Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1422
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, June 30, 1878
“Jesus said unto him I will come and heal him.” Matthew 8:7.
“And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go your way; and as you have believed, so be it done unto you.” Matthew 8:13.
THE centurion of Capernaum is an example to us in a matter which bears upon the collection appointed for today, which, you know, is for hospitals. This good soldier feared for the sick and was anxious for the recovery of his palsied servant. Every employer should take a sympathetic interest in his domestics when they are ill, but in some cases this is not thought of. “If they cannot do their work, they must go”—this is too often the language used about them—and they are driven out of the house as soon as possible. I do not say that masters and mistresses are often cruel, but I fear that some of them are none too kind.
Among religious persons, kindness towards man should be as manifest as piety towards God. The centurion had done what he could to benefit, religiously, the people among whom he dwelt, for the elders of the Jews said, “He loves our nation and he has built us a synagogue.” But he combined with a desire to benefit the soul, a sincere desire for the welfare of the body. This was apparent in the interest which he took in his, “boy,” his personal servant, or young valet. God has joined body and soul together and they ought not to be divided in our deeds of charity. This captain’s sympathy with his suffering valet was shown by practical action.
He did not say that he felt for him and then go off to the guardroom and keep clear of the sick youth. Nor did he merely stand and watch him in his pain to see how he would fare, but he did something—he went out, he called together the elders of the city, he summoned his choice friends to him—in fact, he made the whole circle of his acquaintances feel a sympathy with him concerning the illness of his servant. Then he sent these elders and friends to the best Physician of the age and, I think, also followed at their heels, himself. He used the surest means within his reach and appealed to Him to whom none ever appealed in vain!
From the centurion I gather that we must not be content with loving our people and building them synagogues, but we must also build them hospitals and dispensaries! Find them preachers, by all means, but find them surgeons, too! We may not forget the soul, but we must also remember that the soul dwells in a body liable to many disorders. We may become just a little too spiritual—so spiritual as to spirit away the very Spirit of Christianity! God grant us Grace to be as tenderly considerate of suffering humanity as this centurion was and we probably shall be so if we have as strong a faith and as deep a humility as he had.
Our Lord, Himself, in our text, sets us an example which may plead with us on behalf of hospitals today! He was here upon the high errand of our redemption, yet He did not consider it at all derogatory to His Divine purpose to be continually engaged in healing diseases! For three years He walked the hospitals—He lived all day long in an infirmary, for all around Him, at one time, they laid the sick in the streets—and at all times physical evil in some form or other came in His way. He put forth His hands, or spoke a word and healed all sorts of maladies. This our Lord did very readily, for it was part of His lifework. “I will come and heal him,” He said, for He was a physician in constant practice and would be around at once to see the patient.
“He went about doing good” and in all this He would let His people know that He intended not to bless one part of man alone, but the whole of our nature, taking upon Himself not only our sins, but our sicknesses! Jesus means to bless the body as well as the soul! And though for this present time He has left our body very much under the power of sickness,
for still the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Yet He foreshadows in His healing miracles the Resurrection, when He shall raise us perfectly healed and the inhabitant shall no more say, “I am sick.” Every restored limb, opened eye and healed wound is a token that Jesus cares for our flesh and blood and means that the body shall share the benefits of His death by a glorious resurrection!
As in our Lord’s life His teaching was always connected with healing, He would have the Church, also, take a very deep interest in the bodily sorrows of the people as well as in their spiritual needs. It will be a very great pity if ever it should be thought that benevolence is divorced from Christianity, for up to now the crown of the faith of Jesus has been love to men. It is, indeed, the glory of Christianity that wherever it goes, it erects buildings altogether unknown to heathenism—hospitals, asylums and other abodes of charity! The genius of Christianity is pity for the sinful and the suffering.