THE THREE HOUSES.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 26, Issue 5, 1 May 1936, Page 5

THE THREE HOUSES.

I seemed to see a great house, the largest m the town, and it was filled with hundreds of sufferers. It- was a House of Pain, where were gathered together the sick, the maimed, the impotent. But I remembered that, large as the House was, it could not contain nearly all the sufferers. There were as many outside, and I began to realise more clearly than ever before the pain that is m the world. What a mystery it is! Nor is it strange that we get impatient and even resentful against God (may He forgive us) for allowing it all. Again and again that great "Why?" comes up m our hearts, and there is no clear answer. Time was when men were satisfied to say it is all punishment for sin. I fear it sometimes is, but speaking generally the Book of Job and the 13th chapter of St. Luke have killed that idea. The plain truth is — we don't know. And we have to fall back, as so often, on our dear Lord's words: — "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." I saw another house, a House of Skilled Healing, where men of long training and growing experience give themselves day after day to the healing of all manner of sickness and disease. They have at their command all the inventions and discoveries m medicine and surgery. And very many these are. When we talk boastfully of the triumphs of science, I think we sometimes forget the most important of all. From Lister down to our own day, there is a great company of those who have made their contribution to the healing of disease and the assuag-

ing of human pain. The art of medicine is ancient and honourable, but the physicians and surgeons of today have a thousand methods at their disposal that their predecessors never knew. Is not that a far greater achievement than being able to fly to Gisborne m an hour, listen to a concert at Sydney, or destroy your enemies by poison gas? Then I saw a third house where women are busy all through the year and through every hour of the twenty-four m ministering patiently and untiringly to the needs of others. Go when you will, day or night, you will find them at work v irksome, trying, unpleasant as it sometimes is, it makes no difference to them m the House of Patient Tendance. Why do they do it so unsparingly? There are always many motives — joy m doing a thing well, love of your fellows, sympathy with suffering, and, m many, the best motive of all, for they can say with St. Paul "the love of Christ c'ohstraineth us." I saw the House of Pain, the House of Skilled Healing, the House of Patient Tendance, and behold they were all one house. Civilisation has many faults, but there is something of Christianity about it, and it has everywhere brought hospitals, even where men repudiate our Holy Faith. The French used to call them God's Hotels. It is a good name.