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The Ministry of Healing
of the earth are blessings for all who have courage and will and
perseverance to gather her treasures.
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The tilling of the soil, the employment that God appointed to man
in Eden, opens a field in which there is opportunity for multitudes
to gain a subsistence.
“Trust in the Lord, and do good;
So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou
shalt be fed.”
Psalm 37:3.
Thousands and tens of thousands might be working upon the
soil who are crowded into the cities, watching for a chance to earn a
trifle. In many cases this trifle is not spent for bread, but is put into
the till of the liquor seller, to obtain that which destroys soul and
body.
Many look upon labor as drudgery, and they try to obtain a
livelihood by scheming rather than by honest toil. This desire to get
a living without work opens the door to wretchedness and vice and
crime almost without limit.
The City Slums
In the great cities are multitudes who receive less care and con-
sideration than are given to dumb animals. Think of the families
herded together in miserable tenements, many of them dark base-
ments, reeking with dampness and filth. In these wretched places
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children are born and grow up and die. They see nothing of the
beauty of natural things that God has created to delight the senses
and uplift the soul. Ragged and half-starved, they live amid vice
and depravity, molded in character by the wretchedness and sin that
surround them. Children hear the name of God only in profanity.
Foul speech, imprecations, and revilings fill their ears. The fumes of
liquor and tobacco, sickening stenches, moral degradation, pervert
their senses. Thus multitudes are trained to become criminals, foes
to society that has abandoned them to misery and degradation.
Not all the poor in the city slums are of this class. God-fearing
men and women have been brought to the depths of poverty by illness