No matter how important the work is, how essential it may appear, it must be laid down when painful illness seizes us.

We must be healed of our fever before we can minister.
But there are other fevers besides those which burn in men's bodies.
There are heart-fevers which may rage within us, even when our bodies are in perfect health.

We find people with feverish spirits--unhappy, discontented, fretted, worried, perhaps insubmissive and rebellious.
Or they may be in a fever of fear or dread.

These inward fevers are worse evils than mere bodily illness.

It is better in sickness to have our heart's fever depart, even though we must longer keep our pain, than to recover our physical health, meanwhile keeping our fretfulness and impatience uncured.
We cannot minister while heart-fever of any kind is on us.