How often
have we seen the doctor by the dying bed, trying to preserve life,
when he knew well that life could not be preserved. We have been
tempted to say to him, 'Let the sufferer alone. He is senseless. He
is going. We can do nothing more for his soul; you can do nothing
more for his body. Why torment him needlessly for the sake of a few
more moments of respiration? Let him alone to die in peace.' How
have we been tempted to say that? We have not dared to say it; for
we saw that the doctor, and not we, was in the right; that in all
those little efforts, so wise, so anxious, so tender, so truly
chivalrous, to keep the failing breath for a few moments more in the
body of one who had no earthly claim upon his care, that doctor was
bearing a testimony, unconscious yet most weighty, to that human
instinct of which the Bible approves throughout, that death in a
human being is an evil, an anomaly, a curse; against which, though he
could not rescue the man from the clutch of his foe, he was bound, in
duty and honour, to fight until the last, simply because it was
death, and death was the enemy of man.
But if the medical man bears witness for God and spiritual things
when he seems exclusively occupied with the body, so does the
hospital. Look at those noble buildings which the generosity of our
fellow-countrymen have erected in all our great cities.
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