literally with healing in its wings, cannot, I believe, be
exaggerated.

Eastern piety, meanwhile, especially among the Hindoos, had founded
hospitals, in the old meaning of that word--namely, almshouses for
the infirm and aged: but I believe there is no record of hospitals,
like our modern ones, for the cure of disease, till Christianity
spread over the Western world.

And why? Because then first men began to feel the mighty truth
contained in the text. If Christ were a healer, His servants must be
healers likewise. If Christ regarded physical evil as a direct evil,
so must they. If Christ fought against it with all His power, so
must they, with such power as He revealed to them. And so arose
exclusively in the Christian mind, a feeling not only of the
nobleness of the healing art, but of the religious duty of exercising
that art on every human being who needed it; and hospitals are to be
counted, as a historic fact, among the many triumphs of the Gospel.

If there be any one--especially a working man--in this church this
day who is inclined to undervalue the Bible and Christianity, let him
know that, but for the Bible and Christianity, he has not the
slightest reason to believe that there would have been at this moment
a hospital in London to receive him and his in the hour of sickness
or disabling accident, and to lavish on him there, unpaid as the
light and air of God outside, every resource of science, care,
generosity, and tenderness, simply because he is a human being. Yes;
truly catholic are these hospitals,--catholic as the bounty of our
heavenly Father,--without respect of persons, giving to all liberally
and upbraiding not, like Him in whom all live, and move, and have