The Future of Africa/Chapter 7
ADDRESS ON LAYING THE CORNERSTONE
OF ST. MARK'S HOSPITAL.
Delivered at Harper, Cape Palmas, Liberia, April 24th, 1859.
"And they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them."—Matt. iv. 24.
"Jesus of Nazareth . . . . who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil."—Acts x. 38.
ADDRESS.
It is a work of mercy which has brought us here to-day; a work of mercy which is required by the needs of man, and which is certainly congenial with the spirit of Heaven. We have divine assurance that such a work as this is acceptable to God; for, without a multiplicity of texts, we may refer to the words which our Lord himself repeated from the Old Testament: "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice"; and to those other precious words which fell from his own gracious lips: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." We have just had additional testimony to the same effect, in the graphic description of the judgment, which has been read as the lesson for the day; and which shows us the satisfaction of a gracious judge, in the beneficence of the righteous.[1] And these are sufficient, without any other evidences, that God, in his word, appoves those gracious saving efforts, which are designed to lessen the miseries of earth, to mitigate the pains and sufferings of men, to assuage the griefs of wretched humanity, and, at the same time, to increase the sum of human happiness, and to give comfort, well-being, and satisfaction to our fellow-creatures. Such words, from Scripture, warrant, too, our joy in an occasion of this kind, and justify a proper pride and satisfaction on the part of the projector of, and the co-workers in, this labor of love. Every consideration suggests these happy feelings, and prompts such pleasurable emotions. There is no jar here, to-day, of selfish pride, or dissonance of injurious and boisterous passions. We are not a crew of base malignants; nor are we the agents of dark disaster to our fellow-men.
We have met with no sinister purposes before us; nor do we aim at objects that are to bring woe and anguish to any portion of our kind. On the contrary, every thing here designed, contemplated and expected in this undertaking, is for good and blessedness. We would lessen pain. We would end suffering. We wish to neutralize bodily anguish; to arrest the deadly progress of disease =; to mitigate inevitable decay, and, where the grave lies surely before him, and death is certain, to pave the way of the sufferer to the tomb, with as much of quiet, comfort, and ease, as skill and benevolence can possibly effect.
Nor are the aims here contemplated, those only which are bodily or medicinal. The body is but the machinery and instrument of the immaterial essence which inhabits it; and while, indeed, desirous, both by skill and kindness, to adjust and restore this machinery, when fractured, or disarranged, or lacerated, or under decay; yet, by so much as the soul is superior to the body, so do we estimate its superior value, and aim the more, directly and indirectly, to seek its good. Spiritual, as well as bodily good, is one of our aims and objects in this blessed project. We cannot, if we would, escape the notice of soul-suffering in this world. We have to recognize the presence of spiritual as well as bodily disease among our fellow-creatures. By sense, and thought, and reason, and observation, and experience, by each and all, we have had forced upon our attention those internal disarrangements, those mental fractures, and those spiritual lacerations, which are wasting away the better portion of man's being, and of which, indeed, physical ailments and bodily pain are but the outward signs and symbols. And, for both the one and the other, the disease of the soul, as well as that of the body, human beings need medicines, skill, and the Physician. Here, as everywhere else in the world, poor human nature must needs have the medical man and the minister. And this is to be a Hospital for diseased bodies and for maimed and wounded souls.
2. It is this intrusion of human misery which lessens all our joys through life, and makes brief-born and transient our brightest pleasures. All our delights are mingled with pain in this world, all our happiness is clouded with sadness. Even the satisfaction of this gracious work, which we inaugurate to-day, is neutralized by the contemplation of disease, which it forces upon us, and by the knowledge of loathsomeness, of agony, raid of sickening decay, which it is designed to neutralize. While our minds would fain dwell upon mercy and benevolence to man, bruised bodies and aching limbs force themselves upon our imagination or our sight. While we would delight ourselves in the harmonious tones of human joy. our ears are filled with the sighs and groans of men's misery. Indeed, this world of ours, ever since the fall of Adam, has been a scene of suffering and woe. Bodily distress and physical anguish have ever been the common portion of man all over the globe. The condition of man may but too justly be characterized as a condition of suffering. With respect to the body as well as to the sensitive soul, the words of Scripture are erprally true, that "man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." The frames of but few, born into this world, are whole, and strong, and healthy. Somewhere, in every one's system, there is a tender point, or an infirm organ, or a weakened nerve, or a fractured limb, or a heart not altogether sound, or a lingering cancer, or just the taint of corruption, which will cause a diseased lung, and in the end produce consumption. And thus disease, everywhere, produces sorrow and wretchedness. The air is filled with the shrieks and groans of the suffering. The very sounds of nature are plaintive and mournful. Every breeze that sweeps over the plains, has its tale of pain and anguish. Every wind, in melancholy tones, wails out its agonizing report of disaster and of death. Even in the gentlest gales, we may hear the groans of infants, the shrieks of convulsed children, the moans of agonized men, the throes of distressed and dying woman, and all the various notes of misery with which earth is filled.
3. Into this region of distress and death—this world of suffering and of woe, Jesus Christ appeared. He came on a lofty mission to earth, in order to see what were the pains and pangs of wretched humanity; and to exert a divine power, capable of arresting the deadly tide of disease, in human frames and human hearts. He came in his own distinct and peculiar manifestation—"the Prince of life," for the purpose of scattering disease and of destroying death and its powers. He was the reality of that incident in the life of the High Priest, when we read that "He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stayed." Aaron was but the type, but Christ is the reality of that wondrous healing power. And when He came, the world experienced an efficacy of actual curative might, which it had never before known in all its histories.
Here, now, was the great Physician. Here was "Balm of Gilead." He went about everywhere, doing good. He spent a life of generous and saving restorative power, healing all manner of disease and sickness. He fed the hungry. He comforted the widow. He raised the dead. The deaf had their hearing restored. The blind were reclaimed from darkness, to look forth in joy upon the brightness of clear skies and "the lilies of the field." The paralytic regained lost vital power to disabled limbs. The withered hand was made whole, and became once more pliant and elastic. Lunacy was changed to calm rationality and clear sense. Indeed, all manner of sickness gave way, at once, at His presence. The fiery heat of consuming fevers, and the malignity of noxious ailments, were conquered at His approach; for even leprosy, which is death, seated triumphant amid vitality, yielded at His touch; and life and vigorous health ran suddenly, and with alacrity, through the stagnant veins of its despairing victim.
4. I am told that these were miracles; and so, indeed, they were. They were mighty works; "great and astounding marvels;" wondrous and amazing powers. They were facts and occurrences which startled the senses, and overcame all the deductions of reason, and outran the flights of imagination. But they were something more than this. They were mercies as well as wonders; grace-tokens as well as demonstrations of God's great power; in fine, manifestations of that gracious and merciful spirit which characterizes the religion of Jesus, as well as mighty miracles which evidence the Faith.
Ignorance of this is blindness to the spirit of the New Testament, and of the acts of Jesus. For, without doubt, no man has even seen the deep reality and the wondrous significance of our Lord's miracles, who has only regarded them as wondrous marvels, and hence, has failed to notice the Divine Love, the genial and genuine humanity, the large-hearted philanthropy, and the tender, melting sympathy, which they everywhere so savingly signify The Lord Jesus, never be it forgotten, was not only a wonder-worker among men, but He was, and pre-eminently so even in them, a compassionate Saviour, a sympathizing friend, a brother, "touched with a sense of our infirmities," touching men ever with the subduing touch of kindness, and with a healing power.
5. And this feature of Christ's miraculous power, it should be remembered, is the one which all the ages through, and now, in our own day, still remains an unfailing inheritance in Christ's church and to Christ's people, aye, and even to a heedless world. The age of miracles has gone; but it may well be doubted whether, since Jesus came into this world, any distinct power or influence He once exerted, has ever departed, entirely and in every way, from among men. After the birth in Bethlehem, Jesus is ever present in this world;—His presence is never again to depart from it, until the consummation of all things. His glorified body is indeed in Heaven; but He is with His Church always, even unto the end of the world. And, being present, those wondrous powers, and that mighty energy, which He wrought among men, in the days of His manifestation, are likewise ever present, and never shall depart. There is not one of us here to-day, but who believes in Jesus' personal presence in this church. We all have a firm faith that He is really and undoubtedly with his ministry and people, in all their work and service in His behalf on earth. We are fully convinced, that in prayers, and preaching, and sacraments, He is not a far-off, but an ever-present Lord. But where is the warrant for the dubitating thought, that this presence is vouchsafed only to those offices which are called distinctively religious, and which pertain exclusively to the soul? Where is the ground for supposing that the Lord's presence is confined to those things alone which we specially entitle spiritual.
There is, indeed, no such ground. This sceptical persuasion is, in sonic, the fruit of a mere surface thought upon the high prerogative of Christ's Church; in another class, it is the offspring of a halting unbelief; in others, again, it proceeds from unworthy and unwarranted notions of the inferiority of matter, in general, and of the body in particular; forgetful that all things, since Christ's coining, are sanctified to the loftiest purposes.
In truth, brethren, to deny, or even doubt, Jesus' presence, as pertaining to the body as well as spirit of man, to the whole man, is to hold a mere brutal theory about man, and to make nugatory the efficacy of our Lord's incarnation. For the terms of the large promises of Jesus justify us in looking for, and assuring ourselves in, the presence and strength of our mighty Lord in. all our work and labors, in which we aim at the welfare of the bodies of men. Moreover, the very fact that our Lord went up on high in our flesh, seems to show that that glorified body is still the sympathizing medium between "GOD manifest in the flesh," and frail humanity, in pains and misery.
The form and mode in which power goes out from Jesus, is different now from what it was when men approached, and saw, and felt, and handled that awful person; but the essence and the energy are the same.
Our Lord, at the beginning of his ministry, declared: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised.
And ever since, not only until the Ascension, but all these two thousand years of the Christian era, Jesus has been preaching the Gospel to the poor; it is He who, on Christian and on heathen ground, has been healing the broken-hearted; He it is who has broken the fetter from the limbs of the captive and the slave, and proclaimed emancipation; and it has been Jesus who, in multitudinous almshouses, asylums, infirmaries, and hospitals all over the globe, as healed the bruises, sores, and lacerations of men; enabled physicians to give sight to the blind, and hearing to the ear; made the lame to walk, and cured the dropsical and the paralytic. The bodily presence of Jesus has not been here on earth; but all curative influence, this restorative and healing power, came from the religion of Jesus, and is verily and indeed the work of our own gracious Lord.
Thus again, the Redeemer after His Resurrection, when taking leave of His Apostles, declared: "All these signs shall follow them that believe: in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Is there nothing in it for us in our work here save as reminiscence? Are men to receive these words in no other way than the literal? Do you so magnify these undoubted miracles that when their distinct and characteristic marks vanish, the Church of God sinks to a lower and utterly diverse manifestation of Divine power, so that she is confined to the outward signs of miracles for her interpretation of these large and glorious promises? And do their external, visible characteristics, sever us of these modern times entirely from these mighty works of our Lord? Or do you suppose that because the outward and visible sign of these wonders is denied us in this age, that therefore Christ is not still fulfilling the very same promise in this naughty world to the discomfiture of sin and Satan? Surely this is the last place in the world for any such unbelief. Here, or indeed anywhere else on heathen ground, where Satan has established Ins kingdom, but where the Holy Spirit has lifted up "an effectual banner" against him in Christian missions, we do indeed see "devils cast out;" we see the sick reclaimed from feebleness through the renovating agencies of a new faith; we see Christian converts outrunning, in all the respects of strength of virtue and intelligence, all their heathen kin; we see a power scattering the darkness and disseverance of thousands diverse and inferior tongues, and by Christian philosophy, and the energy and diffusion of the Christian English tongue, reverting the confusion of Battel into the harmony of goodly brotherhood and love. If we cannot believe all this, are we prepared to attribute these gracious results to some oilier influence than Christ Jesus'? Are we willing to believe that there is another power in this world besides that of JESUS to do good to the bodies and souls of men? And is it indeed the case that Christians cannot have the faith that great as were the miracles of Christ, "that greater works than these "were to be done by His people?
Surely none of us are prepared for such a concession as this. "While, indeed, granting that the age of miracles has departed, we claim that the gracious and saving power of Jesus is still the heritage of Christ's people. If the wonder-making phase of miracles has gone, their restorative and compassionate features are still continued by our Lord, in this sinful world. For Jesus Christ came upon earth, and took upon Him our flesh, for this very purpose of good and blessedness to man. He came to touch man with a saving power, and therefore He took our bodily nature upon Him, not to touch and heal men for the brief period of His earthly stay among men, but unto the world's end; and therefore, if we would trace to its source the beneficence which we see around us, in the restored bodies of men, we must recognize the healing power of our Lord still exerted for good, although it comes to us by the agency of our fellow-creatures, and is exerted through the art and skill and genius of man. When the woman in the Scriptures took hold of the garment of the Saviour, He instantly declared that "virtue had gone out of Him." The very touch sent forth healing efficacy. So now healing still continues to go out from His body—His touch still works a curative influence. That glorious body on the right hand of the Father still gives forth a power to repair, a health and life-giving energy, a healing influence, to weak and wretched men.
And it is thus, in one view, that Christianity continues, even to our own day, a standing miracle. This miraculous power of the faith may be seen, I know, in other aspects; but I wish now to fasten attention upon this one point, and claim for our blessed Lord a power which is all and peculiarly His own. Christ is the Healer of the nations; directly, that is, in saving and sanctifying the sinful souls of wen; indirectly, in healing and curing and restoring their bodies by the agencies of physicians, medicines, and hospitals. These are His miracles of love, those the miracles of evidence.
6. And all this will appear yet more distinctly if you will notice the fact that such humane efforts as this of ours are specially Christian. It is the genius of Christianity which has produced the philanthropy of civilized countries. It is the spirit of Jesus' religion which has prompted that high art, that marvellous skill, and those humane institutions by which, in all Christian lands, disease is conquered, life is lengthened out, and pain is neutralized. It is thus that Jesus' presence is felt in the world, even in matters physical and temporal. No other religion has ever prompted such generous benevolent skill, or thus provided fur the miserable and the outcast. On the banks of the Ganges the maimed and the decrepit are cast into the river as food for crocodiles. Pagan and Mohammedan travellers through the deserts of Africa desert the sick and the diseased, and leave them to the tender mercies of the jackal or the tiger. The Indian in the western wilds of America casts out the emaciated and the helpless to the ravenous wolf without pity or remorse. We see here among the heathen, at times, the utter absence of sensibility or feeling for those, even relations or parents or children, who are suffering pain and agony, or who are sick unto death. Even in that religion of which Christianity is an offshoot, the religion of the Jews, although mercy and kindness are marked peculiarities, still we discover no special provisions for the sick; no regulations for gathering them into lazar-houses and receptacles. Indeed, the history of mankind shows that there is no natural tendency to humane and charitable deeds. The human heart, of itself, never originates efforts and institutions of the kind we are originating this day. It is not of man to assuage suffering, to heal the sick, to save the miserable. It was left to the sublime and humane spirit of Christianity to start such works of mercy and such works of love. Jesus had to come into the world, and since His advent the poor, the maimed, the wretched, the blind, and the deaf have been cared for. Wherever His holy religion has been established, there hospitals, almshouses, and reformatory institutions have sprung up all over Christendom; and the woes, and agonies, and wails of poor distressed humanity have been cared for. We claim, as we have the right to claim, that this is the work of our Lord. No matter what may be the agencies used in the conversion of men, or who may have been the ministers or teachers who led them to Christ, we deny the glory to these agents; we claim that Jesus worked their spiritual restoration. So, in like manner with regard to all eleemosynary works and houses, though we recognize the zeal of warm-hearted men and gentle women, the large charities and the heroic self-sacrifice of fearless nurses and physicians, yet Ave claim all for Christ. This stream of pitifulncss for the suffering has its rise in the merciful bosom of our own risen and glorified Lord. All the philanthropy of this world, whether flowing in legitimate or indirect channels, has been prompted by and caught up from this precious faith of Jesus. Whether men reclaim the drunkard, or free the poor slave, or give sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf, or rectify fractured limbs, they learned it all in the school of Christ. The religion of Jesus is the only one which cares for both body and soul. Wherever, in its practical workings, there is a forgetfulness or neglect of either of these portions of our humanity, there Christianity appears misshapen, one-sided, deformed; neither do her advocates gain any real advantage for her by excessive devotedness to one portion of man which is purchased by neglect of the other; indeed, that is a mere mockery of the spirit of Christ, which, while pretending solicitude for the spirit of man, is at the same time indifferent to his temporal estate. The religion of Jesus is a religion which lays hold of both body and soul for time and for eternity. And though Jesus has gone upon high, still He ever liveth. lie is ever present in his Church for good and blessedness for the whole, entire, compact being of man, one and undivided—the undying spirit, and the mortal frame, which at the resurrection is to be clothed upon with immortality.
7. We bless God for the holy religion of Jesus, which He has revealed to man. We bless Him for all the gracious fruits and the saving influences which proceed from this religion. We bless Him for the new spirit which it has spread abroad in this sinful world, for the lofty principles by which it strengthens the will of man, and for the noble deeds to which it has given birth. We bless Him for all the benevolent institutions which He has started into being, in all the fields of its victory and triumph. We bless Him for all the Christian houses, hospitals, homes for little orphan children, refuges, reformatories, houses of mercy, and asylums, into which have been gathered the sick and the emaciated all over the globe, in all the ages of the Faith. We bless Him for all the generous enterprises which the Christian religion has started into being for the bodily relief and the temporal welfare of our fellow-creature. We bless Him for all the philanthropic schemes by which the drunkard is made sober and saved, the outcast Magdalen is made pure in both body and soul, the poor slave is emancipated and becomes a man, the leper is cared for, and his sorrow and desolation mitigated, the prisoner is blessed, the sailor rescued, and the crippled and the diseased are cured.
And while indeed "holding the Head," even the Lord Jesus, as the fountain of all bodily as well as all spiritual good to man, we bless God, also, for all the noble men and women who in all the ages of Christianity have drank in fully the spirit of our common Master, and have gone about among widows and orphans, among the sick and the diseased, the blind, the lame, and the deaf, imitating the Lord's example, "doing good to men." Blessed and merciful spirits! ye who are yet on the shores of time, still diligent in saving deeds and holy charities; or, ye more lofty ones, reaping the fruition of your goodly service for men on the far-off shores of blessedness and glory; we hail and salute you as among the Lest benefactors of your kind, as the faithful ministers of grace and restoration to afflicted men!
With this goodly company we are happy to associate this day our reverend brother[2] who projected this work, and who, by God's favor and the aid of generous friends, has been enabled to bring it to this favorable point. We thank God for the grace thus freely given him for us; "for He loveth our nation and builds" us an hospital. Other things add to the gladness of this ceremony. We are happy in the occasion which assembles us together. This is St. Mark's day, and our Church calls upon us to commemorate that eminent evangelist and saint, who laid the first foundations of the Church in Africa, and who is believed to have moistened its soil with a martyr's blood. In what more befitting manner could we keep the day than this?
We are happy in the selection of the spot from which, in fair proportions, is to rise this house of healing and of mercy. Here, amid pure, untainted, and healthful breezes, the invalid mav uain strength to his body and revive hope to his sinking heart. Here this house will stand a prominent object, and be seen from afar on the ocean, greeting the eye of the sick sailor or the timid, tremulous emigrant, assuring both that, although they approach the shores of Africa, yet the religion of Jesus here, as everywhere else, mitigates the pestilence, heals the sick and the diseased, comforts the miserable and the outcast, and is full of healing, consolation, and of love! "May the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it!"
- ↑ The 25th chapter of St. Matthew, from the 31st verse, had just been read.
- ↑ St. Mark's Hospital was planned and projected by the Rev. C.C. Hoffman, of New York City, missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Cape Palnas, Libera, and the building lias been carried on, and approaches completion, under his superintendence, and through his zeal and labors.