1. Miss Church-Member, suddenly attacked with heart trouble, is hurried away to the Hospital.
2. She receives the attention of Satan’s fiendish surgical operators.
3. A visit through the various wings of the Hospital and sub-offices. The horrifying work described.
The travelers of the Broad Highway pushed onward by millions, seemingly unconscious of their end. Miss Church-Member had become so well accustomed to the ways of the world that she could now adapt herself with more ease to all the exigencies of the journey.
In the midst of her favorable circumstances she was nursing the germs of an insidious disease which rendered her heart weaker and weaker. At times short, but sharp pains were felt; and more than once her hand flew to her breast in evidence of the inward struggle.
Her disease reached a climax after she had gone not far beyond the Valley of Conviction. She was walking along in a happy mood, when she suddenly felt a pang in her heart and mentioned the circumstance to Mr. World who was still her faithful companion.
“What can it be that has been giving you this trouble for so long a time?” he asked.
“I know not,” she faintly replied as she stood still and pressed both hands to her heart.
Thoroughly alarmed, Mr. World called for help while he supported her with his arm.
“It seems strange,” gasped Miss Church-Member in a brief interval of relief, “that, with all the pure air along this way and the variety of things to engage my attention, I should be seized, at shortening intervals, with these cruel and unbearable heart-pangs. Oh, that I might be free from this intruder’s grasp! What shall I do? Where shall I go? I feel again the edge of the invisible blade!”
At this she threw her arms upward and, shrieking in agony, was about to fall as she was caught by Mr. World.
“Let us hurry her off to the nearest hospital,” promptly suggested one of the bystanders who had responded to the call for help. An ambulance carried the fainting Miss Church-Member to one of Satan’s hospitals near by.
An ambulance carried the fainting Miss Church-Member to
one of Satan’s hospitals near by.
The chief physician ordered the apparently lifeless form to be taken at once to an examination room, granting Mr. World the privilege of remaining by the side of his suffering friend. A quick investigation disclosed the fact that Miss Church-Member had been overcome by a partial paralysis of the heart, induced by intense mental anxiety dating from the time when she had passed through the Valley of Conviction.
“Not a serious case,” said the suave doctor in reply to a question from the anxious Mr. World. “An operation will take away, almost entirely, the cause of this trouble.”
“Will you not explain to me the trouble, and the nature of the operation?” nervously asked Mr. World.
“Certain nerves which ramify through the human heart have been affected emotionally by the nonsensical teachings of the King’s Highway. These teachings are commonly known us ‘Narrow-Gauge Ideas.’ If these nerves are rendered insensible, there is scarcely any trouble of that kind again. We can, by an intricate operation, paralyze the mother-nerve leading to the heart, and thereafter you may expect to find the heart of this woman almost dead to the foolish influences that needlessly send conviction and remorse into so many lives.”
While the physician was rapidly speaking these words, the surgeon had arrived, and they forthwith proceeded to the operating room.
Mr. World watched the attendants as they carried Miss Church-Member away. He saw her no more that day, but heard that the operation was successful, and that the patient was resting quietly.
One of the managers of the institution, knowing that Mr. World was companionless, offered to escort him through the various departments of the Hospital. To this he gave his hearty consent.
They first went to the tower which proved to be a magnificent point of view. Here he could see far and wide, for the building itself was situated on elevated ground, and the tower rose far into the air.
On one side of the Hospital stretched away the Broad Highway more pleasing at this point of the route than at many others, and far away it seemed to lead into pleasant woodland realms.
On the other side of the building passed the King’s Highway, which, at this point, was exceedingly rough and uninviting to the view.
Thus I saw how the shrewdness of Hell was exercised in locating hospitals at such places.
“Ignorance is the mother of all that folly,” said Mr. World with a feeling of self-satisfaction, “I see a long line of separate buildings just below us—there along the King’s Highway. What purpose do they serve?”
“Those are medical offices under the supervision of this hospital- staff. Any one traveling on the Narrow Path, and falling sick there, may enter for help and restoration. If the case be difficult, or requiring an operation, or even special nursing, the patient is brought to the hospital.”
“Are you successful in most of your operations, especially with those patients who come from such a rugged path?”
“Fortunately we succeed in effecting a cure in almost every case. We can only deal with those who voluntarily come to our medical staff. Many, in sad need of our help, pass by all our special offices without ever seeking advice.”
“Are your patients foolish enough, after having been treated, to go back to that jolting road, and thus again invite their ills?”
“Most of our patients go hence on the more delightful way which you see, and on which you have come hither.”
“What diseases most commonly affect those who come to your physicians and hospitals for help?”
“Let me answer your question by taking you down to those offices. You may there observe for yourself.”
I saw Mr. World and his escort enter a physician’s office which stood as near the King’s Highway as Satan could build it.
The doctor was examining a church deacon who, by reason of his disease, found it hard to travel on a way so narrow and rugged. He was given a vial of medicine with specific directions.
After the patient had left, the doctor smiled derisively and pocketed his fee with ghoulish delight.
“What ailed that man asked?” Mr. World. “Can you tell me the cause of his malady?” “He has been eating and eating sermons, exhortations, and pious literature, and has done scarcely any work for his so-called Master. Eating much and working little generally results in gout or rheumatic diseases. There are large numbers in the church coming here for treatment who are similarly affected. I suppose such Christians enjoy eating better than they enjoy working.”
“Do you prepare them for better service on the King’s Highway?”
“Never! My business is to give them such medicine as will make all kinds of spiritual food repulsive to them. Then, rather than starve, they go to the fat lands on the Broad Highway for which my medicine prepares them. There they eat of the fruit forbidden by their former Master, for it is sweet-tasting withal. Some go on in the forbidden kingdoms until death, and hold an honorable place in their first church. Others are dealt with more summarily on account of the radical views entertained by certain bigots who wage warfare against a man who finds delight in gardens other than his own.”
The electric bell summoned the doctor to the door. He opened it, and there stood a pilgrim from the King’s Highway.
She entered and, fully exhausted, sank into a chair.
“What is the difficulty?” asked the physician in a cool manner.
“Something terrible indeed, or else my comrades accuse me unjustly.”
“With what do they charge you, Miss Goodly-Minded?” he questioned, as he felt her pulse.
“I am accused of being out of order just because I do not run all the time to prayer-meeting and to other services of the church. They say I am not fit to travel this way, and therefore I have found it very difficult to get over some of the obstacles. Weariness and fatigue have almost dragged me to the earth. My persecution will prove to be my death unless you can give me some medicine to relieve me.”
“Let me see your tongue,” the physician requested. This done, he continued: “Ah! I can easily see, by your coated tongue, that you have already eaten more good things than you could digest. If there is any error, it is because you have already gone to church too much. I have medicine to cure you.”
At that he walked into another room and opened a secret door. I saw him pour a liquid from a large bottle labeled, “Satan’s Malaria Cure.” It contained a mixture of unbelief, ridicule, and self-righteousness. He filled a small vial with sugar pellets and saturated them with the mixture from the large bottle.
“Take four globules every hour,” he directed, as he gave her the medicine, “and I would further advise that you travel for your health.”
“What climate would be most helpful to me?” she asked, for she was a lady of considerable means and could go where she wished.
“A colder climate where you will be free from the noonday sun, and breathe in a new atmosphere. This medicine will do the rest.”
She passed out of the door just as a feeble man was entering. He was an old pilgrim and evidently suffering much.
The doctor seized him by the hand with a strange vigor not even understood by Mr. World.
“So you are under the power of ‘La Grippe,’” saluted the doctor.
“Under the power of something, I am sure, for everything is wrong with me, and everything seems wrong to me,” was the slow answer.
The doctor soon diagnosed his case, and gave him powders with directions.
“It did not take you very long to attend to him,” said Mr. World, after the aged man left the office.
“I deal with so many of that class that I keep the medicine ready. La Grippe is a splendid thing for my trade. It is affecting more pilgrims just now than any other disease. Some churches are more than decimated by the ravages of this plague.”
The manager then conducted Mr. World into another office where the doctor was just giving medical attention to a young lady who was suffering with spiritual quinsy. It was so severe that she could not testify for Christ, and she wilfully passed by the “Great Physician” who could have healed her blessedly. She also passed by all the angels of mercy who throng the King’s Highway. She turned a deaf ear to all the singers who sang, “Then why will ye die?” Finally she was heavily pressed by her disease and, seeing a physician’s office which she could enter without climbing a step, she went in and chose rather to be treated by a doctor of the Devil, as if dead to all the offers of mercy which she had rejected.
She accepted his treatment without question, and even felt at ease in conscience, thinking that the easy, bland method of this physician was in every way preferable to the searching methods adopted by the Healer Divine.
She regained her voice, but it lost that sweet accent of heaven which once had characterized it. It was now difficult and embarrassing for her to pronounce the name of Jesus.
All this proved painful and intolerable, so she took a by-path to the left called “Unchastity” where she found a whole vocabulary of speech more suited to her utterance.
She spent the rest of her days in the habitations of immorality along the Broad Highway, unmindful of the tears and kindly solicitude of her entreating friends.
Into the third medical wing the two went only to see the fiendish program carried on there as in the other offices. The first patient they saw was a young man who, through the misguidance of a weakling, was persuaded to enter the office.
This physician, with a smile on his face, but vile purpose in his heart, administered wilfully the very medicine that gave a transient gratification to the patient’s craving for narcotics, and which would finally cause the appetite to break out anew into an inward burning and gnawing, swinging a master’s sash over him.
The physician told him that his taste was inherited, and it would consequently require much patience ere he could be cured. He gave him the devilish medicine, and urged him to continue using it until the bottle was drained to its dregs.
At first it gave the promised relief, but the young man, now more deeply contaminated by this concoction of Hell, raged in wilder passion than ever, and verily ran to his utmost on the By-Path of intemperance until the flower of his youth and manhood was blasted to the blackest, and his sense of honor lost in the hovels of vice and corruption which, in great variety, stood along the Broad Highway.
The book-keepers of Hell placed an additional mark to the credit of this doctor, while the church looked on the young man’s fall somewhat indifferently, having been hardened by the frequency of similar occurrences.
At the request of Mr. World the manager conducted him back to the hospital building and proceeded to show the various departments to him.
There was some commotion in one of the operating rooms just as Mr. World entered. It proved to be the preliminary work necessary for dressing a severe scalp wound.
It happened that a certain woman, named Mrs. Criticiser, who belonged to an active church, attempted to injure a good and holy man by hurling stones at him.
She noticed that the little stones did him no harm, so she seized one of larger size and hurled it at him with great force. He, being a pure man, and standing on a rock, was not even touched by the missile. But it struck the great rock on which he was standing, rebounded with unexpected force, and struck the head of Mrs. Criticiser with stunning effect.
It was seen that the stone had made an ugly gash on her head, more severe and painful than she intended to inflict on the good Mr. Class Leader. Her friends, being acquainted with the Devil’s Hospital, naturally carried her there for necessary attention.
Mr. World saw Mrs. Criticiser brought into the room in a semi-conscious condition and watched the whole operation.
The surgeon declared that a scar would be carried on her head all through life. Indeed there is no balm in Hell to cure the wounded head or heart so as not to leave a scar. Had she gone to the “Great Physician,” and asked Him aright to apply the “Balm of Gilead,” her head would have been healed aright.
The manager then escorted Mr. World into one of the wards which was crowded to overflowing.
They tarried at the bedside of a man whose left arm and right leg were bandaged. There lay the poor fellow awaiting the slow processes of healing for his fractured bones.
It was on this wise that this man, a certain Mr. Treacherous, came to this sorry plight.
He was an ambitious member of the church, and aimed to be elected to an office therein. His admirers were too few, so the majority vote was given for another, named Mr. Wisdom.
This so aroused the jealousy of Mr. Treacherous that he was moved to seek amends for what he considered a stinging and crushing defeat.
“This will I do,” said he, “I will dig a deep ditch across Mr. Wisdom’s path of success, and will shrewdly cover it from view, and as he chances along that way, in the course of his service, he will surely fall into this ditch to his hurt. Then will I glory in his downfall, so that the stings of this, my defeat, will not prick me so sharply.”
So Mr. Treacherous, in the blackness of the night, digged the ditch and covered it ingeniously. Then he waited day after day to hear of Mr. Wisdom’s injury or death, that he might have cause for rejoicing.
Now Mr. Treacherous, since his defeat, was so heavily weighed down with envy and a desire for revenge that he could not sleep soundly, and was wont to walk about the house in a somnambulistic manner.
One night, under the influence of one of these strange spells, he went from the house and walked over the path that led to the ditch.
To his great dismay and double disgrace he waked not until his body struck the bottom of the ditch. He was bruised and some of his bones were broken. Thus he lay there in agony and cried all night long for help.
Ere the morning broke he wished a thousand times that he had not dug the ditch so deep, or rather, had not dug it at all.
A band of searchers found him and, lifting him from his disgrace, they hurried him to this hospital, for he was not minded to humble himself still more by going to another place where Mr. Wisdom and his kind found relief in time of trouble.
It is likely that Mr. Treacherous will never be able to walk again as perfectly as he did before, for it is the reputation of surgeons and physicians of this hospital, in dealing with cases of such extreme folly, that they so manipulate an operation as to render the patient incapable of complete recovery.
Mr. World and his congenial escort moved on from patient to patient, passing many hundreds who had met with accidents on the Broad Highway.
Many had been wounded by the “sword of the Spirit” and were now hoping to be cured by the processes here in vogue.
In passing on through another ward their attention was called to a woman who lay on a couch and seemed to be suffering more than she was able to bear.
Mr. World inquired concerning her, and was told that she was one Miss Busy-Body, a member in good standing of a radical church. She came to her grief in this strange manner: she had a special aptitude for sweeping before other people’s doors, and could always find dirt, even if she could not find anything better.
She had been told repeatedly to sweep before her own door, but she did not heed this wise counsel, for she often said that there was no dirt visible about her own home.
One day she went forth as usually, broom in hand, and swept the dirt from other doors than her own, much to the annoyance and provocation of her neighbors, for she always raised the dust incontinently.
Now by her continual neglect at home the filth had accumulated to such an extent that when she returned home and attempted to enter the door, her foot slipped on the greasy step, and she fell, breaking her collar bone, two of her ribs, and otherwise injuring herself.
The manager told Mr. World that many such cases came to them for help every day—some from the King’s Highway and still more from the Broad Highway.
They soon came to the bedside of one named Mr. Jealousy who occupied a private room. He was somewhat convalescent when Mr. World saw him.
Mr. Jealousy at one time was an active member of the church, but he undertook to stab Mr. Stability in the back. But Mr. Stability had a good back-bone so strong that no knife that Mr. Jealousy could handle was able to penetrate it.
One time in desperation Mr. Jealousy flung himself violently upon his imaginary foe. But his blade broke, and he himself fell upon it, cutting a terrible gash in his side. He was taken to this hospital for help.
Thus did Mr. Jealousy bring upon himself the disfavor of his church and he was forthwith expelled, for he refused to give the required promise of reformation.
Mr. World and the manager now came to a large door.
“In this room,” said the manager, “we keep all our cancer patients. We have a large number of them and, since they require special treatment, we keep them separate to facilitate the work of the physicians and nurses.”
I saw them enter the room, and heard the words of surprise that fell from the lips of Mr. World as he saw the magnitude of this department.
“These are they,” explained the chief of the division, “who came here through ‘profane and vain babblings.’”
Mr. World then passed through the leprosy ward where he saw quite a few who were once cleansed by the Divine Healer, but who, failing to give thanks for their recovery, suffered fatal relapse and were now in the last stages of this dread disease.
This place was so loathsome to him that he was hastened into the General Department where he saw all manner of patients, each in his particular dilemma.
A great number of this section were suffering from disordered livers, and of these not a few came from the church.
One such, who was a wealthy man, had so far protruded his disagreeableness upon the community that the church officials voluntarily gave him medicine for his liver. This was of no avail. He still grew more irritable and complained about the preacher, the sexton, the choir, and even his own wife. The weather never suited him, and when he gave any testimony about religion it was always a partial outline of the supposed or real sorrows and troubles of the Christian pilgrimage.
While suffering from one of his morbid spells, he listened to the voice of the tempter who persuaded him to seek help at the hands of the physicians under the control of this Hospital. These doctors dosed him until they persuaded him to submit to an operation, and the wicked surgeon knew how to render him still more liable to trouble after his imaginary restoration toward which he was looking when Mr. World saw him.
When he leaves this Hospital he can never be cured from the fiercer subsequent attacks unless he be born again, and such an event Satan knows is very unlikely to occur.
Mr. World, in passing, spoke to quite a few who were suffering from spiritual dyspepsia, consumption, and a great number of other ailments which had developed into chronic form, or had made necessary the surgeon’s cruel knife, and then, turning to his obliging friend, asked if he could not now see Miss Church-Member.
He was taken into a special department arranged for those who were convalescent.
When she saw her faithful and loving friend, Miss Church-Member smiled for the first time since the operation.
The pleasant interview soon ended at the behest of the nurse, and Mr. underground. This question aroused his curiosity and led to a lengthy conversation after which he expressed a desire to visit the secret chambers.
He was conducted into a dark office and asked to sign a pledge that lay on a desk.
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