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The Ministry of Healing
the working of a power that is divine. If he fails here, however
forcible or persuasive his words may be, his influence will tell for
evil.
Many seek medical advice and treatment who have become
moral wrecks through their own wrong habits. They are bruised
and weak and wounded, feeling their folly and their inability to
overcome. Such ones should have nothing in their surroundings
to encourage a continuance of the thoughts and feelings that have
made them what they are. They need to breathe an atmosphere of
purity, of high and noble thought. How terrible the responsibility
when those who should give them a right example are themselves
enthralled by hurtful habits, their influence affording to temptation
an added strength!
The Physician and the Temperance Work
Many come under the physician’s care who are ruining soul and
body by the use of tobacco or intoxicating drink. The physician who
is true to his responsibility must point out to these patients the cause
of their suffering. But if he himself is a user of tobacco or intoxicants,
what weight will be given to his words? With the consciousness
of his own indulgence before him, will he not hesitate to point out
the plague spot in the life of his patient? While using these things
himself, how can he convince the youth of their injurious effects?
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How can a physician stand in the community as an example of
purity and self-control, how can he be an effectual worker in the
temperance cause, while he himself is indulging a vile habit? How
can he minister acceptably at the bedside of the sick and the dying,
when his very breath is offensive, laden with the odor of liquor or
tobacco?
While disordering his nerves and clouding his brain by the use
of narcotic poisons, how can one be true to the trust reposed in him
as a skillful physician? How impossible for him to discern quickly
or to execute with precision!
If he does not observe the laws that govern his own being, if
he chooses selfish gratification above soundness of mind and body,
does he not thereby declare himself unfit to be entrusted with the
responsibility of human lives?