"But nobody can do that—nobody can make a bad man good—but God," said
Willie.
"Certainly. But He uses medicines; and He sends people about with them, just like the doctors' boys you were speaking of. What else am I here for? I've been carrying His medicines about for a good many years now."
"Then your work and not my father's comes nearest to people to help them after all! My father's work, I see, doesn't help the very man himself; it only helps his body—or at best his happiness: it doesn't go deep enough to touch himself. But yours helps the very man. Yours is the best after all."
"I don't know," returned Mr Shepherd, thoughtfully. "It depends, I think, on the kind of preparation gone through."
"Oh yes!" said Willie. "You had to go through the theological classes. I must of course take the medical."
"That's true, but it's not true enough," said Mr Shepherd. "That wouldn't make a fraction of the difference I mean. There's just one preparation essential for a man who would carry about the best sort of medicines. Can you think what it is? It's not necessary for the other sort."
"The man must be good," said Willie. "I suppose that's it."
"That doesn't make the difference exactly," returned Mr Shepherd. "It is as necessary for a doctor to be good as for a parson."
"Yes," said Willie; "but though the doctor were a bad man, his medicines might be good."
"Not by any means so likely to be!" said the parson. "You can never be sure that anything a bad man has to do with will be good. It may be, because no man is all bad; but you can't be sure of it. We are coming nearer it now. Mightn't the parson's medicines be good if he were bad just as well as the doctor's?"