THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 159 



tion : " When the United States Government faced the 

 enterprise of digging the Panama Canal it had to set 

 about the task of creating a new Panama through which 

 to dig it. That region had been notoriously unhealthy, 

 so that every tie of the Panama Railway is said to 

 have been laid at the cost of a man's life. Before taking 

 its engineers and thousands of laborers thither, that 

 government had to establish adequate hospital facili- 

 ties and provide a competent staff of physicians and 

 nurses; but it was also necessary to attempt to clean 

 up the Isthmus, to drain the towns and to do away with 

 all standing pools where mosquitoes breed, to destroy 

 rats and make regulations at the ports so that no others 

 could get ashore from vessels, to erect sanitary vil- 

 lages in which the builders of the canal could be safely 

 kept. The result has been one of the miracles of 

 modern times, the transformation of a pestilential 

 locality into a health resort ; a place where no man 

 willingly lived, who could possibly get away from it, 

 into a place where large hotels are successfully run 

 for steamer-loads of tourists who come seeking rest 

 and new vitality. 



" Jesus came to create a new earth . . . "* 

 It has ever been the glory of the Christian Church 

 that she has acted the part of the Good Samaritan, 

 alleviating misery, providing charity ; she has founded 

 hospitals, asylums; she has relieved, she has rescued 

 the victims of ignorance, poverty, wretchedness, and 

 crime. But in her earlier days, indwelt by the Spirit 

 of her Lord, she went forth as a purifying, reconstruc- 

 tive power, turning the world upside down. !NTor had 

 she at any time wholly abandoned this health-giving 



* " Men and Religion Messages," Vol. II, p. 1. 



