Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1900-08-16
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.

Subject The Mission of Christ - How
Divine Power Will Heal the World
Jesus the Surgeon Who Will Extir-
pale the Disease of Sin.
Tcopyright lsoo.l
WASHINGTON. d. C.-In this discourse
DIR. Talmage puts in an unusual light the
mission of Christ, and shows how divine
power will vet make the illnesses of the
world fall back; text, Matthew xi, s, The
blind receive their sight, and the lame
walk. the lepers are cleansed and the deaf
hear"
Doctor" said to distinguished sur
geon. "do you not get worn out with con-
stantly seeing SO many wounds and bro
ken bones and distortions of the human
body" "Oh. no." he answered; "all that
Is overcome by. my JOY in curing them"
A sublimer and more merciful art never
came down from heaven than that of sur
gerry. Catastrophe and disease entered
the earth SO early that one of the first
wants of the world was doctor. Our
crippled and agonized human race called
years before they came. The first surgeons
who answered this call were ministers of
religion-namely, the Egyptian priests.
And what grand thing if all clergymen
we're also doctors, all d. DIS were NJ. rs,
for there are SO many cases where body
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 disadvanta-
yes the early surgeons. worked from the
was forbidden, first by the pagans and
then by the early Christians Apes being
The brutes most like the human race, were
dissected, but no human body might be
anfolded for physiological and anatomical
exploration. and the surgeons 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 Archa-
sathus because of his bold but unsuccess-
iul attempt to save patient.
But the world from the very beginning
kept calling for surgeons, and their first
.kill is spoken of in Genesis, where they
employed their art for the incisions of a
,acred rite, God making surgery the prede-
,essor of baptism, and we see it again in
II Kings, where Ahaziah, the monarch,
ltepped on some cracked latticework 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
Tor aid. and Aesculapius: who wrought
such wonders of surgery that he was del
| fed and temples were built for his wor..
ship at Pergamos; and Epidaurus and
Podelirius introduced for the relief of the
world phlebotomy,. and Damocedes cured
the dislocated ankle of King Darius and
the cancer of his queen, and Hlppocrates
put successful hand on fractures and intro
duced amputation, and Praxagoras re-
moved Instructions, and Herophilus began
dissection, and Erasistratus removed tu-
mors, and CELSIUS, the Roman surgeon. re-
moved cataract from the eye and used the
Spanish fly; anu Heliodorus arrested dis
ease of the throat, and Alexander of Trales
treated the eye, and Rhazas cauterized for
the prevention of hydrophoba, and PEREZ
val Pott came to combat diseases of the
spine, and in our own century we have
had, among others, a Roux and Larray
in france, an Ashley Cooper and an
Abernethv in Great Britain and a Nalen-
tine Mott and Willard Parker and Samuel
d. Gross in America, and a galaxy of liv-
ing surgeons as brilliant as their predeces-
sors. What mighty progress in the baf-
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!
But Notwithstanding all the surgical and
medical skill of the world, with what ten
acity the old diseases hang on to the hui
man race, and most of them are thou
sands of years old, and in our Bibles we
read of them-the carbuncles of Job and
Hezekiah, the palpitation Of the heart spo.
ken 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, that called for
dental surgery, the skill of which, almost
equal to anything 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 peo'
pie blind by the roadside; epilepsy, as in
the case of the young man often falling
into the fire and oft into the water; by
pochondria, as of Nebuchadnezzar, who
imagined himself an OK and going out to
the fields to pasture; the withered hand
which IN Bible times, as now, came from
the destruction of the main artery or from
paralysis of the chief nerve; the Hounds
of the man whom the thieves lett for
dead on the road to Jericho, and whom
the good Samaritan nursed, pouring in oil
oil to soothe it. Thank God for what sur
gerry has done for the alienation and cure
of human suffering!
| But the world wants a surgery without
pain. Drs. Parre and Hickman and Simp
son and Warner and Jackson, with their
amazing genius, came forward, and with
their anaesthetics benumbed the patient
with narcotics and ethers as the ancients
| did with hasheesh and mandrake, and
| quieted him for awhile, but at the return
| of consciousness distress returned. The
world has never seen but one surgeon who
could straighten the crooked limb, cure
the blind eye or reconstruct the drum OF
soundless ear or reduce dropsy without
| pain, and that surgeon was Jesus Christ
| the mightiest, grandest, gentlest and most
| sympathetic surgeon the world ever saw or
| ever will see, and He deserves the conf
| dence and love and worship and hosanna
| of all the earth and halleluiahs of all
heaven. "The 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 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 complete contrac-
| tion of the muscles, and false ligatures are
| formed, and ossifcation has taken place
| 1t ought to have been attended to long
ago." But Christ the Surgeon seemed to
prefer inveterate cases. One was a
hemorrhage of twelve years, and He stopped
| it. Another was curvature of eighteen
| years. and He Strengthened it. Another
| was cripple of thirty-eight years. and he