Concerning the Ministry
And so you have changed your plan of life and, instead of becoming an experimenter with the flesh, are going to be a healer of souls.
And what do I think about it? I am glad you are not to be an M.D. There is an era coming when the doctor will be a prehistoric creature. Oh, it is far, far away, but already the most progressive minds have ceased to regard the family physician as an infallible being.
Medicine has made the least progress of any of the sciences in the last few centuries.
Credulity has cured more people than pills.
Were you to study medicine, I should advise you to take up surgery, osteopathy, electricity, the Kneippe Cure, milk diet, and all the various methods of stimulating circulation; for the people who patronize these treatments are increasing, as the powder and pill patrons are on the decrease.
Then, too, I should urge you to make a careful study of mental and spiritual methods of cure, that you might be wholly equipped for the dawn of the new age. You are a young man, and you will probably live to see a wonderful change in the treatment of disease, and to find the physician of the old school relegated to the historian.
But just as carefully you should now survey the religious horizon, before beginning your studies for the ministry.
It is utterly useless to stand with lifted eyes and say, "The faith of my parents is good enough for me—good enough for all mankind."
Had the children of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother of the opposite creed.