"Oh, Doctor, you materialistic creature!" said Eva, "to think of talking of a clergyman as if he were a horse—to be managed by changing his feed!"
"Certainly, a man must be a good animal before he can be a good man."
"Well," said Alice, "all I know is, that Mr. St. John is perfectly, disinterestedly, heart and soul and body, devoted to doing good among men; and if that is not noble and grand and godlike, I don't know what is."
"Well," said Dr. Campbell, "I have a profound respect for all those fellows that are trying to mop out the Atlantic Ocean; and he mops cheerfully and with good courage."
"It's perfectly hateful of you, Doctor, to talk so," said Eva.
"Well, you know I don't go in for interfering with nature—having noble, splendid fellows waste and wear themselves down, to keep miserable scalawags and ill-begotten vermin from dying out as they ought to. Nature is doing her best to kill off the poor specimens of the race, begotten of vice and drunkenness; and what you call Christian charity is only interference."
"But you do it, Doctor; you know you do. Nobody does more of that very sort of thing than you do, now. Don't you visit, and give medicine and nursing, and all that, to just such people?"
"I may be a fool for doing it, for all that," said the Doctor. "I don't pretend to stick to my principles any better than most people do. We are all fools, more or less; but I don't believe in Christian charity: it's all wrong—this doctrine that the brave, strong good specimens of the race are to torment and tire and worry their lives out to save the scum and dregs. Here's a man who, by economy, honesty, justice, temperance and hard work, has grown rich, and has houses, and lands, and gardens, and pictures, and what not, and is having a good time as he ought to have, and right by him is another who, by dishonesty, and idleness, and drinking, has come to rags and poverty and sickness. Shall the temperate and just man deny himself enjoyment, and spend his time, and risk his health, and pour out his money, to take care of the wife and children of this scalawag? There's the question in a nutshell? and I say, no! If scalawags find that their duties will be performed for them when they neglect them, that's all they want. What should St. John live like a hermit for? deny himself food, rest and sleep? spend a fortune that might make him and some nice wife happy and comfortable, on drunkards' wives and children? No sense in it."
"That's just where Christianity stands above and opposite to nature," said Bolton, from his corner. "Nature says, destroy. She is blindly striving to destroy the maimed and imperfect. Christianity says, save. Its God is the Good Shepherd, who cares more for the one lost sheep than for the ninety and nine that went not astray."