as the reader may find out.  The Reverend Doctor had an open, smiling expression, a cheery voice, a hearty laugh, and a cordial way with him which some thought too lively for his cloth, but which children, who are good judges of such matters, delighted in, so that he was the favorite of all the little rogues about town.  But he had the clerical art of sobering down in a moment, when asked to say grace while somebody was in the middle of some particularly funny story; and though his voice was so cheery in common talk, in the pulpit, like almost all preachers, he had a wholly different and peculiar way of speaking, supposed to be more acceptable to the Creator than the natural manner.  In point of fact, most of our anti-papal and anti-prelatical clergymen do really intone their prayers, without suspecting in the least that they have fallen into such a Romish practice.

This is the way the conversation between the Doctor of Divinity and the Doctor of Medicine was going on at the point where these notes take it up.

“Ubi tres medici, duo athei, you know, Doctor.  Your profession has always had the credit of being lax in doctrine,—­though 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 isn’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.”