Religio Medici

“ As the physician of the body would endeavour to restore the patient to his normal state, so too the true physician of the soul would labour to banish the religious fever from the mind of his patient, and to plant therein the sure principles of spiritual health—a clearly-defined dogmatic belief, and a deep conviction of the sinfulness of sin. We all need to be from time to time reminded that true religion is not a mere effervescence, not a vain blaze, but a reality which reflects something of the unchangeable glory of its divine Author. ”

“ Reverence for the true, the beautiful, and the good has characterized physicians in all times and climes. But little of the true, the beautiful, or the good crept into the transactions of the Church for many centuries, and we suffer, to-day, more from its interference in time past than from all other causes combined. The same may be said of theology, which is as separate from religion as darkness from light. Only when students of science emancipated themselves from the prejudices and superstitions of the theologians did medicine make more than barely perceptible progress. ”

“ The belief that God was the best physician, not only of the soul but of the body also, was deepened by the dissemination of Christianity. The sincerity of faith among the Christians of the first century was so intense that a great number of them believed that their bodily welfare could not be watched over more carefully than when it was commended exclusively to the care of God in all cases of sickness. ”

“ In its primitive phases, medicine brought gods and men into close relationship and led constantly to religious conceptions. It was, in fact, not a science, but a religion. The early priests were physicians, the primal gods were gods of healing, and their temples were hospitals. As time passed, absorbing speculations, fantastic often, frequently grotesque, about the structure of the body and the nature of disease, won general belief and disappeared. ”

“ O Physician! who, when thou knowest it to be for the sours benefit, curest with a word all diseases no less of the body than of the soul; heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed in my soul: save me, and I shall be saved also in my body. In thee do I trust, not in physicians, nor in any remedies of theirs. ”

“ And it is a fine thought, too—marrying religion to medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way; for religion and medicine properly belong together, they being the basis of all spiritual and physical health. ”

“ Many physicians know a great deal more about religious matters than they do about medicine. They have read the Bible ten times as much as they ever read any medical author. They have heard scores of sermons for one medical lecture to which they have listened. They often hear much better preaching than the average minister, for he hears himself chiefly, and they hear abler men and a variety of them. They have now and then been distinguished in theology as well as in their own profession. ”

“ PHYSICIAN. “Every medical practitioner, whether he desires to have it or not, has a cure of souls as well as of bodies. He is literally an inheritor of some of the duties of the very apostles, and called to be an imitator of the Lord Jesus Christ.”31 Now, as no sphere could be named where Religion is confessedly more required, let us consider it for a little in connection with the Medical Profession. ”

“ This science is yet the stranger within our gates that is not remembered even when its elevating effects are proving practically its divine origin. Theology includes no creed or faith sufficient to heal the sick; while our Master's first article of faith was healing, and he proved that faith by his works. The ancient Christians were healers. Our systems of religion are governed by our systems of medicine. ”

“ In his exclusive care for the body the physician witnesses unconsciously yet mightily for the soul, for God, for the Bible, for immortality. Is he not witnessing for God when he shows by his acts that he believes God to be a God of life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness? Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the natural foe of man and of the Creator of man? ”

“ Jesus Christ as our Physician.
REFLECTION.
"HAVE mercy on me, G Lord, for I am weak.” (Ps. vi. 3. ) “ They that are whole, need not a physician: hut they that are sick ” Nor didst thou come “to call the just, but sinners, to repentance ( Luke v. 31, 32.) Alas! my soul is sick indeed, my heart is ill at ease. I am full of inordinate desires and unruly passions. I am all impatience, sensuality, immortification, and inconstancy. Thou, O Jesus, art my physician, thou alone canst heal me. ”

“ Is it any objection to that faith to say, the age of miracles is past? If the mother, may call in a second physician, to suggest the cause and the cure, may she not call on God? What the doctor can do for a fellow-practitioner, cannot the Great Physician do? Though the doctor had often tried and thought, yet it was not till the last prayer and call on God, brought the remedy to his mind. ”

“ In accordance with this conception, which has been borrowed from a natural philosophy long since relegated to oblivion, the services both of physician and physic are to be rejected, and the treatment of the sick is to be carried on in such a manner that the patient, under supervision of an individual expert in such affairs, is merely to fix his mind on the spiritual, or divine, principle inherent in himself. ”

“ But the profession of medicine never could reach its full development until it became entirely separated from that of divinity. The spiritual guide, the consoler in affliction, the confessor who is admitted into the secrets of our souls, has his own noble sphere of duties; but the healer of men must confine himself solely to the revelations of God in nature, as he sees their miracles with his own eyes. ”

“ While the clergy maintain that a cure is only effected by God's will, the physician knows otherwise. The physician accomplishes his cures alone, and definitely cures and saves the lives of human beings by his own skill, intelligence, and application of methods which have been developed by the exercise of secular knowledge, not theological nonsense. ”

“ But if our physician Christ, God, having rescued us from our desires, regulates our flesh with His own wise and temperate rule, it is evident that He guards it from sins because it possesses a hope of salvation, as physicians do not suffer men whom they hope to save to indulge in what pleasures they please. ”

“ It would be a pleasure to me, reverend pastors of the church, and illustrious professors of divinity, to declare aloud how much physick is indebted to religion; I would gladly vindicate the principles of physicians from the imputations of ancient calumny, and prove that religion is strongly supported by a science, which, being totally conversant in the contemplation of an admirable creature, demonstrates from the wonderful mechanism of a man in health, and the surprising cures of the sick, the existence and great wisdom of the Supreme Artificer, and that even to the most obstinate. ”

“ Far be it from me to say that the spiritual side of medicine should be ignored altogether. We know that our prayers, rightly offered, are a help to our patients—we know that the ordained Sacraments of the Church are a help to them. Moreover, we know very well that there is no royal road to the treatment of disease. ”

“ The great scandal of my youth was to behold the teachers of those days lay hold of science to combat religion. For me to-day I see only God everywhere.'"
In spite of traditions to the contrary great physicians in their relation to faith are like the great discoverers in electricity. As a rule the greater they are as original workers in the medical sciences the more emphatic their expressions of their belief in religion and its efficacy in the relief of human ills. ”

“ Three-fourths of the elements that enter into all diseases are spiritual, and three-fourths of the remedies that must be used for them must also be spiritual. The personal appearance, character, and manner of the physician himself are most important factors in the cure of disease. Confidence in the doctor is more than half the cure; and therefore what the doctor is in himself is of great consequence.
In the spiritual sphere the physician can only heal others as he heals himself. He himself must be an exemplification of the saving health of God's countenance if he is to do good to others. ”

“ Those, then, are to be believed, who hold firmly to the truth. And we may broadly make use of this reply, and say to them, that physicians holding opposite opinions according to their own schools, yet equally in point of fact treat patients. Does one, then, who is ill in body and needing treatment, not have recourse to a physician, on account of the different schools in medicine? No more, then, may he who in soul is sick and full of idols, make a pretext of the heresies, in reference to the recovery of health and conversion to God. ”

“ So the sick man trusts his case in the hands of his physician, and his life is saved by the physician,—yet by or through the patient's faith. This faith is indeed an inward act of allegiance, and no mere outward performance. ”

“ O thou seeker after the Kingdom! Every divine Manifestation is the very life of the world, and the skilled physician of each ailing soul. The world of man is sick, and that competent Physician knoweth the cure, arising as He doth with teachings, counsels and admonishments that are the remedy for every pain, the healing balm to every wound. ”

“ It is a very thoughtless thing to say that the physician stands to the divine in the same light as the divine stands to the physician, so far as each may attempt to handle subjects belonging especially to the other's profession. ”

“ We turn to our physicians because we have no faith in God. Materia medica physicians do not heal the sick. They sometimes succeed in causing the human mind temporarily to substitute a 144 belief of health for a belief of disease that is all. But Jesus and the early Christians healed by true prayer––the prayer of affirmation, the prayer that denied reality to evil, and affirmed the omnipotence of God. And that was done through an understanding of God as immutable law, or principle. ”

“ As we have said before, during the dark ages medical knowledge was confined to the clergy, and the same individuals officiated both as priests and physicians. But at length medicine became a separate profession, and the treatment of physical diseases was assigned to one class of men, and the care of moral and religious matters to another. ”

“ For the religions of all civilized peoples—and Christianity by no means occupies an exceptional position in this respect—have always endeavored most strenuously to keep physical as well as medical thought in strictest dependence upon their doctrines and dogmas. To attain this end various ceremonies, customs, and dogmas were relied upon to keep the priests in a position to secure the assistance of the gods for humanity harassed by pain and affliction. ”

“ The professions should be cordial allies, but the church-going, Bible-reading physician ought to know a great deal more of the subjects included under the general name of theology than the clergyman can be expected to know of medicine. To say, as has been said not long since, that a young divinity student is as competent to deal with the latter as an old physician is to meddle with the former, suggests the idea that wisdom is not an heirloom in the family of the one who says it. ”

“ But when the Great Physician manifests a still greater watchfulness to adapt his daily discipline to your varying temper and the different stages of your Christian growth, you murmur—you believe not in his wisdom as you do in that of the sons of earth.
Do not, then, take his wisdom on faith alone; you must indeed believe, you must believe or perish; but it may be as yet too difficult a lesson for you to believe against sense, against feeling. ”

“ They accepted sickness, disease, and even death without a question, placing their faith and confidence entirely in the hands of the medical profession, who, like the rabbis and high priests, made a church of their knowledge. ”

“ It was quite natural, in view of the exclusively theistic conception which in those times preoccupied the human mind, that the priests were the sole possessors of physico-medical knowledge; and naturally so. For when we consider the theory of life that prevailed at that period, who could have been better qualified to give information [10] to men regarding their own body as well as regarding nature in general, than the priest, the mortal representative of immortal gods? And who better qualified than the priest to invoke the aid of the heavenly powers in all bodily ailments? ”

“ For a while the "physician's art," according to Democritus, "heals the diseases of the body; wisdom frees the soul from passion." But the good Instructor, the Wisdom, the Word of the Father, who made man, cares for the whole nature of His creature; the all-sufficient Physician of humanity, the Saviour, heals both body and soul. ”

“ It required much courage to allow myself to believe that doctors have, taking everything into consideration, done more harm in the world than good, and still more to announce my conviction that Christianity was even more culpable than medicine. The physician, when professing to cure, has too often assisted disease to kill; and he who has had the cure of souls, has invented plans to make believers in his doctrine miserable. ”

“ Now the exact adaptation of the Bible religion to the curative indications suggested by the intellectual, moral, and physical infirmities of human nature, which every one who understands it cannot fail to perceive,--proves that the mind which framed it is divine; and that the religion of the Scriptures, and the constitution of man, are the work of one and the same Creator. God is truly the only wise Physician, whose practice is based upon perfect knowledge ”