Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/215

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for the uncertain future. This gives a man the tranquillity of soul which is no less needed for prayer than for action. Such an one possesses his own soul. Our Lord promises to those, who 'have faith and doubt not,'[1] that they shall 'remove mountains,' a hyperbolic expression, but yet one which seems to claim a certain power of acting upon inanimate nature.[2] Such a power need not carry with it a positive breach of cosmic law. It is impossible for any really reverent mind to wish, even in the supposed interest of his dearest friend, to bend the Will of God to his own desire. Such a rash prayer involves the fatal flaw of that 'doubting mind' which is forbidden us, the mind 'divided' between God and self. The spirit which unites us to God, that unfathomed inner self, desires the universal good.

Our wills are ours, we know not how:
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.

God wills the true health and salvation of each human soul, as He alone can view it, in its relation both to the vast whole of immaterial being and to the order of the material universe.

  1. Matt. xxi. 21. Cp. James i. 6: 'Nothing doubting.'
  2. See Dr. Sanday, Life of Christ in Recent Research, pp. 223, 224.