The Iola register., 1890-05-02
THE DIVINE HEALER.
DR.. Talmage on Christ as the Great
Physician.
The Saviourss Cures Always the Most Won
derful-A Physician Whose Treatment
Was Without Money or Prfce-Ffnal
Gathering of the Saved.

In late sermon at Brooklyn Rev. 7.
Dewitt Talmage discoursed on the pro-
fession of healing. His text was Mat
thew ii, s: "The blind receive their
sight and the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed. and the deaf hear" He
said: 'H
Doctor" I said to distinguished
surgeon, do you not get worn out with
constantly seeing so many wounds and
broken bones and distortions OF the
human body?" 80, no." he answered,
s'all that is overcome by my JOY in cur
ing them" A sublimer or more merci-
full art never came down from Heaven
than the art of surgery. Catastrophe
and disease entered the earth SO early
THAT one of the first wants of the world
was a doctor. Our crippled and ago
nized human race called for surgeon
and family physician for many years be-
fore they came. The first surgeons who
answered this call were ministers of re-
ngion, namely, the Egyptian priests.
And what grand thing if all clergymen
we've also doctors, all ID. DIS were NJ
DIS, for there are so many cases where
body and soul need treatment at the
same time, consolation and medicine,
theology and therapeutics. AS the
first surgeons of the world were also
ministers of religion, may these two
professions always be in full sympathy!
But under what disadvantages the
early surgeons worked, from the fact
that the dissection of the human body
was forbidden, first by the pagans and
then by the early Christians! Apes, be-
ing the brutes most like the human race,
were dissected, but no human body
might be unfolded for physiological and
anatomical exploration, and the surgeon
had to guess what was inside the temple
by looking at the outside of it. If they
failed in any surgical operation they
were prosecuted and driven out of the
city. as was Archagathus, because of his
bold but unsuccessful attempt to save a
patient
But the world from the very beginning
kept calling for surgeons, and their first
skill is spoken of in Genesis, where
they employed their art for the incision
of sacred rite, God making surgery
the predecessor of baptism: and we see
it again in III. Kings, where Azahiah. the
monarch, stepped on some cracked lat
tice-work in the palace, and it broke
and he fell from the upper to the lower
floor, and he was so hurt that he sent to
the village of Ekron for aid; and Escu-
lapius, who wrought such wonders of
surgery that he was deified, and temples
were built for his worship at Pergamos.
What mighty progress in the battling
of disease since the crippled and sick
of ancient cities were laid along the
streets, that people who had ever been
hurt or disordered in the same way
might suggest what had better be done
for the patients; and the priests of olden
time, who were constantly suffering
from colds received in walking barefoot
over the temple pavements, had to pre-
scribe for themselves, and fractures
were considered so far beyond all human
cure that instead of calling in the sur
geons the people only invoked the gods!
But notwithstanding all the surgical
and medical skill of the world, with
what tenacity the old diseases hang on
to the human race, and most of them
are thousands of years old, and in our
Bibles we read of them; the carbuncles
of Job and Hezekiah: the palpitation of
the heart spoken of in Deuteronomy:
the sunstroke of child carried from
the fields of Shunem, crying: ''My
head! my head"' King Asa's disease of
the feet, which was nothing but gout:
detection of teeth, which called for
dental surgery, the skill of which, quite
equal to any thing modern, is still seen
in the filled molars of the unrolled
Egyptian mummies; the ophthalmia
caused by the juice of the newly ripe
fig, leaving the people blind at the road
side: epilepsy, as in the case of the
young man often falling into the fire,
and oft into the water; hypochondria, as
of Nebuchadnezzar, who imagined him
self an OK and going out to the fields to
pasture.
The world has never seen but one
surgeon who could straighten the crook
ed limb cure the blind eye, or recon-
struct the drum of a soundless ear, or
reduce a dropsy, without any pain at
the time, or any pain after. and that
surgeon was Jesus Christ, the mightiest,
grandest gentlest and most sympathet-
ic surgeon the world ever saw or ever
will see, and He deserves the confidence
and love and worship and hosanna of all
the earth and hallelujahs of all Heaven.
'sThe blind receive their sight, and the
lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and
the deaf hear"
notice this surgeon had fondness
for chronic cases. Many a surgeon, when
he has had patient brought to him. has
said: why was not this attended to
five years ago? You bring him to me
after all power of recuperation is gone.
You have waited until there is COM
plete contraction of the muscles and
false ligatures are formed and ossifica-
ton has taken place. 1t ought to have
been attended to long ago" But Christ
the Surgeon seemed to prefer inveterate
cases. One was hemorrhage of twelve
years and He stopped it. Another was
4 curvature of eighteen years and He
straightened it Another was a cripple of
thirty-eight years and he walked out
well The eighteen-year patient was a
woman bent almost double. If you could
call convention of all the surgeons of
all the centuries, their combined skill
could not cure that body so drawn out
of shape. Perhaps they might stop it
from getting any worse, perhaps they
might contrive braces by which she
migat be made more comfortable, but
it Is, humanity speaking, incurable- Yet
this divine Surgeon put both His hands
on hers and from that doubled up post
ure she began to rise, and the en-
purpled face began to take on a
healthier hue, and the muscles began
TO relax from their rigidity, and the