which came so near taking place in the hero of the
allegory. Now the wonderful book from which this example is taken is,
next to the Bible and the Treatise of "De Imitatione Christi," the
best-known religious work of Christendom. If Bunyan and his
contemporary, Sydenham, had met in consultation over the case of
Christian at the time when he was meditating self-murder, it is very
possible that there might have been a difference of judgment. The
physician would have one advantage in such a consultation. He would
pretty certainly have received a Christian education, while the clergyman
would probably know next to nothing of the laws or manifestations of
mental or bodily disease. It does not seem as if any theological student
was really prepared for his practical duties until he had learned
something of the effects of bodily derangements, and, above all, had
become familiar with the gamut of mental discord in the wards of an
insane asylum.

It is a very thoughtless thing to say that the physician stands to the
divine in the same light as the divine stands to the physician, so far as
each may attempt to handle subjects belonging especially to the other's
profession. Many physicians know a great deal more about religious
matters than they do about medicine. They have read the Bible ten times
as much as they ever read any medical author. They have heard scores of
sermons for one medical lecture to which they have listened. They often
hear much better preaching than the average minister, for he hears
himself chiefly, and they hear abler men and a variety of them. They
have now and then been distinguished in theology as well as in their own
profession. The name of Servetus might call up unpleasant recollections,
but that of another medical practitioner may be safely mentioned. "It
was not till the middle of the last century that the question as to the
authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with anything like a discerning
criticism. The first attempt was made by a layman, whose studies we might
have supposed would scarcely have led him to such an investigation."
This layman was "Astruc, doctor and professor of medicine in the Royal
College at Paris, and court physician to Louis XIV." The quotation is
from the article "Pentateuch" in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible,"
which, of course, lies on the table of the least instructed clergyman.
The sacred profession has, it is true, returned the favor by giving the
practi