xury of wasting on others;
though I have yet to learn that anything can be called wasted which
lessens, even for a moment, the amount of human suffering. A plan, for
instance, is on foot for sending twenty of the patients to Madeira for
the winter. The British Consul, to his honour, guarantees their
maintenance, if the Hospital will pay their passage out and home. Some
may say--An unnecessary expense--a problematical benefit. Be it so. I
believe that it will not be such; that it may save many lives--they may
revive: but were it not so, I would still say Give. Let them go, even
if every soul in that ship were doomed. Let them go. Let them drink the
fresh sea breeze before they die; let them see the green tropic world;
let them forget their sorrow for a while; let them feel springing up
afresh in them the celestial fount of hope. We let the guilty criminal
eat and drink well the morn ere he is led forth to die--shall we not do
as much by those who are innocent?

But especially would I say, try to lessen such suffering as that for
which I plead to-day, because it is undeserved in the true sense of that
word--not earned by any act of their own. These poor souls suffer for no
sins of their own; they have done nothing to bring on themselves a
disease which attacks too often the fairest, the seemingly strongest and
healthiest, the most temperate and most pure. They suffer, some it may
be for the sins of their forefathers, some from causes of disease which
science cannot as yet control, cannot even discover. They are objects of
unmixed pity and sympathy: they should be so to us; for they are so to
Him who made them. On this disease God does bestow a special
alleviation--a special mark of His pity, of His tenderness, in a word of
His grace. That unclouded intellect, that unruffled temper, that
cheerful resignation, that brave and yet calm facing of the inevitable
future, that ever-fresh hope, which is no delusion but a token that God
Himself has taken away the sting of death and the victory of the grave,
till the very thought of death has vanished, or is looked on merely as
the gate to a life of health, and strength, and peace, and joy:--all
these symptoms, so common, so normal, all but universal--this Euthanasia
which God has provided for those who, humanly speaking, are innocent, yet
must, for the general good of humanity, leave this world for another;--
what are they but the voi