gh pretty stringent
in practice, ha! ha!"

"Some priest said that," the Doctor answered, dryly. "They always talked
Latin when they had a bigger lie than common to get rid of."

"Good!" said the Reverend Doctor; "I'm afraid they would lie a little
sometimes. But isn't there some truth in it, Doctor? Don't you think
your profession is apt to see 'Nature' in the place of the God of
Nature,--to lose sight of the great First Cause in their daily study of
secondary causes?"

"I've thought about that," the Doctor answered, "and I've talked about
it and read about it, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody
believes in God and trusts in God quite so much as the doctors; only it
is n't just the sort of Deity that some of your profession have wanted
them to take up with. There was a student of mine wrote a dissertation
on the Natural Theology of Health and Disease, and took that old lying
proverb for his motto. He knew a good deal more about books than ever
I did, and had studied in other countries. I'll tell you what he said
about it. He said the old Heathen Doctor, Galen, praised God for his
handiwork in the human body, just as if he had been a Christian, or the
Psalmist himself. He said they had this sentence set up in large letters
in the great lecture-room in Paris where he attended: I dressed his
wound and God healed him. That was an old surgeon's saying. And he gave
a long list of doctors who were not only Christians, but famous ones. I
grant you, though, ministers and doctors are very apt to see differently
in spiritual matters."

"That's it," said the Reverend Doctor; "you are apt to see 'Nature'
where we see God, and appeal to 'Science' where we are contented with
Revelation."

"We don't separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do," the Doctor
answered. "When we say that God is omnipresent and omnipotent and
omniscient, we are a little more apt to mean it than your folks are. We
think, when a wound heals, that God's presence and power and knowledge
are there, healing it, just as that old surgeon did. We think a good
many theologians, working among their books, don't see the facts of the
world they live in. When we tell 'em of these facts, they are apt to
call us materialists and atheists and infidels, and all that. We can't
help seeing the facts, and we don't think it's wicked to mention 'em."

"Do tell me," the Reverend Doctor said, "some of these facts we are in
the habit of overlooking, and which your pro