Article September 1, 2013

Healing in business

Originally published in the 1911 pamphlet titled “The Providence of Good”

Jesus said, by way of emphasizing a point in his teaching, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick," and no man before or since the time of our Master has been so well qualified to speak from the standpoint of successful practice concerning the sphere of the physician and the needs of his patient. He indeed was the healer who gave to sin no more power or legitimacy than he did to sickness, and he healed both with equal readiness and certainty. We have no record of his ever losing a case. His cures were instantaneous. Many of them were made in the absence of his patient, and all of them were undertaken regardless of the nature of the disease. He drew no line of distinction between functional and organic ailments, and in his presence the word incurable dropped out of the language of men. Nor were his cures confined to diseases of the body alone. He truly ministered to the mind diseased, as when, with a word, he restored to sanity and decency the escaped lunatic who had long terrorized the countryside, and when he healed the various other cases of mental disorders mentioned in the Scriptures.

Nor was he neglectful of the material wants of those in need. When a wedding of his friends to which he was invited lacked an essential to the proper entertainment of the guests, he readily supplied it. When the business of certain of his associates was dull because they had none of their usual commodity to sell, he showed them how to cast their nets on the right side, and thereupon they received a bigger stock of goods than they could conveniently handle. When he was traveling overland with a great throng of people in a country where provisions were scarce, he provided a substantial repast that not only satisfied every one's hunger, but had enough left over to feed many more. And when his companions on another occasion were short of ready money to pay taxes due, he told them exactly how to raise the sum required without delay or embarrassment.

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