Page:The People's Idea of God.djvu/8

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6
SERMON

all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.” Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse writes: “I am sick of learned quackery.” Dr. Abercrombie, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, writes: “Medicine is the science of guessing.” Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon Extraordinary to the King, says: “I declare my conscientious belief, founded on long observation and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now obtains.” Voltaire says: “The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

Believing that man is the victim of his Maker, we naturally fear God more than we love Him; whereas “perfect Love casteth out fear;” but when we learn God aright, we love Him, because He is found altogether lovely. Thus it is that a more spiritual and true ideal of Deity improves the race physically and spiritually. God is no longer a mystery to the Christian Scientist, but a divine Principle, understood in part, because the grand realities of Life and Truth are found destroying sin, sickness, and death; and, it should no longer be deemed treason to understand God, when the Scriptures enjoin us to “acquaint now thyself with Him [God], and be at peace;” we should understand something of that great good for which we are to leave all else.

Periods and peoples are characterized by their highest