SOME years ago I went to consult a Iambus physician about my health. I was a woman of nervous temperament, whose troubles — and I had many — had worried me to such a pitch that the strain threatened even my reason. And what was worse, I had grown cold to, and wandered from, my Saviour-God.
I gave the doctor a list of my symptoms, and answered the questions, only to be astonished at the brief prescription at the end: “Madam, what you need is to read your Bible.” “But, doctor,” I began, “Go home and read your Bible an hour a day,” the great man reiterated, with kindly authority. “Then come back to me a month from today.” And he bowed me out without a possibility of further protest.
At first I was inclined to be angry. Then I reflected that, at least, the prescription was not an expensive one. Besides, I certainly had neglected my Bible, I reflected with a pang of conscience. Worldly cares had crowded out prayer and Bible study. So I went home and set myself conscientiously to try the physician’s remedy. I began to feed upon God’s word, and prayer followed.
In one month I went back to his house.
“Well,” he said, smiling as he looked at my face, “I see you are an obedient patient, and have taken my prescription faithfully. Do you feel you need any other medicine now?”
“No, doctor, I don’t,” I said honestly. “I feel like a different person. But how did you know that was just what I needed?”
For answer the physician turned to his desk. There, worn and marked, lay an open Bible.
“Madam,” he said, with deep earnestness, “if I were to omit my daily reading of this book, I should lose my greatest source of strength and skill. I never go to an operation without reading a scripture and praying. I never attend a case without finding, help in its pages. Your case called not for medicine, but for sources of peace and strength outside your own mind, and I skewed you my own prescription, and I knew it would cure.”
“Yet, I confess, doctor,” said I, “I came very near not taking it.”
“Very few are willing to try it, I find,” said the physician, smiling again; “but there are many cases in my practice where it would work wonders if they would take it.”
The doctor’s prescription still remains. It would do no one any harm to try it.
SEL.