The Water of Life and Other Sermons | Page 8

experience to believe that his fellow-men cared
not for him, has entered the wards of a hospital to be happily
undeceived. He finds that he is cared for; that he is not forgotten either
by God or man; that there is a place for him, too, at God's table, in his

hour of utmost need; and angels of God, in human form, ready to
minister to his necessities; and, softened by that discovery, he has
listened humbly, perhaps for the first time in his life, to the exhortations
of a clergyman; and has taken in, in the hour of dependence and
weakness, the lessons which he was too proud or too sullen to hear in
the day of independence and sturdy health. And so do these hospitals, it
seems to me, follow the example and practice of our Lord Himself;
who, by ministering to the animal wants and animal sufferings of the
people, by showing them that He sympathised with those lower
sorrows of which they were most immediately conscious, made them
follow Him gladly, and listen to Him with faith, when He proclaimed to
them in words of wisdom, that Father in heaven whom He had already
proclaimed to them in acts of mercy.
And now, I have to appeal to you for the excellent and honourable
foundation of St. George's Hospital. I might speak to you, and speak,
too, with a personal reverence and affection of many years' standing, of
the claims of that noble institution; of the illustrious men of science
who have taught within its walls; of the number of able and honourable
young men who go forth out of it, year by year, to carry their blessed
and truly divine art, not only over Great Britain, but to the islands of
the farthest seas. But to say that would be merely to say what is true,
thank God, of every hospital in London.
One fact only, therefore, I shall urge, which gives St. George's Hospital
special claims on the attention of the rich.
Situated, as it is, in the very centre of the west end of London, it is the
special refuge of those who are most especially of service to the
dwellers in the Westend. Those who are used up--fairly or unfairly--in
ministering to the luxuries of the high-born and wealthy: the groom
thrown in the park; the housemaid crippled by lofty stairs; the workman
fallen from the scaffolding of the great man's palace; the footman or
coachman who has contracted disease from long hours of nightly
exposure, while his master and mistress have been warm and gay at
rout and ball; and those, too, whose number, I fear, are very great, who
contract disease, themselves, their wives, and children, from actual

want, when they are thrown suddenly out of employ at the end of the
season, and London is said to be empty--of all but two million of living
souls: --the great majority of these crowd into St. George's Hospital to
find there relief and comfort, which those to whom they minister are
solemnly bound to supply by their contributions. The rich and
well-born of this land are very generous. They are doing their duty, on
the whole, nobly and well. Let them do their duty--the duty which
literally lies nearest them-- by St. George's Hospital, and they will wipe
off a stain, not on the hospital, but on the rich people in its
neighbourhood--the stain of that hospital's debts.
The deficiency in the funds of the hospital for the year 1862-3-- caused,
be it remembered, by no extravagance or sudden change, but simply by
the necessity for succouring those who would otherwise have been
destitute of succour--the deficiency, I say, on an expenditure of 15,000l.
amounts to more than 3,200l. which has had to be met by selling out
funded property, and so diminishing the capital of the institution. Ought
this to be? I ask. Ought this to be, while more wealth is collected within
half a mile of that hospital than in any spot of like extent in the globe?
My friends, this is the time of Lent; the time whereof it is written,--'Is
not this the fast which I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry,
and bring the poor that is cast out to thine house? when thou seest the
naked that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine
own flesh? If thou let thy soul go forth to the hungry, and satisfy the
afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be
as the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy
thy soul, and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered
garden, and as a spring that doth not fail.'
Let us obey