Message to Our Physicians
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this instruction with his tears and make it strong with his prayers, that
souls may be saved from death.
In their earnest, feverish anxiety to avert the peril of the body,
physicians are in danger of forgetting the peril of the soul. Physicians,
be on your guard, for at the judgment seat of Christ you must meet
those at whose death-bed you now stand.
The solemnity of the physician’s work, his constant contact with the
sick and the dying, require that, so far as possible, he be removed from
the secular duties that others can perform. No unnecessary burdens
should be laid on him, that he may have time to become acquainted
with the spiritual needs of his patients. His mind should be ever under
the influence of the Holy Spirit, that he may be able to speak in season
the words that will awaken faith and hope.
At the bedside of the dying no word of creed or controversy is to
be spoken. The sufferer is to be pointed to the One who is willing to
save all who come to Him in faith. Earnestly, tenderly, strive to help
the soul that is hovering between life and death.
The physician should never lead his patients to fix their attention on
him. He is to teach them to grasp with the hand of faith the outstretched
hand of the Saviour. Then the mind will be illuminated with the light
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radiating from the Sun of Righteousness. What physicians attempt to
do, Christ did in deed and in truth. They try to save life; He is life
itself.
The physician’s effort to lead the minds of his patients to healthy
action must be free from all human enchantment. It must not grovel to
humanity, but soar aloft to the spiritual, grasping the things of eternity.
The physician should not be made the object of unkind criticism.
This places on him an unnecessary burden. His cares are heavy, and
he needs the sympathy of those connected with him in the work. He is
to be sustained by prayer. The realization that he is appreciated will
give him hope and courage.
The intelligent Christian physician has a constantly increasing
realization of the connection between sin and disease. He strives to
see more and more clearly the relation between cause and effect. He
sees that those who are taking the nurses’ course should be given a
thorough education in the principles of health reform, that they should
be taught to be strictly temperate in all things, because carelessness in