possible means, with promptness and decision, to save the patient's life; but, if this were done only with a keen love of wholesomeness and normal health, the interest of the nurses and physicians would never wane until the patient had become strong and vigorous. If the standard of the best physical health were steadily before the eyes of physician and nurse, and if both had a strong desire to bring the patient, as nearly as possible, up to their own high standard of health, there would be a very great difference in the atmosphere of sick rooms and hospitals. The work of physicians and nurses seems to be more often that of protection against disease than that of achievement of health; and the distinction, though at first sight it may seem a fine one, is nevertheless radical.

Note the parallel between this negative tendency toward health of body, and the same negative tendency in the world toward health of soul. It is protection against the worst ravages of sin which is the moral aim of the majority of the world; not a striving toward a positive standard of healthy life for both soul and body. What is sin but disease of the soul? Sin is just as truly, just as practically, disease of the soul, as any form of known malady is disease of the body. If we could impress ourselves strongly with the fact that sin is disease,—disorder and abnormality,—it would be a radical step toward freedom from sin. By sin is meant every kind of selfishness,—whatever form it may take.

A young friend, in speaking of a companion charming in his words and manners and most attractive because of his artistic temperament, but evidently loose in his ideas of morality, once expressed the opinion that it was "all right" to associate with this charming man,—enjoying all that was delightful in him and ignoring, so far as possible, all that was evidently bad.

"Could you ignore dirty nails, dirty ears, and a bad smell about your companion?" someone asked.

Whereupon the young man exclaimed, with an expression of supreme disgust, "How can you speak of such things,—of course I could not stay with him for five minutes!"

But he did not in the least associate the loose, light, unclean way of looking at human relations, with the same careless uncleanness as applied to the body. And yet, in reality, the one kind of uncleanness corresponds precisely to the other. In the one case the dirt is on the inside and is what we may call living dirt, because it is kept alive by the soul to which it is allowed to cling. In the other case the dirt is on the outside, and can be washed off with soap and water. Very few so-called men or women of the world are willing to appear dirty and slovenly in their bodies,—but a great many are willing to be dirty and slovenly in their souls. A curious and significant fact it is, that often, when a man's nerves give way, even when his external habits have been most cleanly, or even fastidious, they may change entirely, and he may go about with spotted clothes, dirty hands, and a general slovenly appearance, whereas such external shiftlessness would have been impossible to him while his nerves were comparatively well and strong.

When such a man's nerves give way, so that he loses to some extent the external use of his will, the dirty habits of his mind appear in slovenly and dirty habits of body, because he has no longer the will-power to confine them to his private thoughts and feelings. The habits of his body become then a true expression of his state of mind.

We may prove the relation between sin and disease by tracing what might be called a mild sin to its logical extreme. Just as we may follow almost any disease in its