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That sickness is twin born with sin is the oldest tradition in the world. Our maladies arise from something finer than the germs any microscope can detect; and if all disease has its origin in the ill-disposed spirit, in a different well-disposed spirit it may have its cure. There can be no doubt that a mind morbid or in health affects the body. Some persons, by their presence and air, make us sick or well. Temperance is a virtue before it is a bodily trait. All vice digs a mine of ruin which no physician can countermine. What doctor can prescribe for an inordinate affection, from his pocket-book or medicine-chest? A little mind-cure were better than a complete apothecary's shop; and in one's own mind, often more than in another's, the remedy lies. Safety and peril reside in the same region of the affections, even as the very sea that tosses brings us to port. Like cures like; the hair of the dog his own bite; and herbs, as George Herbert says, the flesh they find their acquaintance in. There is no malady which guilty intrigues, extravagant passions, and corroding cares may not produce or increase; and none which good affections will not alleviate or remove. Many a heap of flowers have I seen on coffins that would not have been made by plane and hammer so soon had a tithe of the green leaves, lilies, and roses been strewn along the way. Christ's miracles were wrought on a promise of faith, for the blind eye, for the withered hand, and for the remorseful conscience in him whom He assured, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee," an insane compunction being in this case the evil root. Peter commanded the cripple to stand on his feet, perceiving that he had faith to be healed. The good Samaritan poured out something more than oil and wine into the robbed traveller's wounds. There are in us gashes and ghastly wounds, perhaps unknown to the inflictors, which no sword or dagger ever made. A word or a look was enough to stab us; shall no words or looks suffice to make us whole? No medicaments, only mental cure, can either probe them or bind them up. Right ordering of our active powers is a medicine, as well as that merry heart of which the Preacher speaks. The steadfast will is a life-preserver, and buoys up against spiritual drowning. Heal the mind tired and sore with brooding on absent or unresponsive objects: with labour that cases it, while it wearies the muscles and makes the sweat, according to the old decree, run down the face. As the girders and cross-ties of the bridge distribute the pressure on it of heavy loads, so various duty lightens by dividing every burden of grief or pain. Such considerations may show how far a sane body is not only inhabited, but made, by a sane mind. Let us notice more particularly the connection between sickness and sin.

I. THEY HAVE THE SAME ORIGIN.

II. THEY HAVE THE SAME PROPAGATION AND SPREAD.

III. WHY, THEN, SHOULD NOT THE CURE OF SICKNESS RUN PARALLEL WITH ITS CONTINUANCE AND CAUSE? Disorder is inherited. Ezekiel protests against the proverb that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. Nevertheless, it is true. For example of this communication or transmission, take the illustration of fear. What a leaven it is! Terror is not only a wretchedness, but a disgrace, an exposure to harm. You will be likely to have what you dread. What you rehearse you will enact. This is the shorthand history of disease, misery, and crime. Bonaparte, in his better days, thought the bullet was not run and moulded he should be hit by, though cannonballs ploughed the earth into powder at his side; felt no alarm for himself from the plague in Egypt, and fortified his soldiers against it, with that brave deportment of his own. To what but panic is due the large destruction of life in buildings falling or on fire, in battles like that of Bull Run, and in wrecks at sea? We must be of good heart to be secure. How many have been sick of a thought or of a certain company or of a single companion! How many have got well with thoughts alone that could cure! By one who served in our civil war I was told of sick soldiers who, in their despair, voluntarily turned their faces to the wall and died, because they wanted, and had made up their mind, to die. If as they lay moaning on their beds had come some token of affection, the step of some Florence Nightingale, or any good message, they would have opened their eyes, stretched their limbs, and lived! A grain, a hair, the twentieth part of a scruple, in delicate conditions and a tremulous suspense determines the scale; and the balance hangs for us all to put the atom into, so intimate is the relation between body and mind. We decide each other's fate every day. Balzac tells us of a mother who suddenly expires after one more of her unnatural daughter's hard words; and he adds that the slaughter by savages of those too old to continue on the march is philanthropy in the comparison. This is happening every day. A gentle remembrance from one — a note, a flower, a book, a hand-grasp — to assure us our days of usefulness are not over, enables us to live and labour still. The supernatural acts through the natural. Let us make the connection and be all of us well. Be its fault or defect what it may, I greet, therefore, the new departure which lays the stress on the mind.

(C.A. Bartol, D.D.)

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KJV: And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

WEB: In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet; his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he didn't seek Yahweh, but to the physicians.