THE NEED OF A GOSPEL OF HEALTH.
By David Paulson, M.D.
THERE was never a time since Adam fell and brought sickness, pain, and death into the world when the tender services of the medical missionary were needed more than at the present time. Disease has become so frequent that as we meet our friends the most natural question is in reference to their health—we almost expect to hear them say, "I am not feeling very well." There are reasons for all this. This condition does not come without a cause. It is sad to say, and yet it is true, that one-half of all deaths take place before individuals reach the age of five. It seems as tho before the helpless child has had time to learn to break nature's laws, it is forced into it by the ignorance of its parents. Is there no one to rise up against this awful tide of wo? We hear much of yellow fever in the South; and what a stir was made when cholera invaded the port of New York! But what was this compared with those multitudes who perish before they have time to reach the years of accountability? All this means that humanity is learning wrong habits; it means that, either willing or unwilling, many persons are laying the foundation for both disease and crime. Our lives must be given to the work of saving humanity—not simply saving them spiritually, but saving them physically as well. If we should stand by the water's edge and see a boat-load of people suddenly plunged into the watery grave, the first instinct would be to devise some means of helping them. But all around us humanity is just as truly going down. New diseases are appearing as the result of the invention of new death-dealing habits. Such terms as "nervous prostration," "softening of the brain," "cancer of the stomach," "mania," and "melancholia," are becoming household names everywhere. Humanity seems as blind to-day as to the real root of this awful physical degeneration as were the Jews in the time of Christ to the real cause of their spiritual diseases. What is needed is a "John the Baptist" who will show the people their sins, and bid them repent, and point them to "the Lamb of God that taketh away both the physical and the spiritual sins of the world, for He bore our sicknesses. DAVID PAULSON, M.D.