The Secret of Success
The success of the sanitarium depends upon its maintaining the
simplicity of godliness and shunning the world’s follies in eating,
drinking, dressing, and amusements. It must be reformatory in all its
principles. Let nothing be invented to satisfy the wants of the soul
and take the room and time which Christ and His service demand, for
this will destroy the power of the institution as God’s instrumentality
to convert poor, sin-sick souls, who, ignorant of the way of life and
peace, have sought for happiness in pride and vain folly.
“Standing by a purpose true” should be the position of all con-
nected with the sanitarium. While none should urge our faith upon the
patients or engage in religious controversy with them, our papers and
publications, carefully selected, should be in sight almost everywhere.
The religious element must predominate. This has been and ever will
be the power of that institution. Let not our health asylum be perverted
to the service of worldliness and fashion. There are hygienic institu-
tions enough in our land that are more like an accommodating hotel
than a place where the sick and suffering can obtain relief for their
bodily infirmities, and the sin-sick soul can find that peace and rest
in Jesus to be found nowhere else. Let religious principles be made
prominent and kept so; let pride and popularity be discarded; let sim-
plicity and plainness, kindness and faithfulness, be seen everywhere;
then the sanitarium will be just what God intended it should be; then
the Lord will favor it.—
Testimonies for the Church 4:586, 587
(1881).
[256]
270