thought. Some of you might deceive yourselves with that. You might think, "O, I know that I am deeply consecrated, because, look at the sacrifice I made to come to this convent ion; look how much I was willing to suffer to get here, etc. That shows the state of my spiritual health." Oh, no, it does not, at all. Why was it you made that sacrifice to come here? Because you thought you would have such a glorious time; because you thought you would meet so many of the dear brothers and sisters with whom you had a previous acquaintance. But, dear friends, would you have made as great a sacrifice to do.something the Lord desired you should do, that would have been as unpleasant as this is pleasant? Would you have made as great a sacrifice to go into the colporteur work as you have made to get here? Would you be willing to strain as many points to carry the truth to someone else miles from where you are living as you would make to come here to get some of that glorious truth? That is to judge of the spiritual health. If you want to know whether your spiritual condit ion is good, don't think of that day when everything went along smoothly, but think of the day when everything seemed to go wrong. When you want to find out whether you have any zeal, don't think how when that man came first to you and you could not get out of it, you told him what you believed, but think of how far you have gone out of your way to carry the truth to those who might have a hungering and thirsting for it. That is the way to judge of the state of your spiritual health.

Isolation: Then dear friends, another indication of sickness is the desire for isolation. You know how often the parent will say, "Well that child cannot be well today, he does not seem to care to go out with the children the way he usually does. And so we say, if you begin to feel your love for association with the people of God diminishing, it [PE127] is an indication that your spiritual health is not as good as it might be; and if you do not care to meet with God's people, unless it happens to be at a convention, or during the Pilgrim visits in your town, or something of that kind, it does not speak well for your spiritual health, for the Apostle said, We are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together and so much the more as you see that day drawing nigh.

Now I will have to be quite brief in enumerating some of the spiritual diseases. I will not have to go very deeply into this matter. We find there are all kinds of natural diseases and all kinds of spiritual diseases. In the first place, we know that we have trouble with our natural sight. So often people have trouble also with their spiritual sight. For instance, I am, as they usually say, near sighted. I cannot see anything at a distance; I cannot recognize anyone in the audience. If I want to see anything I have to hold the book quite close to my eyes. I am near-sighted. So some of the Lord's people are spiritually near-sighted. We meet a great many people who cannot see the millennium and all its blessings; that is too far away. They can only see the things as are right close by. That is as far as they can see. They are near-sighted.

And then, dear friends, we meet others who are far-sighted. They are so far-sighted that if they want to read a book, they have to hold it away a long distance; they cannot see very well nearby; but they can see clearly at great distances. And so, we meet some spiritually far-sighted. Sometimes we meet brethren who are so far-sighted they can see way down to the end of the Millennial Age and yet cannot see the weaknesses in their flesh; they cannot see opportunities for services right around their own homes.

There is another trouble common with the sight, here in the United States, and that is what we usually speak of as cataracts. You know how there is something wrong that occurs to the visual part of the eye and keeps getting worse and worse, until at last it completely obscures the vision. Nothing agrees with that so well as pride. Just as that cataract begins in such a little way, so it is with pride. Pride begins by blindness to our own faculties. When we make a mistake we do not want to see it, we do not mind seeing other people's mistakes, but we do not want to see our own; and that pride keeps growing and growing, and gets worse and worse, until at last it results in total blindness itself.

Now when we meet anybody who has had any of these troubles with his spiritual sight, let us send him to the Great Spiritual Specialist, let us send him to that Great Spiritual Physician who makes a specialty of all these various ailments, you might say, and let us remember the [PE128] way the Apostle John puts it in Revelation, "Anoint they eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see."

Hearing: We might also say a little bit about trouble with the hearing. We have trouble with the natural hearing and also trouble with the spiritual hearing. We find some that are hard of hearing, and some that are deaf. How many there are who are spiritually hard of hearing. They are indifferent. They cannot hear unless the Lord shouts, and if He shouts loud enough then they will hear Him; but they never hear the "still small voice." If when walking along the streets there is an opportunity for service, an opportunity to carry the truth to some of those that are passing, they do not hear that. If there is an opportunity and the Lord should say to that brother, "Don't you see there is somebody to whom you could give a tract?" probably he thinks about it; but he does not hear unless it is in a voice of thunder. But how often it is with the spiritual as it is wit h the natural, that indifference grows, and gets worse and worse and worse until at last it results in total deafness itself.

Indigestion: Then I might say a word or two about stomach troubles. You know we have trouble with natural digestion, and also with spiritual digest ion. You know there are many forms of natural indigestion and so there are many forms of spiritual indigestion. There is one very common form of indigestion peculiar to almost all of us. In the natural form, it is that the patient can take nothing except milk. When one has such a form of indigestion as that he has to live on milk exclusively, sometimes for years. So some of the Lord's people have a similar spiritual indigestion, they cannot take anything but milk; they do not want to hear about anything except faith and repentance, and if you go to tell them about restitution, or about some of these other glorious things, they will say, "O, I cannot listen to that; I cannot take any of that; I have indigestion, I must keep on the milk diet." I feel sorry for them.

There is another form of indigestion, just the reverse of that. There is a form of natural indigestion where the patient can take anything but milk; milk is the very worst thing, and the stomach rebels against it in the smallest quantity. So, we meet some of those with that kind of indigestion-some that can take anything but the milk of the Word. They do not want to talk about anything but the time prophecies, and the types and the shadows, and the book of Revelation. And if they come to meeting and find that the love of God is going to be the theme, they will say, "Well, I wish I had stayed home and read Revelation." Now that is spiritual indigestion also. We do not want to have that form of indigestion. We want to be of those who have their spiritual stomachs in such condition that they can appreciate the milk of the Word, and can appreciate the strong meat also. Let us see that our spiritual food [PE129] is pure, but if it is pure, and not contaminated with the traditions of men, then let us be satisfied and let us enjoy it, whether it is milk or whether it is meat.

Heart troubles: We might say a little about spiritual heart troubles. You know trouble with the heart is very serious. And so spiritual heart trouble is very serious, because the heart is simply the intention of the will, the motive, the desire. There are none of these spiritual diseases so dangerous as those that affect and influence our motives, our intentions, our wills, our desires. There are different kinds of heart troubles, natural and also spiritual. The Bible speaks of some being double-hearted, and some that are hard hearted, and as having hearts that are over-charged with the cares of this world, and some as being faint-hearted. And faint-heartedness is a very contagious disease. You know when those spies were sent to spy out the promised land, they did not seem to have faint-heartedness, but they got it down there. When some of the spies returned and said. "It will never do for us to try to take that land, the cities are all walled up to heaven and there are giants in the land, beside whom we are but as grasshoppers." That faintheartedness soon spread to all the nation of Israel, and the next thing we know, there were only two men who lived through it to enter the promised land-Caleb and Joshua. So if we have any of that faint-heartedness in us, let us go to the Great Physician and get Him to inoculate us that we may be immune against the terrible effects of that awful disease.

Paralysis: I might say a little about paralysis. There is natural paralysis, and there is spiritual paralysis. You know how, at times you will go into a house and there is a big, strong, healthy looking man, who just looks as though he could do as good a day's work as any man in the world, and he cannot do anything; he cannot move his hands, he cannot move his feet; and he cannot move his tongue. What is the matter? He is paralyzed. So, dear friends, sometimes we come across a Christian, a big, noble looking Christian who looks like he has as much time as any of the rest of us have, and he has as great ability as any of us have, and he has just as many opportunities as any of us, and he is doing nothing. What is the matter? He is paralyzed with fear, dear friends. You know there are different kinds of paralysis; paralysis is not always total; sometimes it is only partial. Sometimes there will be a man whose arm is paralyzed, and that is all. Sometimes it would be only one half of the body. So dear friends, in spiritual ways, it is not always total paralysis; sometimes it is only partial paralysis. Sometimes, it is only partial paralysis when it comes to doing Volunteer work; sometimes it is only partial paralysis when it comes to speaking about the truth in their [PE130] homes, etc. Dear friends, let us remember that the Scripture says, "Perfect love casteth out all fear." Let us go to the Great Physician and get more and more of that perfect love which is an antidote for this spiritual paralysis.

Nervousness: I might say a word here, also, about spiritual nervousness. You know there is natural nervousness and there is spiritual nervousness. You know what a miserable state a man is in who has nervousness, especially in its worst form, nervous prostration; you know how everything is exaggerated. If there is a beautiful piece of music played, he does not hear music, it is awful to him. And so, dear friends, along spiritual lines, we find sometimes those who have the spiritual nervousness; they are very sensitive and exaggerate everything. It does not matter how nicely they are treated, they are sure to find something to be insulted over; they are just sure that that man meant to insult them, just sure of it, no question about it, it is just so. Now, dear friends, we need to have more of that spirit the Scripture speaks of saying, "Love thinketh no evil." We want that love that does not all the time endeavor to impute evil motives to what others are doing. Let us go to the Great Physician and get rid of this awful monster, spiritual nervousness.

Fevers: And then I might just say a word or two about spiritual fevers. There are natural fevers and there are spiritual fevers. There is the fever of impatience. How often we speak of people being feverishly impatient. You know there are all kinds of fevers, and there all kinds of impatience; there is impatience to be rich, impatience to make a man acknowledge that you have the better argument, and impatience to have your own way. There is a difference in fevers; yellow fever is more terrible that typhoid. So there is a difference in impatience. It is worse to be impatient to be rich than to be impatient to convince anybody that you are right. But, nevertheless, we do not want any of these forms of impatience at all. We remember how, when Simon Peter's wife's mother was sick of the fever, and he sent for Jesus and He came down there and laid His hand on her feverish brow and said for the fever to leave her, she arose and ministered to those in the house. And so with us, if we have any of that impatient fever, let us call for our Master, let the Great Physician lay His blessed palm on our fevered brow so that the fever may leave us, and we may be better able to patiently, not impatiently, minister to Him and to the members of His household. And the secret of it all is to keep spiritual health in normal condition. You know that if a man's natural health is in good condition, he might cut himself with an old rusty nail and it would do him no harm; on the other hand, if that man's health was not good, he might run a small splinter into his finger and the result would be blood poisoning. So, [PE131] in spiritual ways; if a man's spiritual health is in good condition, someone who calls himself a brother in Christ might cheat him out of every dollar he had in the world and it would not affect his spiritual health, but it could not help but affect his esteem for that brother; still it would not affect his spiritual health. On the other hand, if his spiritual health was not in good condition, someone might say some little thing about him, which was not worthy of any notice, and that thing would be exaggerated and treasured up in his mind and might result in outer darkness, and at last in the second death itself.

O, how we ought to praise our Father in heaven for condescending to recognize us as His patients, and to delegate His Son to be our Great Physician! And, dear friends, if you and I submit to the treatment of this Great Physician, in God's providence, there is a time coming when we may share with Him as the physicians in healing the world of mankind, not only along figurative lines but along natural lines as well. How we rejoice as we realize our need of a physician and that we have One whom our Heavenly Father has provided.