Richard Baxter was diseased from head to foot; nevertheless, he became celebrated as the most eminent of the English Protestant schoolmen. He was also of political importance and instrumental in bringing about the Restoration of Charles II.
“When we look into God’s Face we do not feel His Hand.”
Health is a form of capital, and like any other capital may be either well or ill invested. Moreover, we can squander it foolishly or convert it into the supreme oblation, and to most of us life itself is a less difficult sacrifice. The tragedy of war is not so much the toll of the dead as the lists of the disabled.
Few of us are given the chance of dying for others, but to all of us is offered the privilege of spending ourselves for humanity, either individually or collectively. Countless parents, fathers as well as mothers, purchase with their own lives and health, life, vigor and opportunity for their children. The instinct of sacrifice is to a greater or less degree universal to parenthood, and although I do not wish to belittle their offering, I think it even more admirable when placed on a less obvious altar. Numberless people are daily overspending their physical resources in the service of mankind, by the furtherance of knowledge, the improvement of material conditions, by widening the door of opportunity or carrying the message of the spirit into teeming slum and arid desert. Others give themselves with equal prodigality in the more limited and less glorious field of their personal contacts; not merely to their homes, their dependents and friends but to all who come even casually within the radius of their fellowship.
It seems to me difficult to live at the height of our possibilities more especially if our activities are purely selfless, without being at times tempted to overdraw our health account. The soldier is only one of a great host whose bodies have been sacrificed in the performance of an imperative duty. Health is often purchased at the price of ignominious refusal.
It is therefore not surprising that a large proportion of the saints were men and women with ruined bodies,—bodies that had been rapturously spent in the service of God and man. I will mention only a few of the most renowned.