Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-06-26
THE SOUL INSISTS
By H. Addington Bruce

To all sufferers from nervous disorders and
to all who, as physicians, are called upon to
treat sufferers from nervous disorders,
rings recently published and somewhat curl
ously named book, "The Hope of the Vari-
ant"
| would commend it for several reasons not
least for DIR. Behring's appreciation of the fact
that in many. many cases nervous patients
are suffering more from soul disabIement than
from anything else.
This is something of which the nervous
themselves are, as a rule, unaware And by
no means all of those undertaking their care
are as clearly aware of it as they should be.
For, as DR.. Gehring truly says:
1.-The unhappiness of the chronic sufferer
is somewhat ill in his body, and somewhat i'll
in his spirit. and that he is so lamentably and
ineXcusably unacquainted with himself
HE goes from physician to physician, and
some treat his body exclusively, and others
say that there is nothing at fault here, but
that it is merely his mind But few recognize
that it may be both that are in need and few
er still that possibly 1t is still greater factor
and that it may be his soul that is out of
health.
THE illness of such people is rarely alone
that OF their body. In one sense it is always
that. But in another 1t is assuredly also al
ways the soul that is i'll, the spirit of the man
that has become confused, and he does not
know II.
Let us teach him these things. We
should not be afraid to talk to sick man
about his SOUL Oftentimes the only thing
man needs to rise into strong, Virile life is to
be treated though he had one and taught to
face it's needs
In other words, the soul forever insists on
being taken into account. 1t is a common
place of everyday observation that, in the
hurly-burly of modern life, with its competi-
tive struggle for material gains and pleasures,
the tendency with multitudes of people is not
to take the SOU into account at all.
They forget that the soul needs nutriment
equally with the body. They forget that it,
too, needs to be exercised in benefcent activi-
ties So they starve it and they let it shrivel
with disuse.
Then they wonder why they suffer. They
wonder why demon of discomfort forever
harries them. They wonder why, it may be
amid wealth of material possessions, they
are obsessed with fears and breads, tormented
by aches and pains for which their physicians
can find no sufficient bodily cause.
Because they can find no bodily cause-and
because they are under the sway of scientific
dogmas that hold the soul non-existent-the
physicians often fail to procure for their nerv-
GUS patients even partial relief. They lack the
vision which physicians of the Gehring type
happily possess-and so long as they are thus
deficient SO long will the nervous present to
them riddles that insouble.
Which, to be sure, does not mean that ply
slcians who would successfully treat the nerv- |
Gus should be clergymen as well as physicians,
But it does mean thai the fundamental truths
as regards human personality perceived and
affirmed by cic:Gymen shout by physicians
be likewise perceived and affirmed
AS, indeed, ought long ago to have been
borne in upon all physicians by the success so |
often resulting from clerical healing of the |
sick,
Copyright, 1929