DIVINE HEALING by David Paulson, M.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 8, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 10.

DIVINE HEALING.

By David Paulson, M.D.

SOME one asked me some time ago if I believed in divine healing, and I answered that I knew of no other kind of healing. If God does not keep a man well, it is because that man is working hard to make himself sick. The actual fact is that men work as hard, sometimes, to make themselves sick as students toil in the universities to get their diplomas. When they are so persevering in planting the seeds of disease, how can they expect anything else but a bountiful harvest. Disease is not a matter of inheritance any more than education is. Children may inherit an aptitude for readily acquiring knowledge, but they never inherit an education. In the same way, people may inherit a tendency to disease, but not the disease itself.

Yet God does not hold a grudge against a sick man any more than He does against a sinner. Of course both are sinners in reality, for it is as much a sin to transgress natural law as it is to transgress any one of the moral laws. But God does not hold ill-will against any man. He is simply grieved because men are injuring themselves and destroying their happiness. “My people are destroyed because of lack of knowledge.” It follows, then, that as soon as the sick man begins to sow for health God will co-operate with him in securing a harvest of health; for “whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

In my experience with patients I have found the greatest difficulty has been in their unwillingness to co-operate with God, and thus make it possible for Him consistently to restore them to health.

God is wholly loving, and tender in His dealings with men. A patient said to me, while I was examining him the other day, “There is not much hope for me; I am a broken stick, too far gone to be helped.” I was so glad to assure him that he had a Saviour of whom it is said, “A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench.” Man may have fallen very low, but God is ready to help him and lift him up

again. Let us have larger views of the goodness of our heavenly Father.

It will give us new power in our work. The world is hungry for a true knowledge of God, and it is our privilege to give it.

DAVID PAULSON, M.D.