The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-06-20 00:00:00

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

The chancel and transepts of Westminster Abbey
were crowded on Sunday afternoon, when the Lord
Mayor, wearing his official robes, attended by his
officers and accompanied by the Sheriffs and many of
the Aldermen and Common Councilmen, was present
at the service.

The Very Rev. the Dean of Westminster preached
the sermon, taking his text from Matthew iv., 23rd
and following verses :—" And Jesus went about all
teaehing in their spnagognes, and prearhing the
Genpel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of nick-
neiand all manner of disease antonythe iteople. And His
(ante went throughout all Sprit, ; and they brought
unto Hint all sick people that Wcre taken with direr.
&senses and torments, and those which were possessed
with Write, and those which were lunatiek, and thoee
that had the palsy, and He healed them. And,
wino the etnititudes, He went up into a mountain,
and, when He was net, His disciples came unto
Him, and He opened His mouth and taught them"
It was thus, said Dean Stanley, that the public
ministry of our Lord opened, and such was its usual
and ordinary aspect. When the glare of the mid-day
sun was withdrawn, when the shadows of evening
lengthened over the still waters of the lake, when each
separate cleft of the mountains started into dint met
life out of the hazy brightness in which they had been
wrapped before, then out of the houses and tents,
where they had rested during the heat of the day, were
brought out those taken with all manner of sicknesses
and diseases, coming, as the sick in those Eastern parts
would still come when attracted by the fame of any
superior intelligence near them—the blind, the lame,
the wild demoniac; the moon-struck madmen, the
solitary leper, every form of bodily and mental ail-
ment, and vathering in the evening light round one
Divine presence, to be healed of their diseases. And
Jesus healed them, not by a selection of favourites,
not by the waving of some magic wand, not by
the uniform interposition of Divine power, but by a
variety and multiplicity of means, which whilst it
brought him near to each individual sufferer, brought
us also nearer to Him, and nearer in mind and thought
to those scenes described in Gospel history. Such was
the entward life f Christ, and in such a way as that
described in the text a great part of his public dfinistry
seat spent ; and it was an
_aspect of the wonder-
working part of His life which W 41,9 accepted by many
who were unable to accept the rest. This, alike with
every part of the life of onerSavionr, taught a less it
. twofold in form—but one in substance—it .1- •
r•—•-eleti ii I. list eiil and of 1)
of man. it WIMS a revelation of the will of God both in

regard to sickness and health; it taught them that
bodily suffering was not below the notice of Him who
came to save the world. If they were tempted for
a moment to believe that the care of the soul was a
religious duty, but that care for the body was a mere
secular benevolence, the consideration that it was in
the cures of bodily sickness that the whole tenderness
of Christ's nature found fullest vent, and that they
were the foundation on which he took His stand, was
sufficient to contradict the idea. Yes, sickness and
sorrow were parts of the Divine eduation of man, and
such was the law of human sickness as revealed in the
Gospel in its soothing, humbling, elevating, glorifying
effect on those who passed through and those who
I witnessed it. But tender as was Christ to sickness,
I beautiful as was the thought even when pushed
I to exaggeration that the sick and feeble in one
special sense were the favourities of Heaven, yet the
same account told them that while God was surely found
in disease, He was even and more surely served fold
found in health. Not a sickly, feeble frame either of
mind or body, but a sound, wholesome, healthy state
of both was what God willed and Christ came to give.
Health in English formerly, and in German still, ass
the same word as that used for salvation; and healer
in old English and in German still was the word for
Saviour. There were th ise who found a sense of con-
version in the prostration of bodily strength, and there
I were religious services carried on with well-intentioned
zeal even at the present time at which the worshippers
I fell down as if shot, and the floor of the church seemed,
it was said, as though it were strewn with the bodies
of the dead and dying; but the exact opposite of this
was seen at the conversions made by Christ. It was
not the demoniac prostrated on the ground, foaming
and screaming, but the man clothed and in his right
mind, not a helpless beggar at the pool of Bethesda,
but the man walking and leaping in his new found
strength, that were the true witnesses to the power
of Christ and His spirit. Next came the con-
sideration of the duty of man to his fellow-creatures,
in which, no doubt, the life of Christ was to be followed.,
so far as they could, not in the letter, but in the
spirit. Of all vocations, higher even than that of the
ruler, or teacher, or pastor, was that which was the
: most direct imitation of the outward life of Christ--
the profession of healing. However much the tolera-
tion of the Gospel had been elsewhere neglected, at
least in sickness the universal brotherhood of the good
Samaritan was allowed, and the adoption of this
Hospital Sunday without incurring a reproach even
from the most suspicious or censorious, by all
shades of religious belief, was a proof that the
world had made some advance in that fundamental
principle of the Gospel, which was sometimes
repusliated in the intercourse of social life,
and in the sacraments of love. Acknowledged even
by the most exclusive, on that day it might
well be called a feast of charity, and veritably
the truce of God. While care for the sick and
suffering was no doubt taught by many of the nobler
spirits in heathen, and later in Mahometan countries,
it owed its deep and wile extension to Christianity,
and thus every hospital WU a direct link between
themselves and those mighty gatherings on the Galilean
shores. But could they having such institutions not
go further, and wish in the name of Christ to see their
usefulness extended to the utmost limits? The gentle
touch, the tender questions, the compassionate look, the
considerate kindness for each particular case which
marked the ministrations I,f Christ, were but ineen-
tires to them to guard with all possible care in their
hospitals against any roughness or disorder in the ar-
rangements. They would remember the frightful
picture which their great poet Milton had drawn in
the vision .4 our first parents of a place—

Sail, noisome, dark.
A lazar.house it seem'd, wherein were lull
Numbers of all diseas'il, all maladies,
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, nil feverous kinds.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans ; Despair
Tended the sick busiest from couch to couch,
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked
With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Such, no doubt, was the fashion of hospitals in former
days, and such they might have been in Milton's own
days- niere receptacles of disease and death, but such
was not the image now conveyed to their own minds
by the word, such was not the example of a Christian
hospital. Disease and death were there, but in their
most mitigated form, and instead of being a scene of
misery and despair, a hospital wan a fountain of
healing and life— not only to its inmates, but
to the whole neighbourhood of which it was the
centre. Who that had passed ever no carelessly
through the wards of such an institution could have
failed to see that its ministrations were not confined
to mere bodily care. how many must there be
by whom, in the moments of pain' in the long
leisure of slow recovery, in the flush of returning
health, a word of consolation or advice was sure to be
gratefully received, MY at other times it would be re-
jected and despised. HOW waxy must there be who
were thus for the first time brought within the range
of Christian aid - it might almost be said of civilized
8311113athy. HOW Wide-Spread must be the results of
the constant ministrations of a good chaplain; how
consoling and how soothing the tenderness of the
patient, gentle well-trained nurse; bow impressing,
how dear to those who needed it, the warning or
cheering word, or, perhaps yet more, the kind and
significant silence, 44 a wise physician, the true
confessor of modern times. Of all the means of
doing good in this changing world, there was
none of more lasting or unmixed usefulness,
none more immediately after the example of
Christ, than the ministering to the wants of the
sick. Other institutions of Christian benefit
monasteries, chantries, poor-howses alms-houses,
cathedrals, colleges---had passed through many changes,
and in some instances had perished altogether; but
how few, in comparison, of such changes had affected
hospitals. They had grown with the growth of know-
ledge, and rarely indeed had they fallen away from
the plans of their first founders. 'That was indeed a
permanence guaranteed on the wants if our common
human nature, and for that purpose Church and State,
prince and peasant, east and west—Protestant and
Roman, Churchman and Nonconformist alike joinel
on that day in promoting the good of a charity which
admitted of no controversy, of no misconstrnction, and
which brought with it its own certain and immediate
reward.