The religion of health / by Elizabeth Blackwell.

  • Blackwell, Elizabeth, 1821-1910.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The religion of health / by Elizabeth Blackwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    THE BELIGION OF HEALTH. The -words The Religion of Healtli convey a iDrofound meaning to the physician who has spent a life-time in relieving physical uffering. I will tay and state what those w. rds seem to me to imply. Obedience to divine law is the highest wisdom of the hnman race. Wherever God's laws are clearly Adsible, stamped in immutable characters, so plain that every human being who is willing to read them can do so, then the wisdom, the happiness—nay, the simple ommon sense of the race, lies in obejdng them. The fii'st lesson 2verv one of us has to learn profoundly is his subjection to law. There is no escaping this inexorable destiny. Although each one is born with fi-eewill, his type, the plan and pattern of his being, is bom with him also. This type is a limitation to the natm-e, but it is also a guide: it is the finger of Providence showing him the road to foUow in the gi-eat wilderness of creation; it is the divine order, according to wliich each one can freely grow and expand in body and soul to the finest proportions. True freedom consists in the volimtary choice of this type, in the full acceptance of all its con- ditions, and in the endeavour to unfold its capacities. The will may refuse this type, may deny the laws that govern it, may seek torheensein a lawless rejection of di%TJie order; but it is soon arrested by endless obstacles; an J persistence in the unequal strug- gle will only end in degi-adation and self-destruction. We recognise a di-idne law when we see it existing age after age uuchangeably, carrying order and beauty in its fulfilment; penal- ties, discord, desolation, with infi-ingement. These laws are grand ui design, beneficent in theii- effects; equally so, whether we ob- serve the marvel of parental love, or explore the wonders of tlie skies; whether we clotlie them in warm human garments indis- pensable to the simple, loving heart, or frame them in the clear precision of scientific formulae, indispensable to the truthful mind. If tliere be one law that all can clearly recognise in the existence of the material world around us, it is the unvarying method of uunian development from infancy to old ago. A certain plan exLsts, according to which the infant expands tln-ough childhood and youtli into manhood, and thence changes through elderly life into old a;e.