The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory.  In fact, what he wanted was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them.  He was rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely to learn the way of parrying.  But just here he saw a tempting opening, and could not resist giving a home-thrust.

“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.