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The Ministry of Health and Healing
to the limit of endurance. The reaction from this terrible strain tests
the character to the utmost. Then it is that temptation has greatest
power. More than those in any other calling, physicians are in need
of self-control, purity of spirit, and that faith which takes hold on
heaven. For the sake of others and for their own sake, they cannot
afford to disregard physical law. Recklessness in physical habits
tends to recklessness in morals.
The physician’s only safety is, under all circumstances, to act
from principle, strengthened and ennobled by a firmness of purpose
found only in God. Both men and women are to stand in the moral
excellence of His character. Day by day, hour by hour, moment by
moment, they are to live as in the sight of the unseen world. As did
Moses, they must endure “as seeing Him who is invisible.”
Righteousness has its root in godliness. No one can steadily
maintain before others a pure, forceful life unless that life is hidden
with Christ in God. The greater the interaction with humanity, the
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closer must be the communion of the heart with heaven. The more
urgent the duties and the greater the responsibilities, the greater the
physician’s need of divine power. Time must be redeemed from
things temporal for meditation upon things eternal. He or she must
resist an encroaching world, which would so press upon the soul
as to separate one from the Source of strength. Above all other
people, physicians should, by prayer and study of the Scriptures,
place themselves under the protecting shield of God. They are to
live in hourly contact and conscious communion with the principles
of truth, righteousness, and mercy that reveal God’s attributes within
the soul.
Just to the degree in which the Word of God is received and
obeyed will it impress with its potency and touch with its life ev-
ery spring of action, every phase of character. It will purify every
thought, regulate every desire. Those who make God’s Word their
trust will be courageous and strong. They will rise above all baser
things into an atmosphere free from defilement.
When a person is in fellowship with God, the unswerving pur-
pose that preserved Joseph and Daniel amidst the corruption of
heathen courts will make the life one of unsullied purity. The robe
of character will be spotless. In his or her life the light of Christ will