CHRISTOPATHY. 405 



Let them put on the proofs of the apostolic power. Let them 

 peril all in this great attempt. Let the weak excuse of their 

 age of virtue being past, be exchanged for a godly resolve to bring 

 it back again. If they fail, it will be because they are not Christ- 

 ian, or else because Christianity cannot bide its own proofs. If 

 they succeed, there will be no need of missionaries any more, but 

 mankind will sit in a right mind under them, and bless their privi- 

 lege, and their Master's name. The vis medicatrix Christi will be 

 the physical demonstration of the life of a Christian church. 



Under all these means, co-working for good, shall not the body 

 be redeemed, and evil begin to lose the footing that sickness gives 

 it? By heaven's law the sick have claims which the healthy have 

 not, and there is more joy over one man cured, that over ninety and 

 nine who are sound. This is a test of every society — how it speeds, 

 or how it lags, in administering to its sick. They are the weakest 

 parts of our common body, and care and thought turn to them with 

 longings that are the flesh of the physician's heart. And the more 

 that are healed, the more concentrate is the love upon those who 

 suffer still; so that at length the world's whole skill and tenderness 

 shall surround with arts and healing tears the bed of the last sick 

 man. 



Yet we are all to die, though in time neither by the sword of war, 

 nor by the violence of disease. The embryo passes without fear into 

 a larger world, which is meant to be kinder than the mother's womb. 

 The man is to be born again, with as little pain of sense and thought, 

 into the next expansion of the spirit. Death is the angel to the 

 irremediable. prseclarum ilium diem! Let us set our houses 

 in order, make our wills, and take our leave of all things every day : 

 we shall be wanted among our fathers afar off on the morrow. 



