Hospitals and the Church. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CONVENTION OF THE DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA, ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY/ KVENEVG, MAY ยป4, 1860, ON THE OCCASION OF THE LAYING OF THE COMER-STONE OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN PHILADELPHIA. BT THE REV. WILLIAM BACON STEVENS, M. D., D. D. PHILADELPHIA: HENRY B. ASHMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, SANSOM STREET ABOVE ELEVENTH. 1860. ADDRESS. Three-quarters of a century ago this very day, was laid, in this city, the corner-stone of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. On the 24th day of May, in the year 1785, "An Act of Association of the Clergy and Congregations of the Protestant Episcopal Church" in this State was adopted and ratified, by which these churches were erected into the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Seventy-five years have passed since the founda- tions of this Diocese were laid by the pious hands of White, Magaw, Blackwell, Hutchins, and Campbell, and the nine churches which ratified the Act of Association have grown into a hundred and ninety, and now, on this 24th day of May, 1860, this Diocese through its Bishops, and these parishes through their clergy and deputies, have witnessed the laying of another corner-stone, the corner-stone of the Hospital of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and we have gathered here this evening to complete the series of services with which it has been thought proper to inaugurate this pious work. 4 At the particular request of the Bishop, occupying indeed the place which had been assigned to him, and which I only occupy because his own lament- ed feeble health will not permit him to fill it, I purpose to show in a few words the religious character and bearings of this Hospital, and though I cannot give you the compact thought and the breadth of survey which our beloved Diocesan would have done, yet I will strive to enforce the duty and the privilege of the Church to foster this work of mercy, as a proof of our love to God and as an evidence of discipleship of Him, from whose very garments went forth healing virtues to the sick and the diseased. The principle which I lay down as the basis of my remarks is this, That the Hospital is the out- growth of Christianity, and that the Church Hospital is one op the most marked exponents of Christianity. The more thoroughly we explore the past with the best light of science and learning to guide our steps, the more clearly does it appear that hospi- tals have a Christian origin. The nations of anti- quity were not, indeed, devoid of the natural affection for and care of the sick and the needy of their own several households. Kings and legis- lators, like Cambyses and Solon thought it policy to care for their wounded soldiers and the parents and children of those slain in battle. States at public expense provided, as did Rome by its leges 5 frumentariw for its indigent citizens. Rich patrons distributed their sportula to their obsequeous clients. The priesthood spread their frequent epidones or sacred public feast. Cities like Argos, Corinth, Athens built halls for the lodging of travelers, and throughout Italy and Greece the jus hospitii of the Romans and the xenia of the Greeks were rigidly observed, so that many of the rich built additions to their houses for the better accommodating of those who held the relation to them of hospes or xenos, and these additions termed by the Greek xenia and by the Latins hospitalia, were made more sacred by being dedica- ted, the former to Zeus Xenious and the latter to Jupiter Hospitalis; so that the violation of what from the names of these houses was called hospital- ity, was regarded as impiety and crime. Yet though we find the name hospitalia, we find but little corresponding to the institution known as the hospital, in any of the nations of the world before the coming of Christ. The reason is ob- vious, and springs alike from the structure of their government, the nature of their religion, and the teaching of their philosophy. In all ancient governments, except the theocra- cy of the Jews, man was looked upon only as a creature of the state. What he could be, and what he could do, as a civilian or a soldier, was that which alone gave him any value or considera- tion. He was never regarded as a brother, in 6 whose welfare each citizen was interested; never as an immortal being, with interests extending be- yond this world; and hence the element of mercy for the sick and the needy is not found in their laws, or in their government, or in their public in- stitutions. As to their religion, it is enough to note the character of the gods whom these ancient nations worshipped to understand how completely their religion was devoid of true benevolence. Their gods wTere sensual, imperfect deities; impersona- tions of hate, or lust, or war, or strength, or beauty; but lacking the virtues of truth, compas- sion, generosity and holy love. The influence of such a mythology must have been debasing to the worshippers. Men will rise in virtue no higher than the virtue of the god they wrorship ; and the moral lineaments of the deity before whom they bow, will ever be reflected from their character. There could, therefore, be no self-sacrificing benev- olence as a governing principle of men, when there was none in the god whom they adored. So also in the systems of philosophy which were taught, the pupils would necessarily imbibe the doctrines of their teachers; and we look in vain in the systems of philosophy, whether among the Academicians, or the schools of Alexandria; whether among the Eleatics or the Epicureans; whether among the Pantheists or the Pyrrhonists; whether among the Stoics or the Sophists; for any 7 great principle of universal good-will or of brother- ly kindness : and if perchance Plato, or Aristotle, or Theophrastus, or Cicero, appear to put forth the claims of benevolence, of kindness to strangers, of relief for prisoners, of meliorating the condition of the poor and the enslaved; yet the motives by which they urged these claims were all drawn from selfish principles, springing from personal or political aggrandizement, and not in a single in- stance because it was right in itself and demanded of them by God. The temples, indeed, were often resorted to by the sick, especially the temples of iEsculapius, who was worshipped all over Greece as the god of the medical art. These temples were usually built near springs of water, on elevated sites, out- side the walls of cities, and with open areas. The sick who resorted thither, were obliged to spend one or more nights in the sanctuary; to undergo certain washings and fastings; and a peculiar diet prescribed by the priest; after which, it is said, iEsculapius revealed in a dream the remedy for the disease. Those who were cured sacrificed to the god. and hung up in the temple votive tablets, on which they wrote their sickness and their rem- edy. Strabo and Pausanias tell us, that the tem- ples of Epidaurus, Cos, Tricca, and many others, were full of votive tablets, placed there by the gratitude of recovered patients; and doubtless many of the therapeutic agents of the ancient phy- 8 sicians were obtained from the experience recorded on these grateful tablets. This use of these tem- ples continued with the pagans until the beginning of the fourth century, when the last of these, the iEsclepion of Cnidus, was shut up by Constantine because of the existence of superstitious rites, which he as a Christian emperor was bound to suppress. This is the nearest approach to a hospital fur- nished in the records of profane ancient history; and in the fact that iEsculapius was worshipped as a god, and that the sick resorted to the temple for healing, we learn that even in heathen minds, divine aid and the offices of religion were linked with the relief of the sick; thus almost foreshadow- ing the higher connection between divinity and disease which wTas to be made by the great Physi- cian ; and the more enduring union between the sick and the Church, which would be established under the influence of Christianity. When Christ came it was as a healer of bodily as well as soul sickness. That he should appear in this aspect, was distinctly prophesied of him by Isaiah, when he says, " Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;" where the word translated "griefs" signifies bodily disease and sickness; and the same word is rendered " sick- ness" and " disease" in various passages of the old testament. Accordingly, Lowth, Gessenius, Rosen- muller, Hitzig, Pye Smith and Alexander translate 9 the word "infirmities," "disease," "sickness," "sufferings." That the Jews themselves thus understood this prophecy as belonging to Christ is evident from their Talmuds; for, not to quote others, in the treatise Sanhedrim, there is this re- markable passage: " What is the name of the Messias ? Some said Leprous, according to that, ' Surely he hath borne our sicknesses,' and Messias sitteth in the gate of the city; and by what token shall he be known ? He sitteth among the dis- eased poor." That which prophecy declared con- cerning Christ, was literally fulfilled by him. Im- mediately after he had selected his twelve disci- ples, it is said of Him : " And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." Teaching! Preaching! Healing! The first act after he came down from the moun- tain, where he had delivered his sermon, was to heal a leper. The first on entering into Capernaum, to heal the centurion's servant, sick of the palsy. The first on entering Peter's house, was to restore Peter's wife's mother, sick of a fever. And of the evening of that first Sabbath in Capernaum, St. Matthew says, " When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: that it might be ful- filled which was spoken by Esaias, the prophet, 10 saying, ' Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.'" Everywhere through the records of the Evan- gelists do we find the healing hand and healing power of the blessed Redeemer. Countless num- bers of cases are mentioned, every variety of dis- ease and sickness, all classes of the community, all parts of Judea, all stages of suffering humanity were by him healed. It is peculiarly interesting to trace this feature of our Lord's ministry through the several Evangelists. It has a marked promi- nence in each. Now, there are descriptions of spe- cial cases, such as St. Luke, himself a " beloved physician," records with technical and professional accuracy; then again, groups of lepers and of de- moniacs approach Him in their horrid loathsome- ness and supernatural fear, and depart healed and in their right mind; and then again, we read such sentences as these: " Great multitudes followed Him and he healed them all." " And great multi- tudes came unto Him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them, insomuch that the people wondered." "And when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew Him, and ran through that whole region round about and began to carry about in beds those that were sick where they heard he was; and whithersoever he entered into villages or cities or country, they laid the sick in the streets and 11 besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment; and as many as touched him were made whole." Thus Jesus went up and down Judea and Gali- lee, as the great Physician, healing all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases among the people. It was peculiarly fitting that the Redeemer of men, should inaugurate his kingdom by healing all manner of human disease. For what is sickness, what is disease? Are they not resultants of man's fall in Eden ? Are they not precursors and preparatives of that woe pronounced on the race through Adam : " dying thou shalt die ?" Every sickness is directly or indirectly the effect of sin, and the w-orld has become a lazar-house, because sin reigns in our mortal bodies. How then could He, who was " manifested to take away sin," bet- ter authenticate his divine mission than by healing the results of sin, as indicative and illustrative of his power to heal sin itself? Indeed on several occasions Jesus appealed to his ability to cure dis- ease as a proof of his ability to cure the sin-sick soul: " But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee arise and take up thy bed and go thy way into thine house." Thus he made his physical cures the credentials of his power to cure the evils of the soul. Further more, each student of the Bible is aware that sin 12 is every where represented in its pages under the terms and figures of human disease. Now this constant use of language is not by accident, but of design; not for rhetorical beauty, but for expres- sive type. When God would represent to the eye of the Israelites the loathsome nature of sin, he points them to leprosy, and ordained it as the standing type of uncleanness and separation from his people. When he would typify error, he uses blindness as an emblem of mental darkness. When he would typify indifference to warning, it is by deafness. When he would typify moral weakness, it is by palsy. When he would typify the wasting process of sin, it is by marasmus; and when he would present to us a picture of total depravity, God does it in these medical words : " The wThole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and pu- trefying sores, they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." Thus there is not a phase of moral disease which does not find its counterpart in some form of physical malady. This being the fact, it is extremely interesting to mark how the diseases which our Lord most frequently cured, were just those which represented the inner and deep-seated diseases of the soul. Leprosy, which indicated spiritual un- cleanness ; insanity, including the whole class of demoniacal possessions, which indicated the loss 13 of a holy and controlling will; palsy, which indi- cated moral inability to save oneself; and blind- ness, which indicated spiritual darkness, those in whom, as" the Apostle says, "the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not." What a marvellous theatre then did the mala- dies of mankind present for the display of the remedial power of Jesus, and for the higher exhi- bition, through this display of healing gifts, of his divine power to save his people from their sins. Seeing then that God has by his providence established such close relations between sin and disease; seeing that Christ established to a certain extent his claim to be the soul's Saviour from sin by his being the healer of bodily sickness; and seeing that Jesus blended the two characters of the great Physician and the great Redeemer in his own divine person, it follows that the Church, which is his body, should aim to establish its au- thority by credentials of a similar character, and embody among its instrumental agencies for the regeneration of the world some of the medical blessings which the great Physician has entrust- ed to her care. That our Lord designed that his Church should follow to a certain extent his example, is evident from the fact, that in his first commission to his disciples, he said, " As ye go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand; heal the sick; 14 cleanse the lepers :" and thus, as St. Matthew says, " He gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out; and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." So in his* last com- mission to the College of the Apostles, after his resurrection, and just before his ascension, after commanding them: " Go ye into all the world," he adds, among other signs that shall follow them that believe : " In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Under this grand commission, we see the Apos- tles acting so soon as they were baptized by the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. The very first incident which sacred history records after the conversion of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, is the healing of the man lame from his mother's womb, who had been laid daily for years "at the gate of the temple called beauti- ful." Shortly after that we find such a record as this: " And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the peo- ple, insomuch that they brought forth the sick into every street, and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks and them which were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were healed every one." From that day forth we can 15 almost trace the footsteps of the apostles by the healing virtues which made life and health spring up in their path. When Philip would introduce the Gospel to the Samaritans, he not only preached Christ to them, but he cured also the sick and dis- eased. When Peter would introduce the Gospel at Lydda, he prepared the way by curing a para- lytic, saying to him the emphatic wTords: " iEneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." When Paul and Barnabas would introduce Christianity into Lycaonia, they not only preached the Gospel, but healed the impotent man at Lystra who had never walked. When Paul would introduce the Gospel into Ephesus, he not only spake boldly in the synagogue for the space of three months, but he so exercised the healing power with which he was entrusted, that " from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the dis- eases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." Thus, through all the apos- tolic period, as well as during our Lord's personal ministry, we find the Gospel for the soul, and heal- ing for the body, go hand-in-hand on their blessed and heaven ordained mission. The early Church seemed to feel as if its risen and ascended Lord had left them two important trusts to discharge for him and through him, the relief of the poor, and the care of the sick; and they wrought as if ever and anon they heard his voice saying, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 16 one of the least of these ye have done it unto me." The stirring appeals which have come down to us in the writings of Cyprian, Hermas, Origen, Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexan- dria, evince the boldness and urgency with which this love-principle or, as Clemens Romanus calls it, "this bond of the love of God," was pressed upon the Christians of those days, so that their care of the poor, the sick, and the stranger, wTas one of the features of their religion which most impressed itself on the heathen mind. The earliest Christian institutions of which we have any record, which approximates to the mod- ern hospital were those established by Basil, bishop of Cesarea, about the year 370. The first of these, called from their projector Basileias, was erected just outside the walls of Cesarea, and was opened as a receptacle for every species of human misery, from the outcast stranger to the loathsome leper. Large and airy apartments were provided. Phy- sicians were resident within its walls; nurses min- istered with tender care; the wants of the poor were supplied; and to prevent idleness, and con- sequent fomentings of vice, " spacious workshops were provided for every kind of handicraft, and all its inmates who were able, were called upon to add by their labor to the fund of which they were reaping the benefit." So extensive and compre- hensive was this great institution, that Gregory of Nazianzen, in his funeral discourse on the death 17 of Basil, calls it " a city in miniature." Similar institutions, known as Nosocomia, were planted, though on a smaller scale, in the country, and there was one in each provincial diocese, placed under the care of the bishop, who supervised its affairs. Chrysostom founded many of these in Constanti- nople; St. Augustine one in Hippo; Fabiola, a noble Roman widow, of the house of Fabii, estab- lished one in Rome about 380; the Empress Flac- cilla one in Constantinople, and both these women themselves nursed the sick there with their own hands. The examples of these persons, and the active working of the spirit of Christianity, gave rise to a great variety of charitable institutions which comprehended mostly under the generic term Xenodochia, were yet divided and sub- divided into Orphanotrophia, or hospitals for or- phans; Brephotrophia, for foundlings; Cherotro- phia, or widow's asylums; Parthenones and Par- thenocomia, for the support of destitute and afflict- ed virgins; Gerotrophophia and Gerotocomia, for the aged and infirm; Ptochotrophria and Ptocheia, refuges for beggars and destitute; Lobotrophia, for the maimed, and the impotent and lepers. These institutions often distinct, were also frequently congregated under one establishment, so that the several charities of the metropolitan church could be dispensed from one common centre, and thus be brought more effectually under the control of the bishops and clergy. 2 18 As the Church stretched out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river, she every where brought forth this fruit of good works, and almshouses, refuges, asylums, hospitals, were seen co-extensive with the spread of Christianity. In nearly every land, we find that the first organ- ization or introduction of the hospital was by a minister of our holy religion. It was at the solici- tation of the archbishop of Lyons, that Childebert, first son of Clovis and the Queen Ultrogothe, founded in the year 542 the grand hospital of that city. The first in Paris was founded .about 650 by Landri, bishop of that city. The first general hospital in England was founded at Canterbury in 1070 by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury. The first who did anything for the introduction of hos- pitals into Scotland was Archbishop Spottiswood; and had I time to trace out the history of the great hospitals of Europe, it would be seen that nearly all originated in the piety of individual Christians, or the devotion of the Church ; that the tap root of each goes down to the deep sub-soil of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; and that the benefac- tions which have watered each, flowed from the charities of the Church. The Christian origin of the hospital system is indicated in the names which are borne by mod- ern institutions. A few indeed are named after laymen or corporations, or from the special service to which they are devoted; but the larger number 10 are called by Christian epithets, after the three persons of the Holy Trinity, or by the names of apostles and martyrs. The earliest titles in France were Hotel-Dieu, or God's Hospital; others are called Christ Hospital, the Hospital of the Holy Ghost, the Hospital of the Holy Trinity, St. Luke's, St. Bartholomew's, St. Michael's, St. Stephen's, St. Mark's, St. James', &c. They were founded as acts of pious charity, consecrated by religious rites and ceremonies, sustained by the offerings of the faithful, ministered in by humble and self- sacrificing piety, and dedicated to the glory of God. Christianity gave them birth. Christianity planted them in every nation where itself came; and Christianity has ever been their nursing mother and defender. Having thus established the fact that the hos- pital is the outgrowth of Christianity, I proceed to show that a church hospital is one of the most marked exponents of Christianity. The history of these benevolent institutions shows that there is a normal relation between the hospital and the Church. It was the great head of the Church who first manifested himself as the great healer of disease. It was the Apostles of the Church who continued the miraculous dispensation of healing gifts. It was the collective gifts of the Church, just after the day of Pentecost, which first provided for the wants of the poor and the afflict- ed ; and though while the Church was overshad- 20 owed by paganism, and ground down by persecu- tion, it could give but little outward manifestation of its charitable spirit, yet shortly after Constantine became a Christian, the Council of Rome under Sylvester, ordered the fourth part of the posses- sions of the Church to be devoted to the building and supporting of hospitals and asylums. When these various eleemosynary institutions were es- tablished, they were in nearly every instance from the earliest times placed under the care of the bishops and clergy; and as we learn from the de- crees of the Council of Chalcedon, the writings of Epiphanius and others, the bishop was the one " who named the Majestri Hospitalii, the Xeno- dochi, the Paramonarii, the Orphanotrophi, the Brephotrophi, Ptochotrophi; in a word the imme- diate superiors of these institutions, the nurses themselves, and the subaltern officers, held their tenure mediately or immediately of him." Thus the hospital was a recognized part of the ecclesiastical system, it was one of the distinguish- ing features of the Church, and the living exponent of Christianity; " the monument," as Dr. Muhlen- berg happily says, " erected by the Church to the memory of her Lord stretching forth his hand to heal. Even more than places of worship this was the characteristic mark of a Christianized society. The temple at Jerusalem had been standing for ages. The synagogues were of ancient date. The pagans worshipped in groves and high places. 21 The Greeks and Romans piled their magnificent architecture to the God. Men were familiar with what answered to churches, but asylums for the wretched, hospitals for the sick, were yet unknown in the world; they were the product of the Chris- tian Church." The question may be asked, if this be so, why have not Protestant Christians interested them- selves more in this noble form of charity ? The answer is found in the fact, that as the Church passed into the penumbra of an overshadowing papacy, and amassed wealth for secular ends, and converted hospitals into monasteries, and permit- ted abuses to exist therein, which in the dark ages, like some fungus growth, sucked out the very life blood of the institution on which it fed; then the true Christian character of the hospital, that of being an handmaid to religion, was lost; the conventual and monastic systems supplanted their influence; and when the reformation dawned, the reaction in the Protestant mind from every system and institution peculiar to Rome, caused it to swing wide away from any contact with what it dreaded as its polluting touch. In the long struggle in England and on the Continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth century for the great prin- ciples of the Gospel of Christ, the Reformers bent the strength of their energies to defending and sustaining the citadel of truth, and found but little time to busy themselves with the advanced posts 22 and outworks of Christianity. It was a life strug- gle for the doctrines of grace. The very article of a standing or a falling church was in peril, and it was no time then to reorganize and adjust long established institutions, morticed as they were into the Church and State machinery of the day, and complicating questions of property and author- ity, which the turbulence of the times would not permit of an amicable settlement. Since those times of strife, the Protestant nations of Europe have had their energies absorbed in consolidating and buttressing up the grand fabric of truth; in sending out and maintaining Colonial children; and in securing controlling power in the diplomacy of the Continent. The Church also has been occupied in her mission work in foreign lands; in preaching the Gospel by the silent page of God's word, or by the living preacher, throughout the world. In this country, but recently entered upon its ca- reer as an independent nation, with all our religious resources taxed to the utmost to develop and supply the opening territories, west and south and north; as well as the demands which immigration and natural increase require at our hands, we have not had the time, the means, the men, to expend in the noble work of carrying out the practice of the primitive Church, the injunction of the apostles, and the ex- ample of Christ. Recently, however, there has been a waking up to our duty and to our privilege 23 on this subject. The Church begins to feel that while with one hand it should hold forth the faith of Christ, with the other it should hold forth the works of Christ; that it has duties to discharge towards healing the bodies as well as the souls of men, not merely as an end to give bodily relief, but as a means of reaching the soul and relieving it of its moral disease. I have not time to unfold all the arguments which support the position that it is the duty of the Church to undertake just such a work as we have now inaugurated; yet a brief notice of them is demanded in reply to the question, Why do we thus arise and build ? We do so then, because a church hospital embo- dies in a peculiar manner the great love-principle of our religion. This love-principle is the very basis of Christianity. It was that which moved the Father to send his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and it was that which moved Christ to give himself a sacrifice for us. Christ and his apostles showed the working of this love-principle by deeds of compassion done for the sick and the needy. It did not expend itself in teaching and preaching; it wrought also through healing; and as disease and sickness is an out- growth of sin, so should it be met by a healing agency which is an outgrowth of love, and thus make the body, which is the theatre of sin's tri- umph, the theatre also of love's conquest; so that 24 as the diseases and sufferings of humanity tell of the fall of the first Adam, who was of the earth, earthy; the Church, which in the form of a hospi- tal stretches forth its hand to heal, may equally tell us of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, and of the higher soul healing which he as the great Physician can alone dispense. Thus does the Church, though at a long distance, follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and in this way accredits itself before the world not merely as an ecclesiastical society with its episcopal and canon- ical organization; not as a body of men holding to certain formularies of faith and rites of worship, but as a living organ aiming, while it disseminates the truth, to illustrate and uphold the love-princi- ple which gave it birth, by grappling with sin in the body as well as in the soul, and by seeking to relieve not heart sickness merely but body sick- ness also; that it comes in to take the place of its absent Lord, and to do now, though imperfectly, the work he did when he went up and down the land, " healing all manner of sickness and all man- of disease among the people." Again we do this, because a church hospital furnishes a large and peculiar missionary field. Its well filled wards are an ample parish, and its constant succession of patients make up in the course of a year a large congregation. To this congregation, whose minds are peculiarly recep- tive of truth, by reason of the mellowing and 25 subduing influence of sickness, the chaplain reads the daily morning and evening prayers, and preaches from Sunday to Sunday the pure word of God. Thus are the patients brought more directly, more continuously, and more effectively under the ministrations of the Gospel than in any possible parish; for here they are for a time shut out from the world, freed from its lures and its snares, with time to think, books to read, services to hear, teachings to instruct, and a faithful minis- ter to guide such as inquire the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward. Religion is thus brought before the minds of such a congregation, not as an abstraction, not as a mere ecclesiastical system, but as a living faith working by love, proving its divinity by works akin to those wThich the founder of the religion himself wrought, when he was " made flesh and dwelt among us." Viewed in this light a church hospital presents one of the most inviting fields of missionary and ministerial labor; for the voice of the Church, to each one who has received within the wards and chapel of the hospital bodily and spiritual healing, is the same that Christ addressed to one whom he had cured : " Go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee." So shall there be not only missionary work done in the house, but missionaries shall go forth from its gates, who shall, as they go, spread 26 abroad the fame and name of their redeemer Jesus. One of the martyred reformers has called sickness " Christ's own sweet school." The hos- pital, then, is Christ's own sweet school-house; the patients Christ's own scholars; and there the providence of God has placed them, that they may be taught by Christ's own church lessons of love and faith, and thus be made meet for Christ's own sweet home in Heaven. Once more, we should do this, because the Church especially enjoins it upon the clergy to provide for the sick and the needy. Not only do the Apostolical Constitutions impose this duty es- pecially upon the ministers of Christ; not only have general and provincial councils legislated upon it, but the mother Church of England, and our own, have introduced a special charge upon this point into their ordinal, and incorporated into each of its officers for the ordination of deacon and priest, and the consecration of bishops, directions as to what each should do in reference to the sick and the needy. Indeed, it is one of the notes of the true Church of Christ that, like its divine head, it provides for the sick and the needy, and by insisting upon this in the offertory of her com- munion service, and in the solemn vows of the ordinal, she keeps frequently, solemnly before her members and her ministers, the duty " to be ready to give and glad to distribute," to " have pity upon the poor," to " provide for the sick and 27 the needy," " to search for the sick, poor, and im- potent people of the parish," and " to show them- selves gentle and merciful for Christ's sake to poor needy people, and to all strangers destitute of help." It may be asked, since the State furnishes almshouses, and hospitals, and asylums, and since private corporations also do the same, so as to cover nearly all kinds of sickness and infirmity, and since the community are more or less taxed for the support of these institutions, why is there any need that the Church should undertake this work ? I will premise my reply, by saying, that what the State does is only because of the force and in- fluence which Christianity exerts upon the body politic. It is because the love-principle of the re- ligion of Jesus has permeated our wThole society, and shaped and controlled its manifestations of benevolence, that these noble monuments of man's charity are built up on the plains of our fallen humanity; and this is a marvellous and striking tribute which the State, both in this country, and in Europe, pays to religion, that it derives from the influence of Christianity its highest and truest philanthropy. We honor the State for the provision which it has made by law for the sick, the poor, the unfortu- nate ; but the charitable institutions which it erects are mostly secular in their character and temporal 28 in their aim; often made the instrument of political influence, subject to the changes of clashing parties, they become frequently places of official corruption, and are too often altogether devoid of the reli- gious element in its controlling, humanizing, and soul-elevating power. We honor private corporations for their splendid manifestations of charity, but in these a mere worldly philanthropy mostly prevails, the offices of religion are not provided for, the balm in Gilead, and the Physician there are not sought after as the chief of blessings. It is a benevolence which begins and ends with the body. Its circumference is earth, its diameter is time, its centre is the human frame, and the soul, that which even the heathen poet Pindar could call " the bright image of eternity;" that which God himself breathed into man, and to which he gave the birthright of immortality, this soul of which Jesus himself asks, " what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul;" this soul, for the redemption of which, Christ became a man of sorrows, and died a culprit's death; for the elevation of which, the whole econ- omy of redemption has been arranged and adjusted and kept in glorious operation for nearly six thous- and years; this soul is almost uncared for, and its Arery immortality and accountability are virtually ig- nored. With this state of things the Church is not, cannot, dare not be satisfied. It must not when it sees 29 a sick or wounded neighbor, pass by like the priest, on the other side; or like the Levite, coldly stop and look at him with an uncompassionating curiosity, and then, like the priest, also pass by without extending a helping hand. The Church must prove itself the good Samaritan of the world. The Church must take the sick and wounded in its arms, nurse them in its Christian Pandocheia, give them of its alms, and send them forth with a double healing, with health in their blood, with Christ in their hearts; or, dismiss them to their rest in sure and certain hope of a home in that Land, in which "the inhabitants shall not say I am sick." We cannot trust these priceless interests of the soul to a creedless philanthropy. Thankful as we are that so much misery is alleviated by the noble founda- tions which men have erected or endowed for pur- poses of personal, or family, or national, pride, we yet feel no warrant to make such Christless chari- ties, the receptacles of the Church's sick. She must rise above these in her aims and motives, in some degree proportionate to her estimate of the glory of God and the worth of the soul. When some one pointed in admiration to the dome of the Pantheon, that shrine of all heathen gods, that " pride of Rome," as Byron calls it, Michael Angelo, who was then planning the Basi- lica of St. Peter's, rejoined, " but I will lift it up and plant in heaven;" and so when the world points in admiration to the eleemosynary institu- 30 tions of secular charity, beautiful indeed in them- selves, but of the earth earthy, the Church re- plies ; " But I will lift them up and plant them in heaven;" and she does so. She raises them from the merely secular and philanthropic, from being simply govermental or corporate agencies for re- lieving human misery, and transforms them into instrumentalities of grace, and makes the door of the hospital to become to many a soul the very " gate of heaven." And when the Church, developing from within herself, and by the power of her divine life, these various forms of charity, shall make provision for every need and infirmity, and cluster around her houses of mercy, of refuge, and of healing, and extend her ministries to the bodies, as well as to the souls of men; when she shall thus become a nursing mother of the sick, the orphan, the widow, the in- firm, the unfortunate, and stretching out her ma- ternal hands shall gather them all in her arms and press them to her bosom, then will she truly vin- dicate her character as the spouse of Christ, car- rying out the will of her Bridegroom-Lamb, and following the steps of her ascended Head, who gathered around him the halt, the maimed, the sick, the afflicted, and made thousands and tens of thousands to rejoice in his healing power. It is not too much to say that during the three years of his earthly ministry there went forth from the Great Physician more curative, and restorative 31 power than ever emanated from all the medical men or hospitals in the world. It has been beautifully said that " a deed is never done till it has ceased in its consequences. Long after the stone has sunk to the bottom never to rise again, the surface of the stream is troubled with the whirl of its plunge." Emphatically is this true of the work we have this day commenced. We have deposited a stone in the earth; upon it, as a corner stone, is to be built up a noble structure of Christian charity. Who shall tell the consequences of this deed ? We shall pass away, but this building shall re- main ; our children and children's children shall be gathered to their fathers, but the walls of this hospital shall still enclose the sick, and its gates shall still give entrance and exit to its beneficiaries; its chapel shall still echo chants and prayers and ser- mons ; and generations of sick, like rising and fall- ing tides, shall flow and ebb through these con- secrated wards, and all the while the blessed con- sequences of this day's deed will be accumulating: and only when the judgment shall be set and the books are opened, will the grand total of phy- sical, mental, and moral blessings which have resulted from this institution be summed up in the arithmetic of heaven, and be proclaimed by angel- heralds to the praise of the glory of His grace, who put it into our hearts to arise and build this hospital and dedicate it " To Christ in the Sick."