is not so absorbed with that as to omit from His view or His
treatment the merely superficial manifestations of it.

So that if Christian people, individually and as Churches, are justly
exposed, in any measure, to the sarcasm which is freely cast upon them,
that they neglect the temporal well-being of men in order to attend
exclusively to their spiritual wants, they have not learned the example
of such partial treatment from their Master; nor have they taken in the
significance and the power of His life in its relation to human sorrow.
All that makes the heart bleed Christ comes to take away. 'All the ills
that _flesh_ is heir to,' as well as those which each spirit, by
rebellion, brings upon itself--are the foes with whom Christ has left
His Church in the world in order to wage incessant warfare. If we
Christians, oppressed with the sense of the depth and central nature of
the evil of man's sin, have so devoted ourselves to preaching and
evangelising, that we are, in any measure, rightly chargeable with
neglecting hospitals and infirmaries and other forms of relief for
temporal necessities, just in that proportion have we departed from our
Master's spirit. But I do not, for my part, much believe, either in the
good faith of the accusers or in the applicability of the charge which
men, who never do anything for the religious improvement of their
fellows, are apt to bring against us. My little experience, I think,
teaches me that the folk who say to us 'Do not waste your money on
Bibles and missionaries, give it to hospitals and schools,' are not
usually the people that 'waste their money' on either; and that the
largest portion of all the work that is done in England to-day, for the
temporal well-being of men, comes from the Christians who also do work
for their spiritual well-being.

But let us learn the lesson, if we need it, from our enemies and our
critics; and see to it that the more we feel the lofty and transcendent
importance of carrying Christ's salvation to men's souls, the more we
endeavour, likewise, to live amongst them as He did, the embodiment of
pity, wide-eyed and comprehensive, for every evil that racks their
hearts and every pain that tortures their nerves. As a fact, hospitals
are found within the limits of Christianity, and not outside it; and so
far, Christendom, though it is largely professing Christendom only, has
learned that it follows a Christ who is the Saviour of the body and the
Physicia