The Claims of Our Hospital. 
A SERMON, 
Preached on Hospital Sunday, Jan’y n, 1885, 
IN THE 
First Congregational Church, 
BY 
Rev. CHARLES RAY PALMER, Pastor. 
PRINTED BY REQUEST OF 
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE HOSPITAL. The Claims of Our Hospital. 
A SERMON, 
Preached on Hospital Sunday, Jan’y n, 1885. 
IN THE 
First Congregational Church, 
BY 
Rev. CHARLES RAY PALMER, Pastor. 
PRINTED BY REQUEST OF 
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE HOSPITAL. THE CLAIMS OF OUR HOSPITAL. 
I.uke lx. 2.—Anri he sent them forth to preach 
the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 
So ue of you may remember to have seen a 
rather striking paper by Prof. Stuart Blackie 
which appeared a few years since, on the 
utilization of evil. If so you will very readi- 
iy recall the main position taken and felicit- 
ously illustrated in it. In answer to the 
question for what purpose do the evils in 
the world exist, he lays down the principal 
that evii exists that there may be a field for 
the manifestation of goodness. The grandest 
characteristics of man, physical and moral, 
are developed through his masterful strug- 
gles with an ungenial environment. The 
farmer, what would evoke his hardy virtues 
were there no barren or stony fields, no forests 
or wilderness, no weeds or vermin, no frost 
or drought or flood ? Were there no tem- 
pests of wind and wave, the sailor’s heroism 
would no longer be tasked; the triumphs of 
seamanship would be unknown. If there 
were were no prevailing ignorance and stu- 
pidity, the occupation of the vast army whose 
life work is found in grappling with the 
great tasks of education, and whose own in- 
tellectual development is conditioned by 
those tasks, would be gone. If there were no 
political tasks in the world’s government 
there would be no statesmen or soldiers. In 
short, were there no want, there would 
be no work, and of course no call for suc- 
cessful and admirable workers. Were there 
no pauperism, misery, disease or wounds, 
there would be no call for philanthropy, 
charity, mercy, and no arena for the 
display of the fairest sympathies, and the 
finest energies of the human soul. 
If there were no temptations, what 
possibility would there be of robust 
virtue, what praise in righteousness, what 
dignity in moral courage ? 
Whether or no we judge with this writer, 
whose thought I have followed without 
quoting his language, the final cause of evil 
is thus indicated; whether or no we are 
ready to think evil exists in order that good 
may be manifested; of one thing we 
can make no doubt, it is in the face of evil 
that goodness is actually manifested. That 
is where we see it and recognize it. In the 
ever fresh, the ever resolute, the ever un- 
conquerable struggle with evils persisting 
and abounding, we discern what goodness 
is, and learn to admire and to emulate its 
praise and its recompense. This is even true 
of the divine goodness. It is in its answer 
to human guilt that we perceive and adore 
divine grace. It is in the midst of the suf- 
fering, the diseased, the impotent and the 
dying, that we see and learn to appreciate 
the love and the power of the Savior of man- 
kind. In apprehending the world’s awful 
need of redemption, we begin to appre- 
hend the unsearchable riches of our blessed 
Itedeemer’s love. 
We easily pass from this great truth to the 
thought that evils in the midst of us are a 
perpetual appeal to the best impulses and 
best endeavors of which we are susceptible; 
a perpetual summons to generous affection 
and to beneficent work. Human want and 
human woe call loudly upon Christian love. 
That this is an oft-repeated lesson of the 
gospel, I need not tarry to show. My pres- 
ent purpose has in view a particular applica- 
tion of this lesson. Our Lord laid upon 
His disciples the duty of healing the sick. I 
cannot but think His precept includes with- 
in it the charge to provide the best possible 
facilities, and use the best attainable means, 
in order to the discharge of that duty. My 
theme is the claim of the hospital upon 
Christian beneficence. 
I. In pursuance of this theme I wish first 
to remind you of the singular dignity given 
by Christ to all works of mercy. The text 
says specifically “heal the sick;” but in the 4 
parallel passages we read an amplified form 
of this charge; e. g. in Matthew it is: “Heal 
the sick, cleanse the leapers, raise the dead, 
cast out devils—freely ye have received, 
freely give!” Evidently the range of their 
operations was not to be restricted to any 
one type of beneficence, it was to embrace all, 
and they were to do these things in con- 
nection with preaching or proclaiming the 
Kingdom of God. They were to do these 
works of mercy as illustrating the truth of 
their proclamation ; as evincing that in a new 
and an important sense the reign of God on 
earth had begun. Similarly when John the 
Baptist from his gloomy dungeon in the 
mountains beyond the Dead Sea, sent bis dis- 
ciples to Jesus with the question whether He 
were indeed the Coming One, the Messiah of 
Israel, the Desire of Nations ; when, that is, 
the great prophet asked of Jesus a fuller un- 
folding of the evidence He was that Coming 
One, you remember the manner of the re- 
sponse. He said: “Go and tell John the 
thiDgs ye now see and hear;” and “in that 
hour,” we read, “He cured many of diseases 
and plagues and evil spirits ; and on many 
that were blind He bestowed sight.” That 
was His answer to His questioner. He does 
not say, “I am the Coming One,” but “tell 
John of the power I am revealing ; tell John 
I am healing the sicknesses and infirmities of 
mankind; tell John ef the mercy and the 
might you have seen, delivering the diseased 
and raising the dead; he will know what 
these things mean !” These demonstrations 
of the love and the power of which He was 
the embodiment He appealed to as satis- 
fying proofs that the King had come. 
Could there be a more impressive indication 
of the fact that Christ regarded the healing 
of the diseased, the mitigation of distress, 
and all of what we call works of charity and 
mercy, an integral part, and an important in- 
tegral part, of the work He came to do in 
the world; of the redemption of mankind ? 
And as we know, the work which He had 
Himself begun, He laid upon His followers 
to carry on. “As the Father sent Me into 
the world, even so send I you.” He even 
went farther than to lay this work upon 
them as a matter of obligation. In most sol- 
emn and tender words He intimated He 
should measure the love of His followers for 
Himself by the love which they showed to 
the wretched and the needy; that in the hour 
of their final judgment His highest word of 
approval would be—“I was hungry and ye 
gave Me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave Me 
drink; I was a stranger and ye took Me in; 
I was naked, and ye tflothed Me; I was sick, 
and ye visited Me; I was 4n prison, and ye 
came unto Me. For what ye have done to 
one of the least of these my- brethren ye 
have done unta Me!" --With what greater 
dignity could works of mercy be invested, 
than they are by these words of Christ? 
Can we receive words as His and 
not feel the strongest impulse to 
the ministrations which He describes ? 
If indeed He wanted, would our 
hearts be slow, or our hands unready, to 
supply His needs ? If'H<f wanted a house in 
which to be cared iory would we not build 
it? If He wanted nursing, and attendance, 
and food, and the appliances of comfort, and 
healing, would we not mrtke haste to provide 
them all, and that with-a lavish hand ? Am 
I wrong, it the remembrance of His example, 
and of His, words, leads me to believe Him 
interested profoundly in every house of mer- 
cy; to imagine Him pointing to our own in- 
stitution to say, “what you have done there, 
you have done unto Me! What you will do 
there you will do unto Me! Let naught be 
lacking there, if you love Me /” 
II. I advance to remark (2nd) the hos- 
pital is a distinctively Christian institution 
in its history. The earliest disciples of 
Christianity did not fail to respond to the 
spirit and the teachings and the example of 
their Divine Master. You remember that the 
very first trace of formal organization in the 
Christian church which we discover in the 
acts of the apostles, is a movement to secure 
a better distribution of charity to those in 
need of it. It is also worth remembering 
that one of the earliest results of the po- 
litical triumph of Christianity in the Roman 
Empire wras the promulgation of laws for the 
protection of the feeble and the help- 
less. In no particular did Christi- 
anity more sharply contrast with 
Paganism than in its thus awakening and 
directing care for the needy and the misera- 5 
ble. The Roman poet Ovid, who died in our 
Lord’s lifetime, could reckon upon applause 
in saying as he did : “Wherefore should one 
give anything to the poor ? One deprives 
one’s self of what one gives, and only helps 
the other to prolong a wretched life !” Con- 
trast Christ with the spirit of that utterance! 
When the Emperor Julian, the apostate, un- 
dertook to reverse the work of Constantine, 
and extirpate Christianity in the Roman Em- 
pire, he attempted from his Pagan and hu- 
manistic standpoint, to rival the benevolent 
institutions of Christianity, because of the 
advantage these gave it over the Paganism 
that had known them not. He dared not re- 
store Paganism in its utter heartlessness and 
its many cruelties. By its development of 
the kindlier spirit, which originated with it, 
Christianity wrought most effectively upon a 
suffering world, and achieved most shining 
successes. From the time it became a power 
in the world, it established everywhere a 
multitude of various institutions, until then 
unknown and unimagined; buildings for the 
reception of strangers and travelers; alms 
houses for the poor, orphan houses, homes 
for the helpless aged, and hospitals for the 
sick and suffering. It was thus Christians 
labored to reproduce and perpetuate the life 
of Christ among men. The bishops of the 
4th century vied with each other in the 
most munificent charity. Basil, of Caesarea, 
founded one of the earliest hospitals. *It was 
called the Basilias. In it strangers were hos- 
pitably entertained, and the sick were receiv- 
ed whatever was their disease, and provided 
with nursing, and medical attendance. In it 
were residences for physicians, and work- 
shops for artizans, and all its appointments, 
were on the most generous scale. Basil him- 
self was an ascetic, and a promoter of monas- 
ticism. 
It is commonly said that the hospital of 
modern times is an outgrowth of the monas- 
tery. It is so far true, that every monastery 
had its infirmary, where not the sick only, 
but the blind, the aged, and the indigent, 
were housed and cared for, and in process of 
time, with the growth of the monasteries, and 
of the communities about them, separate 
buildings had to be erected for infirmaries, 
and these are undoubtedly the prototypes of 
the modern hospitals. About the earliest re- 
cord of the building of a hospital, i. e., a 
building specifically for hospital purposes, is 
in the life of Archbishop Lanfranc, who, in 
1080, founded two, one for lepers, and one 
for ordinary diseases. Hospitals continued 
to be ecclesiastical establishments until the 
Reformation, when some of the monasteries 
were appropriated and made public hospitals, 
being generally put under municipal control. 
The eighteenth century saw such institutions 
wonderfully multiplied, and now their 
number, and the wealth of their en- 
dowments is past all statement. 
Seldom, now, have they any ecclesiastical 
connection; and doubtless they are better 
without it; but it was the church which 
originated them; it was Christian love and 
Christian enterprise which built and main- 
tained them, until a Christianized society as- 
sumed them and made them a public charge. 
Certainly I am justified in claiming from 
these facts, that the hospital, whatever shape 
it takes at present, is a distinctively Christian 
institution in its history, and as such it ap- 
peals just as much as ever to Christian senti- 
ment and Christian beneficence for sympathy 
and support. It is only by reason of a le- 
gitimate division of a duty that Christian 
people, revering the precept of the Master, 
now preach the Kingdom of God in one edi- 
fice, and heal the sick in another. It is in 
recognition, I trust, of the same obligation 
in either case. 
III. 1 pass to remark, 3d, institutions of 
mercy are commonly regarded the consum- 
mate flower of the Christianity of this cen- 
tury, and as such they have their special 
claims upon every Christian community and 
every Christian man. The great distinction 
of this century, probably, in the future, 
from a religious point of view, will be the 
wonderful outbreak and development 
of voluntary effort. personal and 
organized, in the direction of 
humane, beneficent, philanthropic and ev n - 
gelistic enterprise. One of the earliest in- 
ventions, we may say, of this inventive 
epoch, was tne benevolent association, or 
corporation, aspiring and empowered to do 
*Neand. in Cb. Hist. 6 
a thousand good things, which men would 
once have imagined only the church or the 
state could undertake. Most marvellously 
have such associations multiplied; very 
great tasks have they accomplished, and they 
in turn have stirred up the state to do gr<>at 
and good things, which otherwise it might 
have neglected. If you have not had your 
attention turned to the facts, to investigate 
the progress of humanity and mercy in this 
period will give you many surprises. The 
state of Massachusetts within a very few 
years spent $2,000,000 on an asylum for the 
iasaue. Do you appreciate it is not a 
hundred years since the insane were treated 
like wild beasts, in some Christian lands 
even ? Perhaps it is not unfair to make that 
instance a sample of the change modern 
society has undergone in the general direc- 
tion of humanity ; and it is historically un- 
mistakable that the inspiration of the change 
is Christian. A heathen visitor to our 
shores, whose rank and official relations 
made him the object of polite attentions, 
was shown among other things many of 
our public buildings. Before he left us 
he remarked to a friend, “your prisons, 
your dungeons, your scaffolds and 
your armies, I understand. My country can 
outdo you in such things, but your orphan 
asylums, and your old men’s homes astonish 
me, and your homes for old women would 
seem to my people ridiculous.” Yes, very 
likely, and so to the very finest representa- 
tives of the ancient civilizations who could 
be mentioned, or the finest representatives of 
the culture or the religion of the oldest non- 
Christian civilizations of to-day that could be 
selected, many more of our institutions of 
mercy would seem incomprehensible; neither 
we may boldly say, would an atheistic people 
ever have built them. But in this Christian 
laud they stand, paid for by private dona- 
tions, or by taxation willingly endured, and 
their name is legion—homes for the found- 
ling, the orphan, the forsaken, the idiot, the 
friendless and the aged; asylums for the 
blind, the deaf and dumb, the disabled, the 
inebriate; reformatories, dispensaries, refu- 
ges, private and public hospitals, special 
and general— who could chronicle the long 
list of them ?—in their variety, as in the ad- 
mirable appointments of some of them, wit- 
nessing of the wealth of the Christian senti- 
ment from which they have sprung. And of 
all shall we not recognize in the hospital 
the very chief, as meeting the sorest 
needs, at the largest outlay, with the 
best practical result. It seems to me 
that in London’s thousand charitable 
institutions, and emitiently in its thirty hos- 
pitals, we see the high-water mark of its 
Christianity, as truly as in its im- 
posing Cathedral, and its parish 
churches, I cannot help juuging both 
from the light of history, aud from the na- 
ture of the case, that the hospital is one of 
the most direct outgrowths of the Christian 
life of a community ; aud one of the best 
measures of the genuineness and intensity of 
that life is to be seen in the outflowing of 
kindly sympathies, and of wise liberality in 
keeping the hospital in its every department 
up to the highest standard of attractiveness 
and usefulness. I would have the very at- 
mosphere of it bespeak the fact that it was 
founded and is maintained in whole hearted 
and unsparing Christian love Ought not the 
Christian sentiment of such a community as 
this to see in such au institution the fairest 
possible opportunity to display how fully it 
apprehends the precepts of Christ, and how 
thoroughly it has absorbed His spirit ? The 
poor and the sick we have with us always, 
and they have the strongest claims upon our 
consideration as the followers of Christ, if 
they be viewed severally ; what shall we say 
if they be one and the same, and that the claim 
be doubled? Can any need press more imper- 
atively than that ? Can anything meet that 
need like au institution where the best pro- 
fessional skill; the most ample arrangements 
for cleanliness, comfort, and hygiene; and 
these directed and regulated in a large 
Christian wisdom and kindliness, await even 
the humblest sufferer? Should any Christian 
community rest, until such an institution 
is a fact, and a permanent fact in the midst 
of it? 
Christian frieuds, our fair city, ancient 
though its beginnings are, has attained its 
present proportions by a very rapid growth 
in a few years. It is fairly comparable not 
with cities that have slowly matured through 7 
Centuries, but with those who have sprung 
into existence in a generation. It is no dis- 
credit if we acknowledge that the growth 
of our population has been far more rapid, 
than the development among us of those 
institutions in which are recognized the 
aspirations of an enlightened Christian peo- 
ple. But no one can have failed to perceive 
in recent years at least the beginning of 
those institutions, and the awakening of 
public interest in them. After a five years’ 
patient and persistent struggle, which began 
with a very few—perhaps we should say with 
one—we have at length a hospital building, 
sufficiently complete to be open 
for the reception of patients. The munifi- 
cent gifts of a goodly number, the contribu- 
tions of far more, the wise aid of the com- 
monwealth, have secured to this community 
and this county, this great blessing. It has 
cost nearly a hundred thousand dollars, and 
seems to be admirably adapted to answer its 
beneficent purposes for a long while to come. 
We all rejoice, no doubt, in the accomplish- 
ment of so much. But it is most important 
that we understand our task is not completed. 
It is onlv well and hopefully begun. It cer- 
tainly needs to be fully paid for, as it is not 
yet. It certainly needs to be completed, as 
it is not yet. But even this is not all. 
It cannot be kept open, and maintained at 
its highest attainable usefulness, without 
large annual expenditures. If these have to 
be met by proportionally large charges, it 
cannot be regarded as in all respects a chari- 
table institution, and certainly its doors will 
not stand open to those who most need to be 
taken there. It will not be what we wish it 
to be, and what it ought to be, until it is lib- 
erally endowed, until it has an in- 
come from its endowments sufficient 
easily and amply to provide for all pos- 
sible demands upon it. For such 
endowments we must look to those who are 
able from their abundance to grant them. 
Doubtless they will come in due time, in the 
growth of Christian liberality in the county, 
and especially in this section of it in which 
the institution stands. A good beginning 
has been made. 
But meanwhile, what is the institution 
to do ? What is to meet its immediate 
and urgent needs ? What can meet them 
save the gifts of the many; the contin- 
uous outflow of our bounty toward it in such 
measure as our ability permits ? I trust this 
most fitting designation of one Sabbath in 
the year for the purpose will make every 
church one source of generous supplies, and 
I trust our hearts may be always responsive, 
and our hands may be always open when- 
ever occasions remind us of the Hospital’s 
unending need in accomplishing its unend- 
ing work. It will do what we enable it to 
do. It will admirably assist us to fulfill our 
obligations to Christ and our fellow men, if 
we rightly measure those obligations, and are 
prompt to supply it with what is requisite for 
the purpose. When its indebtedness is ex- 
tinguished and all its apartments are finished 
and furnished, and its income—-either from 
invested funds or from habitual contribu- 
tions—is ample'to provide for its expenses, 
then, and not until then, will it be- 
come what so many desire to see 
it, a House of Mercy open and free to all 
comers. Let us do what we can to hasten 
that day. And let what we do be done with 
heartiness and good will, not as to an institu- 
tion which asks favors of us, but as to one 
which belongs to us, and is the object of our 
affection and honest pride. Let us give its 
claims upon us the high place in our thoughts 
about them, to which they are justly entitled. 
Let our humane sympathies, and our Chris- 
tian affections be alike enlisted in its behalf. 
Let us find pleasure in promoting its efficien- 
cy, and its adornment. Let us in a manner 
all become co-workers there with the Great 
Physician. And as from time there go forth 
from its doors, men and women, who have 
found there a new lease of life, whose tortur- 
ed bodies have been relieved, whose weari- 
ness and distress have been dissipated, whose 
hearts have been made more responsive to 
all good, through the effect of the kindness 
they have experienced, our gifts, through the 
thanksgivings of these, shall indeed redound 
to the glory of God ; our service shall be ac- 
cepted of Him, as the savor of a sweet sacri- 
fice. Friends, let your offerings now be made; 
and let them be worthy of yourselves, and of 
the purpose to which you dedicate them. And 
may God accept and bless us in this most be- 
coming consecration!