The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-07-24

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 vels of man as healer, read nrofessor l Nhlte marvellous collection of facts in
 his book entitled The Wonders of Mod
 erh surgery Up to 1S70 80 per cent
 or all those who had fractured leg or arm
 with the bone protruding through the skin
 died. Now through the discoveries result
 ant rom the ilfe's work of Sir Joseph
 Lister, practically all those with frac-
 tured limb bones get well. Once when a
 gangrened leg had to be amputated a
 shrieking, yelling patient was held down
 by main strength and the leg cut off as
 quickly as possible, as a butcher with his
 ax would chop meat Then the bleeding
 stump was scared with boiling pitch
 Seventy-fiye per cent of those patients
 died. Now such operations are considered
 practically harmless. A whiff of ether.
 breath of chloroform. deep sleep a
 painless operation, and the heavy eyelids
 open. All the horrors of that operation
 are blank. Our uncles, our aunts, our
 parents, our grandparents, died by the
 hundreds of inflammation of the bowels, Along comes surgery and says. Down
 on the table qulck Out with the appen- di-.." And today clubs could be formed
 by the hundreds who would have died of appendicitis unless death had been driv-
 en back at the point of the surgeons knife.
 Wonders of Modern Medicine.
 But today are the wonders of modern surgery" any more marvellous than the wonders of modern medicine?" Is the power of modern medicine to cure di- sease any more marvellous today than the power of modern meteorological inves- tigations to prevent disease? You see Christ stopping here and there to open blinded eye or to unstop a deaf ear or to loosen the heavy and 1abored brath-
 ing of the asthmatic sufferer But today the achievements of the healer include more than here and there an isolated phy- sical cure. 1 see the lights In thousands of hospital windows gleaming like the stars in the heavens. I see the white robbed nurses and the doctors coming forth as did the angels of health who troubled the waters at the pool of Beth esCa, crying to the sick everywhere, Come and be cured of your ailments!" I see thousands and tens of thousands of strong men and women who would have died twenty years younger than they are now had they lived and been sick in the days when Christ lived and he had seen them not or touched them not Christ as a physician of the body was a wonder worker. But man today as a curer of physical ailments is accomplish ing far more than Christ ever did. Man Is not only opening the eyes of those born blind, but he is making by the thous- ands and the tens of thousands the deaf and the dumb speak until this ancient miracle has ceased to be wonder be- cause of It's commences.
 Now, study Christ from another stand point. What did Jesus come down on earth to do? He came to save the world? Oh, yes; he came ito save the world by drawing men unto himself and banding them together as Chris tians. That means men were to become followers of himself. Yet, after he came to earth and was born in the manger and lived in Nazareth. he llteral- ly became the "despised and the rejected Of men,. After he had lived and suffer- ed preached and worked on and on until the day when he was erucifed, the con verts he had won were only a little hand full of followers at the foot of his cross. If I should take yol to a country pastor and say 'Rev. Mir. So and-So, how large is your church?" he would say: "0h, very small. We have only syscorc members all told. But we are part of the great Presbyterian church, with its hun. dreds Q. thousands and millions Of men- bers. Therefore we are Drard to belong to the great body of this church mill tant." l,ut Jesus ,vhen he died did not lave any great church. He was only the humble Sazarene with one hundred and twenty disciples all told in Jerusalem From a worldly standpoint Christ's life seemed to be an afjeot fa'h're. Do you wonder that Christ said to his disciples in the words of my text. He that be- lieyeth on me. the works that do shall he do also. and greater works than these shall he do?" How has the promise been fulfilled in the great preachers and or ganizers of the Christian church? In- spred by his life and teaching, men have arisen whose achievements as far as they can be measured by numbers, has surpassed a thousandfold those of their Divine Master.
 Growth O. the Y. M. c. 4.
 Compare If you will the rapid advance ment of Christianity during the century just passed with the seemingly paltry number of 120 whom Christ gathered about him in Jerusalem during his earth ly ministry. In 1S44 George Williams of London organized the first Y NJ C. A. association of the world. Forty-six years later. as a direct outgrowth of his work there were 6625 different Y M. C. A. as- section societies with their enrolment of tocOoO members, with property worth over s26,o50,000. In 1865 William Booth, a humble Methodist minister, stepped out of the church of his birth and in Not tingham, England, organized the Chris tian Mission, the outgrowth of which Is the modern Salvation Army. In thirty five years that army. as direct result of William Booths work, had it's il ,0O0 officers stationed in all parts of the world, holding annually over 10000 meetings and possessing its own printing presses, scattering forth 43000,000 pamphlets and papers Of gospel news and with an in- come of nearly s4,000,0O0 per year In 1880 Franeis F. Clark, a comparatively un- known minister, organized his young people Into band of Christian workers, called the Christian Endeavor society. He Is called Father" Clark now. not how ever, because he is an old man, but be- cause he was the father of a movement which in twenty years had a society with nearly 4,ot0,ooO members. Consider the work or John Wesley. Compare the first band or TO members with the conversions under the power of the Holy Ghost of Whiteheld. Finney. Moody These men ieu me people by the tens of thousands 10 kneei at the foot of the cross. Tell me- m reference to the criterion of number mas not a man as preacher and 1hrlst,an organizer done ''greater things" than did Christ?
 But, again. in this worldwide sween of mans greatest works" we must see how man is everywhere overturninp the heath en doctrine that might makes rjght,' rather than right makes might i" We must see man as the defender of inc weak man. the hope of the helpless man. the friend Of the bereft man and in one sense the rescuer of the lost Christ comes as the friend of the friendIess But. an, now friendless and helpless he him ser pecame' James Morrison in a won uefIul review of the worlro oF f.trtet,s