The Christian as a Physician
By L. A. S.
THE business of the Christian is to go about doing good. We know this because Jesus Christ, who is the Christian’s pattern in all things, occupied his time in this way. He “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” Acts 10:38. A very large part of the work of Christ among the people consisted in the healing of disease. All healing of disease is by the power of God, and therefore it pertains especially to the calling of the Christian. Every physician ought to be a Christian, and every Christian ought to be, and will be, in a sense, a physician. Every Christian has a license from God to heal the sick. No monopoly of this work can fall to the control of the state, because God and his work are altogether independent of, and superior to, any human authority, although the state does very properly enforce regulations protecting human life from ignorant and unscrupulous persons who would pose as physicians could they do so with safety to themselves.5 The Christian knows and ministers the grace of God, which saves an individual from sin; and there is an intimate connection between sin and sickness. Physical disability is very often the reflection of moral disturbance. Conscience sways the mind, and the mind powerfully influences the health of the body. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” and a clear conscience is an aid to physical tranquillity. Indulgence of appetite and passions quickly stamps disease upon the physical frame. All sickness resulted primarily from sin, and through the removal of sin all sickness is ultimately to be done away. He who was crucified for our sins also “bare our sicknesses.” Both in the laws of nature and in the plan of redemption, God has revealed himself as the source of both moral and physical life, and he who reveals God to the world must reveal him as a God whose laws conserve physical health no less than moral soundness. In the history of the third angel’s message emphasis has been laid from the first upon the truth that the work of God for mankind has in view the restoration of the physical as well as the moral health. From the very beginning of this message, it has been made clear that the dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of physical health is to have a fundamental place in the work of those proclaiming it to the world. It began not only as a message of reform in spiritual practices, but in physical practices also. In clear tones it proclaimed to the people a reform in practices of dress and in customs of eating and drinking; and it proclaimed this not upon the authority of medical science, but as a revelation of the will of God. No physicians were at that time numbered among its adherents; yet it presumed to speak boldly upon a topic the knowledge of which was thought to belong exclusively to the graduates of medical colleges. There could be no clearer evidence that the work of the physician—the healing of physical ills—is a part of the work of those who are commissioned to proclaim to men the message of God’s truth. Not only did the third angel’s message assume to speak with authority in the realm of physical science, but it spoke contrary to ideas which were at the time of its beginning held by the medical authorities as well as by the people. The principles of health it laid down found no advocates among men of repute in the medical world. On the contrary, they were received with expressions of scorn and derision. But a change has taken place; not in the principles of health advocated by Seventh-day Adventists, but in the attitude of medical authorities in the world toward those principles. The very ideas of healthful dress and right practices in eating and drinking which were at first advocated in the face of popular opposition and scorn, have now come to be indorsed and advocated by physicians of high authority everywhere, and are more and more commanding the approval of investigators in the realm of physical science. Health is of God, whether it be health of the soul, of the mind, or of the body. The work of the gospel is to restore all parts of man’s being to a state of health, as in the beginning, when man was created. And he who engages in the work of physical healing should, if he would be truly successful, recognize God as the great Physician, the source of all health and life, and be able to minister his grace to the one in need, no less than to supply those physical conditions under which health may be restored by the operation of natural laws.