To Gain an Entrance
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Medical Missionary Work (1893).
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I am intensely interested in the education of medical students as
missionaries. This is the very means of introducing the truth where
otherwise it would not find an entrance.
I can see in the Lord’s providence that the medical missionary
work is to be a great entering wedge, whereby the diseased soul may
be reached.
Oh, what a field of usefulness is opened before the medical mis-
sionary! Jesus Christ was in every sense of the word a missionary of
the highest type, and combined with His missionary work that of the
Great Physician, healing all manner of diseases. Many in Christ’s day
refused to be convinced of their lost condition. When Christ was in
their midst as a mighty healer of bodily woe as well as the maladies of
the sin-sick soul, some would not come unto Him that they might have
life. They refused to be illuminated. So it will be in our day. Some
will not be healed of their soul diseases.
Every physician can and ought to be a Christian, and if so, he
bears with him a cure for the soul as well as the body. He is doing
the work of an apostle as well as of a physician. How much need
there is of the preciousness of pure and undefiled religion, that the
spiritual teacher may be administering to the soul necessities while
relieving the distress of the body! How refreshing it is to the suffering,
tempest-tossed soul to hear the words of hope, words from God spoken
to the suffering one, to hear the prayers offered in his behalf! How
essential that the living missionary should understand the diseases
which afflict the human body, to combine the physician, educated to
care for diseased bodies, with the faithful, conscientious shepherd of
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the flock, to give sacredness and double efficiency to the service!
The Lord, in His great goodness and matchless love, has been
urging upon His human instrumentalities that missionaries are not
really complete in their education unless they have a knowledge of
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