God has given us all one great gift—life. This gift can be invested in heavenly possession or spent in earthly allurements; “seed corn or devoured”—sown for the Master’s use, or consumed in selfish purposes. The great law of life is activity. No man has a right to lead a dormant career; for this life is not a stagnant pool, but an active, running stream, carrying the gracious gifts of a pure and bounteous fountain head on and on—always receiving, always giving.
Christ has given all to us. We owe all to him. Therefore we have dedicated our lives to him for service, not because it is popular, neither for profit nor gain, fame nor honor, but because of our obligation, our gratitude and love for him and our fellow creatures.
With Dr. David Livingstone, “we desire to be missionaries, heart and soul,” God had only one Son, and he gave him to be a missionary and physician. Poor imitations of him we are or can ever hope to be, but in his service we hope to live, and in it we wish to die.
Christ was the greatest teacher, the greatest preacher, the greatest medical missionary, that ever lived. We have chosen him for our example, and his teachings as our rule in life. He administered to the needs of both soul and body, and it is in this respect we desire to pattern after him, and follow his command, “Go preach, . . . heal the sick, . . . freely ye have received, freely give.”
The command is, “Go ye into all the world.” All the world means all the countries, nations, and peoples—foreign fields as well as our own neighborhoods.
To every true and loyal subject of King Jesus, there is but one sphere of service, and that is the world. There is but one question, and that is, “What wilt thou have me to do?” There is but one object, and that is the glory of our Lord and Master.
You have heard how God has so bountifully blessed us in the past. We believe that greater blessings await us in the future in the greater opportunities he has given us for service, if we fill them.
Even in this enlightened country, with its numerous medical men and evangelists, there are thousands suffering, yes, dying, without a knowledge of God’s saving health. There are many souls who are carrying burdens of sin and sorrow, not knowing of their blessed privilege of leaving all with the Lord. When to their moral burdens is added the burden of physical suffering, what a grand opportunity for the true medical missionary after Christ’s type to step in and assist in undoing the bands of pain and woe, and point them to the Lamb of God, that bears the sins of the world. Such are daily experiences with many Christian physicians, and more opportunities exist for such experiences than are being realized. If such opportunities abound here, what countless numbers there must be in the heathen lands!
Picture in your minds, if possible, the great dilemma this country would be in if to-morrow we should awake to find every hospital, sanitarium, and asylum, every medical society, sanitary commission, and board of health, every physician and nurse gone, and ourselves shorn of the common knowledge of diseases, their causes and treatment. Imagine the epidemics, the plagues, and the accidents which would so speedily come upon us. Add to this the resultant misery if from our loved ones were taken the spirit of sympathy, help, and pity toward a suffering one. When you have painted such a picture, then you have before you in miniature a picture of the many millions now living in heathen lands.
Just a glance at the existing conditions and needs of the people brings before us not a picture of fanciful ideas, but of sound facts, appalling and heart-rending in their aspects. In some great hospitals a bell is rung each time an accident case arrives. Can you not fancy—and after all, it is not very largely imagination—that you hear the sound of that bell reverberating the world? Did you hear it just now? It was from China that the sound came. A Chinaman has fallen and injured himself. A crowd gathers round. They gaze and laugh at his sufferings, and when they have had enough, move on, leaving him to die. Exaggeration, you say?—No, sober truth. There is no Red-Cross man there to take him to a hospital, and no hospital to which to take him; and if a native medical man is called, the wound will be treated according to the time inflicted, and not according to its nature. This is simply one call; there are two hundred thousand medical missionaries wanted in China today. The success of evangelizing this empire will depend upon the medical missions established there; for it is only by relieving their bodies that you can interest their souls.
Listen! the bell is ringing in India. A boy has broken his leg. A string will be tied tightly around it until at last gangrene sets in, and the native quack will be called to amputate the limb in order to save the boy’s life.
The sound of the bell in Persia is wafted to us across the plains and mountains of Asia. It tells of a woman in nature’s sorest trial. No sympathizing mother or husband is there, and the woman is kept in a dark, damp room with no food for three days, and no one is allowed to be present save the barber’s wife, until after the visitation of the god.
Now it is the clanging of the bell in Africa: for a child is in convulsions. What is to be done?—A red-hot iron is pressed to the skull, till a hole is burned down to the brain, to let out the demon. Why not? It is only a girl, let her die.
This time the sound comes with greater force; for it is not far away—Halsted Street, Chicago. A visiting nurse has answered, and found a woman in an indescribable, miserable room, sick with typhoid fever. No time must be lost. She must be made comfortable and her symptoms combated, so she will be saved to her helpless little children, and given a chance to learn of her Saviour.
Surely that bell is announcing to us the Macedonian cry in forcible tones. And can we not truthfully say that God’s greatest prospective blessing to this class is the blessing of great opportunities, with the assurance, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” As God blessed Jesus in doing his Father’s work, so we may expect Jesus will bless those whom he sends to do his work.
Surely the need of medical missions is crying enough, the appeal for the missionary great enough, the urgency of the cause intense enough, and is there not in our hands strength sufficient to furnish the means, and in our medical college and training schools students enough to furnish the men, that these millions who are suffering and dying because they lack the knowledge of God’s power to heal and save may find relief and a knowledge of better things?
O, should not our humanity as well as our Christianity impel us, we who may and ought to go, to go, and with one mighty effort of body, soul, and mind help roll away this load of sorrow, and cheer up this ocean of suffering, with its mute but agonizing cry for help and pity?
In the name of Him who had compassion upon the multitude, and in answer to his command, Go preach and heal, and in response to him who asks, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” our individual and heart-deep response is, “Here am I; send me” to carry this great and glorious gospel for the healing of the nations.