IS there always done for our sick what is possible, to ameliorate their suffering, to break the power of disease, and, as far as we are able, to watch in behalf of the preservation of their life?
Alas, there is no ground as yet for boasting all too highly, of the saving power, that goes out from our medical science. She certainly made brilliant discoveries, her operations arouse our wonder, and against more than one evil she has found a fixed method of treatment. But of the fourteen hundred million persons here on earth, at most one third are profited thereby. And even with that one third medical care is provided by municipal charities, and in the country by a factotum, that is still so bitterly insufficient, that really only in the case of those, who are able to pay more freely, can care be said to be somewhat adequate. And even then, what mistakes and neglects, which the sick all too frequently have to pay for with their life.
The saying therefore is common abroad: “That doctors help more people under ground than heal them.” And though this may be somewhat exaggerated, yet it is sure, that the grace-gift of God, that is given us in medicine, does not spread by far the blessing, which it should spread.
For this reason it is altogether plain, that in sickness many people refuse to place confidence in means; that more than one makes slovenly use of means; and that here and there there are even those who systematically refuse to call in a doctor’s aid.
This at least is far more clear and far more understandable, than that there are so many others and so many more, who forget their God, swear by their doctor, and rather put themselves into human hands, than that they should lean upon the Lord their God.
Asa, the otherwise so godly king, who in his old age sought his physicians more than his God, remains for all God’s people in times of sickness and danger of death a solemn warning.
YET our sick should not be victims of the constant swaying of our soul on this point.
When Hezekiah lay deathly sick, what would it have been for the Lord our God, to heal this elect prince miraculously and without means?
And yet the Lord did not do so. Rather He sent His prophet to the sick king; and now Isaiah appears at his sick-bed, not to announce to him a miraculous something, neither to rouse him spiritually; but altogether prosaically, almost vulgarly, as it seems to us, in the name of the Lord to tell Hezekiah, that they must take … a lump of figs (Is. 38, 21).
Could it ever be revealed more clearly and more forcefully, that when the Lord our God intends to heal the sick, as a rule brings that healing about by a twofold, creaturely means. First, in casu by figs, which He Himself had made to grow, and in which He has created a strong extracting power; and secondly, by a human helper, by whose hand and care the figs were put upon the boil.
For what other purpose did God make also healing herbs to grow, and Himself prepare healing waters in so many springs, were it not, that with the help of all such means His sick children should fight against diseases and sicknesses?
Even lepers in Israel the Lord did not allow by any means to go about freely; but, that this dreadful disease should not come upon all the people, He Himself gave to and through Moses sternest ordinances to cut off every touch with leprous persons.
Sickness, even as death, is from sin. Diseases and pestilences are evil, destructive powers, that come upon us as consequence of sin. When once sin shall be done away, there shall also be no more sickness. So long as sin holds sway, sickness also continues to rage. And therefore it is one battle and one struggle, which on the part of God is laid upon us, against sin and misery, against spiritual and physical evil.
THEREFORE your sick also must be cared for with tenderness, but also with seriousness. And when they are seriously ill, so that they lie at the point of death, then from their moaning and sighing there goes out to you a call for deliverance, against which for no moment you must stop up your ears.
When you hear some one, in danger of drowning, scream for help, you will not think for a moment, of quietly walking along, in cold blood to go home, and there pray for that man, the while he is already long drowned. No; then an ejaculatory prayer is sent upward. On the part of the drowning one, a: “God help me!” and from your heart a: “God, help me save him!”; the while you reach out for a rope, a pole, a ladder, or you yourself jump into the water, as you realize your calling of God, to save that man from death; and presently, after you have been permitted to save him, to thank God for that blessing.
And why help that drowning person, who was a stranger to you, and leave your own wife, or your own child, who lie sick at home, to languish without help?
Is not dying dying, whether you see one dying in the water, or slowly die away on a bed of down?
For, of course, whether you save one by means of a rope thrown toward him or by quinine; by a pole, which he grasps, or with tincture of iron, which he swallows; all these together are means, which God places at your disposal, wherewith to fight for the life of your fellow-man.
An animal does not see this. Ten and more poles may be at hand, but no animal will hand one out to another animal, in danger of drowning. Not to animal, but to man God gave this insight. And therefore you are under the stress of the sixth commandment, responsible, for doing all in your power, to save the life of husband, wife, child or dependent.
To you it was entrusted, and if in this you are indifferent, it shall once be required at your hand.
AGAINST one sin only you should here be on your guard. You should not separate the means from your God, as though your hand had made it, and as though with this means you would fight against God, to save your sick from the hand of the Lord.
Therein and therein alone lies the evil abuse.
Then one thinks: God wants to kill my child, for God has made him ill; and with this medicine I will try to withdraw my child from God’s killing power.
And that of course is wicked.
This must never be.
It is God Who kills, and God Who makes alive. Whoever has at any time been saved from the water, was saved therefrom by God. And whoever recuperated from sickness, was healed therefrom by God. And such remains the case, though God uses a man with a pole, to save a drowning person, and a physician with medicine, to heal the sick.
In everything is the Lord.
He is the Almighty in the plague, in the pestilence and in the sickness, but He is equally the Almighty in the physician, in the medicine, and in every one, that cares for your sick.
You may be used of Him as second cause, but He is and always remains the first cause, both in the evil, that threatens your life and in the medicine, whereby He will avert that evil.
IT is therefore no caring for the sick, as it ought to be in a Christian family, when the bed is made and medicine given with regularity, but without an equally conscientious calling upon the Most High and supplicating the God of all compassion.
Prayer without work is also in the sick-room a caricature of true piety; but work without prayer is especially at the sick-bed a deriding of the living God.
See it in the case of Hezekiah.
First you have in Isaiah 38, 10-20 his glorious prayer, and only after that the prosaic order of the lump of figs.
According to Deut. 8, man shall not live by bread alone; for if you have nothing but bread, and God does not bless that bread, you will yet perish from hunger.
And so the sick also shall not live by medicine alone, for all those medicines effect nothing, except, as God’s almighty power operates in them.
To your medicine as to your bread applies what is written in Deut. 8, 17, 18: “Say not in your heart: My power and the might of my medicine has restored me to health; for thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, that it is He, Who gave you the medicine, to work its healing power in you.”
With your medicine therefore pray, even as with your work. From your God, and from your God alone await recovery, if it pleases Him, by medicine to recover you from your sickness.
Prayer on your own part, and urging your sick to pray.
Your God, and Him alone to be magnified by your sick, and willingness yourself to be nothing but an instrument in His hand, but then also a willing instrument, that works accurately, as God wills that you shall work.
Your patient is perhaps sick unto death. And now God wills to use you, to fight for his life. And therein will a child of God be tender of conscience, always zealous, and in a sacred sense self-sacrificing.
With a drowning person, who screams for help, but also with your sick, who moans upon his bed.
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