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Unity of Spirit

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 29, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 32.

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Unity of Spirit

By D. H. Kress

To me this was one of the best meetings ever held by medical workers that I have had the privilege of attending. When men representing this phase of the work can meet and calmly counsel together over important principles and see eye to eye, it speaks hopefully for the future of the medical work. Seldom have I been in an assembly for counsel where I have been conscious of a sweeter spirit than was present at this meeting. “They shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion,” is the promise which is nearing fulfilment. When it meets its complete fulfilment, then the Lord can make “bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”
Our health and medical work has suffered much in the past—more from its friends than from its avowed enemies. Often, truth has been made cruel. We have failed to carry out the instruction to “maintain the unity of the spirit” “till we all come in the unity of the faith.” Unity of the faith without unity of the spirit is of little value. The quickest way to reach unity of the faith is by maintaining unity of the spirit. With such a spirit as was manifested by the representatives of our medical work, there can be no doubt that that work will make rapid progress in the future, and will soon be recognized in its proper setting in the gospel of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the third angel’s message.
Our sanitarium and health work is to occupy an important place in the closing days of the gospel. Medical missionary work will be in demand moreand more as we near the end. Some years ago Sister White wrote, “I have been surprised at being asked by physicians if I did not think it would be more pleasing to God for them to give up their medical practice and enter the ministry. I am prepared to answer such an inquirer: If you are a Christian and a competent physician, you are qualified to do tenfold more good as a missionary for God than if you were to go forth merely as a preacher of the word. I would advise young men and young women to give heed to this matter. Perilous times are before us.”—Special Testimony, Feb. 19, 1893.
In the same Testimony she said, “I could wish that there were one hundred nurses in training where there is one. It ought to be thus. Both men and women can be so much more useful as medical missionaries than as missionaries without the medical education. I am more and more impressed with the fact that a more decided testimony must be borne upon this subject; that more direct efforts must be made to interest the proper persons, setting before them the advantages that every missionary will have in understanding how to treat those who are diseased in body, as well as to minister to their sin-sick souls.”
It is evident from this that the medical work will not be left in the rear as the message goes to the world in power. In the year 1901 Sister White again said, “I wish to tell you that soon there will be no work done in ministerial lines but medical missionary work.”—General Conference Bulletin, April 17, 1901. We have none too many medical workers. When all these workers give themselves unreservedly to the work of soul-saving, results will be seen.
D. H. KRESS, M. D.