The Spirit's Gift of Healing

«To another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit.” — 1 Cor. xii. 9, BSANNE would think that the Spirit could have no connection with the gifts of an hospital nurse. The Spirit belongs to the sphere of religion; the gifts of nursing belong to the sphere of the physician. Yes, but the sphere of religion is everywhere; it includes the sickroom as one of its wards. What makes the difference between a good and a bad nurse is often just the possession of the Spirit. Two hands may be equally skilled mechanically; yet the touch of the one is soothing, the contact of the other is repellent. Why is this? It is because the one is the hand of the hireling who works to make a living; the other is the hand of the philanthropist who lives to achieve a work. The one is the touch that discharges an allotted task; the other is the contact that feels a kindred pain, The one is the helpfulness that is eee

mindful of favours to come; the other is the movement of a perfect self-forgetfulness which for the present is only conscious of the humanity which it succours.

Spirit of Christ, Thou whose glory it is to give Thy life for the many, help those whose lot it is to minister to the spirits in prison. Help those whose call it is to watch by the bed of sickness, to smooth the troubled pillow, to solace the couch of pain. Teach them that the art of ministration is the art of love. One day in Thy courts is worth a thousand days of mere outward learning; one touch of Thy pity is worth a thousand rules of mere worldly prudence. Give to those who tend the pains of humanity a deep sense of humanity itself. Let the suffering to which they minister be felt as their own suffering. Create within them that sympathy which makes sacrifice itself not sacrificial, because it makes us love our neighbour as ourselves. Inspire them with the thought that they are members of one body with those whom they succour. Let them feel that the limbs which lie racked upon the sick-bed are their own limbs, that the eyes which watch sleeplessly for the morning are their own eyes, that the hands which are folded in feebleness are their own hands. Then shall they have power, Thy power, the power of Thy love

Then like Thee they shall bear away the infirmities from others, because like Thee they have begun by taking the infirmities on themselves, for their cross shall be the step to their crown and their power to suffer shall be their strength to heal.