THE SPIRITUALLY SICK by Cornelia Snow

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 12.

THE SPIRITUALLY SICK.

By Cornelia Snow

“All things work together for good to them that love God.” These words are often repeated for the encouragement of those in trying circumstances. With many who profess to love God, all things are not working for good; when this is the case, the individual is spiritually sick.

When the body is well, all the activities and processes of life tend to build up the physical being; food is a delight; work strengthens; cold stimulates; heat does no harm. But in sickness, the condition is opposite; food generally makes the patient worse; work tears down; thought is a burden; cold depresses. The individual is out of harmony with nature. So it is in the spiritual world. All things work for good to those submitted to God’s laws, physical and moral. To one in accord with spiritual law (which is the law of love), the endurance of trial, the loss of friends, the misrepresentations of enemies, misunderstandings, imposition—all these things are stimulants, as cold is to the strong man.

But when one is sick, lacking love, or the Spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of giving up self, all things work against him, and day by day he sinks lower into the “Slough of Despond,” just as the sick man loses physical strength, and gradually is overcome by the conditions in which a healthy person would thrive.

The first step toward recovery for the invalid to make is to yield his will and implicit obedience to his physician, who, step by step, will lead him back to harmony with nature’s inexorable principles. So we, finding ourselves at war with our surroundings, being borne down to a spiritual death, unable longer to struggle against sickness of soul, must find our way to the great Physician, and yield obedience to His requirements, which are “Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

The sick man learns the rules of health and applies them to his life. The spiritually sick must learn the principles as taught and lived by Jesus Christ; and as one deviation from the known laws which govern the body may bring pain and death as the result, one deviation from the example of our Pattern may cause the loss of rest—the loss of that soul-health which we so long to possess. CORNELIA SNOW.

North Deering, Me.