OF Prince Bismarck it is told, that he had enough toughness of will power, to repress an attack of raging toothache. Not always; but at times when weighty problems of state were at stake, when toothache would have disabled him, he was able to perform his weighty task with seriousness and level-headedness. So did the seriousness of his sense of duty urge his spirit, and his spirit (mind) operated so powerfully upon his nerves, that thereby he brought to effect the same result which is otherwise done by chloroform or cocaine. The germ of pain was there, but the outpouring of pain in his nerves he repressed by the power of his will.
This is what the Proverb-poet expresses in a general sense as follows: The spirit of a man will sustain his sickness (Proverbs 18, 14, Dutch version).
As you lie on your sick-bed, you are and continue to be all your days, a dual being. On one hand you exist in your soul, and on the other you exist in your body.
And the struggle is to know which shall win, the power of your soul or the power of your body.
Make no haste, let not your tongue run away with you, and say not all too readily, that of course the soul must win, for this is by no means always true. The needs and wants of the body can be so compelling, that the soul must stand aside. Exhaustion can go so far, that the spirit loses all power over the body. And when it comes to dying, the soul is not permitted even to will to retain power over the body. Then there is no help for it.
With one-sided spiritualism, with strained overspirituality you advance here nothing. In every domain of life God’s ordinances must be reverenced, with respect also to the relation between soul and body.
The struggle of your spirit in you may therefore never aim, purposely, to injure your body and withhold from it the care, which according to God’s ordinance is your body’s due; but must solely be applied, to prevent the influences of your body, also and particularly in sickness, from making it impossible for the spirit within you to hold its own.
Do not take that struggle too lightly.
Pain can become an overwhelming power, an emaciating weakness, especially when it violently attacks the life of the nerves, and undermines the strength of mind.
Especially in our times the condition of our nerves has become ever more precarious. They never are at rest. By the busy, restless life they are so endlessly held in tension, as to become overstrained and then limply to give way. Sometimes so limp, that by no stimulant can they be strung again.
Our physicians call this depression of nerves. A pregnant word, back of which sometimes hides nameless suffering.
And this weakening of the nerves is so serious, by reason of the fact, that by those nerves alone the spirit in you can operate upon your body. For your nerves are, so to say, the handle by which your soul takes hold of your body. Only by your nerves can your soul reach your body.
It is these same nerves, by which your body tries to hold your soul under, and by which your soul must enter into your body.
Sparing of your nerves is therefore in very deed a demand of piety, because thereby alone you render your spirit able, to have dominion over your body.
AND yet, do not think that the real mainspring of your strength is in those nerves.
We do not discount them; indeed we count with them; for God has strung them as conducting wires between your soul and your body; but still the strength must come from your spirit.
When you have put your horse in new traces before the heavily laden wagon, these traces render excellent service; but they are of no avail, if the horse does not pull, or is not strong enough, as truck-drivers say, “to give a start.” By that “giving a start” they mean that first extreme effort to set the wheels a-going. When that is done, the rest goes easier. But that first “giving a start” costs sometimes incredible exertion of strength. And thereby you recognize the merit of the horse. Is it a horse that has blood in him, you need do nothing; for then he twists and stretches and strains of himself, until the truck makes headway. But if the horse is a jade, he remains standing stock-still, and with lash and cry and push you must try to get the cart going.
And so it is with yourself.
Your nerves are the traces to the wagon; but these traces are of no use, if the spirit in you, that must work upon the nerves, is limp and sunken-in.
Is there strength in your spirit, strength of self-perception, strength of will, strength of action, then even with weakened nerves your strong spirit will do wonders, but if your spirit is tired, languid and without elasticity, you lie on your sick-bed really as an object of contempt, as is sometimes said: “He lies there like a log.”
YOU notice this at once with a patient; at least if you have any knowledge of the sick-bed, by having been with many sick.
Of course we do not speak here of minor ailments, of sudden affections, which occasion little pain and do not attack the system. That is really no sick-bed.
No, by sick-bed we understand that anxious condition, when there is real suffering, when the sick one becomes exhausted; when danger lurks about the bed, and it comes to the point of struggling with the spirit that is in you against your sickness.
In case of a panic, one always sees three kinds of people. People, who stand confused and petrified, and will-lessly let themselves come to grief. Other people, who at such a time with presence of mind, do wonders. And in between these two, those ordinary folks, who do no wonders, but at least let themselves be saved, and in part lend coöperation.
And these same three sorts of people you find on the sick-bed, the moment the case becomes serious.
On one hand, sufferers, who at once drop their wings and hide their head in the feathers, and with whom literally nothing can be done. Over against this a few noble sufferers, who with wondrous presence of mind remain master of themselves, and do not suffer courage to be lost from sight. And in between these, common sick folk, who neither coöperate nor resist much.
And with an eye to these conditions, the Proverb-poet says: “The spirit of a man will sustain his sickness,” and then adds so pathetically, “but a wounded spirit, who shall lift that up?”
That is to say, when on the sick-bed you find an insunken spirit in the sufferer, so little if anything can be done.
THIS, as is self-evident, is spoken altogether in terms of the natural. Spoken as it occurs with unconverted, and as it occurs with converted people.
Yet in both instances the sinful and the noble impulse are very different.
A child of God, who is right with God, knows that the sixth commandment forbids him to jeopardize his life, and thus commands him to do all in his power to sustain his life. He also knows, that, however powerless and nothing his spirit is in itself, grace is a mysterious power, by which faith can do all things; and also that in just such weaknesses the strength of the Lord is made perfect.
Thus he knows the commandment. He knows his own impotence. But he also knows the Fountain, from whence power flows. And now come the workings of faith, and by these workings of faith he triumphs.
Always more than conqueror through Him Who loved us.
But a converted man can also be insunken. That faith doth not operate. That the Source of strength does not glitter before the eye of the soul. And then he is very badly off, for then the sixth commandment is nothing to him, and the knowledge of his own weakness is offensive to him.
For this reason oftentimes converted people are so utterly wretched on their sick-bed, and are often put to shame by sick people of the world.
In hospitals or retreats this is not so strongly evident.
When a child of God is amid strange environment, and understands that he is watched, and realizes, that the honor of his Savior hangs by it, this high stimulus is mostly strong enough, to lift him up out of his despondency.
But when he is alone, alone with the members of his family, and thus needs not be ashamed before any, then this faithless insinking can sometimes be so shocking and offensive, that from such a sick-bed all glorifying of the Name of God is gone.
AND yet here also in most cases it exclusively depends upon what with the horse before the heavy cart is called the “getting a start.”
That first effort to lift oneself up from his limpness and despondency, is then indeed extremely difficult and demands an incredible exertion of strength, and if the spirit in us is not of a nobler nature, that first start is not made.
But when that first start is made, and you have brought about by faith that first revival in your spirit, so that from under your sickness you come up, and now your spirit bears rule again over your sickness, then already on the evening of that day and in the morning that comes after it goes so much easier.
And then the fruit is so glorious.
For then you feel yourself ten times more free and happy. You increase the chance of recovery. You suffer less. Your inner life resumes its activity. You do good to all around you. And above all you lie no more down in your guilt, but in your way you glorify the Lord your God.
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