st.

"Yes; but you surely would not consider it inspiration of the same kind
as that of the writers of the Old Testament?"

That cornered the Doctor, and he paused a moment before he replied. Then
he raised his head, so as to command the Reverend Doctor's face through
his spectacles, and said,

"I did not say that. You are clear, I suppose, that the Omniscient spoke
through Solomon, but that Shakespeare wrote without his help?"

The Reverend Doctor looked very grave. It was a bold, blunt way of
putting the question. He turned it aside with the remark, that
Shakespeare seemed to him at times to come as near inspiration as any
human being not included among the sacred writers.

"Doctor," the physician began, as from a sudden suggestion, "you won't
quarrel with me, if I tell you some of my real thoughts, will you?"

"Say on, my dear Sir, say on," the minister answered, with his most
genial smile; "your real thoughts are just what I want to get at. A
man's real thoughts are a great rarity. If I don't agree with you, I
shall like to hear you."

The Doctor began; and in order to give his thoughts more connectedly, we
will omit the conversational breaks, the questions and comments of the
clergyman, and all accidental interruptions.

"When the old ecclesiastics said that where there were three doctors
there were two atheists, they lied, of course. They called everybody who
differed from them atheists, until they found out that not believing in
God was n't nearly so ugly a crime as not believing in some particular
dogma; then they called them heretics, until so many good people had been
burned under that name that it began to smell too strong of roasting
flesh,--and after that infidels, which properly means people without
faith, of whom there are not a great many in any place or time. But
then, of course, there was some reason why doctors shouldn't think about
religion exactly as ministers did, or they never would have made that
proverb. It 's very likely that something of the same kind is true now;
whether it is so or not, I am going to tell you the reasons why it would
not be strange, if doctors should take rather different views from
clergymen about some matters of belief. I don't, of course, mean all
doctors nor all clergymen. Some doctors go as far as any old New England
divine, and some clergymen agree very well with the doctors that think
least according to rule.

"To begin with their ideas of the Crea