The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

MEDICAL MISSIONS

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In the light of all this one is not at all surprised to learn
that the return of a medical missionary has more than once
been greeted by a town holiday! Thousands of people love
their doctors more than their saints, for they do them more
good. "Nor," says Dr. Lyons, "is there anything so strikingly
helpful in the presentation of the gospel message to the people
in their present condition, as a spiritual ministration of medicine among them. The bare presentation of the Gospel to the
people is much like tinkling cymbals or sounding brass of the
kind we hear in the streets daily, as it holds the cross before
disease-stricken eyes, and over graves of multitudes of poor
who might have been saved through a little real love in the
form of a few doses of medicine." The doctor with the love
of Christ in his heart is the living incarnation of his Master
before a people who for three hundred years have heard almost
exclusively of a dying or dead Christ, and who knew little of
the great physician.
Not all mission doctors are uniformly successful, to be
sure. The difference does not seem to depend so much upon
the superior technical skill of one doctor over another as upon
the patience and love which the doctor is able to exemplify under all sorts of trying circumstances. It is true that usually the
mission doctor is better equipped than his rivals in general
knowledge of medicine, but it is not in this respect that he
shines. It is when he draws his inspiration daily from his
hour with Christ and carries that atmosphere with him through
the day that he binds people to him with bonds of steel. At
no time does one crave real love so much as when one is on a
bed of illness. One knows by intuition whether the doctor
loves the patient-or the patient's money. The mission doctor
will rise at two in the morning as readily as at eight, will go
long distances through storm as quickly as through sunshine,
charges only what the patient is able easily to pay, will stay
as long as necessary, and depart with a prayer for the patient,
— and even though the patient lack faith in the prayer, he loves
the spirit which called it forth. Many a patient has caught
himself saying, "I wish all the world had the spirit of that
doctor." In a mission hospital it is easy to let the patient