The Brookhaven leader., 1890-05-01

hemorrhage Of twelve years, and He
stopped it Another was a curvature OF
eighteen years, and He Strengthened it.
Another was a cripple OF thirty
eight years. and he walked out
we'll. The eighteen-year patient
was a woman bent almost double.
IL 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 might be made
more comfortable, but it is, humanity
speaking, incurable. Yet this Divine
Surgeon put both His hands on her, and
from that doubled-up posture she began
to rise, and the empurpled face began
to take on a healthier hue, and the
muscles began to relax from their rigid
ity, and the spinal column began to ad-
just itself, and the cords of the neck be-
gan to be supple, and the eyes, that
could only see the ground before, now
looked up into the face of Christ with
gratitude, and up toward Heaven in
transport. Straight After eighteen
weary and exhaustive years, straight!
The poise, the gracefulness, the beauty
of healthy womanhood rcinstated.
The thirty-eight years case was a
man who lay on a mattress near the
mineral baths at. Jerusalem. There
were five apartments where lame peo-
pie were brought so that they could get
the advantage of the mineral baths
The stone basin of the bath is still visi-
BILE, although the waters have disap-
peared, probably through some convul-
sion of nature, the bath, one hundred
and twenty feet long, forty feet wide
and eight feet deep All. poor man; if
you have been lame and hel phess thir-
ty-eight years, that mineral bath can
not restore. But Christ, the Surgeon,
walks along these baths, and have no
doubt passes by some patients who have
been only six months disordered, or a
year, or five years, and comes to the
mattress of the man who had been near
ly four decades helpless, and to this thir-
ty-eight years invalid said: "Wilt thou
be made whole?'
The question asked, not because the
Surgeon did not understand the pro-
tractedness, the desperateness of the
case, but to evoke the mans pathetic
narrative. "Wilt thou be made whole?"
Would you like to get well?" "Oh
yes" says the man, that is what l
came to these mineral baths for; have
tried every thing. All the surgeons
have failed, and all the prescriptions
have proved valueless, and l have got
worse and worse, and 1 can neither
move hand or foot or head. Oh, if l
could only be free from pain of thirty
eight years. Christ, the Surgeon, could
not stand that. Bending over the
man on the mattress, and in voice
tender with all sympathy but
strong with all omnipotence, He says:
'Rise!" And the invalid instantly
scrambles to his knees, and then puts
out his right foot, then his left foot,
and then stood upright as though he
had never been Frustrated. While he
stands looking at the Doctor with Joy
too much to hold, the Doctor says:
shoulder this mattress! for you are
not only we'll enough to walk, but we'll
enough to work, and start out from
these mineral baths. Take up thy bed
AMI walk Oh, what a Sugeon for
chronic cases then, and for chronic cases
now!
This is not applicable so much to those
who are only little hurt of sin, and
only for short time, but to those pros
trated of sin twelve years, eighteen
years, thirty-eight years. Here is a
Surgeon able to give immortal health.
'Ob," you say, 81 am so completely
overthrow and trampled down of sin
that l can not rise" Are you fatter
down than this patient at the mineral
baths? No. Then rise. In the name
of Jesus of Nazareth, the Surgeon who
offers His right hand of help, l bid
thee rise. Not cases of acute sin, but
of chronic sin-those who have not
prayed for thirty-eight years, those
who have not been to church for thirty
eight years, those who have been gam
blers, or libertines, or thieves, or out
laws, or blasphemers, or infidels, or
atheists, or all these together, for thirty
eight years. A Christ for eXigencies.
A Christ for dead-lift. A Surgeon who
never loses a case!
In speaking Of Christ as a Surgeon,
must consider Him as an oculist, or eye
doctor, and an aurist, or ear doctor.
Was there ever such another oculist?
That He was particularly sorry for the
blind folks, / take from the fact that
the most of His work was with the
diseased optic nerves. have not time
to count up the number of blind people
mentioned who got His cure. Two
blind men in one house, also one who
was born blind; so that it was not re-
moval of visual obstruction, but the
creation of the cornea, and ciliary
muscle, and crystalline lens, and
retina, and optic nerve, and
tear gland; and the blind man
of Bethsaida, cured by the saliva which
the Surgeon took from the tip of His
own tongue and put upon the eyelids;
also two blind men who sat by the way
side. In our civilized lands we have
blindness enough, the ratio fearfully in
creasing, according to the statement of
Boston and New York and Philadelphia
oculists, because of the reading of morn
ing and evening newspapers on the
iolting cars by the multitudes who live
out of the city and come in to business.
But in the lands where this Divine Sur
geon operated, the cases of blindness
were multiplied beyond every thing by
the particles of sand floating in the
air, and the night dews falling on the
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